Growing Up in San Francisco Read online

  Through it all, the steady bell-ringing of Salvation Army volunteers resounded from shopping areas in the Presidio to Nob Hill, Noe Valley and the Bayview—giving us all a very gentle reminder that the holidays are, indeed, a time to think of others.

  16

  SAVORING THE PAST

  Recent excavations in the Outside Lands have uncovered historical artifacts related to the history of Merrie Way, a one-time amusement village located above the Cliff House and Sutro Baths, near the corner of Point Lobos Avenue and El Camino del Mar. Adolph Sutro filled this area with many attractions that were originally part of the Midwinter Fair of 1894, held in Golden Gate Park, and he operated the spot as the Sutro Pleasure Grounds from 1896 to 1900.

  Another nearby archaeological dig, this one organized by a group of San Francisco high school students in 2012, managed to unearth the blue-and-white geometric-patterned interior tile floor of a greenhouse/conservatory that was adjacent to Sutro’s residence just across the street from Merrie Way. Sutro’s home and the conservatory, built in the 1880s, managed to survive the 1906 earthquake, only to be torn down by the city in 1939 when they were barely fifty years old. The reemergence of the old tile floor was a nice little peek into the past.

  Just recently, a bit of sleuthing by this author has managed to uncover yet another popular artifact from this area—one which some people might consider to be the greatest lost treasure of all, perhaps rivaling the Maltese Falcon—the popular but long-gone food of the Hot House restaurant, once located at Playland-at-the-Beach.

  The Hot House operated at 750 Great Highway for nearly forty years, from the early 1930s until the closure of Playland on Labor Day weekend 1972. Originally operated by Barney Gavello, the restaurant dispensed Mexican food to appreciative crowds for decades. It has been estimated that on peak weekends during World War II, the Hot House sold up to twelve thousand tamales to Ocean Beach visitors from both the steamy, fragrant interior—with its cream-color stucco walls and hand-carved dark-wood counter and stools—as well as from the takeaway windows facing the waves.

  In a uniquely San Francisco twist, the Hot House, unlike most other purveyors of Mexican food, always served baskets of dark-bake sourdough French bread, with generous quantities of butter alongside, rather than the more authentic stack of tortillas. In addition, spaghetti was a featured menu item for decades. Food from the Hot House still elicits fond memories for thousands of San Franciscans, unlike most other places before or since. On the nostalgia scale, it is right up there with Herman’s potato salad, Blum’s candies, Larraburu French bread and Herb’s meatball sandwiches.

  Gavello must have felt the decline of Playland approaching, as he sold his beloved restaurant just a few years before the amusement park breathed its last. New owners Juan Faranda and Jose Robleto took over with enthusiasm, continuing to work with the time-tested recipes that had been pleasing the crowds for decades. Faranda, of Sicilian-Peruvian background, was born in Lima, Peru, in the late 1930s and had been living in San Francisco since his teens. As the manager of an adjacent Playland eatery, the Pie Shop, he was well acquainted with the outgoing Gavello and knew that he and his partner could maintain the quality and the atmosphere of the Hot House even after Gavello’s retirement.

  Popular Playland dining spot from the 1920s through 1972. After Playland closed, the Hot House relocated to Balboa Street and continued in business until the owner retired in 1996. It is now operated by the owner’s son on a monthly “pop-up” basis. Photograph by Dennis O’Rorke.

  The new owners took over in the late 1960s, still serving the original 1934 recipes, much to the delight of loyal customers. There continued to be a lively, festive crowd at the Hot House every day of the week—how could it be any other way, when it was surrounded by the excitement of Playland?—and there was seldom an empty seat in the place, right up until the time the wrecking ball struck in 1972.

  Once Playland closed, Juan Faranda bought out his partner and moved the restaurant to a new location a few blocks away at 4052 Balboa Street, where it continued as a family business for nearly a quarter of a century, even expanding into an adjacent building that once housed a drugstore. Sadly, though, many of the original loyal customers thought the Hot House had vanished along with the rest of Playland, and perhaps there was too little advertising done in those days. One of my mom’s bingo-playing companions tipped her off about the new site in the early 1980s, and it was the first that our family had heard of it, but we soon became regulars.

  All throughout the restaurant’s long run on Balboa Street, the owner often found himself in the kitchen, ensuring that the staff was preparing the food precisely according to the original recipes and not taking any unauthorized shortcuts to save time or skimp on crucial ingredients. With help from his wife and children, the Hot House continued to thrive, though on a smaller scale. Juan finally decided to retire in 1996 and closed the restaurant after a total run of more than sixty years.

  Recently, his forty-three-year-old son Eric was attending a Giants game with friends when the talk turned to classic San Francisco food. Eric was astounded that while so many people his age remembered Doggie Diner, few knew of the Hot House. He decided then and there that a whole new generation of San Franciscans deserved to know exactly why the place was so fondly remembered and what the excitement was all about. Juan, now in his late seventies, agreed to turn those classic recipes over to Eric, but with a clear understanding that they must never be given away.

  As a trained chef with a culinary degree, Eric has now resurrected the Hot House menu and started a once-per-month catering business, delivering food orders throughout the Bay Area from his home in San Mateo County for a reasonable price, plus a delivery fee. While the eighty-year-old recipes remain a family secret (I know—I tried unsuccessfully to get him to share the luscious enchilada sauce recipe with me), he and his family know the powerful draw of both food and nostalgia, and he hopes to bring back some lost memories for many of us.

  His toughest challenge was rescaling ingredient proportions to yield a couple of hundred servings, rather than several thousand, because things like salt and spices tend to react differently when proportions are changed—sometimes they are stronger than desired, and sometimes weaker. Eric laughs as he recalls his father’s recipes with measurements expressed not in “cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, pinches and dashes” but rather “barrels, sacks, pounds, gallons and potsful.” With his parents watching closely over his shoulder, Eric has now mastered the correct measures of ingredients that are required to create the precise taste and texture of the classic dishes, but in manageable quantities—and his customers enthusiastically agree that he has done so to perfection as soon as they take that first bite.

  Many of his loyal fans are known to schedule family get-togethers around Eric’s once-per-month delivery schedule for enchiladas, tamales, chili con carne, rice and beans, and he is currently working on a business plan to expand the operation to include FedEx overnight deliveries packed in dry ice. Ultimately, this enthusiastic San Francisco native and graduate of Archbishop Riordan High School would like to resurrect the Hot House in a classic San Francisco neighborhood location, complete with some iconic Playland décor and memorabilia.

  Just for the record, I recently took along a casserole filled with authentic enchiladas and sauce from the Hot House to share with two different groups of friends for pre- and post-Thanksgiving dinners. As we were eating, I could almost feel the ghosts of the past nudging me as they reached down the long wooden counter for another slice of dark-bake sourdough French bread and a couple of pats of butter. The food and the company were excellent, as we all relived a few precious moments from our neighborhood’s beloved culinary past, recalling the sights, sounds and smells of dear old Playland.

  Today, Eric Faranda operates the Hot House under a new business model, the “pop-up” restaurant—that is, renting a licensed established restaurant kitchen on a periodic basis, taking orders in advance and then magically transp
orting his customers back in time with mouth-watering carryout orders, right down to the grated cheese and chopped fresh onions.

  For more info, contact Eric Faranda at [email protected] or via his Facebook page, the Original Hot House From Playland.

  A view along Ocean Beach and the Great Highway evokes fond memories of the past for those who remember the fun and excitement of Playland—gone since 1972 and replaced by a rather bland development of homes and apartments. Photograph by John A. Martini.

  AUTHOR’S COMMENT

  So good was the food, and so memorable, that several times over the last few years, the Western Neighborhoods Project (WNP) message boards have carried recipes—all of them identified as being “from The Hot House at Playland.” Just for the record, Eric Faranda laughs and responds with an emphatic, “No, not quite,” to each of the drastically different versions—only he knows the real secrets behind the sauce. All of those allegedly “authentic” versions that have appeared online in recent years are simply the stuff of urban legend.

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  THE CITY AS BACKDROP

  In the fall of 1972, veteran actor Karl Malden, then sixty years old, was teamed up with the younger Michael Douglas, then twenty-eight, in a new crime series, The Streets of San Francisco. It was not the first time that the city was used as the backdrop for a television series. Years earlier, The Lineup (known later in syndication as San Francisco Beat) teamed up old-time actors Warner Anderson and Tom Tully in similar roles. Sadly, the 1954 series seems to have disappeared from the airwaves, though the 1972 Malden-Douglas series remains in syndication today and offers many nostalgic glimpses of the city as it used to be.

  Beginning with season 1, exterior scenes for The Streets of San Francisco were shot on location in San Francisco, with interior shots filmed at a motion picture studio in Southern California. By season 2, however, the credits began to indicate, “Filmed completely on location in San Francisco.” Among the many settings are a murder victim’s house in Sea Cliff with a tremendous view of the Golden Gate Bridge; a would-be arsonist in a large home on Junipero Serra Boulevard near St. Francis Circle; a suspect captured in the wooded area beneath the Mount Davidson Cross; various scenes at multiple locations in Golden Gate Park, including the Japanese Tea Garden and the Music Concourse, with the old de Young Museum in the background; and visits to a smaller San Francisco State University, the old Zim’s at 19th and Taraval and a passenger getting onto a green-and-cream MUNI streetcar at 15th Avenue and Ulloa.

  The band shell in Golden Gate Park, built in 1899, was donated by sugar baron Claus Spreckels and is still the site of open-air concerts. An underground garage was added to the Music Concourse in 2005 as part of the new de Young Museum project. Photograph by Michael Fraley.

  From the early days of the film industry, San Francisco has provided an ideal setting for the making of movies, with urban, suburban, rural, mountain and ocean settings all within close proximity. Many locals enjoy pointing out the various spots around town where Bullitt careened in one of Hollywood’s most famous car chases, the corner above the Stockton Street Tunnel where Brigid O’Shaughnessy shot Miles Archer or the spot where Dirty Harry gunned down the bad guys.

  SOME FILMS SET IN SAN FRANCISCO

  American Graffiti (1973), Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Cindy Williams

  Basic Instinct (1992), Michael Douglas, Sharon Stone

  Bullitt (1968), Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset

  Competition, The (1980), Richard Dreyfuss, Lee Remick

  Conversation, The (1974), Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Cindy Williams

  Dark Passage (1947), Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall

  Dirty Harry (1971), Clint Eastwood, Andrew Robinson, Harry Guardino

  Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan

  Fan, The (1996), Robert De Niro, Wesley Snipes, Ellen Barkin

  Freebie and the Bean (1974), James Caan, Alan Arkin, Loretta Swit, Valerie Harper

  Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967), Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn

  Harold and Maude (1971), Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort

  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Harrison Ford, River Phoenix

  Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy

  I Remember Mama (1948), Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Ellen Corby

  Joy Luck Club (1993), Ming-Na Wen, Rosalind Chao, Lauren Tom, France Nguyen

  Lineup, The (1958) Eli Wallach, Robert Keith

  Love Bug (1968), Dean Jones, Michelle Lee, David Tomlinson, Buddy Hackett

  Maltese Falcon, The (1941), Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre

  Milk (2008), Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin

  Mother (1996), Albert Brooks, Debbie Reynolds

  Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Robin Williams, Sally Field

  Nine Months (1998), Hugh Grant, Julianne Moore

  No Small Affair (1984), Jon Cryer, Demi Moore

  Once a Thief (1965), Alain Delon, Ann-Margret, Van Heflin, Jack Palance

  Organization, The (1971) Sidney Poitier, Barbara McNair

  Pacific Heights (1990), Melanie Griffith, Matthew Modine, Michael Keaton

  Parent Trap, The (1998), Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid, Natasha Richardson

  Portrait in Black (1960), Lana Turner, Anthony Quinn

  Right Stuff, The (1983), Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid

  San Francisco (1936), Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy

  Sister Act (1992), Whoopi Goldberg, Maggie Smith, Harvey Keitel

  Star Spangled Girl (1971), Tony Roberts, Todd Susman, Sandy Duncan

  Sudden Impact (1983), Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke

  Take the Money and Run (1969), Woody Allen, Janet Margolin, Louise Lasser

  They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970), Sidney Poitier, Martin Landau, Barbara McNair

  Towering Inferno (1974), Paul Newman, Steve McQueen

  Vertigo (1958), James Stewart, Kim Novak

  View to a Kill, A (1985), Roger Moore, Tanya Roberts

  Wedding Planner, The (2001), Jennifer Lopez, Matthew McConaughey

  What’s Up, Doc? (1972), Barbra Streisand, Ryan O’Neal, Madeline Kahn

  Yours, Mine and Ours (1968), Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda

  Scene at Candlestick Park in the mid-1960s, prior to the stadium’s expansion. Wikimedia Commons.

  SOME TELEVISION SERIES SET IN SAN FRANCISCO

  Though Often with Filming Elsewhere

  Amy Prentiss (1974–1975), Jessica Walter, Johnny Seven, Helen Hunt

  Barbary Coast (1975–1976), William Shatner, Dennis Cole, Doug McClure

  Checkmate (1960–1962), Anthony George, Sebastian Cabot, Carolyn Craig, Doug McClure

  Dharma & Greg (1997–2002), Jenna Elfman, Thomas Gibson

  Doris Day Show (1968–1973), Doris Day, Denver Pyle

  Falcon Crest (1981–1990), Jane Wyman, Robert Foxworth, Abby Dalton, Lorenzo Lamas

  Full House (1987–1995), John Stamos, Bob Saget, Dave Coulier

  Have Gun—Will Travel (1957–1963), Richard Boone, Kam Tong

  Hotel (1983–1988), Anne Baxter, James Brolin

  Kezar Stadium, one-time home of the 49ers, has long been a popular backdrop for motion picture and television productions. Note that at $4.50, this ticket was considered to be rather pricey in 1970. Author’s collection.

  Ironside (1967–1975), Raymond Burr, Don Galloway, Don Mitchell, Barbara Anderson

  Lineup, aka: San Francisco Beat (1954–1960), Warner Anderson, Tom Tully

  Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1967–1973), Donna Mills, Leslie Charleson, David Birney

  McMillan & Wife (1971–1977), Rock Hudson, Susan Saint James

  Midnight Caller (1988–1991), Gary Cole, Wendy Kilbourne

  Party of Five (1994–2000), Scott Wolf, Matthew Fox, Neve Campbell, Lacey Chabert

  Streets of San Francisco (1972–1977), Karl Malden, Michael Douglas/Richard Hatch

  Sudde
nly Susan (1996–2000), Brooke Shields, Nestor Carbonell, Kathy Griffin

  Tales of the City (1993 miniseries), Olympia Dukakis, Donald Moffat

  Too Close for Comfort (1980–1986), Ted Knight, Nancy Dussault

  Trapper John, M.D. (1979–1986), Pernell Roberts, Gregory Harrison, Madge Sinclair

  18

  A NICE PLACE TO VISIT

  It is now just over 155 years since my great-grandfather David Dunnigan and his cousin Michael stepped off the boat that brought them to San Francisco from our family’s original American home in the District of Columbia—an arduous journey around Cape Horn. For a century and a half, hundreds of my relatives called San Francisco home. Today, just one older cousin lives in her longtime home near Duboce Park. All my hundreds of other relatives have picked themselves up and moved to other places—sadly, Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma has been a popular destination for many—but others visit our hometown on a regular basis.

  Returning as visitors rather than as permanent residents changes our perception of things a bit. We don’t need to rely on MUNI during morning and afternoon rush hours, nor do the heated arguments among members of the city’s Board of Supervisors impact us as directly as in the past. We no longer get upset when a favorite hardware store, shoe repair shop or bakery closes, nor do the woes of the public school system any longer have a direct impact on us.

  There are things, though, about which we “returning natives” are passionate, including some places that must be included in each and every return visit—even if just on a drive-by basis.

  On most of my visits, I take MUNI to get around, since I can often be found at the historic old Ocean Park Motel near the zoo, with the L-Taraval beginning and ending its long run right at the front door, thus assuring me of a seat at the start of my daily adventures. It amazes me that the fare is now $2.25 per ride, though a one-day visitor’s pass for $16 and a seven-day pass for $29 represent good value for most visitors. Soon, I’ll be able to qualify for MUNI’s senior fare of $0.75 per ride, up from the nickel rides that my parents enjoyed in their youth and again as seniors in the early 1980s.