My Favorite Corner of SF
As a former San Francisco State University student, the area of Irving Street and 19th Avenue in the Sunset District was my neighborhood hangout. If my friends and I had a short day of classes, we’d hop on the MUNI 28 bus and head to this part of town looking for exceptional nourishment on a college student’s budget. We always found it here, usually in the form of a steaming hot bowl of Vietnamese pho.
It didn’t matter if the rest of the Bay Area was celebrating sunshine and warm weather. The sun rarely ever shined in this part of town. We would consider it a heat wave if temps ever got into the upper 60s. Thick, dense fog and a bone-chilling breeze were the usual forecast no matter what time of year it was. But it always made my soup noodles all the better.
If I wasn’t grabbing a banh mi sandwich or a bowl of pho, I would be getting a haircut at one of the neighborhood hair salons staffed with Chinese American aunties ready to pry into my social life. And no chain supermarket could compare to the variety of harder to find Asian foods at the ethnic produce markets in the neighborhood. It was the closest thing you could get to a farmers market around here. Many of the folks in this part of the city are Asian American, so the businesses catered to its residents.
To me, San Francisco’s Chinatown always seemed like an idealized version of what tourists thought Chinese American life looked like. In the Sunset District, there were no kitschy pagoda-shaped storefronts or huge gift shops selling overpriced brightly colored silk pajamas and cloisonné jewelry. This neighborhood was where true everyday Asian American life was actually being lived. It was gritty, not at all glamorous, but it was real.
Roughly 36% of the residents of San Francisco are Asian, and plenty of neighborhoods in San Francisco reflect different facets of the American experience. The Sunset was no exception. In this neighborhood, there were little old ladies who reminded me of my grandmother, small businesses that resembled the ones my parents frequented, and plenty of first-generation youth searching for their identity somewhere between their Chinese culture and American life, just like me.
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It’s been over two decades since I last lived in San Francisco. Despite succumbing to suburban Bay Area life now, I return to my favorite neighborhood whenever I can. I still head to a mom-and-pop restaurant to nosh on some authentic Vietnamese food and visit one of the produce markets still left. But many of the small businesses I used to frequent have been replaced by cellphone stores, boba drink shops, and Chinese chain store bakeries. The storefronts may have changed, but the vibe of the neighborhood is still the same. Just a slice of everyday Asian American life that is also uniquely San Francisco.
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