Today the only danger on this corner is being overrun by tourists exploring narrow, picturesque byways like Spofford Street and Old Chinatown Lane. But for decades, the alleys of Chinatown were haunted by vicious assassins, the ruthless paid foot soldiers of violent tongs, criminal Chinese gangs that specialized in extortion, gambling and prostitution.

These “highbinders” or “hatchet men” – so called because their favorite weapon was a hatchet with a shortened handle – would emerge from the shadows, split open the skulls of their victims and disappear into one of the innumerable alleys. And it was on the site now occupied by the Superior Trading Co., on the night of Jan. 23, 1897, that the most infamous of all tong murders took place: the assassination of Little Pete.

‘King of Chinatown’

“Little Pete,” whose real name was Fung Jing Toy (sometimes transliterated as Fong Ching), had risen from humble beginnings to become known as the “king of Chinatown.” Born in 1864 in Guangdong province, the southern region that was home to almost all of San Francisco’s early Chinese immigrants, he came to San Francisco at the age of 10.

His first job was as an errand boy for a Sacramento Street shoe factory. Smart and ambitious, he quickly became fluent in English and worked as an interpreter for the Sam Yup Co., one of the powerful Six Companies that controlled Chinatown.

Cultured, well-groomed and polite, Pete was well-liked by white San Franciscans, who saw him as “Mr. Chinatown.” But, as Richard Dillon notes in “The Hatchet Men,” his 1962 account of San Francisco’s Tong Wars, Pete had one character flaw: He was totally amoral. Dillon writes, “His story was Horatio Alger, Dupont Gai style, but with sinister overtones.” (“Dupont” was the old name for what is now Grant Avenue.)

Pete soon acquired a modest bankroll, which he used to start a shoe business, which he called “F.C. Peters and Co.” to attract Caucasians who would not buy shoes made by a Chinese company. This misleading name was the origin of his nickname: Whites who got the inside joke – “F.C.” stood for “Fong Ching” – started calling him “Little Pete.”

A fighting tong

The shoe business made him rich, but Pete was not satisfied. He opened several gambling dens and founded a fighting tong, whose foot soldiers were young toughs from the Chinatown underworld. In that vendetta-ridden quarter, it was inevitable that a rival tong would put a price on his head. But the smooth-talking magnate knew everything that happened in Chinatown, and hired the most feared “boo how doy” (“hatchet son”) in San Francisco, Lee Chuck, as his bodyguard. He also acquired two sets of chain mail, weighing 35 pounds each, which he and Lee Chuck began wearing.

Pete’s prudence paid off when Lee Chuck encountered Pete’s would-be assassin on the street, outdrew him and shot him dead. When Lee Chuck was charged with murder, Pete made one of only two mistakes he made in his life. He attempted to bribe the police into releasing him. Convicted of bribery after three trials, he was sent to Folsom Prison for five years.

Prison did not teach Pete the error of his ways. When he returned to San Francisco, he made another fortune in the slave-girl trade, successfully importing close to 100 soon-to-be-enslaved prostitutes by claiming they were going to work in the Chinese pavilion of the great Midwinter Fair of 1894. He also made vast sums at the track by bribing jockeys. Meanwhile, his connections with wealthy and powerful white San Franciscans grew even stronger.

A price on his head

But a $3,000 contract had been placed on Pete’s life. And his confidence, no doubt abetted by his status as a quasi-legitimate businessman, led to his second – and fatal – mistake.

Pete had hired a white bodyguard, C.H. Hunter, correctly reasoning that no highbinder would risk killing a white man. Pete lived upstairs from his shoe factory in a well-guarded building at 819 1/2 Washington St.

On that fateful January night, Little Pete sent Hunter to get a newspaper. When Hunter protested, Little Pete told him not to worry. Then he strolled through the ground floor of his factory, left the building and walked 30 feet east to a barbershop at 817 Washington, across from Ross Alley. (The street numbers were changed after the earthquake: otherwise, the murder site would be next to the legendary, now-defunct noodle house Sam Wo.)

Two paid tong assassins had been stalking Little Pete, and this was their chance. As Little Pete sat in a chair, they rushed in and fired four times at point-blank range, killing him instantly. They ran out. Police followed two suspects who were seen running into 123 Waverly Place, a few yards away, but no conclusive evidence was presented and the crime was never solved.

The tong wars continued to rage after Little Pete’s death. Undeterred by raids carried out by the Chinatown “flying squad,” in which policemen would burst into various tong headquarters, smash all the furniture and literally kick the occupants downstairs into the street, the highbinders grew more and more brazen: One assassin gunned down a cymbalist on stage at the Chinese theater on Washington before a packed house, none of whom would testify. Fear was so widespread that the population of Chinatown dropped dramatically.

Quake turns the tide

It took the great earthquake and fire of 1906 to turn the tide against the tongs.

Many highbinders left, and the climate in the rebuilt quarter became more hostile to the tongs. The Six Companies regained control. Law-abiding citizens, always the vast majority of Chinatown’s residents, were more Americanized and were no longer willing to be tyrannized by gangsters. A relentless but beloved policeman named Jack Manion, who worked the Chinatown beat from 1921 to 1946, applied the coup de grace. The last tong murder took place in 1922, and the last slave-girl raid was in 1925. The hatchet men’s reign of terror was over.

Editor’s note

Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Every Saturday, Gary Kamiya’s “Portals of the Past” will tell one of those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Francisco’s extraordinary history – from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach, to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond.

Trivia Time

Last week’s trivia question was: A famous Civil War general admitted that San Francisco’s real estate market had defeated him. What were his exact words? Answer: General and former S.F. banker William Tecumseh Sherman wrote, “I can handle a hundred thousand men in battle, and take the City of the Sun, but am afraid to manage a lot in the swamp of San Francisco.”

This week’s trivia question: Name three intersections in San Francisco where numbered streets cross.

Gary Kamiya is a freelance writer and Bay Area native. His new book, “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco,” will be published by Bloomsbury in August. E-mail: metro@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Saga-and-assassination-of-Chinatown-s-Little-4663076.php

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Tenant advocates and property managers in San Francisco’s hyperactive real estate market are fretting about new earthquake safety rules that will spike the cost of repairing older buildings and ultimately increase monthly rents.

 
On the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake that killed hundreds of people and leveled much of San Francisco, the city approved a new law Thursday requiring thousands of apartment buildings to be upgraded to better withstand tremors.
 
Owners of about 3,000 multi-unit residential buildings sprinkled throughout the city will have to shoulder the sizeable costs of the seismic retrofits but will be allowed to pass on those costs to tenants, although some may qualify for an exemption.
 
In a city where a one-bedroom apartment rents for nearly $2,200 per month, any increase to the already sky-high cost of housing prompts a conversation.
 
“Tenants are struggling already, so paying even an extra $50 on top of that is pretty hard for most people,” said Ted Gullicksen, the director of the nonprofit San Francisco Tenants’ Union. “The heftiest rent increases will be in the smaller buildings, just because there are fewer tenants to share the costs.”

Mayor Ed Lee signed the bill Thursday, saying the measure would better protect the nearly 60,000 people who live or work in those buildings from potential disaster.
 
“This mandatory seismic retrofit program will protect San Franciscans, protect our housing stock and ensure San Francisco can rapidly recover from the next earthquake,” Lee said in a statement. “We renew our commitment to making sure that disasters such as the 1906 earthquake and fire do not devastate our city again.”

The retrofitting legislation covers so-called soft-story multi-unit buildings built before building codes were changed in 1978 – that is, those with three or more stories that are wood-framed and have a garage or other similar opening on the ground floor.
 
Owners of suspected soft-story buildings will receive notices in the mail, which will give them a year to get an inspection to determine whether they need to retrofit.
 
Authorities estimate the upgrades could cost around $60,000 to $130,000 per building. Lee said banks are developing financing packages for owners to help pay for the work.
 
As part of a compromise with tenant advocates, the city also agreed to streamline its process for qualifying those who make less than $78,000 per year for a hardship exemption from the pass-through costs.
 
A separate, pending city ordinance would exempt single parents on welfare or senior citizens from the retrofitting-related rent increases.
 
While much of the city’s real estate market is soaring thanks to a tech boom that has attracted giants such as Twitter to the city’s downtown, many apartment owners are limited in what they can charge because most private units are rent controlled, said Charley Goss, government and community affairs coordinator of the San Francisco Apartment Association. That is often the case for owners of the buildings most likely to be affected in the Mission, Western Addition and Marina neighborhoods, he added.
 
“The owners that can best shoulder the costs probably would have rented their apartments recently, so would be getting their full market value,” he said. “Those who haven’t will likely have to get a refinance on their building or get a second mortgage or a loan.”
 
Robert Link, who owns a small property management firm, said he would have to spend about $70,000 to retrofit an Edwardian multi-unit building he owns in the inner Richmond.
 
“The ultimate beneficiary here is not the property owners but San Francisco tenants, because doing these upgrades will preserve rent-controlled buildings,” he said. “Really what this requires is managing tenants’ needs and expectations of the process, and giving them advance notice of as much as you can of the work to be done.”
 
San Francisco’s rents have been climbing in the last several years, leveling off only recently as experts say the market has approached saturation.
 
Rents average $2,175 for a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, according to RealFacts, a Novato consulting group that tracks apartment complexes with 50 or more units.
 
After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, San Francisco mandated retrofitting of unreinforced masonry, or brick, buildings. But the effort to bolster soft-story apartment buildings was a tougher sell, and was opposed by owners and tenants rights advocates concerned over the rent increases.
 
Seismologists predict that a significant earthquake in the region – two to three times as strong as Loma Prieta – is likely to occur within the next 30 years.
 
“When an earthquake happens, these buildings will be vulnerable. If we’re going to be able to recover, this is a necessary step,” Goss said.

Copyright Associated Press

Article source: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/San-Francisco-Mayor-Ed-Lee-Signs-Quake-Retrofit-Law-203827081.html

Jim Gardner
Managing Editor- San Francisco Business Times

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Some real estate developers collect yachts. Others dabble in winemaking, heli-skiing or competitive cycling.

Jesse Herzog sells hot dogs.

A vice president of development for Avant Housing and AGI Capital, Herzog is also the proprietor of Zog’s Dogs, a gourmet hot dog stand at 646 Market St.

Real estate development was dead in the water back in 2009 when Herzog (nicknamed Zog) was looking for a revenue-generating opportunity and stumbled across a classified advertising a hot dog stand for sale in downtown San Francisco. He had always wanted to own a hot dog stand, so he bought it.

“My family came here in 1850 — they were wholesale butchers downtown and had a corral where they kept cattle in the Dogpatch,” said Herzog. “Six generations later, I’m entitling a property in the Dogpatch and selling meat downtown. So the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

Zog’s sells an average of about 125 hot dogs on a decent weekday. Best sellers include the Moral Conundrum (a veggie dog wrapped in bacon), the Prop 8 Dog (two dogs in one bun), and the Bobo Dog (for the Bourgeois Bohemian).

Indeed, Herzog has turned his hot dog stand into an expression of his interest in art. He offers what is certainly the world’s only Hot Dog Stand Artistic Fellowship (deadline March 1) where artists are encouraged to make hot dog-themed art. Winners include a group who made a video about the launch of the first hot dog into outer space, a woman who painted ketchup and mustard portraits of customers (including Avant Housing executive Eric Tao, who ended up looking like Michael Jackson), and a performance piece on “love and loss in the context of hot dogs.”

“It’s been interesting to me to understand what the San Francisco consumer wants, which can be very complicated,” said Herzog. “San Franciscans have a lot of opinions, whether it’s about hot dogs or real estate entitlement.”

Jim Gardner oversees print and online news coverage of the vibrant Bay Area economy.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/02/san-francisco-real-estate-developer.html

The free rides are a contrast to the Muni’s first day of operation on Dec. 28, 1912, when everyone – even Mayor James Rolph Jr. – paid a fare. Rolph dropped a shiny new nickel in the fare box, made a short speech, and took the controls himself for the first ride on the first car of the first publicly owned big-city transit system in the country.

“It is in reality the people’s road, built by the people and with the people’s money,” he said.

On its first day, the Muni had only 10 streetcars and one line that ran from Geary and Market streets out Geary to 10th Avenue and then to Golden Gate Park. But Rolph was thinking big.

“I want everyone to feel it is but the beginning of a mighty system of streetcar lines which will someday encompass the entire city,” he said.

As it turned out, Rolph was a prophet. The new Municipal Railway became both the engine of progress for the city and San Francisco’s biggest political problem.

Though Muni officials like to point out that passengers board Muni vehicles on an average of 673,196 times every weekday and that 90 percent of all San Franciscans live within a block or two of a Muni line, it is clearly the city’s least favorite public service.

“It may be the system people love to hate, but what would we do without it?” said Rick Laubscher, president of the nonprofit Market Street Railway, a volunteer group that is the Muni’s partner in historic preservation.

Laubscher’s organization had a big hand in bringing back historic cars to the city streets, and loves to point to Car No. 1, the first car. Carefully restored, it will be back to work on the streets Friday after 100 years.

Car No. 1 is a reminder of a time when the Municipal Railway was the pride of the city, especially when compared to its privately owned competition, the original Market Street Railway and its predecessor, United Railroads.

In fact, the Muni was formed because of the poor track record of the URR, which ran streetcars, cable cars and even a horsecar line on Market Street. The United Railroads had multiple problems, including obsolete equipment, poor service and a terrible reputation.

Two of United Railroads’ top managers had been indicted on corruption charges in the graft trials that followed the 1906 earthquake, and the company had gone through a huge streetcar strike in 1907.

“It was one of the most violent strikes in American history,” said Emiliano Echeverria, a transit historian. There were street riots – strikers against strikebreakers with passengers caught in the middle. More than 20 people were killed and hundreds injured.

The birth of Muni

The company broke the strike, but it was a fatal victory. The strike, coupled with the sorry service offered by the URR – “a rambling wreck of a railroad,” Echeverria called it – swung public sentiment toward establishing a city-owned transit system.

“It was toward the end of the gilded age, the attitude of ‘the public be damned,’ ” Echeverria said. “It was thought that the people could do it better.”

So the Muni was born. The editors of transit industry magazines looked on with alarm – “San Francisco tries Socialism,” one headline read – as Muni grew with amazing speed.

Within six months, the Geary line was extended to the Ferry Building. Two years after the first car, the Stockton Street Tunnel was opened, and not long after that the railway had six lines and was carrying 20 million passengers a year.

Work had also begun on the new Twin Peaks Tunnel. More than 2 miles long, it was the longest streetcar tunnel in the world and a game-changer for San Francisco.

It opened up the western half of the city, until then a sparsely inhabited area of vegetable farms and sand dunes. There was some rail service offered by United Railroads to the area, but it was a roundabout route, out Haight Street and Lincoln Way or by way of Mission Street and Ocean Avenue. “It took forever,” said Laubscher.

New neighborhoods

When the tunnel was being built, real estate promoters put up a sign next to the new West Portal: “Seventeen Minutes to Kearny Street.”

Mayor Rolph drove the first streetcar through the tunnel on Feb. 3, 1918, and the West Portal and St. Francis Wood and Parkside districts grew up around the streetcar lines.

The year before, the Muni’s J-line had climbed over the hills to reach Noe Valley and the Mission District and, in 1927, the Sunset Tunnel, the last major project of that era, opened to cars on the new N-Judah line.

Rolph provided the political capital and city engineer M.M. O’Shaughnessy provided the engineering muscle. The two had transformed San Francisco. Much of what people see now, everything from the Municipal Railway to the Great Highway at Ocean Beach, happened on their watch.

The city took pride in its city-owned railway. The streetcars were immaculate, and the system made money.

It was the days of the fondly remembered four streetcar tracks on Market Street – the private company’s cars on the inside tracks and Muni on the outside. The noise of the clanking, rumbling streetcars was tremendous. “The roar of the four,” it was called.

The bleak years

World War II nearly wrecked the transit system. Gasoline and tires were rationed, and the city was full of war workers, soldiers, sailors and Marines. The combined Muni and Market Street Railway carried 272.5 million passengers in 1944, the most ever.

That year the voters passed a bond issue to buy out the private, and much larger, Market Street Railway, and the systems merged. What the city got for $7.5 million was 440 elderly streetcars, 197 miles of track, 154 motor buses and nine electric trolley buses. Nearly everything was falling apart.

Starting in 1948, the Muni pretty much junked the old streetcar system, a process that went until 1956, when the last B cars ran out Geary to Playland-at-the-Beach.

In 1947 came the cruelest blow of all: Mayor Roger Lapham planned to junk the cable cars. The word leaked out in Herb Caen’s column in The Chronicle and caused a huge uproar.

The cable cars were saved, but nearly all the streetcar lines were scrapped: only the six from the early day were left, and those were spared mostly because buses couldn’t fit in the tunnels.

The Muni system by 1953, losing $4 million to $5 million a year, was pretty much an orphan with little political support. But a citizens’ revolt against a proposed citywide freeway system, with highways through the parks and along the waterfront, helped swing the pendulum the other way.

Muni transformed

In 1973, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution giving priority to Muni and other transit vehicles on city streets – the famous “transit first policy.”

Nearly a decade earlier, in 1962, San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties’ voters approved a bond measure to begin BART, which included a San Francisco subway.

Construction was a huge mess, and Muni planning for the subway was a muddle, but in 1980, the Muni Metro opened, and the system was transformed again.

And now the Muni has come full circle, critics and all.

The system’s latest project, the hugely expensive Central Subway, now under construction from South of Market to Chinatown, is still being described as a politically motivated boondoggle.

“They are ignoring their 75 existing lines and are being distracted by sexy building projects,” said Gerald Cauthen, a former Muni executive turned critic.

The Market Street subway, he said, is not operated efficiently so that at rush hour the trains are far too crowded. “They are just jammed,” he said.

The bus service on Stockton Street, he said, “is an insult to Chinatown.”

“I think the system is pretty weak now,” he said.

But Muni, even critics agree, is more than rail cars, cable cars and buses. “It’s the face of government in San Francisco,” said Laubscher. “Even if you don’t ride it, you see it every day if you are a motorist, or a pedestrian or anyone in the city.

“And when you ride it, you see a microcosm of San Francisco in the people on the Muni – all the good and bad of the city, all riding inside what is a big tin can.”

San Francisco Municipal Railway by the numbers

Dec. 28, 1912 Date of first operation

5 cents First fare

$2 Adult cash fare today

$64 Fast Pass (not including BART)

673,196 Current average weekday boardings

75 Transit routes

1,050 Transit vehicles

506 Diesel buses

313 Electric trolley buses

151 Light-rail vehicles

40 Historic streetcars

40 Cable cars

71.5 Miles of single light-rail track

8.8 Miles of cable car track

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: cnolte@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Municipal-Railway-celebrates-100-years-4150766.php

The New York Times cited the Fox Theater when it included Oakland on its list of 45 place to go in 2012. Photo by Pete Hottelet/Flickr.

We’re No. 1! And No. 3! Also No. 9!

As one of the biggest metropolitan regions in the country, the Bay Area routinely appears on lists created by government officials, PR firms and others. The lists claim to measure everything from human misery to the housing market, and they’re shilled in press releases that come through our inboxes at KQED News almost every day. Often, they rank our region pretty high.

But are those lists accurate? You be the judge. Let’s take a look back at who ranked the Bay Area and its cities on their 2012 lists, and then leave a comment at the bottom of this post letting us know what you think and what lists we missed.

The year started with a pleasant surprise for a struggling Bay Area city, as in January the New York Times ranked Oakland No. 5 on its list of the 45 places to go in 2012. Oakland was the top American city on the list.

“New restaurants and bars beckon amid the grit,” the Times wrote. “Tensions have cooled since violence erupted at the recent Occupy Oakland protests, but the city’s revitalized night-life scene has continued to smolder.”

In September, Bloomberg Businessweek put San Francisco at No. 1 on its list of America’s Best Cities.

Though numbering fewer than a million people, this coastal city packs in so much—from world-class restaurants and museums to community fairs and music festivals, a large educated class, and an improving economy—that many proud San Franciscans will tell you that its finish at the top of Businessweek.com’s 2012 best cities ranking is well-earned.

Of course, lots of people would want to learn more about America’s Best City. So it makes sense that San Francisco would be the most-Googled city of 2012. And if you search Google you’ll probably learn that San Francisco has an active LGBT community and a diverse dining scene, which makes sense, considering that Travel and Leisure ranked it as both the No. 1 gay-friendly city and the top city for ethnic food. It was No. 2 when it came to diversity, cafes and tech-friendliness, according to Travel and Leisure, which also ranked it No. 3 for hipsters. (No. 3, Travel and Leisure? Did you walk around the Mission this year?)

In addition, this year San Francisco ranked No. 3 on The Daily Beast’s list of America’s greenest cities, while the research firm Clean Edge ranked it No. 2 for green tech activities.

No. 1 on that list was San Jose, which also topped Career Builder’s list of cities with the most job growth between 2010-2012 (San Francisco was No. 9.) And if you’re flying to San Jose to interview for a new job, you can be reasonably confident you’ll arrive on time, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation. The agency said Mineta San Jose Airport was No. 1 for on-time performance in California. (SFO was at the bottom of the list.)

Of course, that job will need to be high-paying if you hope to buy a home. This month the National Association of Home Builders said San Jose had the eighth-least affordable market for home buyers in the country. San Jose also had the nation’s fifth-highest increase in home prices between the third quarters of 2011 and 2012, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The picture is even bleaker in San Francisco, which the NAHB ranked as the second-least affordable market.

And even if you can afford to buy a home in the Bay Area, you’ll need to take extra care when driving to meet with your real estate agent. San Francisco drivers are among the country’s worst, according to Allstate.

But if anyone can solve a city’s problems, it’s Bay Area residents. After all, the Bay Area is the fifth-smartest municipal region in the country, according to the online cognitive training company Lumosity. Maybe it’s something in the air; the air purifier manufacturer Kaz put the Bay Area at No. 15 on its list of regions with the cleanest air in the U.S. And it’s a little easier for Bay Area residents to help keep that air clean by driving electric cars. That’s because the region ranked No. 4 when it comes to electric vehicle charging stations per person on a list compiled by Xatori, a startup that builds software for connected cars.

So the Bay Area had a lot to be proud of in 2012. And local residents weren’t afraid to talk about what makes the region great, according to the dating site WhatsYourPrice.com.

WhatsYourPrice.com surveyed 2,000 members from San Francisco to reveal whether the city landed on the “naughty” or “nice” list this year. 31% percent of San Francisco admitted to being guilty of “Pride” more than 5 times a week.

That earned San Francisco the No. 9 spot on the site’s most sinful cities list.

Article source: http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2012/12/21/what-made-the-bay-area-no-1-in-2012/

Sales associates report greater numbers of San Francisco-based realtors and clients touring The Ellington and making offers on the East Bay’s premiere high-rise condominium building. For example, 35% of walk-in traffic during the first quarter of 2011 lives or works in San Francisco, compared to only 20% in 2010. In a tough real estate market with cautious consumers, The Ellington continues to draw buyers to the property because of its unparalleled value, amazing views, and extraordinary amenities. Few comparable homes in San Francisco are available for under $500,000 while prices at The Ellington start below $300,000.

“The interest in The Ellington being expressed by San Francisco buyers this year is unprecedented,” said Pacific Marketing Associates Vice President Kim Cole. “Home prices at The Ellington reflect the high end product our buyer is looking for; interestingly we’ve noticed that these same buyers are opting for a prime East Bay waterfront location over a more pricey San Francisco address. For example, a home at The Ellington featuring two bedrooms, two baths and a city view recently sold for $405,000. The same home in San Francisco would have sold for $700,000.”

Article source: http://www.sunherald.com/2011/04/21/3045248/for-values-and-views-san-franciscans.html