when I come home to you San Francisco,
your Golden Sun will shine for me you guys take care keep keep on keepin on
the Tenderloin is an unusual name and when comedian Dave Chappelle came to San Francisco
to film a comedy special in 2004 that choice moniker didn't escape him Went to that Tenderloin
is nothing tender about that at shit at all that was rough the opposite of Tender I have
never seen crack smoked so casually before the Tenderloin district certainly wears the
mark of homelessness drug abuse and poverty that comedian Chappelle mentions but the Tenderloin
also has a rich history and notoriety beyond the current gritty street scene and that's
what inspired community organizer randy shaw to say what the Tenderloin currently
needs is not another clinic or shelter what it needs is a museum so what would visitors
to a proposed Tenderloin museum see or do kelw Steven short talks with Shaw about some of the
possibilities Randy Shaw is the director of the Tenderloin housing clinic and right now
he's a historian tour guide and museum booster the idea is you walk in the ground floor to the
right you'd have the performance space Cafe Shaw is walking through what he hopes will
be the lobby of a future Tenderloin History Museum it hasn't been finalized but but but
just a lot of talk to sort of immediately give people walk in and field in a different place
Shaw is in the former lobby of the Cadillac Hotel at Eddie and Leavenworth streets in San Francisco
built the year after the 1906 earthquake the Cadillac was home to wealthy visitors in the
first part of the 20th century today approximately 160 tenants in subsidized housing call at home as
Shaw mentioned the museum is still conceptual at this point but one of his favorite ideas
has already been scrapped if we want to make some money cuz you have to make money of it about the
venue's is you know have a boxing ring and have it like a Fight Club because we have Newman's gym
but and you know the insurance issues I Hillman Pacific Heights would love to come down a box
in the Tenderloin in Friday nights probably not going to happen it is a little too interactive
yeah a little like like yeah guy you crazy cuz the insurance cost for that yeah residents of
Pacific Heights coming to the Tenderloin to punch each other does sound crazy but many
years ago professional boxers did just that in the hotels former ballroom as Shaw mentioned
it was the home of Newman's gym name a famous boxer and he probably punched a bag at Newman's
Jack Dempsey Joe Lewis Sugar Ray both Robinson and Leonard people don't know that that we had
a Muhammad Ali training in Newman's gym and the Cadillac Hotel where the museum would be look at
me now don't tell me that in a perfect specimen of a man then there was the tenderloins music scene
so let up a spy jerry garcia lived at the cadillac in 1961 the Grateful Dead's very
first live album was at the great American Music Hall here in this neighborhood so I don't people
when they think of Grateful Dead in San Francisco think Haight Ashbury Panhandle they don't realize
this is where the music was recorded in their glut when they really made the next step to the
higher level of success Shaw says that in the early 1970s Wally hiders recording studio on
Hyde Street was the best in the Bay Area so this is where you'd want to record and has some great
cross-fertilization because probably Stills and Nash is playing in one room Grateful Dead
and other Queens they're all there at the same time on site hanging out for you know hour after
hour recording the rise of the san francisco sound in rock correspondent with the decline
of another music scene that had been vibrant in the Tenderloin throughout the 50s and early 60s
most people do not know that the Blackhawk jazz club which the time Miles Davis Thelonious Monk
Cal Tjader Dave Brubeck the jazz greats of the era were recording live albums here in the black
hawk at Turk and Hyde there's a famous photo by the lake photographer Jim Marshall Miles Davis at
Newman's gym in 1971 he used to light the box in the Tenderloin in fact photographer jim marshall
captioned that photo of Miles Davis don't hit me in the mouth I got a play tonight today of course
the Tenderloin has a reputation for vice and let's be honest now that's a part of history that many
people find alluring this was a place has been said where you could always go in a restaurant and
make the book underground speakeasies card games including those involving Chief of Police at times
so the talent had this kind of bar/restaurant fun kind of atmosphere and that's about as far
as Shaw will go on that part of the Tenderloin story he doesn't dwell on current neighborhood
crime other than to say he thinks most of it is caused by non-residents it probably won't
be featured in the museum and it doesn't have to be it's right there on the street for everyone
to see so who does Shaw think will come to the Tenderloin to learn about it we think European
tourists are really going to be interested in this neighborhood they like the grittiness they're
not into the Fisherman's Wharf scene as much they want to see something that's more authentic Shaw's
research on the topic surprisingly doesn't blame current crime and homelessness for lack visitors
to the area he says it's because there's no focus no center no place for anyone to find
what the area is about that would be the purpose of the proposed Museum and performance space the
museum would also offer walking tours of the 1930s buildings in the neighborhood most of which have
all of their original architectural elements Shaw takes me into one which was built as a YMCA Hotel
this looks like a European Renaissance palace or something with the top of it yes it's it's very
Venetian in that color scheme Venetian yes yes yes it's crisscross of geometric patterns that
sort of borders you have on a on an illuminated manuscript and it's just part of the ceiling it's
a great description of that today the building is one of the many single room occupancy hotels
or SROs in the Tenderloin Shaw thinks this type of architecture could be another attraction but
isn't it going to be well creepy going up and knocking on someone's door to see their single
room home? Shaw says a lot of reports have depicted the project in this manner and he
says these reports are totally wrong one reporter once said to me well gia you can have people come
to this neighborhood and gawk at people and I said I said what's very interesting about that
is Chinatown's market itself to tourists for 40 years and I've never heard anyone saying that
why you bring whites in to gawk at Chinese? I've never heard that I've never anyone said
don't come to the mission where you staring at Latinos I mean that is the weirdest thing so
there's a bizarre standard which somehow the Tenderloin is not allowed to play by the same
rules other neighborhoods while it's true that people may enjoy seeing and learning about the
architectural gems of the Tenderloin at the same time it's equally true that tourists are going to
have to walk around spilled trash bags on the sidewalk while dodging people who can barely
stand up in the middle of a weekday morning as I did on Shaw's tour and that situation does not
invite you to stop and linger yet the simple act of having people come through with an admiring
eye can have its own benefits you know how when you see someone looking up other people start
looking up too? it happened to us while Shaw was showing me around well my name is Joseph
Charleston and you live here in town yeah borned and raised you grew up in Ingleside district so
you were just you were but we were pointing out the building slipping off y'all you guys caught
my attention so uh I noticed the building because nobody looks up if you notice in this neighborhood
you realize district or tenderloin nobody looks up everybody's looking down or you know they got
tunnel vision because of the drugs prostitution everything else that goes on Charleston wouldn't
consider tourists to be gawkers he too sees them as potential agents of change San Francisco I
might be talking to a millionaire he might walk by our seat they're not going to allow this to
continue and that says Shaw gets to the core of this project the core issue is this just because
you're poor doesn't mean you have to live in it in an in an unpleasant drug filled crime ridden
environment the low quality of life it's going to take more than tourists experiencing the gritty
urban realism of the Tenderloin to change it much more but if that causes a few more
people to start looking up well it couldn't hurt yeah yeah exactly i hi it couldn't hurt
that's right in San Francisco's Tenderloin district I'm Stephen short for crosscurrents
we go back way long years long you check-in me when I was home girl over a guardian angel
this is just the ghetto part of me right I love Turk & Taylor right all my friends is
down here and I got small water crack that I want to when I'm smoking you know I could
act out I can fight I could do whatever the hell I want to do you know there it's
my really only source of income right now is what I get from this sometimes I get a sale I
just had my own show here but a month ago and sold out pretty good so now I'm just coming
and I'll make it as much as I can putting it in the shows here which are really good
the needle exchange started when a couple of my close friends died from AIDS every day I
do this every week in order to try to keep the community more safer from transmittable diseases
and I get about between four and five thousand a week with supply big money
there's a young man on the corner of Jones Street and Golden Gate West affordable systems he's
Highland faint groan he's thinking he gonna die he looks like he's in pretty bad shape yeah but
he really liked it here peace was quiet there's no drama no screaming no hollering come here you can
get a good peace of mind that going to bathroom wash up and lay down all day then you can go right
across the street and eat which would probably go across the street and eat and this church
has been here over 100 years that's crazy even if an earthquake come it's not going anywhere
this mona caron painting on this mural I was the first character she
put on here that's me kick it she immortalized me
I love the Tenderloin man this is home man I'd rather die here today I really would I love
this neighborhood man there's something about the difficulty of being in the Tenderloin that brings
out the very best in people where are they going to go this is the last neighborhood where you
could find low-income housing they don't have a kitchen they don't have a bathroom so that's
what people come outside and that's what you see that's the energy of the Tenderloin the streets
are people's living room pretty much I find the Tenderloin to be endlessly fascinating to be
filled with really substantial interesting people with real people whose concerns and whose outlooks
on life they don't have the artificiality that I sometimes find in myself or my more middle-class
friends I think a lot of aspects of the Tenderloin that for some folks might be challenging or might
turn off some individuals to me it's just just life in the Tenderloin and I think if you can
learn to embrace that there's a lot of beauty here you just have to be able to sort of get through
the rough patches get through the weeds a little bit to see the beauty of what's really could be is
realized here and I think the level of community is much deeper in this neighborhood then and many
others in San Francisco when I come home to you San Francisco your Golden Sun will shine for me
you guys take care keep keep on keepin on. Jackson Browne - Gone to Sorrow.
someone who had been away suddenly came back today and I allowed a hope to stray into my mind
for a moment face to face we looked back upon the
place where long ago we went to chase our careless time
oh what do we know not what we were asking our wings were passing so slow over mountain
wondering if I could see something in her hand for me I picked it up most carefully and looked inside
as her love had long been dead slowly then she turned her head
and look the other way instead as if to hide
whoa what did I know not what I was losing my mind was moving so slow
in confusion
someone who had been away suddenly came back today but I had forgotten what to say to keep a friend
darkness sometimes fills the sky children sometimes ask me
why I don't know I used to try and answer them
oh what do you know not what I've been feeling the past is dealing so slow my tomorrow gone to sorrow
gone to sorrow you