Note from Linda: Good things can start from a simple photo … So on November 9, 2020, I posted on FB the (above) image I took of this beauty of a building on one of my stellar Buena Vista walks, and soon thereafter I get a comment saying:
“Used to live there! Third floor on the backside, could see from the Farrallons to Angel Island …”
Say what?! So I responded and asked the commenter — Dore Coller — to tell me more, and he did! And here it is. Community, 40 years later, still sharing stories! Enjoy!
“You asked me to tell y’all a little story about that pic on FB of the sun setting behind our old place, 601 Buena Vista West. This only goes back a little less that 40 years ago but anyhow …
We were living in the North Mission on Guerrero and Clinton Park in a great old place but always loved to pop over the hill to Buena Vista Park. We would wander all over the city, checking out each of the neighborhoods and all the gorgeous old houses.
I was always trying to ascertain where the perfect spot in the city would be: traffic, fog, trees, view, access, all factors. For me that west side of Buena Vista Park, towards the top, seemed perfect. Great houses, gorgeous views to the west, which gave you more of a country feel rather than an urban view feel on the east side, fog not too bad, just seemed right. You were in the Haight but a couple of blocks above the action so you could participate or not. And you were just over the hill from the Castro and the Mission. So you had Haight Street and the park at your disposal, or could cruise over the other way and head down around Corona Heights (the sunbathing scene hadn’t quite gotten started) down the Vulcan steps, catch a movie at the Castro Theatre and head back home.
One day my sister was visiting from LA where she worked for Michael Jackson, and as usual we were driving around the city looking at houses etc. We came up 14th Street and around Buena Vista Park past St Josephs and down the other side. As we’re driving by Java Street I say to her “Now here to me is the perfect spot to live in San Francisco.” She turns to me and says “Well there was a For Rent Open House sign in that house right on the corner”.
Screeeech! Pulled over by the park and ran back up to the house.
The apartment for rent was on the 2nd (or 3rd floor if you counted the basement apt). You came up the front steps and up another flight or two, and the apartment was in the back. It was a 1 bedroom apartment, with the living room looking out a big bay window looking north and west. To the left you could see straight down Lincoln Avenue, all the way to the Farrallons! To the north and west you could Pt Reyes on a clear day, and then sweep your eyes all along the Mt Tam ridge all the way around to about Angel Island. The back bedroom, which was along the Java Street side had an updated bathroom and a sliding glass door to nicely sized redwood deck [editor’s note: still there!] with the Farrallons view, as well as a large circular window well above the street. Small kitchen around the other side of the living room with a back wooden stairway. We were about 70 or 80 feet up.
One of the nice things about being up at Java Street altitude levels was that the fog would come in, and then later in the evening it would settle. You’d look straight out the bay window and see nothing but grey but then go out on the back deck and see the moon and stars in a clear sky!
Needless to say, we charged in there and charmed the pants off the rental agency folks who were showing the place (like mentioning my sister worked for Michael Jackson haha! and I worked for Bill Graham at the time).
We signed the lease and moved in just a couple of weeks before we got married. Our families for the most part rented rooms in the Spreckels Mansion B&B down the street on the other side of Frederick Street.
The folks who rented that also rented out Graham Nash’s house next door. My Mom would always rent a room in one of them. Graham’s place still had a studio up on the top floor.
Our house had some pretty colorful folks living in it. One floor below us was Joel and Diana, classic hippie folks with their grown kids, definitely off our page. He looked like a cross between Phineas Freak and Rasputin, and acted accordingly! Diana was an Earth goddess, channeling Gaia in a serene grounded way. He was putting together some sort of telecommunication network with Russia. Lived there for years, then one day when they were about to go broke some huge company wanted something he had and made him a gazillionaire.
Up on the 3rd floor there was an older gay couple who were wonderful folks, except when then would pass out in their brass bathtub with no overflow valve and it flooded down through 3 floors! You have to remember back then there was a high degree of activity in Buena Vista Park. I think the band Martha and the Muffins had a song called “Boys in the Bushes” that was about BV Park.
Anyhow, being on the top floor they had a perfect view of whatever boys were hanging out in the bushes, and if they saw someone they liked the just waved them up. There was a fair amount of traffic up that back stairway, and it wasn’t just the tenants taking out the garbage!
When our first son was born there shortly after we moved in, the landlords, who lived someplace in New York, sent us a baby gift! Great relationship. We would load the boy into the stroller and head down Masonic, which was about a 45 degree angle slope, a lot more fun down than up. We’d head over to Walter’s (Ashbury Market), pick up the Sunday papers, or head down to Haight Street to see what was going on. That time in the ’80s was a fair renaissance in the Haight, old storefronts full of local businesses, new ones popping up. Not too skeezy though there was enough of that.
I had seen several incarnations of Haight Street by that point — the speed freak boarded up storefronts of 1969, the beginning of a community revival in the mid ’70s, and then we were there pushing a stroller through the still pretty wild sidewalks, not feeling an ounce of concern for our safety, everybody just folks far as we could tell.
Our babysitter lived just a little ways away on Ashbury Street, next door to the old Grateful Dead house. She would come up to our place or we would drop off the boy there and hang out with her and her family in their stock original Haight Victorian. They had been there since the beginning, had the first head shop on the street, had some great tales to tell.
It was a great time to be there. You could still be thrown out of the Persian Aub Zum Zum room for absolutely no reason or pop down to the IBeam and catch the Chili Peppers, or Chris Isaak at the Nightbreak. Buy great clothes at Aardvarks or Held Over, go to the Pork Store for breakfast or Holey Bagel, or head over to Cole Street and go to the Tassajara Bakery, or pick up strings and picks at the music store, or go bowling, or just head out to GG Park and go on the carousel.
Anyhow, we stayed for a few years, till #2 was on the way. We searched and searched for a bigger place in the neighborhood, but by then couldn’t find anything we could afford. We ended moving to Madrone Canyon in the redwoods in Marin where we found a house where we could rent out an extra bedroom to cover the rent. Of course the week after we moved we got a letter saying that we’d made the list for the new apartments at Kezar, but we had made the move.
Always loved that gem of SF, and we always will.
Ok that’s enough rambling for now,
All the Best,
Dore Coller”