SF, CA - Help, I'm Being Held Prisoner in a Chinese Fortune Cookie Factory

Today we’re off for North Beach, where Jack Kerouac found his voice and then on to Chinatown. Will we find some stairways along the way? You betcha. In fact, we’re parking so that we have one at the onset to climb on our way up to Coit Tower. Again, it was a beautiful stairway, surrounded by gardens and covered by greenery. And, again, we noted that there were many homes with their front doors, front gates, house numbers and mail boxes on the stairway.

Such a different way of life from what we’ve been used to. We not only wonder how they get things like TV’s and refrigerators down to their homes but how do you invite guests to your home? Parking is at a terrific premium so guests would not only have to walk up the stairway but also have to fight to find parking anywhere near the stairs. Quaint but crazy. And, look, they’ve even got a fire hydrant up the stairways one of the cross walks. The stairway is about 1 block high with 4 crosswalks. And, look, the crosswalks even have names and signs. Here’s Darrell.

Up at the top is Coit Tower, a beautiful memorial to one of the most intriguing people to have lived here, Lillie Coit. A cigar-smoking, pants-wearing fire-chasing anomaly in old San Francisco where women were supposed to wear dresses, go to the sitting room while the men smoked and not chase fires. You know, be proper. Well, ’Firebelle Lil’ was not always proper. She was known to gamble and dress as a man so she could gamble in the men-only gambling establishments in the city. She was also a fine shot and could drive a carriage.

She was born in West Point in 1843 where her father was a surgeon and graduate. At 8, she and her family moved to San Francisco. She had always been fascinated by firemen but at the age of 15, she got involved. There was a fire at the top of Telegraph hill and her favorite fire crew, # 5 was shorthanded that day and couldn’t pull the firetruck up the hill. (When there was a fire on a hill, the firemen lined up on a rope to pull the firetruck up the hill to the fire.) It looked as if Manhattan No. 2 and Howard No. 3, two other fire groups, were going to beat # 5 to the fire. Lillie, who had heard the fire alarm and had rushed over, jumped in to help pull the rope yelling at the bystanders: ‘Come on you men! Everybody pull and we'll beat 'em!’ And, they did. From then on, Lillie was an honorary member of Fire Company #5 and wore the gold badge they presented to her constantly.

As she grew older, she didn’t follow the fire trucks as ardently as she once did but still had their interests at heart. When any firefighter fell ill, she was in his sick room and would send flowers to those who had died. She married Howard Coit and lived the life of a wealthy SF matron for a while. Later she separated from her husband though they never divorced. After an envious relative made an attempt on her life, killing a close family friend who had rushed to save her instead, she fled to Europe and lived abroad for 20 years until the murderer died. When she returned to San Francisco, she suffered a stroke and spent her remaining years in the Dante Sanitarium.

Upon her death in 1929 she left 1/3 of her fortune to San Francisco to ‘be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of he city which I have always loved.’ 2 memorials resulted from this bequest: Coit Tower and the Firemen’s statue in Washington Square, both of which we visited today.

We huffed and puffed up to the Tower and found these beauiful murals lining the rotunda inside. They were designed and painted under the auspices of the Public Works Art Project, one of the New Deal projects of Franklin Roosevelt.

After we had toured and admired the rotunda, we went down the hill (our favorite part) to view the Firemens Monument in Washington Square and have lunch. We sat across from the St. Peter and Paul Church with 666 as its street address. The church was completed in 1924 and has 2 spires which reach 200’ and a beautiful, intricate stained glass window.

The funny thing about it is that native son Joe DiMaggio wanted to marry Marilyn Monroe here but he was divorced so couldn’t. However, after their marriage, they posed on the steps for wedding photos.

While we were eating our lunch, we met a a girl from Kansas who looked like she was a San Francisco girl, a bit edgy and a bit goth, who was rolling her own cigarettes. (Don’t ask and don’t tell.) She stunned us when she admitted she couldn’t wait until she got back to Kansas because she was just a small-town girl at heart. Hmm. not what we would have guessed but good for her that she knows what she wants.

We then wandered around savoring the aromas of fresh baked Italian pastries, pasta dishes and cheeses. We are intrigued by the plethora of small shops, the variety of small restaurants and the small corner stores on every block. So many more than you’ll find in many cities and or towns. I’m sure that this is because Walmart and fast food have not penetrated the cities yet. We have walked the city over and have found very few fast food joints here. We’ve seen a few Subway’s and one MacDonalds but no KFC, no Arby’s, no Burger Kings and none of the others. The closest Walmart is about 45 miles away, either across the bay in Oakland or down the coast in San Jose. Nary a Walmart in San Francisco.

Here’s another type of ‘stairway’, steps cut into the sidewalk. We’re wondering how the residents access this home.

We spent some time wandering this area, found Columbus Tower, built in 1907 after the earthquake and fire, which Francis Ford Coppola bought in 1972 for his Zoetrope Studios. Behind that is the 1972 Transamerica Tower. First scorned, it has now become a symbol of the city. It’s 48 stories and 850’ tall and because of its shape, it does not shade other buildings.

We then stopped at the Cafe Trieste which was a popular hangout for the beat generation: Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, etc. I ordered my usual decaf and swear I got a decaf with a double shot of expresso. It was that stong. I’m ready for more steps now. There were two musicians in the corner one playing a mandolin and the other a guitar. We drank our coffee to their rendition of Sweet Georgia Brown.

Since it was still early, we headed on over to Chinatown where we strolled down Grant Avenue, the central (tourist) avenue and stopped to walk under the China Gate. I found a t-shirt for $3.99 that I liked but, luckily I didn’t buy it since I found ithe same exact t-shirt on the next block for $2.88. Were these souvenir San Francisco t-shirts made in China for sale in Chinatown to tourists?

Next the Fortune Cookie Factory on Ross Alley. Pretty auspicious, eh?

So, I suppose you all think that fortune cookies were invented in China and brought over here by the immigrants? Right? Nope. In fact most of the people who claim to have invented this are Japanese and they invented these little cookies in America. Yep, one legend is that they were first baked in a San Francisco bakery and served in the US in the 1890’s or 1900’s in the Golden Park’s Japanese Tea Garden by the builder of the garden, Mokota Hagiwara. These were displayed at the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco in 1915. Another legend is that they were invented in Los Angeles by the owner of a Noodle Co around 1918. It is said that he handed out little cookies with pieces of paper with words of encouragement on them to the poor and homeless in LA.

In fact, these were known as ‘fortune tea cakes’ deriving from the treat called ‘Japanese tea cakes’. Thus, fortune cookies were most associated with the Japanese until WWII when approx. 100,000 Japanese were interred in camps in the US. Many of these had been restaurant owners who had distributed the cookies. Here’s where the Chinese come in and begin serving them in their restaurants. However, these were made mostly by hand and very expensive. When the fortune cookie machine which automatically put the fortune inside the cookie and folded it around the fortune was developed in 1960, they became cheaper, took off and are now a staple in Chinese restaurants thrroughout the US.

I think it’s time to export them to China calling them American fortune cookies.

Most fortune cookies are made by large factoried which churn out them out by the thousands. However, there is one small factory still in Chinatown, on a back alley where they are made by hand by several ladies. Here you can walk in and see the rapid process by which they are made. There a large metal tub pours the dough down on to small 3” hot plates which move clockwise around a circular conveyer belt to cook (off to the right in the picture below). When they back to this side, the cook would take them off the plate while they were still soft, put a small piece of paper against one side, bend both edges into the middle to cover the fortune and then quickly bend the cookie over the silver metal rod in front of her while it was still soft enough to bend. She then put the bent ones into the holes to cool down and harden.

Pretty slick and pretty quick since they must do it all while the dough is pliable enough to bend. And, that darn conveyer belt keeps running around. Off to the side is a bowl of those small cooked disks which were for us to sample. Obviously they hoped we’d buy some of those or some of the other treats they had bagged on shelves off to the side.

Oh, yes, to take a picture cost $.50. We gave them $1.00, plus bought a bag of almond cookies and I snapped away.

Here’s a building which is what we all think of China but it didn’t always look like this. After the earthquake and fire of 1906, the city fathers planned to move what was the Chinese slum much further south and out of the city center. The Chinese fathers, knowing that their livlihood was here, quickly began to rebuild on their own. They built fantastic buildings like this one, designed to be a tourist attraction to convince the city fathers to let them stay in the center of the city. And they did. It seems to be a Win-Win for both of them. Chalk one up for the Chinese and the City fathers.

We also visited Portsmouth Square with its card games. Not only was this group engaged in a heated game, there were about 5 other games in progress, all heated and most with money on the table.

We then headed on over to Fishermen’s Wharf for a soup and sandwich meal at Boudin Bakery. Here we saw some window washers with special challenges - and special solutions for them. Look at that long handle for the brush.

Back at the parking garage which was $15.00 for the day, we put our parking ticket into the machine. No go. We tried again. Still no go. Gary tried several more times. I then took it to the main kiosk to try to pay but I had the same luck as he did. Finally, I was able to flag down a security guard who tried. Nope. He turned to me, told me that it was my lucky day and that we wouldn’t have to pay. He wasn’t about to collect money himself and he opened the gates for us and we headed off.

What a fine day in SF. Sunny weather, unusual history, delicious meal and free parking. What more could one ask?

9.4     2025’ (see, I told you that coffee was strong.)