Farewell Fisherman’s Wharf

San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf is now a sorry, empty shell, awaiting demolition and major changes. This video shows almost all the restaurants and retail shops at the former iconic tourist destination, including Ghirardelli Square, totally empty, even amid a working wharf. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CtYx6OeFUkc. As a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, this video sickens me.

Times surely change and so do people, businesses and consumer tastes. (I am still a little annoyed that Santa Monica Seafood recently closed its restaurant and fish market in Costa Mesa.) But the almost total wipeout of a long-established and beloved, and sometimes bedeviled institution, going the way of other policy related failures in the City by the Bay such as the retail pullouts on Market Street and Union Square, is particularly ugly and unimaginable to me, surpassed only in my mind by the death of Luciano Pavarotti (which I still find hard to accept).

As a tourist destination, and for a first time visitor, perhaps the cheesy souvenir shops and street experiences off the Wharf, like a Wax Museum, might have felt very remotely like some of the repulsive but exciting aspects of Times Square in New York City. Natives of San Francisco surely were not the biggest cohort of visitors to the Wharf. But since the 1950s, the Wharf restaurants and experiences offered strong impressions and views of the Pacific and San Francisco Bay, and wildlife, that made memories, and those memories will not be the same anymore because of perceived need for “revitalization and redevelopment efforts,” and proposals for new attractions, which one can only hope will result in something better coming out of San Francisco’s complicated and crazy politics. I have my doubts that things will be better.

Restaurants such as Alioto's, Tarantino's, and Fisherman's Grotto, have permanently closed or faced eviction due to financial difficulties, allegedly based on reduced business from the impact of the pandemic.  But failures in public safety and policing might also have been a reason for the slow and steady business downfalls. Recall Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate, an illegal migrant with a long rap sheet, was acquitted of murder in the killing of Kate Steinle, who was walking on a pier with her father when she was struck by a bullet in the back from Garcia-Zarate’s gun in July 2015. To add insult to tragedy, the liberal appeals court overturned a single conviction of Garcia-Zarate on a charge of being a felon in possession of a gun in 2019. Petty theft like pickpocketing, car break-ins, and tourist scams, were also reported at higher levels in the Wharf area than other parts of the City, along with higher reports of some violent crime. (To my mind, “revitalization” should include hiring and stationing more police in the area.)

Restaurants were and are not the only attraction at the Wharf. At Pier 39, with its sea lions and boat tours of the beautiful Bay and Alcatraz, there is reported a near-return to 2019 visitor levels, but overall foot traffic remains below pre-pandemic levels. 

New plans for Fisherman's Wharf include an idea to redevelop Pier 45 with different attractions and a wholesale seafood market.  There is discussion that Fisherman's Wharf needs to move away from its traditional focus on souvenir shops and towards a more diverse mix of attractions and entertainment. 

But I will miss the places where memories were made, mostly at the restaurants. Though Alioto’s, owned by the same family as former Mayor Joe Alioto (a truly “moderate” Democrat) had a lousy Yelp rating of 19, it was a much better place than that. Fresh linens, experienced waiters, a delicious seafood risotto, a boozy bar, and huge picture window views of the Harbor and often sea lions outside, barking as being feed scraps thrown at them from the cooks, were a delightful experience, even if you got charged extra for the bread basket. My wife and I loved a date at Alioto’s at lunch, when you could see all the activity in daylight through those windows.

When I was a kid, my dad’s favorite place at the Wharf was next door to Alioto’s, at Fisherman’s Grotto #9. I don’t know why he preferred #9, but that is where he always took us if dinner was at the Wharf. He was a native, born in San Francisco, and he did not eschew the tourist destination the Wharf had become over the years. He remembered when the Dungeness crab was plentiful, truly local and cooked right outside those two restaurants by street vendors. Great abalone, stacked and the size of pancakes, also used to be on the restaurant menus, too. By the early 1960s, poor management “fished out” the formerly abundant abalone and it was no longer available at any of the Wharf restaurants, let alone the whole state. And the local crab was also fished out, and became more expensive, as it was now sourced by the street vendors and restaurants from Oregon and Washington state. But those Wharf restaurants had plenty of other great fresh seafood preparations to offer, including wonderful petrale sole. Today, more local Dungeness crab has made something of a comeback in Northern California, but those fisheries remain tentative; as with abalone, which is farmed now as a much smaller species in places like the Channel Islands of Santa Barbara.

And it is hard to believe that the red brick iconic Ghirardelli Square, named for the eponymous chocolate, is an empty shell. I had my Junior Prom dinner there at a steak restaurant that used to sell their steaks by the inch as you lined up to enter the place. My old boarding school friend Martin and I took my elderly mom to lunch at a great high-end Chinese restaurant there, with truly fond memories of that day. Perhaps those reading this may have visited the chocolate shop there for a delicious hot fudge sundae. It is all gone now.

Change is a constant in our life spans. To be realistically engaged in life, one must accept that things change. But memories just don’t just evaporate, especially good ones. I have great memories of the old Fisherman’s Wharf and am saddened that Alioto’s and Fisherman’s Grotto #9 are now slated for demolition to be replaced by something different. Though I have my doubts about the changes at Fisherman’s Wharf, I am going to keep my memories.