By BILL YEE
Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again.” I beg to differ with that opinion. In the last couple of years I have spent extended periods in the city of my birth, San Francisco.
Although I have spent the last 44 years in Los Angeles, San Francisco, “The City,” is still home in my mind.
This is not to say Los Angeles and in particular Alhambra is not a great place to live. I raised my kids in L.A.! Moving from San Francisco to SoCal, I got used to and enjoyed the warmer weather. I had a great career as an educator and feel quite blessed with many lifelong friends.
However, I have never gotten used to the urban sprawl of L.A. To visit someone in L.A. is a major expedition. A one-way travel time of less than an hour is a rare occurrence. The freeways still frustrate me.
So what makes me say “I Left My Heart In San Francisco,” a la the iconic Tony Bennett song?
First, I miss San Francisco, a real city. It’s a city where you can take a long walk, get on a bus or BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and be somewhere without getting in your car.
For example, I did not own a car until I was 24. As a substitute teacher I would bus to my assignments. Owning a car without a purpose was not good in the neighborhood where I grew up. When I did have a car, it would sometimes take me up to 40 minutes to find a parking space; that would be followed with a six-block walk home.
San Francisco has real neighborhoods within walking distance. You can walk from Chinatown to North Beach and transition from Chinese to Italian. Today whenever I am in The City, try to a take a long walk into my old neighborhoods.
There is something about seeing the fog roll in and feeling a chill in the air as I go up and down familiar hills and streets of the city.
The memories of my life in The City are a time capsule of my youth and young adulthood.
I enjoy walking from our family flat on Franklin Street to my elementary school, Redding on Pine Street. This is where I spent many an afternoon playing various sports, from basketball to touch football. Strikeout was one of our favorite games (baseball with a tennis ball) at Bush Street Yard.
Just two blocks up on Leavenworth is our laundry. Around the corner was my two-block paper route that I had for five years. It was on that paper route that I learned how to manage money. It paid a lot of bills for a family suffering financial hardship after the early death of my father. Many of my subscribers were the customers of our laundry.
Across the street from my route was my cousin Warren’s flat and (SRO) boarding house. His basement was sort of a club house for the boys in the neighborhood. We were nerdy kids. We raced slot cars in his basement. He built a long straightaway with a lot of curves. (Yes, there are basements in San Francisco.)
Later we set up a darkroom in the basement bathroom. This is where I developed (no pun intended) my lifelong hobby as a photographer. On Saturday afternoons we would play cards after we finished our paper routes and chores.
In our neighborhood we played baseball in the alley next to Warren’s dad’s laundry and football down the block in the driveway of KYA, the local Top-40 rock station.
Going to Chinatown was part of my San Francisco experience. It was every Saturday that my older brother Benny and I would go shopping in Chinatown. Our routine was to have breakfast and shop before the time on our parking meter ran out.
I remember during Chinese New Year lighting firecrackers in Portsmouth Square and one time throwing a cherry bomb into the Stockton Tunnel. I believed it startled quite a few of the drivers.
Near our house on Franklin and Pine was Lafayette Park. This is where my best friend Warren Kubota and I, with other friends, played war with water balloons and water pistols. On some Sundays it was tackle football without pads.
In later years my cousin Warren and I would challenge the old men on the tennis courts. Unfortunately, experience overcame youth.
In a real sense, I lived the television show “The Wonder Years” in San Francisco.
I am glad to say when people ask me where I am from, I say San Francisco. It was the city of my youth that shaped me into adulthood.
To this day, although I live in L.A., I remain a loyal Giants, 49ers, and Warriors fan.
By the way, don’t call it Frisco; it’s a term used by outsiders who don’t know better. It still The City to me!
Bill Yee is a retired Alhambra High School history teacher. He can be reached at paperson52@gmail.com. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.