Love for the Loin

Over the years I've heard colorful and varied explanations of the Tenderloin's wonderful name. Most often delivered is that the neighborhood's crime and corruption earned it the title of San Francisco's "soft underbelly." Older residents twinkle and recount stories of police offers receiving "hazard pay" bonuses simply for being assigned to the neighborhood - bonuses that allowed them to afford the pricier cuts of tenderloin steak. My favorite attribution is the reference to the not-so-tender loins of the prostitutes that walk the streets - in full daylight, no less.

Yet the neighborhood's storied past and chaotic present have a uniquely San Franciscan charm - one that I feel a kinship to, perhaps unsurprisingly. It is, in essence, a neighborhood of performance:
Of ACT, Curran, and Orpheum, San Francisco's most expensive prosceniums
Of the Warfield and the Great American Music Hall whose jaws descend upon veneered crowds for hours at a time before spitting them out, wizened and exhausted.
Of the brothels and whore houses of the late 1800s, and the heartbreaking day-glo strip clubs of today.
Of speakeasies it harbored when prohibition made it necessary; of those it advertises now that nostalgia makes it good for business.
Of The Maltese Falcon's Sam Spade and his (and Hammet's own) apartment at 891 Post Street - just steps from my studio.

And of its inhabitants - its glorious inhabitants - addled by drugs, ravaged by poverty and mental illness, jaded by prostitution, addiction and despair. They mutter and shout and laugh maniacally and stare, and while one might easily dismiss their ramblings for madness, after three of four strolls down those ravaged streets one can't help but be rattled by the raw truth of their despair.

This is my Tenderloin: the one whose streets have been decorated by the likes of graffiti royalty Banksy and Twist:



This is my Tenderloin: the one where hipsters rummage next to Vietnamese grandmothers for beets at the Heart of the City farmers' market (and aren't these just the most enormous beets you've ever seen?):

This is my Tenderloin: where a row of trees outside City Hall can remind me of the streets of Paris:

This is my Tenderloin: where a sense of humor is not required, but it certainly makes aimless wanderings a little more entertaining:

And this, too, is my Tenderloin: The Tender, a glorious website about a glorious neighborhood.