Posted on 05/29/2025 9:46:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I went to the Warf with my parents in 1964 - just before we left to go to Taiwan. It was great. Went there in the mid-70s a couple of times. Still really good. Made one trip to SF in the early 90s...and haven’t bothered since.
Wharf. Not warf. Sigh...getting old.
A film from the mid-60s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=755RPXzDdqk
Not that Richmond is a particularly ‘big’ city, but it was big enough
to cause me not to want to live in it. I could drive in, and did
commute about an hour each way 5 days a week for several years.
But I just had to watch out so as not to hit any deer in the early morning.
(Came close a couple of times…)
Pier 39 is still going strong. They have private security. We were there recently. There was also a nice Boudin bakery cafe we had lunch in. The boat to Alcatraz is farther down the Embarcadero now and that had to have hurt Fisherman’s Wharf. But those restaurants have been on the decline for many years.
Ah, yes. They were originally across the square from that picturesque church.
Alioto’s was a very well known old establishment. Extended family members of the owner (His Cousin) was into local politics as well including Mayor Alioto from that late 60’s - early 70”s. I went there probably 40 years ago and it was pretty good. One of many San Fran. OG restaurants to have gone under. SHOCKING, not!
I used to spend a couple of weeks a month in our San Francisco office, and my commute was the Ferry from Marin to the Embarcadero. Probably the best commute in the world.
Then when the ‘Rona hit, first they cut the ferry to basically zero, and when they started running more regularly, it was really jarring. I’d be sitting on the upper deck, with the boat traveling at 20 kts, and invariably some Karen would yell at me to “PUT YOUR MASK ON!!!!”
OK fine, whatever lady.
Then from the ferry building, there’s the Embarcadero plaza, which was jam-packed with tents, junkies shooting up in public, raw sewage everywhere, the contrast of the ladies from Marin in their masks and the massive public health disaster in the plaza was just too much.
Had to move to Texas, just couldn’t take California any longer.
It still makes me angry, what the raving lunatics did to California.
Best time for Fisherman's Wharf was back in the early 1960's. My mom worked there as a waitress for a famous restaurant that had musicians and singers. Served many famous people including movie stars. This was back before it got flooded with T-shirt and souvenir shops.
“Best time for Fisherman’s Wharf was back in the early 1960’s. My mom worked there as a waitress for a famous restaurant that had musicians and singers. Served many famous people including movie stars. This was back before it got flooded with T-shirt and souvenir shops”
Dirty Harry agrees.
Of course he would, he's a native San Franciscan like me. Born and raised in SF, was a great city until the Democrats took over in the mid-1960's, then it was downhill from there. I remember the busy atmosphere of the Embarcadero, with train cars hauling freight into and out of the pier warehouses, and to Fisherman's Wharf. Then t-shirt and souvenir shops popped up, then homeless and drug addicts along with thieves busting car windows, and now it's all gone after Covid.
OoH! Don’t forget the poop!
That’s San Franshitsco the only place I know that has a web site to Track and Map piles of Shit.
San Francisco Poop Map
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b6fab720912642b6aedafdb02a76d2a4
Daily Mail Online: Interactive map reveals the staggering number of human waste on San Francisco’s streets
https://www.openthebooks.com/daily-mail-online-interactive-map-reveals-the-staggering-number-of-human-waste-on-san-franciscos-streets/
San Francisco’s poop statistics: Are we measuring the wrong thing?
https://www.tonym-v.com/blog/2020/2/4/san-franciscos-poop-statistics-are-we-measuring-the-wrong-thing
Same here. The other night, I was looking at old photos of that visit, including one at Fisherman's Wharf. SF was a nice place to visit back then.
Decades back my brother-in-law gave me a tour of the Liberty ship docked there ... he was a marine operating engineer at the time.
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