The middle portion of Market looks to its past as better days. The section between Fifth and Seventh Streets used to be a lively theater row, but it has since declined into a collection of pawn shops and adult theaters.
"It's ironic that when they put in BART, the Market Street Beautification Project was launched. And that's what really began the skid of mid-Market," says Gray Brechin, urban geographer at UC Berkeley and author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin.
Just west of Van Ness Avenue, auto showrooms give way to a two-block district of design studios and antiques stores. Nearby, Zuni Café is a quintessential California restaurant— like Market Street, it blends homey and chic in its decor and food. (Other Market Street standouts range from glossy One Market Restaurant, down by the bay, to the 70-year-old It's Tops Coffee Shop, with tabletop jukeboxes and dinner available until 3 a.m.)
The new gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community center marks the gateway to Upper Market and the Castro, called Eureka Valley a generation ago. The neighborhood has a cozier feel, in contrast to downtown's looming architecture. And the district's revelatory, be-yourself air gives the place spirit. "Even the trees thrive here," says Brechin.
A sunny morning draws crowds of post-gym tank-top wearers and serious newspaper readers to the woodsy patio of Café Flore. Victorian homes rise up the hills, looking down on the storefronts and sleek restaurants that pack this neighborhood.
 |
| Ed Kashi |
| San Francisco Shopping Centre |
 |
|
Across the street, assassinated city supervisor Harvey Milk and victims of AIDS are honored in a colorful mural, a visual reminder of wounds that run through this community.
"Castro isn't just a neighborhood, it's a suburban village," says Market Street Railway's Rick Laubscher. "The cable car shaped this place. A village grew up at the end of the line."
At Castro Street, the streetcars loop around Market to change direction and head back toward the Ferry Building.
Living on Market time
Laubscher, whose great-grandparents opened a deli on Market in the 19th century, worked to retain Market's streetcar tradition when planners wanted to demolish the tracks in the 1970s. "These were tracks that had been there since 1860. And I thought, 120 years of transit tradition is coming to an end?"
Vintage streetcars ran as an experiment in 1983. A permanent line, the F-Market, opened in 1995. The colorful vintage cars— from Hiroshima, Melbourne, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, among other cities— have become a signature of the street.
 |
| Ed Kashi |
|
A Baltimore native, streetcar #1063 rolls down Market Street, passing Civic Center.
|
|
|
Now president of the nonprofit Market Street Railway, Laubscher describes the landmark Flood Building on Market at Powell, as "one of the great office buildings of the 20th century." The stately structure is triangle shaped to fit the odd angles created by Market's orientation. Nearby, chess tables line the sidewalk's edge and a dreadlock-wearing duo pounds out rhythms on plastic tubs. Behind them, an orange streetcar from Milan delivers a ponytailed girl laden with shopping bags.Across the street from the Flood Building, the 20-foot-tall Albert Samuels Clock has four time-telling faces, its inner workings swinging to mark the seconds. "I listen to that old street clock," Laubscher says, "and think how many entire lives have ticked away in its vicinity. When Dashiell Hammet was writing, he walked under that clock every day."Another streetcar, a blue and yellow one that first ran in San Francisco in the 1940s, rattles past. And the clock keeps ticking, in time to the streetcar's distinctive rumble.
