San Francisco Voice

There is a funny thing about neighborhoods in San Francisco.  On the one hand, they are very distinct from one another.  North Beach and Chinatown lie side by side but you can tell almost exactly when you’ve crossed from one to the other.  And even the new-to-SF can tell the subtle differences between a place like commercial North Beach and its more residential neighbor, Telegraph Hill.  But then there are all of these little pockets and smaller divisions within neighborhoods that kind of blend together and make it hard to tell what’s what and where is where.

It’s kind of like with music subgenres.  Let me digress for just a moment.  There was a time when the people who listened to “metal” all kinds of fell in to the same category.  But if you try to define a metal band today, you need to know if the band is hardcore or thrash, metalcore or progressive.  You need to know that thrash metal includes black metal and death metal which are distinct from one another and that doom metal came before goth metal which is NOT the same thing.  If you get more in-depth in your research, you’ll learn about mathcore and folk metal.  But if you know all of these things and you try to explain them to someone who doesn’t, you end up having to fall back on the general label of “metal” for your explanation.

This is what it’s like with some of the neighborhoods in San Francisco.  People who once lived in the “bad part” of Nob Hill have now long been living in “The Tenderloin”.  Between these two spots, which are only blocks apart, you’ve got Lower Nob Hill and The Tendernob.  And then there are various other names for certain streets depending on whether you’re talking to your skeezy friend who lives there or your real estate agent trying to get you to live there.  And so, you have certain streets that are parts of one or more neighborhoods but which become something of a neighborhood on their own.  And so you’ve got Polk Gulch.

Polk Gulch (controversially renamed Polk Village) is that section of San Francisco which is made up of Polk Street where it runs between approximately Geary Street and Union Street.  Oh, but get anyone to agree to that border!  Many sources will tell you that Polk Gulch doesn’t go as far as Geary but rather stops heading south at California Street, leaving off what is arguably the sketchier part of the Polk Street area locating in (or near, depending on your source) The Tenderloin.

But, Polk Street is undeniably slightly different from the rest of the area which it traverses.  Sure, you can see something a little seedier in the southern end of this stretch that what you’ll see as you head up towards the Russian Hill neighborhood, but there’s a semblance of similarity among the different spots all along the street that kind of serves to make it seem like its own little place.  Although plenty of people live here (and the streets are frequently filled with plenty of people who don’t live – specifically – anywhere), Polk Gulch is primarily a commercial area.  There are stores which range from the corner convenience stop to the lower end boutiques of the city, restaurants which go from grab-a-slice to dress-spicy-and-sit-down and bars which are mostly divey but have some college-esque feeling as well.

In all honesty, I tend to spend more time at the southern end of the stretch than the northern end myself.  Live music at Hemlock Tavern happens almost every night of the week.  Venues for dancing and drinking in the nearby area include the divey “gay saloon”, The Cinch, and the college-pick Vertigo.  And for nights when something different is on the menu, the tranny strip club at Polk and Post (Divas) always offers an eyeful of entertainment.  But heading further north, you do have Red Devil Lounge and you start getting in to the shopping so there’s no reason to avoid trekking up there either.

It may kind of blend in with some of the other neighborhoods that surround it, but Polk Street is a virtual neighborhood all its own so if you’re looking to see some San Francisco local flavor, it’s one of the spots to add to your list.

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