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Exploring San Franciscoís mysterious Outer Richmond

“If you blindfolded me and spun me around,” says Greg, a native of San Francisco’s foggy, desolate Outer Richmond, “I wouldn’t have a clue what avenue I was on. They all look exactly the same.”

There’s no arguing the essential uniformity of the Outer Richmond, a residential neighborhood bordered by Golden Gate Park on one side, and the wooded Sutro Cliffs on the other. Crisscrossed by little avenues of quiet, pastel-colored houses, smooth-plastered and sloping in a vaguely Spanish design, the Outer Richmond begins somewhere in the mid-teens of the avenues and culminates in the steely-grey surf of Ocean Beach. In short, it is a placid stretch of identical, interlocking houses far removed from the bustle of downtown San Francisco. On the surface, this modest neighborhood seems to boast little that would warrant a second glance. With just a bit more exploring, however, one discovers the remarkable cultural richness and ethnic variety of this, the coldest and foggiest neighborhood in San Francisco.
Regardless, it is still a challenge to extract anything resembling a sense of wonder from the Outer Richmond’s jaded locals. Talking with Greg offered humorous insight into the dynamics of the neighborhood. Having moved here from England at the age of eight, Greg was mocked for his Cockney accent by the other kids at Lafayette Elementary, a large school far out at 32nd and Anza. “There were about ten white kids, ten black kids and ten Latinos. The rest were Asian. They used to laugh at me when I talked,” he recounts. “Then there were the FOB’s (fresh off the boat). They were the ESL kids, they didn’t speak much English. They hung out together. Even the other Asian kids made fun of them.”

Despite his linguistic isolation, Greg was still a few years away from the weekly beatings that would plague his high school career in the rougher Lower Haight. All in all, the Outer Richmond was (and still is) a very safe neighborhood. A policeman revealed that the only crimes are ’stolen cars, a few break-ins, and kids fighting.’ Apparently, youth gangs (divided ethnically between Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese) have regular ‘turf wars’ over controlling gambling rackets at the local high schools. But there are no serious weapons problems, and the restless youth of the Outer Richmond remain, with their hooded sweatshirts, multiple pagers, and souped-up Honda Civics, a prosaic piece of San Francisco culture.

I accompanied Greg down to the neighborhood’s commercial heart, crowded Geary Boulevard. This barrier-divided street stretches all the way from the ocean to downtown, and has more daily traffic than any other street in San Francisco. The bulk of Geary’s shops in the Outer Richmond are to be found in the ten-block range between 17th Avenue and 27th Avenue. These blocks are filled with run-down little stores: hairdressers, a stationers, a few delis and bakeries. Pedestrians fill the sidewalk and cars circle like sharks, dodging the double-parked cars and diving into the rare open space. After a few fruitless minutes of circling, I drove around the block and parked on a quieter sidestreet. I walked back to find that, just as Greg had promised, the old Chinese men at Donut World (Geary and 17th) were sitting around formica tabletops, laughing and drinking coffee out of styrofoam cups. Down the street, some Russian grandmothers in floral bonnets and shawls were judgementally squeezing tomatoes at the sidewalk grocer’s. A throng of people waited restlessly nearby for the workhorse of the public bus system, the 38 Geary. Just another typical, mundane day in the Outer Richmond.

Even through the peaks of dot-com prosperity in the late nineties, the Outer Richmond changed little. Being overwhelmingly residential, it has little space for new businesses to be built- as if anyone would have wanted to invest in this cold, wet enclave- and the most significant changes have been demographic. Most conspicuous has been the growth of the Russian community. The Russian Orthodox church at Geary and 27th, with its immense gold onion-dome spires, has long been the neighborhood’s most visible landmark. All along Geary, signs are written in Russian, over groceries, liquor stores and restaurants, and handwritten flyers in Russian are posted on the outside walls of the shops. Elderly Russian women haggle with their younger counterparts, the shop attendants, while middle-aged Russian men smoke and look sporting in their teal and azure Adidas track suits. Strangest of all, given the chilling weather and the general informality of American culture, are the teenage Russian girls, all made-up and strutting in leather miniskirts and low-cut leopard-skin print tops.

All in all, the Outer Richmond is as pleasing and eclectic a blend of different cultures as you will find anywhere in San Francisco. Mostly, this diversity is celebrated in the cuisine. Tommy’s, on Geary and 24th, is a bustling Mexican restaurant which features the West Coast’s most extensive selection of tequilas. Khan Toke nearby is an acclaimed Thai restaurant where you must take off your shoes to enter. Russian food is to be found at Traktir, far out on Balboa St., and even Egyptian fare, complete with belly dancers, is represented at the colorful Al-Mazri nearby. Nevertheless, the Outer Richmond remains primarily a maze of multi-colored, semi-detached houses clinging to neat, narrow avenues.

It is also a land of laundromats. Inconspicuous, permeated with strange blueish light and packed with community noticeboards, washers whirring in the doldrums of routine, nowhere is the sheer residential nature of the Outer Richmond seen more clearly than in its laundromats. They are subdued, unstaffed, sparsely patronized. Through the night, long after the last quarter has pulled the day’s last wash, the picture windows flood the avenues with that eery blue light, and starkly illuminate the hulking white appliances sleeping within. Like the fog, the laundromats quietly seep into one’s consciousness. Unlike washing-houses in trendier parts of the city, they don’t feature coffee bars, and don’t seem to be likely places to meet that special someone either. For dating, Richmonders have a few bars (like the Polynesian-style Trader Sam’s, at Geary and 27th), and of course, their coffee shops.

One of the best-known is Cafй Bazaar on California and 21st. Here the old wooden tabletops are marred with rivulets, scratches and gashes, almost like small rivers, or Martian channels on the smooth face of a planet. Graced with these marks of writers and knives, the tabletops of Cafй Bazaar attest to a long history of conversation, intellect, eating and relaxation- a good place for friends to meet, or for a first date. The cafй also has a reputation for putting on great shows, from folk to jazz to poetry readings. Trombones and other brass instruments hang in the big picture windows, which are overgrown with the trailing vines of plants. Rows of Torani syrup gleam behind a bar painted in mottled tones of green and gold. On this grey Sunday afternoon the cafй is filled with single men reading, both ponderous tomes and ephemera. In the corner, an unruly and crowded signboard bursts with notices for writing groups, dogwatchers and yoga, for music lessons, apartment rentals, and mysterious offers in Russian.

In the light of the window seat, a dead-ringer for a longshoreman, shirtsleeves rolled up, a cap covering his eyes, reads the newspaper. Over in the back, a placid man who could just as well be the Dalai Lama is entertaining two Vietnamese girls in their own language. A couple plays scrabble by lamplight, while a woman blows on her cup of tea. Behind the counter, the barista, a young guy with impeccably gelled hair, taps the side of the biscotti jar in time with
the low-fi hip hop emanating from the CD player. More like a little piece of Vermont transferred to San Francisco, Cafй Bazaar is still nevertheless very cool, and very Outer Richmond.

Signs for yet another Irish plastering company cling wetly to a phone pole in the fog at 32nd and Cabrillo. The Irish, once the predominant ethnic group in the Richmond, still retain a presence in the avenues from 30th to the ocean. Most of them work illegally, and they have mastered the art of low-budget advertising on the phone poles of the Outer Richmond. Their ads are inevitably for bricklaying, plasterering, or general construction. Curiously little work seems to be done out here, given the number of houses; but perhaps that’s better. After all, it would be an incongruity out here to see black roads and bright houses, with orderly, well-trimmed flowers. If Geary Boulevard is the commercial heart of the neighborhood, the avenues after 30th- and especially tranquil Cabrillo St., grey asphalt scrubbed with fog and sea salt, empty, oceanbound- reveal the essential spirit of the lonely Outer Richmond.

After 40th Avenue, things start to disintegrate. The houses are more run-down, the dust and salt settles evenly over everything, and the pavement is bleached and cracked. A car with a cardboard window sleeps beside weathered scaffolding on a building that has yet to be condemned. There is a hesitant breeze, fog, an unclaimed couch thrown on the sidewalk. It is almost as if the utter chaos and formlessness of the sea has persuaded these last eight blocks to give in to the anarchic pull of dissolution. The God-forsaken inhabitants who live above 40th get the full brunt of the Pacific, it’s wind, severe fog and chill. There is almost a peat-burning smell, and graywashed smooth walls, reminiscent of Mayo or Clare. And also, swimming at frigid Ocean Beach is about as much fun as in Ireland.

“Look! San Franciscans at the beach!” deadpans Greg. “They look confused. They don’t know if they should take their shirts off, or build a sandcastle, or try to sunbathe, or what.”

The sparse crowd of beachgoers waits hopefully for the sun to peek out from behind a cloud. But the clouds only grow thicker, and darker, and the people resign themselves to tossing sticks for their dogs, or flying kites. The dogs yap, skitterish children run into the water and out again. The only ones oblivious to the miserable weather are the surfers.

“Ocean Beach,” says Bryce, a wetsuit-clad young surfer, “is one of the 10 most dangerous places to surf in the world.” He should know. A former professional surfer who went on the surfing world tour circuit, Bryce is lanky and tall, with a wave of bleached blond that attests to too much time in the sun. Having mastered the waves of Hawaii, Australia and Tahiti, Bryce has seen his share of dangerous conditions. The challenge of Ocean Beach, according to him, has to do with its tricky cross-currents and riptides, and the unique phenomenon of the nearby San Francisco Bay, which surges water in and swooshes it quickly back out to sea. If a surfer gets caught on the wrong end of the cycle, it’s easy to get swept out for good. I think of this as I watch the bobbing black shapes in the water, which from time to time arise and cruise down the white crest of a wave, before disappearing again in the mercurial water.

Time passes; the sea darkens. Afternoon fades, and the few hardened beachgoers are starting to go home, or up the road to the famous Cliff House, a restaurant and bar built in 1909 with a sweeping view of the Pacific. One of San Francisco’s most durable landmarks, the Cliff House is the culminating attraction of the Outer Richmond. It is a great place to have a pint of Anchor Steam and watch the white-capped rollers crash into Ocean Beach. On this cold and foggy Sunday afternoon, it seems especially the perfect thing to do.