The Lower Haight may be just six blocks east of Ashbury Street, but tourists won’t find a chapter on this inconspicuous neighborhood in Frommer’s. Nor will they find any Gap stores or boutiques selling $800 dresses. Here in the center of the city, the news is that while seemingly every other commercial strip in town is replacing bohemian grit with bourgeois gloss, the Lower Haight isn’t, making it the perfect home for those who still hanker for old-fashioned urban pioneering. “It’s now San Francisco’s version of New York’s East Village,” says 14-year Lower Haight resident Rob Bregoff.
It helps that the area has gotten safer, thanks in large part to the efforts of one visionary entrepreneur, Matt Revelli. In 2000, Revelli opened the first of five Upper Playground stores—all non-glitzy shops featuring clothing or furniture designed by local artists—and, along with other watchdogs, started chasing the druggies and loiterers off their stoops and out of the neighborhood. Today, city officials have also joined the crime watch, beefing up foot patrols and installing surveillance cameras on Haight and Webster Streets.
Add to these initiatives a smattering of intimate, independent new stores and restaurants, and you have the makings of a hood that offers young professionals and creatives on-the-edge urbanity (sans mugging). And many in the neighborhood feel confident it can retain that identity. “With small businesses and a wide range of people, it’s is one of the last pockets that feels like San Francisco,” says Revelli. “It’s an independent-thinking neighborhood.”
Like a genuine Parisian café (sans the rude waiter), Café du Soleil offers capp-uccinos, French wine, and open-face sand-wiches in its living room–style corner space. 200 FILLMORE ST.
Once the go-to place for all-out sweaty dancing, Nickies is now a classy lounge with DJs playing nightly—but, like most bars in this neighbor-hood, it sells no hard liquor. 466 HAIGHT ST.
WHAT IT COSTS
To buy…$700,000
for a one-bedroom, 821-square-foot unit with a parking space at 645 HAIGHT ST.
To rent…$1,550 for a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment at 525 HAIGHT ST.
THE TALK
Since UC Berkeley Extension aban-doned its former San Francisco campus in 2003, the five buildings taking up an entire city block have stood empty, witnesses to drug use and car break-ins. Berkeley wanted to demolish two buildings to build rental housing, LGBT-friendly senior housing, a park, and a community center. The neighbors were mostly in favor of the plan, but city preservationists who were attached to the historical buildings stalled the project. The supervisors finally ended the fighting by assigning landmark status to three of the five lots and allowing the developer to move forward with the other two, which will break ground in 2008.
55 LAGUNA ST.
Shopfronts
With its men’s store and annex, women’s store, custom furniture business, and gallery (Fifty24SF), Upper Playground has practically taken over the neighborhood by letting artists showcase their work on whatever surface they please. With locations in Berkeley, Portland, London, and soon Stockholm, it’s now taking on the world. UPPER PLAYGROUND: 220 FILLMORE ST.; FIFTY24SF: 248 and 252 FILLMORE ST.
With trendy clothes from local designers, accessories, house-wares, paper goods, and more, Doe really is a “miniature department store,” as owner Kati Kim says. Look hard, and you’ll catch its namesake deer adorning tops and bags in unexpected places. 629A HAIGHT ST.
Newly opened Bluebird carries its namesake label’s vintage-inspired clothes for little girls, plus feminine frocks for big girls. 214 PIERCE ST.
Opened last year to display local art and clothing with a punk/hip-hop vibe, Lower Hater is all about the love—for the neigh-borhood and its artists. 597 HAIGHT ST.
ON THIS SPOT
The San Francisco Patients’ Coop-erative , “the longest continuously running cannabis club” in San Francisco, has earned residents’ respect through its service
to the community, including counseling, skills training, and a program to feed
the hungry. 350 DIVISADERO ST.
GRUB
At first glance, swanky RNM seems out of place in this gritty neighborhood, but reasonable prices and casual touches like lounge seating, flat screens playing classic flicks, and a side of mac and cheese have endeared it to locals. 598 HAIGHT ST.
Memphis Minnie’s Bar-B-Que Joint & Smoke House serves its juicy, tender meats undressed, so you can choose from four homemade sauces. You’ll be thankful for the fat roll of paper towels on each table. 576 Haight St.
With big portions and small prices drawing crowds all weekend long, Kate’s Kitchen is a classic checkered-tablecloth brunch spot. Who can turn down a “flanched farny garney” (flipped-egg and cheese sandwich)?
471 HAIGHT ST.
Neighbors eagerly awaited the October opening of Iraqi restaurant Baghdad Nights. Authentic dishes from an Iraqi chef are cooked in the tandoor oven, and belly dancers liven up the spot on weekends. 682 HAIGHT ST.
ONLY HERE
Walking into the Lower Haight’s self-proclaimed “most unusual bar” is like an acid flashback: walls warp in strange shapes and colors, the lights look like melting sea creatures, and a silver, blimplike sculpture hangs from the ceiling. But someone was lucid enough to put up a sign at the bar reading, “No Bud, no Miller,
no Coors. Why have the usual? You’re at Noc Noc , try Spaten or Radeberger.”
557 HAIGHT ST.