Category: Family

Though my family lived in Oakland, we had a close connection with San Francisco. In the 50’s and 60’s, my dad, an accountant, had an office in 835 Clay St in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Our family often had dinner in Chinatown and afterwards we would stop at the Lucky Corner, a mom and pop grocery store on Grant and Washington that was one of my father’s accounts. I’d get candy for desert. Once, in the store, a tall, African-American man bent over and gave me a Dizzy Gillespie for President pin.

Then we would walk over to City Lights, the North Beach bookstore. My father, mother and sister browsed the books. As a 12-year-old, I was bored in the bookstore.

On Broadway, we walked past the topless club barkers, who thankfully did not encourage us to go in. When I was older, my father, somewhat embarrassingly, talked about going to the Condor Club to see Carol Doda with my friends’ fathers.

My parents also liked to go out on special occasions. This portrait of them at Bimbo’s 365 Club, probably taken in the early 60’s, was in a frame that sat on our TV room bookcase for 30 years. I can imagine it was taken by a house photographer, dressed in a skimpy outfit and fishnet stockings.