Downtown- 
Polk Street, 
Van Ness Avenue 
In 1856, Polk Street, named for the eleventh president of the United States, was the first street in the extension of San Francisco west of Larkin Street in what was then called the Western Addition.  That broad district is now generally considered to lie west of Van Ness Avenue, where the spread of the 1906 fire was halted.  Most of the buildings on Polk Street were lost.  The rebuilt Polk Street was its own self-contained neighborhood, centered in Polk Gulch near the bottom of California Street.  Today, a split in the neighborhood can still be observed a block or two south of California.  To the north, Polk Street is more prosperous.  To the south is a profusion of seedy bars mixed as always in the City with new businesses many of whose owners are immigrants economizing on rent in exchange for the opportunity of making big through sweat equity.  The street is home of several bookstores, many restaurants and a few hundred boutiques. 

Frank Norris' fictional McTeague, the hapless dentist, lived and practiced on Polk Street near California Street where the California-Van Ness cable car came down into Polk Gulch.  (It still does.)  Austin Street was a one-block carriage entrance alley between and parallel with Bush and Pine, 1-1/2 blocks south of California.  The modern street has been renamed for Norris.   At least San Francisco does honor her writers after acquiring a few of them over the past 150 years.  Charles Gough, a successful milkman who became alderman and in the 1850s was appointed to a committee to come up with names for the new streets in the Western Addition, named Octavia Street for his sister. 
 
 


         Frank Norris, 1870-1902

"At the corner of Polk Street, between the flat and the car conductors' coffee-joint, was Frenna's. It was a corner grocery; advertisements for cheap butter and eggs, painted in green marking-ink upon wrapping paper, stood about on the sidewalk outside. The doorway was decorated with a huge Milwaukee beer sign. Back of the store proper was a bar where white sand covered the floor. A few tables and chairs were scattered here and there. The walls were hung with  gorgeously-colored tobacco advertisements and colored lithographs of trotting horses.  On the wall behind the bar was a model of a full-rigged ship enclosed in a bottle."

Frank Norris, McTeague: A Story of San Francisco [1899] from Chapter 8.

 
 

In the summer of 2002, two used bookshops were operating just north of here.  See pictures at right for particulars.    North of  California Street, Polk Street is known for its restaurants.  I shall have more to say about the neighborhood shortly, as soon as I walk off a few meals.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Yet another treasure in the Tenderloin -
California Culinary Academy, Polk at Turk
Originally the California Hall, called the Deutches Haus, 
now designated a landmark by City of San Francisco.


Frank Norris' own passageway and the 
view from Polk to Larkin


... but less grand than the street Charles Gough 
named for his sister Octavia.
 


Reasonable prices here  Lifetime Books, 1346 Polk, south of Pine.  Under new management.  Owner estimates 10,000+ books on shelves.  Mostly hardback.  Plans possible floor space expansion in future. 
Two representative prices for near contemporary nonfiction: The San Francisco Earthquake, by Thomas and Witts, ISBN 8128-1360-X, $10.  The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Rhodes, ISBN 0-671-44133-7, $10. 
 
 


Large inventory here Acorn Books, 1436 Polk St., between Pine and California.  Manager estimates "over 100,000 books on shelves."   Several titles I sought in local and California history were all here.  The back wall fiction section extends from floor to ceiling.  I could not reach the top shelves standing on a secure bookshelf ladder.  Representative prices were The European Discovery of America, by Samuel Eliot Morison.  "The Northern Voyages" (pub. 1971) $15, and "The Southern Voyages" (pub. 1974)  $30.  The Story of Maps, a 1st ed. 1949 classic by Lloyd A. Brown  $30.  (Dover's paperback edition is sold for $10-$15 used.)  I purchased this one on impulse.


Nabokov was beyond the grasp of many.
Acorn Books' fiction section