I took Muni for the first time in 1998. It was the M line. I picked it up on 19th Avenue across from San Francisco State, where I was a student at the time. Having just moved to San Francisco from the small town of Los Altos, I had never taken public transit, and standing on the platform the day, I felt like I had “arrived.” I was a real city girl.
I had no real destination in mind, I just wanted to get out of the fog and into the action, wherever that was. I imagined the “action” was downtown, and pictured tall buildings and lots of people in suits and blinking neon signs. I had only a vague idea which direction it was, and followed the blue sky to the northeast.
I boarded the train and grabbed a pole with white knuckles as the ground seized and lurched beneath me. I fell a bit to one side and bumped against a woman reading a newspaper. She didn’t even look up. I spotted an empty seat across the aisle, and as the car jolted back and forth I counted to three, let go, and flung myself, as casually as I could, into a seated position.
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Thankfully I was able to snag a window seat. Though the thought grosses me out now (especially now), I’m pretty sure my nose was pressed up against the glass. Just a few stops into the ride, the bus crossed a busy intersection and entered another world: the neighborhood of West Portal.
Nestled against a hillside with Sutro Tower rising in the distance, West Portal Avenue looked like a tiny town. The street was lined with leafy green trees and quaint buildings with tile roofs and gabled entrances. I watched the neighborhood unfold as we passed shops with windows full of knick-knacks, busy restaurants with brightly colored awnings, and a beautiful old movie theater. At the very end of the street, the train rolled into West Portal Station.
I decided to save downtown for another day and wander around here instead. Looking back, I wasn’t yet the “city girl” I thought I was, and the small-town atmosphere of West Portal felt familiar and safe, yet still exciting. West Portal was, for me, the best of both worlds: a small town in a big city.
West Portal is named after the western terminus of a tunnel built in 1918 underneath Twin Peaks. This tunnel connects the fog-filled, sleepy southwestern side of the city to bright, vibrant Market Street and downtown San Francisco. The first time I took the M through the tunnel to the Castro I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, leaving behind a world of black and white and emerging just minutes later in a land of rainbows and sunshine.
Over the years, I’ve driven from my home in the Outer Richmond to West Portal when I need a change of scenery but don’t feel like going into the heart of the city. I would browse through Goodwill, grab breakfast at Café Rain Tree, and people-watch. I always made it a point to stop into Curiosities, an antique store filled with glittery jewelry and pretty things. And I’d meet my friend Jane, who lives in the neighborhood, for a weekend matinee at the Empire Cinema.
West Portal Avenue is filled almost exclusively with mom-and-pop shops. At the beginning of this year, a few cherished longtime businesses closed their doors: Shaw’s, an old-fashioned candy store beloved by locals for 89 years, and Manor Coffee Shop, a diner open since 1967 known for its charming mid-century decor and all-American menu.
Now, it is uncertain which of the remaining businesses will survive the pandemic. As of this writing, many of those I first visited 22 years ago are still here including Bookshop West Portal, Eezy Freezy Market, and the Empire Movie Theater. Near the end of the street by the Muni station, there’s a great little dive bar called the Philosopher’s Club that’s been here since 1960 and enforces a strict no-laptop policy. During shelter-in-place, some businesses are open including Paupenhausen Hardware, and restaurants such as Bursa, Goat Hill Pizza, Spiazzo Restaurante, Trattoria da Vittorio, and El Toreador.
Since the stay-at-home order, my husband and I have largely kept to our neighborhood. And for the most part, I’ve been perfectly happy with that; we are fortunate enough to live in a wonderful place with lots of natural beauty. But I do miss our adventures around the city — dinner in North Beach, window-shopping in the Mission, and our excursions to West Portal.
I miss having a drink inside McCarthy’s Irish Pub while waiting to eat dinner at bustling El Toreador next door. The host or hostess would come into the bar and tell us our table was ready — and when it was, we’d sit beneath walls festooned with sombreros, piñatas, and figurines painted in every color of the rainbow. I miss wandering in and out of stores like Curiosities or West Portal Antiques, saying hi to the shopkeepers, mindlessly picking up a stuffed animal or a smooth leather journal while we strike up a conversation. I miss running into an old friend and giving them a hug. And I miss being a passenger on a train, my face turned to the window, passing through neighborhoods and rolling through tunnels toward the sun.
