Polk Street Changed...Forever?

[+ Lucky]

I had great fun on Polk Street in the early eighties before the internet took the hustle off the street. Here is an update on what has happened to some of our favorite places.

 

SAN FRANCISCO

Polk Gulch cleanup angers some

Gentrification pushing out 'hookers, hustlers'

Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer

 

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

 

 

Lee Cole recently decided to put a new coat of paint on the Polk Street building that houses his roller skate store, saying he wanted the place to look nicer, to fit in.

 

It didn't seem out of place before, when the lower Polk Gulch district was largely known as a seedy hot spot for drug dealers, hustlers and the homeless. But Cole says the neighborhood has changed, in part because of a new neighbor who opened a $6.5 million restaurant and is paying for improvements to buildings near his.

 

"Myles O'Reilly is a man who cannot look at ugliness," Cole said of the restaurant owner who also owns a popular Irish pub in North Beach. "He changed the neighborhood overnight."

 

Some say O'Reilly's actions have sealed the trendy transformation of lower Polk and pushed along the urban removal of an already marginalized group of people.

 

Gay Shame, an activist group that champions the rights of "radical queers," says gentrification is pushing out "hookers, hustlers, drug addicts, homeless people, trannies, needle exchange services, working-class queers and other social deviants."

 

"Polk Street is one of the last remaining places where there has been cross-class, cross-gender and cross-sexuality, an interaction between street cultures," said one member of the group who identified himself as Mary. (Gay Shame members have a policy of not using their real names when speaking with the news media). "To see that steadily replaced by high-end destinations for partying suburbanites is really heartbreaking and very intolerant."

 

A recent swell of bars has replaced Polk Street's hustler watering holes of the past. The Polk Gulch Saloon, a renowned place for drag queens and transsexuals, is now the chic Lush Lounge, which serves bright-colored cocktails and caters to the happy-hour crowd.

 

Reflections, a place where johns were known to drink, is now a dance club called Vertigo that brings in DJs and young clubbers. The Hemlock, a hangout with live bands and lots of local hipsters, replaced the historic gay bar The Giraffe. Rendezvous, the last male hustler bar in the neighborhood, closed about six months ago, and a wine bar called SNOB opened a few doors down.

 

O'Reilly converted the old Maye's Oyster House building between Bush and Sutter streets into O'Reilly's Holy Grail, a restaurant with wooden arches at the entry, imported stained-glass windows, hickory pecan floors from South America, a headless Apollo from Rome, a 250-year-old Spanish chandelier and a 17th century painting, believed to be from the school of El Greco.

 

Above the space, he transformed a run-down residential motel into 14 European-style hotel suites, and he bought a dilapidated building next door where he plans to open an upscale rotisserie bar.

 

"I put my life savings into making a statement on this street," O'Reilly said. "Polk is one of the most prominent streets in the city. We are trying to rejuvenate this area, and it already seems to have taken a turn for the better."

 

For years, the lower Polk Gulch, said to be the second-densest neighborhood after Chinatown, has been the subject of conversation in neighborhood association meetings and among some of the newer residents and business owners who want to eliminate the open-air drug dealing, prostitutes and homeless people that have traditionally defined it.

 

"The prostitution and drugs are still here, but overall, it is getting better," said Ron Case, a local architect and past chair of the Lower Polk Neighbors Association. "The bars are changing from down and outs to upscale, and people are realizing it can be nice and safe here, and they don't have to walk over passed-out people and vomit."

 

Gay Shame calls the Lower Polk Neighbors Association a "brutal gentrification squad" of wealthy business owners, slumlords and bureaucrats.

 

"They are trying to transform Polk Street from the city's last remaining gathering place for marginalized queers and street culture into a hip destination for wealthy suburbanites," Mary said. "We want a safe place for marginalized people, and Polk Street has historically been that space.

 

"The neighborhood may soon be known more for green-apple mojitos and stretch Hummers than trannies and tweakers (methamphetamine users)."

 

Though the neighborhood association argues that its intentions are not related to homophobia, members do admit they do not support drug use or prostitution and welcome the recent transformation.

 

"We are delighted that O'Reilly is helping move all of these changes along and bring people to the area that will spend money," Case said. "But we have to be diligent. If you let up, it is inundated really fast."

 

Carolyn Abst, current chair of the Lower Polk Neighbors Association, said O'Reilly had taken a big gamble on the neighborhood and was exactly the type of business she wanted.

 

"We are not trying to be like Chestnut or Union, though we do want people to come here and feel safe," she said. "We are just kind of about cleaning up our act. We want a fruit stand, and we'll take a Starbucks, too."