Goodbye Mr. Stag

pstrongThe Myth on Market Street Series Continues..../strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/464/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Martha Bridegam/p pMarket Street between Sixth and Seventh offers a large choice of restaurantsbr / where you can buy coffee for less than a dollar. Pick a place with a large,br / clean, front window. Sit down with your coffee where you can see into thebr / street. There is usually something to watch./p pThis immediate area contains a pharmacy, some bars, a methadone clinic, twobr / nude theaters, a lot of residential hotels, and two check cashingbr / storefronts. Also nearby are the respectable Golden Gate and Warfieldbr / theaters, a federal courthouse, and several tourist hotels. And a slummers'br / best-kept secret, the the ambrosial Tu Lan Vietnamese restaurant on Sixth./p pThis is a picturesque block but it is not a slum exactly. It is a necessarybr / kind of urban place where people of all social classes mingle andbr / occasionally communicate. Now it is going the way of New York City's Timesbr / Square: it is being cleaned up./p pWhile drinking your coffee you may see someone pass by wearing a paddedbr / winter jacket in an unusual silver-tan color with a wide black stripebr / running across the shoulders and down both sleeves. The Mr. Stag Fashionbr / Center, down the block at 1041 Market, was selling those in early Octoberbr / 2000 as "The Puff Daddy Jacket." For a while they were asking only 30 dollarsbr / apiece, marked down first from 80 dollars and then from 59 dollars. At least one man whobr / bought a 30-dollar jacket was homeless at the time. After some days'br / wear he said the jacket was a good one./p pBut the 30 dollar jackets—and the 20 dollar second-hand bluebr / jeans—are no longer for sale. After 31 years Mr. Stag was evicted in thebr / fall of 2000, along with its brother institution, Jeffrey's Men's Shop. Inbr / their place is a plywood enclosure covered in layers of advertising posters.br / Inside, renovations are still going on. High up on the front wall is anbr / architect's drawing of the property's future as an office building./p pIn the block around Mr. Stag, one of the two House of Blue Jeans stores isbr / closed. Other bits of the neighborhood are gone, too. The Homeless Advocacybr / Project, where I work sometimes, has been displaced from Sixth and Market tobr / Ninth and Mission. The Eviction Defense Collaborative itself was unable tobr / hang on to its mid-Market offices and shifted to South Van Ness. The St.br / Francis movie theater has closed and now has its own dreary shell of plywoodbr / sheathing./p pWhile new "live-work" loft projects stand empty in suddenly boomless Southbr / of Market, the renovations continue around Market and Sixth. Maybe therebr / really will be tenants to fill these newly cleared buildings once they'vebr / been polished up to Financial District standards. But whether new payingbr / tenants do or don't appear, the evictions of the old neighbors can't bebr / undone./p pIn 1969 Al "Big Red" Sultan founded Mr. Stag and Jeffrey's on the groundbr / floor of the seven-story former Weinstein's department store, along thebr / south side of Market between Sixth and Seventh. He hung on for 31 yearsbr / through earthquake, fire and riot, and watched three different owners givebr / up on renovating the rest of the building. The upper floors stood empty allbr / that time, except when unauthorized pigeons and persons found their way in.br / A small storefront between the two clothing stores was vacant for eight orbr / nine years, too after a McDonald's restaurant failed there. But Sultan saidbr / his own business thrived right up until the eviction./p pThe building is a hodgepodge of structures from the early 20th Century, abr / fact that makes renovation difficult. Paul Boschetti, who sold the propertybr / for development this past spring, said the section that housed Jeffrey's—on the right as you face it—is the former Hotel America, built in 1910.br / The rest of the building is probably 70 to 80 years old. City records showbr / the department store's founding family assembled the property from smallerbr / lots between 1924 and 1931./p pBut by 1969, Sultan said the store had closed and the upper floors were "inbr / terrible shape" from disuse. He convinced the owners to let him convert thebr / ground floor to storefronts. "The electrical, elevators didn't work. It wasbr / just a bad situation up there, you know."/p pI taped a long interview with Sultan the day he closed up shop for good.br / That was October 17, 2000—11 years to the day after the Loma Prietabr / earthquake kicked Mid Market into an economic slump but failed to dislodgebr / Mr. Stag and Jeffrey's./p pSo what was the neighborhood like 31 years ago?/p p"You know, funny, much like it is now," said Sultan. "Hasn't changed—tobr / me, I don't see it changed at all. It's the same bunch of people, samebr / crowds, same everything, you know. We do get a few more tourists now than webr / did years ago because they've made some improvements of hotels a block awaybr / around the corner."/p pWhat would he miss here? "Every customer, every face—I miss itbr / all. To me, this is—it's like burying one of my children. This is, thisbr / is the feeling I have, closing this store."/p pRight up until moving day, these two stores formed a lively part of Marketbr / Street's toughest block. Both stores, especially Mr. Stag, had broad openbr / displays that extended onto the sidewalk during business hours. This meant thatbr / they had to be watched carefully against theft. Like many Mid Marketbr / business people, the staff stood up front with the merchandise, or sometimesbr / out on the broad sidewalk facing it. They were part security guards, partbr / salesmen, part bartenders—part of the lively jumble in a downmarketbr / retail district that is now being smoothed out./p pThey packed up Mr. Stag first, on the morning of the 17th, loading all thebr / merchandise into a truck bound for a warehouse in Sacramento. Sultan saidbr / the inventory of both stores would stay there until it could be sold at fleabr / markets./p pManager Delbert Hicks, who had helped to run both stores for most of the 31br / years, paused in loading the truck to answer a shocked questioner on thebr / sidewalk. No, the business hadn't failed, he said, "We've been dot-commed."/p pEvicted, yes—dot-commed, no, not exactly. Scott Harper, a Whitneybr / Cressman broker working with the building's new owner, said in late 2000br / that he would want conventional office tenants for the rehabbed building,br / like engineers, architects and lawyers—not dot-coms. "The landlord isbr / motivated by having someone he knows will be paying the rent in a fewbr / years," he said dryly./p pThe afternoon of the 17th, Jeffrey's was full of customers paying lastbr / visits. One of them, John Lamantia, had made a special trip from San Jose—"because he has outstanding clothes, and they're something you can't findbr / all over, and I look good in them."/p pThe two stores' stock in trade was a shrewd mix of the flashy and thebr / practical. Mr. Stag featured puffy jackets, plus a table abundantly stackedbr / with 20 dollar pairs of second-hand blue jeans—the only second-handbr / goods sold in either of the two stores. Jeffrey's front window showed off anbr / impossibly oversized display model of the wide-lapel "Joe Hollywood" blazer,br / specially made for this store only, available in six colors of brightbr / wave-pattern velour. Inside, the stock was mainly modest-colored men's suitsbr / and jackets, though a shirt with "Millenium 2000" holograms—a big sellerbr / the previous winter—was still on display./p p"We don't compete with nobody, because nobody competes with us," Sultanbr / laughed. "Nobody dares compete with us because they don't dare carry what webr / sell."/p pHe claimed to have no equal among neighboring stores, though Kaplan'sbr / sporting goods and military surplus does carry some new outdoor wear, andbr / there are several storefronts nearby selling shoes and casual clothing. Hebr / guessed his customers would shift to the Ross's and Marshall's bargainbr / stores along Market to the east of Sixth./p pA grizzled customer, who gave his name as Lucky, said Marshall's would makebr / a poor substitute. "I know. I've been, I've gone here a lot of times. He'sbr / got the best little location, the best clothes for a working man's, uh,br / pocket." His voice gathered strength as he repeated himself: "That's whatbr / you're dealing with. You're dealing with a working man's pocket. You know,br / he had good quality clothes for—for the average man who really couldn'tbr / afford to go into, like, Nordstrom's and stuff."/p pAsked when he got the eviction news, Sultan turned serious. "May. May. Endbr / of May... that was when the bomb fell." Despite a "financial settlement,"br / Sultan expected to lose three to four hundred thousand dollars. "I wantedbr / my year. I wanted my year here. A year, I could have liquidated my stores inbr / an orderly manner."/p pWalter Armer, a director at Seligman Western Enterprises, said part of thebr / building was seismically unstable, to the point where "we felt badly aboutbr / having occupants in the building." He said his company is overseeing thebr / renovations on behalf of the new owner. The owner is a limited liabilitybr / corporation with its address at the Michigan offices of Seligman Assocs.,br / Inc./p pAbout the eviction agreement, Armer says, "Suffice it to say, I think thatbr / everybody was happy at the end of the day. That was certainly our goal and Ibr / think that Mr. Sultan felt that way as well."/p pThose vacant floors upstairs wore out a lot of investors' hopes over thebr / years. Although the department store closed in the sixties, the building didbr / not change hands until 1984. That year property records show the Weinsteinbr / Investment Co. deeded the property to Alexander and Binyamina Anolik, whobr / were to pay $1.75 million for it over time. But by 1996 the Anoliks werebr / facing foreclosure and had to hand the property back. Sultan says thebr / Anoliks' development hopes for the building failed because of the savingsbr / and loan crisis and an early—'80s glut of San Francisco downtown officebr / space./p pOn retaking the property, the department store's legal successor, a trust,br / sold it to Paul G. Boschetti, owner of the nearby Aida and Verona Hotels.br / Boschetti says he got the building for just $650,000 by agreeing to take itbr / "as is"—which meant a leaking roof and upper floors full of pigeons andbr / trespassers' damage that looked like a "war zone."/p pBoschetti fixed the roof and elevator and covered a window to shut thebr / pigeons out. (Well, mostly out. Some were shut in, with unfortunatebr / results.) He originally planned to develop the property into a touristbr / hotel, and was thinking of converting the former McDonald's storefront intobr / a lobby. However, Boschetti, too, had to give up on developing the place./p pIn spring 2000, the building finally gave Boschetti a profit. He sold it onbr / June 2, 2000 to a limited liability company identified on public papers asbr / 1050 HCT LLC. Computed from public transfer tax information, the sellingbr / price from Boschetti to 1050 HCT was $5.5 million./p pFour days after the purchase from Boschetti, 1050 HCT sold the propertybr / again to 1035 Market Street LLC, which is the current owner. The purchasebr / price in this second sale, also as computed from the transfer tax, works outbr / to $7.75 million./p pThe "1050 HCT" entity—the buyer that apparently bought and sold thebr / property at a $2.25 million profit in four days—was represented on thebr / sale documents by James I. Hunter and had its address in care of Hunter'sbr / HCT Investments, Inc. in Alameda./p pReached by phone recently, Hunter took a moment to remember the buildingbr / involved, then said the $2.25 million difference between the prices soundedbr / high—"I didn't think we made *that* much money. There must have beenbr / something else." Later, commeting on the deal, he said, "Sometimes you losebr / and sometimes you win." He declined to name the investors, but confirmedbr / that the profit from such a deal goes in several directions. "Yes, and itbr / goes in several directions when you lose."/p pHow could the buying and selling prices have been so different from eachbr / other within such a short period? He said, "at that time it tooked likebr / offices were going to go down Market and that area was going to bebr / rejuvenated." He said, office businesses had previously avoided the areabr / because of too much "hassle." Had I seen the alley behind 1035 Market?br / "They're dealing drugs all the time... It hadn't been regarded as safe."/p pBut Hunter was speaking in the past tense, at least about the San Franciscobr / office space market. "All that has changed."/p p"There's millions of square feet [of office space] available 'cause of allbr / those dot-commers gone bust."/p pDid he eventually expect buildings along Mid Market would turn into businessbr / offices? Sure, he said, "They eventually should." They're near BART, andbr / "Market is a hell of a street...That area should've gone a long timebr / ago.... it should've gone in advance of the South of Market area." Whybr / hasn't it? "The difficulty of doing business in San Francisco." /p pWhy did South of Market "go" first? He guessed because the warehouses, with detailsbr / like "big wooden beams" were more to the taste of the dot-com companies,br / and there were "not as many people to hassle their employees."/p pDid he feel sorry for the current owners, stuck renovating the building inbr / the newly fallen market? "I think they'll be fine in the long term."/p pTheories vary about what has kept mid-Market rents low since the days when abr / department store could flourish between Sixth and Seventh. Some old-timersbr / think it started with the BART subway construction diggings on Market Streetbr / in the early 1970s. Also in the 1970s, Boschetti suggests, the city'sbr / skid-row focus was driven westward from Third Street to Sixth by thebr / hard-fought Yerba Buena displacements, which cleared two whole blocks ofbr / dense, cheap housing to build the complex between Third and Fourth Streetsbr / that is now a park, convention center and entertainment complex./p pAfter the displacements came the downtown office space glut of the 1980s,br / and then the 1989 earthquake—all of which has probably helped preservebr / Sixth Street as the last big low-rent enclave in the South of Marketbr / district. "Low-rent" being a relative concept on Sixth, however: subsidizedbr / rooms at the Seneca Hotel cost $450 per month, and even the worst privatelybr / run hotels can now get $150 per week and upward for a single room withbr / bathroom down the hall./p pWith nonprofit offices being replaced by businesses up and down the street,br / and even Sixth Street poverty getting expensive—well, yes, the lastbr / scruffy block of Market Street is probably turning around./p pLast fall Armer, of Seligman Western, expressed excitement at the task inbr / front of his company: making a commercially rentable property out of "almostbr / a hundred thousand feet of vacant space that's been collecting pigeons." Hebr / said the renovation would keep the existing facade and fire escape for abr / "funky, retro-type look," while doing some seismic strengthening andbr / bringing the mismatched parts of the building to a uniform height. Thebr / architect is Gelfand RNP./p pIt's still not clear what kind of tenant is likely to replace Mr. Stag andbr / Jeffrey's. Sultan mentioned a rumor about a Starbucks moving into his spot,br / but Armer chuckled at that suggestion, saying a Starbucks would need highbr / pedestrian traffic and a lot of nearby office workers—not a likelybr / combination around Sixth Street. Sultan also guessed his space might bebr / attractive to a large drug store chain if it decided to crowd out the fadingbr / Merrill's pharmacy at Seventh and Market. Armer declined to comment on thebr / suggestion about Merrill's./p pMerrill's is distinctly part of old Mid-Market. Its red and white awningbr / formed the background to a memorable realist scene in the 1994 Terry Zwigoffbr / documentary "Crumb." On a visit to one of his eccentric brothers, thebr / cartoonist R. Crumb sits sketching on a sidewalk bench while an elderlybr / woman with flaky dry skin and a painfully bent neck stands nearbybr / overfeeding the pigeons./p pWhether or not Merrill's hangs on, the "Crumb" scene already belongs to abr / different Market Street of the early 1990s that is no longer reproducible.br / The pigeon lady disappeared around 1995. Around that time they took out thebr / benches, too. Mr. Boschetti takes credit for reducing the pigeon populationbr / by shutting off their roost in the empty floors above Mr. Stag. Everythingbr / is cleaner and duller now./p pOne of the customers taking a last look at Jeffrey's on closing day was citybr / police officer Darryl Jones. He looked at the jackets and bought a tan suit.br / Sultan carried the pants back to his work table in the storage room and tookbr / in the cuffs while reminiscing about his store's dramatic moments./p pHe told about a 1979 fire that demolished part of the Kaplan's building andbr / caused smoke damage at Jeffrey's and Mr. Stag. Then the earthquake in 1989,br / which caused "a depression" in mid-Market retail and forced Sultan to watchbr / expenses for a while. Then there was the Rodney King riot in 1992, whenbr / looters broke into Mr. Stag and set a fire. Luckily Sultan arrived in timebr / to put it out, so his loss was limited to theft and carpet damage. And nowbr / it was time to leave./p p"You know what's going to happen when I leave? When this business closes,br / after today and tomorrow, every business in this block is going to feel thebr / impact of the loss of these stores because of the customers that we drawbr / here... Lots of times... if I get a customer for shoes, I mean, I alwaysbr / send them down to my neighbor down the street, where he can get some nicebr / shoes. Sometimes my neighbor sends them here because they know, well, youbr / know, where they can go to get a nice suit. And... everybody benefits frombr / that. But now, we'll be gone, what are you going to do?"/p pSultan finished with Officer Jones' trouser cuffs and excused himself towardbr / the front of the store, muttering, "I gotta go back and get him to put hisbr / pants on." He turned me over to his accountant, Julian McClendon, who wasbr / sentimental too, and also a little bit dazed./p p"...Well, Al is like, an icon, you know, certainly from my point of view, Ibr / mean, not so much from the point of San Francisco, I'm not quite sure howbr / they view him, but I'm sure that with - with all the customers that theybr / have in here that they're going to miss him. But this is probably my lastbr / client that's on this street. Most of them are in the Financial District andbr / although you get tired of the smell sometimes and that sort of thing whenbr / you walk up Sixth Street, still, it's a part of what sort of keeps peoplebr / alive, all those different smells and things that they see, you know, thatbr / sort of thing, and when you're no longer on Market Street because yourbr / clients are gone, and you're just in the Financial [District] area, youbr / know, they kind of change, and you just kind of miss it."/p pHow does Sultan see his block two or three years from now?/p p"Well, I see it as the same characters walking the street. I don't care howbr / many millions of dollars they put in fixing buildings here, everything,br / you're not going to change the same people that walk here, because of allbr / the types of remaining businesses that are here - check cashing places, andbr / those places, you know."/p pSome time ago one of the Sixth Street hotel landlords told me he expectedbr / the residential hotels there would turn into hostels for young backpackbr / tourists. But Sultan dismissed this prediction—"No, I don't think so...br / eventually somehow the city will buy up those buildings somehow and try tobr / get all of those places closed out and get everybody out of there and thenbr / resell the properties to developers. But I think that—the only reason whybr / it's there now... it's the only place they can get housing for, you know,br / the poor."/p pMcClendon, the accountant, agreed Sultan's stores could have survived if notbr / for the eviction, but at the same time he predicted the neighborhood wouldbr / change. "Oh, it's just—it's just dot-coms, and—and in the retail areabr / it'll be selling to people that can buy retail but they'll also be able tobr / afford four-thousand-dollar-a-month apartments... 'Cheap'br / four-thousand-dollar-a-month studio apartments. So the kind of retail thatbr / you're going to see in here is going to be a different kind of retail.br / Because the common folk will just be out of here."/p pbr /© 2001 Martha Bridegambr / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p