The Tenderloin is a neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, in the flatlands on the southern slope of Nob Hill, situated between the Union Square shopping district to the northeast and the Civic Center office district to the southwest. Encompassing about fifty square blocks, it is historically bounded on the north by Geary Street, on the east by Mason Street, on the south by Market Street and on the west by Van Ness Avenue. The northern boundary with Lower Nob Hill has historically been set at Geary Boulevard.
It contains the Uptown Tenderloin Historic District. The terms "Tenderloin Heights" and "Tendernob" refer to the area around the boundary between the Upper Tenderloin and Lower Nob Hill. The eastern extent, near Union Square, overlaps with the Theater District. Part of the western extent of the Tenderloin, Larkin and Hyde Streets between Turk and O'Farrell, was officially named "Little Saigon" by the City of San Francisco.
The area has a reputation for crime, homelessness, and open-air drug markets. It is the center of the fentanyl crisis in San Francisco.
The Tenderloin is also known for the families and communities that have lived in the neighborhood. It has the highest concentration of children in San Francisco, with an estimated 3000 children in the neighborhood, mostly coming from immigrant families. The neighborhood includes a Little Saigon, a historically Vietnamese section on two blocks of Larkin Street. The Tenderloin has a rich LGBTQ history, including historic gay bars and a Transgender Cultural District that encompasses the site of the Compton's Cafeteria riot.
History
The Tenderloin took its name from an older neighborhood in New York with similar characteristics. There are several explanations of how that neighborhood was named. Some attribute the name to a New York City police captain, Alexander S. Williams, who was overheard saying that when he was assigned to another part of the city, he could only afford to eat chuck steak on the salary he was earning, but after he was transferred to this neighborhood he was making so much money on the side soliciting bribes that now he could afford to eat tenderloin (filet mignon) instead."Williams, 'Ex-Czar' Of Tenderloin, Dies; Picturesque Former Inspector of Police Gave the District Its Sobriquet. Figured In Lexow Inquiry; Retired on Pension After That;-Noted for His Love of a Fight; 77 Years Old. He Never Shunned a Fight. Appearance Before Lexow." The New York Times March 26, 1917
The Tenderloin borders the Mission/Market Street corridor, which follows the Spaniards' El Camino Real, which in turn traced an ancient north–south Native American trail. The Tenderloin is sheltered by Nob Hill, and far enough from the bay to be on solid ground. There is evidence that a community resided here several thousand years ago. In the early 1970s, the area along Market Street was excavated to develop the BART/MUNI subway station at Civic Center and the west side of subway station at Powell Street.
The Tenderloin has been a downtown residential community since shortly after the California Gold Rush in 1849. However, the name "Tenderloin" does not appear on any maps of San Francisco prior to the 1930s; before then, it was labeled as "Downtown", although it was informally referred to as "the Tenderloin" as early as the 1890s. The area had an active nightlife in the late 19th century with many theaters, restaurants and hotels. Notorious madam Tessie Wall opened her first brothel on O'Farrell Street in 1898.
Almost all of the buildings in the Tenderloin were destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and the backfires that were set by firefighters to contain the devastation. The area was immediately rebuilt, with some hotels opening by 1907 and apartment buildings shortly thereafter, including the historic Cadillac Hotel. In 1911 the Cort Theatre opened at 64 Ellis Street. At that time it was one of the largest theaters in San Francisco. It was the original venue for the San Francisco Symphony which played its first concert there on December 8, 1911.
By the 1920s, the neighborhood was notorious for its gambling, billiard halls, boxing gyms, "speakeasies", theaters, restaurants and other nightlife depicted in the hard boiled detective fiction of Dashiell Hammett, who lived at 891 Post Street, the apartment he gave to Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. Also around this time, due to Red Light Abatement Act, prostitution and other vice began to be pushed out from the Barbary Coast district to the more southern and less business-occupied Tenderloin.
In the mid-20th century, the Tenderloin provided work for many musicians in the neighborhood's theaters, hotels, burlesque houses, bars and clubs and was the location of the Musician's Union Building on Jones Street. The most famous jazz club was the Black Hawk, Time, August 3, 1959 at Hyde and Turk Streets where Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, and other jazz musicians recorded live albums for Fantasy Records in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
With housing consisting almost entirely of single-room-occupancy hotel rooms, studio and one bedroom apartments, the Tenderloin historically housed single adults and couples. After World War II, during a period of decline in central cities throughout the United States, the Tenderloin lost population, resulting in a large number of vacant housing units by the mid-1970s.
Beginning in the late 1970s, following the Vietnam War, the Tenderloin received large numbers of refugees from Southeast Asia—first ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, then Khmer from Cambodia and Hmong from Laos. The low-cost vacant housing, and the proximity to Chinatown through the Stockton Street Tunnel, made the area appealing to refugees and resettlement agencies. Studio apartments became home for families of four and five people and became what a local police officer called "vertical villages." The Tenderloin quickly increased from having just a few children to having over 3,500 and this population has remained. A number of neighborhood Southeast Asian restaurants, bánh mì coffee shops, ethnic grocery stores, video shops, and other stores opened at this time, which still exist.
The Tenderloin has a long history as a center of alternate sexualities, including several historic confrontations with police. The legendary female impersonator Ray Bourbon, a performer during the Pansy Craze, was arrested in 1933 while his show "Boys Will Be Girls" was being broadcast live on the radio from Taits Cafe at 44 Ellis Street. In the evening of August 13, 1961, 103 gay and lesbian patrons were raided in the Tay-Bush Inn, a café frequently visited by gay and lesbian patrons. As a response to police harassment, S.F. bar owners formed the San Francisco Tavern Guild. A study into prostitution in the Tenderloin found that while trans women face discrimination from certain professions and their sexual partners, sex workers in the Tenderloin area were adept at overcoming some such difficulties.
On New Year's Day in 1965, police raided a Mardi Gras Ball at California Hall on Polk Street sponsored by the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, lining up and photographing 600 participants and arresting several prominent citizens. One of the first "gay riots", pre-dating the Stonewall riots in New York, happened at Compton's CafeteriaDocumentary movie Screaming Queens: the Riot at Compton's Cafeteria at Turk and Taylor Streets in August 1966 when the police, attempting to arrest a drag queen, sparked a riot that spilled into the streets. The group ended up smashing the windows of the police car and burned a nearby newspaper stand to the ground; the riot promoted the formation of the Gay Activists Alliance.Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. First Printing edition. Berkeley, California: Seal Press, 2008. Prior to the emergence of The Castro as a major gay village, the center of the Tenderloin at Turk and Taylor and the Polk Gulch at the western side of the Tenderloin were two of the city's first gay neighborhoods; a few of these historic gay bars and clubs still exist.
The apartment where Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon was once in the boundaries of the Tenderloin at the corner of Hyde and Post. Both the movie and book were based in San Francisco's Tenderloin. There is also an alley in what is now Nob Hill, named for the book's author (Dashiell Hammett). It lies outside the Tenderloin because the boundary was defined with borders different from today's. Some locations, such as Sam Spade's apartment and John's Grill, also no longer lie in the Tenderloin because local economics and real estate have changed the character and labeling of areas over time.
In July 2008, the area was designated as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.
In 2017, a portion was declared the Compton's Transgender Cultural District commemorating the historic transgender population and culture and in particular, the 1966 transgender and queer uprising, and the Compton's Cafeteria riot.
Attractions and characteristics Nestled near the downtown area, the Tenderloin has historically resisted gentrification, maintaining a seedy character and reputation for crime. Squalid conditions, homelessness, crime, illegal drug trade, prostitution, liquor stores, and strip clubs give the neighborhood a seedy reputation.
Part of the neighborhood forms part of the theater district. Prominent theatres include the Geary, the home of the American Conservatory Theater, and the Curran, Golden Gate and Orpheum Theatres operated by the Shorenstein Nederlander Organization. Alternative theaters in the Tenderloin include EXIT Theatre, which operates four storefront theaters and produces the San Francisco Fringe Festival, the New Conservatory Theater, the Phoenix Theater, CounterPulse, PianoFight, the New Music Center and others. Alternate galleries include The Luggage Store, the 509 Cultural Center, and others. The neighborhood had many bars dating to prohibition and before with dive bars, including some left over from when the neighborhood housed large numbers of merchant seamen but most of those have closed or been transformed. One bar is built on the site of a previous speakeasy, Bourbon and Branch, at the corner of Jones and O'Farrell Streets. The original speakeasy was restored in the bar's basement, including many of the original decorations. Many bars have entertainment including the historic drag bar Aunt Charlie's. Larger live music venues include the Great American Music Hall and the Warfield Theatre. Historically, the Tenderloin has had a number of strip clubs, although their number has decreased in recent decades. The best known was the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre. The Tenderloin is also a hub for the gender diverse community. The categories of LGBTIQ created a new gender politics that helped to distinguish between the different groups; the Tenderloin was heavily populated by the transgender community. Many street activists paved the way for change, such as Anne Ogborn.
In his seminar 'Take Charge of Your Life', Jim Rohn recounted his visits to the Tenderloin to experience the "human tragedy". He described his visit to a bar in the Tenderloin where the bar tender told him about a dancer by the name of Cookie, who was severely disabled and had a child suffering from leukemia.
Crime