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Blocker: 1800 Haight
Exploring San Francisco through the lens of city blocks, Blocker is a weekly series by Charles Hodgkins. Look for it on SFist each Wednesday, around the lunching hour.
View the map of all published Blocker episodes.
Blocker, No. 19: Haight St. in the Upper Haight
A man in a black leather jacket carefully backs his Yamaha into one of the six motorcycle spaces on Haight at the corner of Shrader. He's here to see Pinback's in-store performance at Amoeba Music across the street later in the evening, but he's also pulled his bike into a world where the warm early evening air is alternately punctured by the scent of patchouli, McChickens, pee, and smoke from silly cigarettes. Plenty of off-street fee parking and reminders of the 1960s glory days are also available.
Certain parts of Haight between Shrader and Stanyan have seen better commercial days – specifically, the shuttered and boarded Cala supermarket at its west end, and on a much lesser scale, the former home of taco/burrito retailer Chabela's at 1805 (dormant since the mid-'00s) – and there's no escaping the persistently suffocating sense of flower power and "revolution" around here anytime soon. (Kind bud?) The vibe on the block's sidewalks can be construed as seamy or circus-like (or perhaps both), depending upon one's tolerance for American Youth in Very Big Pants, or for politely deranged men pushing shopping carts and singing "COME TO AFRICA!!" at the top of their high-pitched lungs. But regardless of one's frame of reference, there's always a lot to take in down here in Amoeba Gulch.
On this autumn evening, Haight's lowbrow big top features a woman parading up its south sidewalk decked out in a glittering, back-length silver headdress, while an enterprising young man in front of hardscrabble bar John Murio's Trophy Room offers passers-by a pair of what he calls "expensive," "hip-hop" Sean John jeans for "only $36." On a quieter note, a man of artistic purpose kneels on unforgiving concrete in his thin leather pants, working on a triptych in ink as vinyl copies of New Morning and Magical Mystery Tour sit idly nearby. (Incense?) Down at the west end, a small group of young urban campers, apparently on leave from the Alvord Lake netherworld across Stanyan and down the knoll, hovers shiftless outside McDonald's.
Poles along Haight's sidewalks are plastered with just as many fliers as the last time you were here. Amoeba's window displays, meanwhile, remain as cleverly crafty as ever – hey look, it's a Harpo Marx record! – and despite the decline of the world's love for physical music-product, the independent music retailer at the old Rock 'N' Bowl appears to be doing as much of a land-office business as ever, judging by the volume and mass of red-and-yellow shopping bags emerging from the store.
A trio of businesses catering to the hip San Franciscan – Reverb Records, Skates on Haight, and Milk Bar – sits across from Amoeba and just down the block from outpatient dialysis service center Renal Advantage Inc. (RAI), which itself has nothing to do with house music, skating, or white Russians. An elderly man leaves the center and, without any hand gesture, feebly attempts to hail a passing cab in a voice inaudible more than six feet away. (Doses?) We flag the next available one for him as we attempt to decipher the figure next to Hendrix and Morrison in the Deceased Rock Icon™ mural on RAI's east exterior wall. A thinner Jerry? An overly haggard Lennon? A de-Rasta'd Marley? One thing's clear: It ain't Janis.
Back in contemporary times across the road, Cha Cha Cha's clientele is, aside from Amoeba's across-the-board pull, the most varied on the block. After all, there's usually at least one clean-cut shirt-tucker, or perhaps a gaggle of primped young women, waiting on the sidewalk at peak dining times for a table inside. These are also usually the people who blindly park in the McDonalds lot, then return a couple hours later to find their cars have been towed off. Just because there’s a big, fun record store and a pretty park across Stanyan doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a forgiving block.
