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November 19, 2008
Gold Alley Delights
by guest writer, Brooke Cheshier
Like the snaking streets and bridges of Venice, San Francisco’s cross-hatching of alley streets makes the idea of getting a little – or terrifically – lost seem truly promising. Last week, I took a day to get intimate with Gold Alley, one of the most delicious cobbled back ways in North Beach.
Tucked behind Montgomery Street and just below Broadway – the strip that’s home to Little Darlings, The Condor Club and the Roaring 20s – Gold Alley is a neighborhood within a neighborhood. Reminiscent of the glamour of the 1930s (minus the unsanitary row and slum housing of the alleys of the same decade), it is the yang to Broadway’s “ladies of the night” yin. Here, amid the exposed red brick and mortar, fresh new galleries and luxury boutiques bump up against restaurants and shops that have had their doors open for over 30 years.
I was instantly smitten with this diverse micro-community. Gold Alley isn’t big, and I had no idea so many goodies could be folded into such a tiny space. Bix Restaurant, Hedge Gallery, William Stout Books, and Japonesque are the alley’s mainstays, along with the neighborhood’s youngest addition, Carrots. With its artist’s soul and aesthetic, it’s a community worth getting to know. Here are a few highlight’s…
William Stout Books: You don’t have to be an architecture buff to fall in love with Stout Books, which has been a Montgomery Street bastion for over 30 years. This jewel box bookstore flanking Gold Alley smells like printed paper and dust-covered book jackets (although there’s hardly a speck of dust in sight) and is full of towering metal shelves dedicated to rare, out-of-print books and current releases in architecture, urban planning, interior and graphic design, landscaping, and fine and decorative arts.
The airy, two-story space holds over 20,000 hardbacks and paperbacks, including a collection of graphic design volumes which were, to me, the visual equivalent of a Shakespearean sonnet or a Miller Williams sestina. In other words, pure poetry. Since I had set a budget for the day’s adventure, I resigned myself to a single purchase – a beautiful anthology of Jazz Album cover designs – and then beat a hasty retreat before I changed my mind and bought the entire section.
804 Montgomery Street 415.989.2341
www.stoutbooks.com
Mon- Fri
10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Saturday
10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Japonesque: I found refuge at Japonesque, a unique, soul-renewing gallery and the other entryway “flank” to Gold Alley. Spending a few minutes at this Zen-like gallery was as mentally and emotionally revitalizing as a day spent at Japantown’s Kabuki Springs.
Proprietor Koicha Hara loves art that seems to breathe, and every piece on Japonesque’s gallery floor, from the graphite wall panels by Hiromichi Iwashita to the glazed porcelain by Masamichi Yoshikawa, seems to possess movement and life. That’s because Hara serves as both curator and artist at Japonesque, and he works hard to maintain a harmony between his own works and those of the artists his gallery represents.
As an artist, Hara often combines recycled materials with freshly plucked organic matter. As a curator, Hara travels to Japan twice a year and hand selects woodwork, ceramic sculpture, shaped paintings, glazed porcelain, Japanese calligraphy and other pieces by artists like Masatoshi Izumi and Morino Hiroaki Taimei to showcase alongside some of his own pieces at his deceptively large, two-story showroom.
824 Montgomery Street
415.391.8860
Tues – Fri
10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Saturday
11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Carrots: Carrots is a different kind of sanctuary. Started by sisters Melissa and Catie Grimm, of Grimmway Farms fame (the world’s largest grower, producer and shipper of baby carrots), Carrots is a luxury boutique housing stunning jewelry and design collections from designers like Susan Zahedi, Peter Som and Richard Chai.
When I checked out the elegant storefront, I found a space filled, not just with high-end labels, but with large gilt mirrors, vintage European chandeliers and romantically curved armchairs and lounges. The resulting interior possessed an effortless Parisian-chic ambience, the kind that inspires you to lounge on a chocolate-hued ottoman, nibble on a carrot cupcake (they're complimentary!) and moon over a dozen creamy French and Italian soaps.
When I asked Melissa Grimm why they chose Montgomery Street and the perimeter of Gold Alley as their location, Grimm explained that she and her sister have been frequenting the shops and restaurants of this neighborhood for years, and loved its centrality. They also loved the history of the brick and mortar building, home to Ernie’s Restaurant for nearly 86 years. Although Ernie’s closed its doors in 1999, it is still remembered locally as one of San Francisco’s great hubs, made a national icon when Alfred Hitchcock featured it in his 1958 movie, Vertigo.
I sincerely hope the rich, relaxed aesthetic, along with the espresso bar and complimentary bucket of beer (for men who book a personal styling appointment) makes the not-so-recession friendly price tags a little easier for people to swallow. For me personally, I’ll have to forego that stunning Stella McCartney wool strapless dress and just stick with the soap.
843 Montgomery Street
415.834.9040
www.sfcarrots.com
Tues – Sat
11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Hedge Gallery: Steven Volpe and Roth Martin founded Hedge in 2003. Their vision was to connect – at times by tenuous threads – the art of the past, present and future by creating a showroom comprised of a highly edited collection of 20th century design that included, but was not limited to, furniture, sculpture, and ceramics.
When I visited, the gallery was wrapping up a retrospective on renowned New York artist Forrest Myers. Myers’ retrospective was the second exhibit to go by the name Not Furniture (Volpe and Martin launched the first Not Furniture exhibit in 2007 as a part of the Design as Art movement). Since the exhibit’s close, Hedge has returned to furnishing the showroom with an eclectic mix of mid-century inventory. This can typically include works by artists like the late French designer Pierre Paulin, Japanese glass sculptor Ritsue Mishima, and contemporary Welsh potter Paul Philp, whose terra cotta and mold-colored ceramics stun viewers with their organic beauty.
48 Gold Street
415.433.2233
www.hedgegallery.com
Mon – Fri
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Bix Restaurant: Let me say this: A day of gallery and design hopping finished with a dry martini and a tartare of trout at Bix Restaurant’s mahogany bar infuses new meaning into the phrase cocktail culture.
How do I describe Bix? I am not sure I can do it justice. It’s Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth meets The Cotton Club, without the crime lords and scantily clad performers. It’s thick-upholstered chairs, glossy tabletops, pressed linens and Bruce, the bartender, wearing a white tuxedo jacket. It’s classic cocktails like the sidecar and the Bix Manhattan washed down with rich, velvet-y jazz. In the words of owner Doug “Bix” Biederbeck, it epitomizes, “High-Low.”
At 5 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, the Bix bar was already three-quarters full. By 6 o’clock, it was standing room only. The live jazz session wouldn’t start for two more hours, but that didn’t seem to matter to the people pushing up to the bar. As Bruce says, fewer people may be dining out these days, but they haven’t stopped drinking. Bruce would know. He has been the bartender at Bix since “Bix” opened the downtown supper club 20 years ago.
Bruce knows the drink orders of many of the patrons, who range in age from early 20s to 60-plus, by heart. The feeling that this is a true neighborhood joint is pervasive, although I imagine the Bix staff have a flexible definition for the word neighbor. I hope so, because after only one visit, I was longing to be considered one of the gang. Maybe, I thought, as I stuck my nose in a glass of albarino and waited for my order of Bix’s famous chicken hash, Bruce will even greet me by name the next time I stop by. Oh yes, there will be a next time.
56 Gold Street
San Fran, CA 94133
415.433.6300
www.bixrestaurant.com
Mon–Thurs Bar: 4:30
Dining Room: 5:30
Live Jazz starts at 8 p.m.
Brooke Cheshier spends most weekends watching SEC Football and stealing blackberries from the neighbor's She is the wine correspondent for G -The Magazine of Greenville, making heavenly matches between southern eats and the world of drinks. Visit her blog at: http://aficionada.squarespace.com.
Posted by Pamela at November 19, 2008 1:03 PM| Share on Facebook |
