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This, of course, was before SoMa or East Cut, or the glittering mostly empty glass towers along Mission Street, before skyscrapers on Rincon Hill, and before the mixture we have now: the clubs, the leather district along Folsom Street.<\/p>\n
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South of Market had its own mix: The world-famous Palace Hotel was on the south side of the street, there was the Grand Opera House on Mission Street, and a granite U.S. Mint, full of gold. There were also big wooden flats packed with families lining the little alleys: Mina, Natoma, Tehama, Clementina, Stevenson\u00a0\u2014 slums, really, kids playing in the street. Cheap hotels, flophouses, a crowded district full of life. They had their own distinct accent South of Market\u00a0\u2014 the words all run together, mangled up a bit so it was \u201cSoutha Market,\u201d and \u201cPotrera Avenoo\u201d for a street that led out of town on the way to Sannazay. They said \u201cyeah\u201d a lot. But it didn\u2019t always mean \u201cyes.\u201d So watch it, kid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Robert O\u2019Brien, who wrote a column called Riptides in the Chronicle, thought South of Market was the heart of the city.<\/p>\n
That city died on the morning of April 18, just 120 years ago next Saturday. The earthquake wrecked the flimsy buildings. The fire destroyed the rest. \u201cThat was the end of South of the Slot; that was the beginning of the San Francisco we see today,\u201d O\u2019Brien wrote.<\/p>\n
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The Admission Day Monument in the foreground and Flood Building in the background, both on Market Street in San Francisco, survived the 1906 quake.<\/p>\n
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S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
The people who lived South of Market moved away \u2014 to the Mission, the Richmond, the Sunset, even to Oakland. Most never returned. They did not see themselves as victims, but as survivors, keepers of the spirit of the city. They never forgot.<\/p>\n
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In the fall of 1924, Peter Maloney, a well-connected police officer and civic leader, helped organize the South of Market Boys, open to anyone who lived in the district before the fire. \u201cThere\u2019s a laugh in it, there\u2019s a tear in it, and there\u2019s a rock-bottom fellowship in it,\u201d he wrote in the first issue of the South of Market Journal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Peter Maloney was the group\u2019s first president, and he no doubt presided over the first annual gathering before dawn at Lotta\u2019s Fountain on April 18, 1925. The gathering has become San Francisco tradition and will be staged again just after 5 a.m. next Saturday.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a grand old event, and a little haunted, too. At 5:13 a.m., the fire trucks at the ceremony will set off their sirens, the wail bouncing off the tall buildings, loud enough to stir up the ghosts of another vanished city.<\/p>\n
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A vintage cable car, one of the originals that survived the 1906 earthquake, carries passengers during Muni Heritage Weekend in September 2017.<\/p>\n
Amy Osborne\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
The South of Market Boys were pretty lively ghosts. They believed in drinking a toast to the old city and having a good time in the new one. They had grand ceremonies, including a South of Market ball every year. They sponsored baseball games at Seals Stadium, they sponsored a shelter for the down and out, and they helped the sick and the old folks at\u00a0Laguna Honda Hospital.<\/p>\n
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All the top people belonged, including the mayor, James \u201cSunny Jim\u201d Rolph. All the other politicians, too. Most of all, the South of Market Boys were a great networking organization, 3,500 strong, as big as any social organization in the city.<\/p>\n
One of the big shots\u00a0\u2014 as they used to call them\u00a0\u2014 was Tommy Maloney, Peter\u2019s older brother. He and his brother were the sons of a saloonkeeper from County Kildare. Neither brother had more than a sixth-grade education, graduates of \u201cthe college of hard knocks,\u201d as Peter put it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tommy was elected to the state Senate in 1924, the year the South of Market Boys were founded. He then transitioned to the Assembly, where he was speaker pro\u00a0tem, a solid supporter of union causes, workers\u2019 comp and other issues. He represented San Francisco in Sacramento for 32 years.<\/p>\n
He was one of those old-time retail politicians: He went to wakes and weddings and every fancy ball. He never forgot a friend, a real South of Market Boy.<\/p>\n
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![\"William]()
<\/p>\n
William Del Monte, a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco\u00a0earthquake and fire, commemorates the 105th anniversary of the disaster in 2011. Del Monte, the last San Franciscan remaining from the earthquake, died in 2016.<\/p>\n
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Liz Hafalia\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Eventually, time got them all. Leo\u00a0Sapienza was the last president of the South of Market Boys; for nearly 50 years, he ran the 1906 commemoration. He died at the great age of 95 in 2014. His daughter Karen took the event over, but she passed away as well. And in 2016, William Del Monte, the\u00a0last San Franciscan who was alive in those days, died at age 109.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And now the guard is changing again. After 39 years of organizing the event, lining up the civic leaders, setting up the space, doing a thousand things, Lee Houskeeper is stepping away. This is his last 1906. Next year it will be someone else. Houskeeper is a unique San Franciscan: the survivor of the survivors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tower of the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street remains intact in the aftermath of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[184,7,3934,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-262852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-earthquakes","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}