Travel
High-class ’hood
by Jules Older
Living among the very, very rich is kind of refreshing.
This is the year of The Big One. It’s the time of All Quake, All the Time. This is the 100th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.
Here in San Francisco, there are earthquake tours, lectures, books, films, photo exhibitions, marches, articles (“Will we survive the next one?”) – and neighbourhood parties.
One neighbourhood (and it happens to be the one where I live) survived the earthquake and fire pretty much intact. It was wealthy then; it’s even wealthier now. Welcome to Pacific Heights, home of the consulates, the Gettys, Danielle Steele and … er, me. And I’ll stay here as long as the apartment owner stays in China.
Living among the very, very rich is kind of refreshing. The streets are clean, the homes are lovely, the gardens lovingly tended. Steele lives (when she’s not in her Paris digs) in a little cottage the size of a mid-size city’s metropolitan museum. It’s the Spreckels Mansion, built by one Alma deBretteville. Big Alma, as she was known, was poor but impressive. Six feet tall and with the figure of a goddess, she posed for the Victory Statue in San Francisco’s Union Square. And she caught the eye of Adolph Spreckels.
He was married with children and heir to a vast sugar fortune (perhaps the original sugar daddy). He left his family for Big Alma, and she built them the 55-room mansion of white limestone, now owned by the richest writer west of Hogwarts School. When writers come to town, I always take them for a look; I call it Inspiration Point.
A newer Pacific Heights home recently went on the market for the highest price ever asked for a San Francisco home. Care to guess how much?
If you guessed $65 million you’d be right on the nail. But did I mention that it’s a fixer-upper? An estimated minimum $8 million is needed to make it liveable. Oh, and don’t bother dropping by for the open home; unless you can demonstrate an abundance of assets, you can’t even get a look. Broke my poor wife’s heart.
Still, we like to wander by as we walk the streets of Pacific Heights, gawking at popular history. Here, for example, at the corner of Pacific and Steiner, is the familiar front door from which Raymond Burr departed for court on TV’s Ironside. Almost next door stands the massive Queen Anne Victorian where Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid lived in happier times. Mrs Doubtfire was filmed just down the street. And nearby is the notorious apartment building where two bred-to-kill dogs mauled a neighbour to death in 2001.
So, between the wealth and the well-known, the scurrilous and the scandalous, Pacific Heights is a rich, rich lode. The best way to mine it is on one of the excellent organised walking tours. That way, if you want to put in an offer on that $65m baby, you’ll know what it’s like to live here.
I’ve been in the Heights only a couple of years, but my neighbour, Laura Pilz, has lived in or near the place since 1978. She came from the heart of the American Heartland – Youngstown, Ohio, the polar opposite of this cosmopolitan city by the sea. “Back then,” she says, “there were nearly endless jobs, housing costs were low, rents were affordable, and like me, lots of people just decided to move here.”
Laura never left. “I liked the big city with lots of culture, and it was certainly more sophisticated than the Midwest. It was a financial centre, Silicon Valley was booming, and there was a lot of entrepreneurial thinking.”
And she found a different way of thinking here. “In the Midwest, it was all about your job; here, when they ask what you do, they don’t mean your job but your recreation: do you ski, hike, sail or surf?”
In many ways, Laura is a typical San Franciscan and a typical Pacific Heightser: she’s from somewhere else; she’s smart, ambitious and successful (she’s a financial adviser); and she’s unafraid of change.
Unlike many Americans, she’s also unafraid of ethnic diversity, which is good because San Francisco is a rich mix of Asian (mostly Chinese), Latin (mostly Mexican), black, white and striped. Oh, and gay. If you’re homophobic or even just homoyuckic, better stay in Ohio.
For Laura, Pacific Heights offers something else as well. “The architecture is charming, romantic and varied, ranging from Victorian to deco with a lot of Italianate thrown in. Plus, the famous hills and spectacular views.”
She says of Pacific Heights what so many European visitors say about San Francisco: “It’s more European than American. You’re not driving to the mall but walking to a commercial street where you meet people you know. While it’s a big city, it’s not impersonal.”
It is extremely pleasant. The views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge are jaw-dropping. You can walk to the beach, to theatres, to parks and movies and bookstores. The shopping on Union and Fillmore streets defines hip American excess. The restaurant options are endless.
Laura’s pleasures in the neighbourhood reflect my own. “It’s not faceless, uniform suburbia, places with few quirky elements,” she says. “In Pacific Heights, there’s plenty of quirkiness. And that just makes you smile.”
So, until the next earthquake, we who are lucky enough to live here will keep on smiling.
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