THE ITALIAN PART OF CHINATOWN

There was a time when Chinatown ended at Broadway and North Beach began. Chinese-Americans who crossed that divide risked being beaten up by maladjusted Mediterraneans, and the Beatniks looked on approvingly.

By the Seventies, that was no longer so. For one thing, ideas in American society were changing (it was now the Hippie era), and for another the American-born Chinese saw no reason to let the old situation stand. If their country was sending them to Vietnam and expecting them to die for the flag, they were not going to be obedient little yellow men upon their return.
There were a few confrontations, and the situation resolved itself – an 'amicable' ceasefire between the two ethnicities ensued.

The only ones who were not entirely pleased were the Beatniks and Hippies, who regarded North Beach as their stomping ground.


NOT LIKE IT USED TO BE!

They were roundly ignored. The Chinese bought real-estate and slowly settled in the neighborhood. The Italians gradually moved to the suburbs – they no longer needed an enclave, it having been discovered at some point that they too, mirabile dictu, were white - as was their food! Hosanna!
By the eighties, North Beach was about thirty percent Chinese. The rest of the population consisted of some sour and elderly Italians, plus yuppies and immigrants from the oddest places.

Along with Beatniks and Hippies, who fondly spoke of the old days.

They were boring and repetitive.

By now the terms ‘Beatnik’ and ‘Hippie’ had expanded to include every type of Artistic or Bohemian loser in the book, as well as tarot-readers, blank-verse "poets", free-spirits, social dissidents, Jack Hirsch, punks, and spoiled brats far past their childhood.
Suffice to say that what they primarily had in common was a very white attitude, no matter their ethnic background (most of them actually were white), a sense of superior entitlement ("we are intellectuals!"), and drugs (pot, speed, and LSD).
As well as the highest incidence of psychological dysfunction and venereal disease in the city. In San Francisco, these things often go together.

The superiorly entitled (i.e.: 'Beatniks', and 'Hippies') lived in residential hotels. So did many Chinese immigrants, but not in the same hotels. There was a distinct sense of racial segregation - the Chinese immigrants did not wish to have addicts, pervs, and excons as neighbors; the drug-users, deviants, and criminally inclined were convinced the Chinese were filthy and didn't deserve to be in the same building.
And as long as everybody kept to their own hell-hole, everyone was happy.

Then in the mid-eighties everything started to fall apart.


THE CHINESE ARE COMING! THE CHINESE ARE COMING!

Two things happened. The strip (Broadway between Columbus and Montgomery) started changing. Restaurants closed, tit-shows and nightclubs no longer attracted the well-to-do from the suburbs, and the easy availability of porn videos meant that many of San Francisco's finest citizens finally realized that they didn't need to ogle strippers in sleazy dives.
At the same time, fears of the Communist takeover were prompting Hong Kong investors to pour money into the San Francisco real-estate market, and regular Hong Kong citizens moved over to the US in larger numbers than before.

Pretty soon the remaining Italians, and the Beatniks and Hippies, were complaining that all the places in North Beach were being bought by the Chinese.
'The Chinese are taking over. How dare they. It's unheard of!'
Tempers flared, and there was animus. The Chinese were seen as foreigners.

Never mind that the old Italians were the ones selling and retiring, or jacking up the rent on commercial locations and forcing out long-time tenants. Never mind that the Beatniks and Hippies did not contribute one iota to the neighborhood, and included more sex-criminals than a trailer park.
The Chinese, it was widely perceived and loudly opined, were a problem.

The Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, however was the death-knell of the old Italian neighborhood. The freeway that served both the Chinese and Italians was shut down, never to be used again. People who had driven in to both ethnic districts to buy old-country foods stopped coming.
The Italians, mostly, left. They were replaced by newer immigrants - not only a few from Italy, but also many from North Africa. Yes, some of the old cafes are still owned by Italians - the staff are largely Maghrebi. And the owners are often not the same Italians who started the place, but some Roman or Venetian newcomer who took over once the Sicilian and Calabrese founders retired.
The Chinese became the majority in North Beach, primarily because they did not have anywhere else to go.

Other than multitudes of European tourists, the main customers for the cafes and restaurants are local Chinese-Americans, and people from outside the neighborhood drinking in the colourful atmosphere.

Oh, and the Beatniks and Hippies. Who are now into cheap heroine and caffeinated beverages - the combo is better than a speedball.
Especially when you chase it with a Red Bull.


JUST LIKE OLD TIMES!

As they do in the Tenderloin, the Chinese north of Broadway retire to their dwellings at night, leaving the neighborhood to the other denizens. Who wants to hang around with drug users, degenerates, and people with attitude?
The atmosphere changes, the ambiance is different. It becomes another world entirely than it was during the day. The strip clubs and tit shows open their doors for business, the Beatniks and Hippies come out and howl in the streets.
Yes, the white folks are back, they actually never left.
It's like nothing ever changed.



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