{"id":471575,"date":"2026-09-22T04:39:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T04:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/471575\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T04:39:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T04:39:29","slug":"uncle-walters-mystery-house-mission-locals-exclusive-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/471575\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncle Walter’s Mystery House \u2014\u00a0Mission Local’s exclusive tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nobody knew about the secret passage. That is, after all, the nature of a secret.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But there it was: In the far corner of the longtime penthouse office of ousted permit-expediting king and erstwhile mayoral best buddy<\/a> Walter Wong, tucked behind an innocuous hidden door resembling a cabinet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With a push, the hidden door gives way, revealing a series of secret shelves on rollers. They\u2019re empty now \u2014 unlike Wong\u2019s nearby former private bathroom that, embarrassingly, turned out to be occupied by a painter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What was once stored on these hidden shelves? Wouldn\u2019t you like to know.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The passageway is narrow; you aren\u2019t getting through here with your backpack on, let me tell you. It\u2019s only a few feet long and leads directly to the fire stairs. Wong \u2014\u00a0or a politician or a companion \u2014\u00a0could easily race through and down to the street undetected by anyone knocking on the opaque glass wall of Wong\u2019s penthouse office. That\u2019d be the cops, the feds, Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, anyone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWalter was always thinking ahead,\u201d said a longtime associate with a laugh. \u201cHe probably didn\u2019t have a building permit for that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

You think? Retracing the permitting history of this building vs. the actual construction is a task befitting all the king\u2019s horses and all the king\u2019s men. For decades, Wong was the ultimate fixer<\/a> for those in search of no-questions-asked building permits. The Department of Building Inspection was a magical place and Wong was its dark wizard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve written before<\/a> (more than once<\/a>), it is nigh-impossible to overstate the influence Wong held over the DBI, particularly its plan-check and central permitting divisions. He stocked it with his people, who handled his business. And, here, in the shadow of Highway 101 at 1717 Mission St. (and other addresses<\/a>), was Wong\u2019s tower<\/a> \u2014\u00a0his Orthanc<\/a> to the Department of Building Inspection\u2019s Minas Morgul<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wong didn\u2019t just work magic with construction and permitting. He also landed dodgy contracts<\/a> and sold dodgy things<\/a> to the city and squired San Francisco officials<\/a> around China, where they were f\u00eat\u00e9d with booze and \u201csome stone\u201d (jewelry, presumably). You\u2019ll not be surprised that the rich dudes offering up the booze and stone got their permits.<\/a> Wong, of course, handled that. For many years, he operated by his own set of rules, flouting the law for all to see<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Until he didn\u2019t: One day after the FBI arrested former Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru in January 2020, Wong\u2019s citadel was raided<\/a>. He would soon plead guilty<\/a> to fraud and money-laundering charges and help the feds to nail his old pals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In July, Wong sold his 95,000-square-foot \u201cself-sufficient kingdom<\/a>\u201d to Kink.com, the adult film company. Earlier this month, they kindly led your humble narrator and photographer Zoe Malen on a tour through their vast new home base.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As you\u2019d suppose, the building\u2019s new owners are not squeamish types. They\u2019re not alarmed by much.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when they found what was waiting for them in here, they called the FBI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"MohammedContractor and permit expediter Walter Wong, right, pictured here in 2018 with ex-Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru. Photo by Susana Bates for Drew Alitzer Photography. <\/p>\n

\"AThe faux-cabinet gives way, revealing a secret passage. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

\"OpenSecret shelves are hidden within the passageway. It opens to the building\u2019s fire stairs, providing a quick, unseen exit to the streets below. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

\"LargeWalter Wong\u2019s former penthouse office, which Kink.com is transforming into an event space<\/a>. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

Wong rented his sprawling offices to political campaigns<\/a>, including Willie Brown\u2019s re-election drive in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez\u2019s upstart campaign just four years later. Young political volunteers and workers referred to the polite older man who would often fix or build stuff himself as \u201cUncle Walter.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Kink.com people would like you to know that, no, there will not be an \u201cUncle Walter\u201d line of adult films. But will Uncle Walter\u2019s secret passageway find its way into a porno shoot? This, we are told, is \u201cway too tempting to not use.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are other secrets in this building, however, that are a bit less stimulating. And while a secret passageway is tantalizing, the building\u2019s new owners were less enthused by the secret floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, a secret floor. Well, more of a half-floor. Like in \u201cBeing John Malkovich.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no elevator to jam open with a crowbar, though. There\u2019s simply a ladder that takes you to a panel removed from the second-floor ceiling. In their apparent haste to decamp from this place, Wong\u2019s people left the panel exposed and the ladder placed enticingly beneath it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you were to ascend this ladder and precariously clamber into the area above, you\u2019d find a series of rooms shoehorned into the space between floors two and three. The ceilings are low \u2014\u00a0perhaps five and a half feet high (that\u2019s me in the photo and I\u2019m 6-feet-tall). There are doors that lock. A trapdoor could allow you to, literally, drop in on the men\u2019s room \u2014 where, blessedly, there is no painter to terrify.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And while this hidden floor is not on the building\u2019s plans, it was equipped with a full sprinkler system. Whatever was yanked off these shelves was valuable enough that nobody wanted it to burn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What was once stored here? Wouldn\u2019t you like to know.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All that\u2019s left are labels, perhaps hundreds of them, listing the many addresses of the projects Wong was connected to. In the corner, a yard or so from a Chinese postal service envelope, a large set of plans rests on the floor. A cursory analysis indicates they were from the Metreon \u2014\u00a0where you could\u2019ve seen \u201cBeing John Malkovich.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new owners tell us they called the FBI. But not just about this hidden floor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They claim that one of the nonprofits renting space in the building reported to them that unknown items had been stored by Wong in locked rooms in the suite the nonprofit rented. These rooms, it seems, were not searched when the feds raided this building.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whatever was kept in those rooms was apparently extracted en masse as Wong\u2019s people left the building, and purportedly shipped to parts unknown. This is something the Kink people say they made a point of telling the feds.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA Chinese postal envelope and various labels with addresses of Walter Wong\u2019s myriad projects are strewn on the floor of a hidden story at his longtime building, located between the second and third floors. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

\"AThe detritus-strewn floor of the hidden story, crammed between the second and third floors. Visible below through a removed ceiling panel is the building\u2019s second floor. Photo by Zoe Malen. <\/p>\n

\"OfficeA ladder leads to an open panel in the ceiling. And, beyond that, the hidden floor. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

\"ALabels left behind on in the hidden floor in Walter Wong\u2019s former building. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

Wandering through the more remote annexes of Uncle Walter\u2019s Mystery House, one can feel stuck in a Hollywood prop room or trapped within the world\u2019s largest junk shop. This labyrinth lacks only a minotaur.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Turn a corner and you\u2019ll find five hulking outdoor streetlamps lying on the floor. Each is about five yards high and resembles nothing so much as the death ray affixed atop a Martian UFO<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wong ran numerous companies from under this roof, and many of them had contracts with San Francisco government. He threw off anyone who\u2019d be suspicious, however, by unilaterally devising new addresses<\/a> for his building and assigning different ones to different companies. Problem solved!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Only stumbling distance from the quintet of death-ray lights are boxes and boxes of even more giant lights topped, incongruously, by a Black and Decker toaster oven. One box reads \u201cRFP 79002-A sample. 3\/2\/2015 11:38 a.m. Kingsun.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This streetlight Request for Proposal, it turns out, is the very one former Public Utilities Commission general manager Harlan Kelly allegedly attempted to rig for Wong<\/a>. No idea about the toaster oven, though. Or the boxes of kitchen gloves in the next room. Or the many cartons of battery packs for flip phones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"FourFive hulking street lights, left behind at Walter Wong\u2019s former building. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

\"AStreetlights by the boxload at Uncle Walter\u2019s Mystery House. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

\"OpenThe atrium at Uncle Walter\u2019s Mystery House. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

\"RedA Kink.com flag flies atop CitiCenter, now the adult film company\u2019s HQ but formerly the citadel of fixer Walter Wong. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

A 2018 Yelp review<\/a> for the third-floor Chinese restaurant once housed on this site, the Center Cafe, offers mixed praise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have given it 5 stars,\u201d it reads, \u201cbut the combination of the 82 health score and my frequent visits to the bathroom after this meal (and eating leftovers) worries me about what\u2019s going on behind the scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, you can\u2019t get much more on-the-nose than that. These days, the defunct Center Cafe resembles a restaurant evacuated mid-shift. A laminated menu still sits atop a table; the House Special Fried Rice is eternally $8.95.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The building\u2019s new owners would like to bring back an eatery or pop-up someday. But it\u2019s not a top priority. They\u2019d like this place to be, naturally, an office and studio for their adult film company. They\u2019d like Walter\u2019s former penthouse to serve as an event space, even for not-kinky events. (You can book it here, by the way<\/a>). They\u2019d like to be on good terms with the neighbors and the nonprofit tenants renting space here. And they\u2019d like to move Kink\u2019s retail space, metalshop and woodshop here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You could argue that this would be the first legitimate Production, Distribution and Repair (PDR) taking place on-site since this building<\/a> served as the Spreckels\/Russell Dairy Company<\/a> during the Johnson Administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Except, instead of big dairy machines,<\/a> now they\u2019d be crafting the latest thing in sex toys.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AHouse Special Fried Rice is eternally $8.95 on a Center Cafe menu. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

\"SeveralCassette tapes left behind in the former caretaker\u2019s apartment at CitiCenter, aka Uncle Walter\u2019s Mystery House. Photo by Zoe Malen<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was 7 a.m. and it was pouring rain,\u201d says the voice on the other end of the phone. It belonged to a man who worked for many years in Wong\u2019s former building.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI look out the window and I see a guy on a horse wearing a duster<\/a>. And he\u2019s leading a burro. And they\u2019re going up the onramp and onto Highway 101. So, I call the Highway Patrol and I say, \u2018I\u2019m not drunk and I\u2019m not high but this is what I\u2019m looking at.\u2019 I gotta give them credit, they jumped right on it. The animals were not hurt.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He exhales. \u201cOne of the weirdest things I saw in my life, actually.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Working in this building, that\u2019s saying something.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, almost as an afterthought: \u201cHey, did you find the safe?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Say what?\u00a0<\/p>\n

This conversation took place a couple of days after Mission Local\u2019s visit to the building, and, no, we hadn\u2019t seen it on our tour. But that\u2019s because we didn\u2019t know where to look.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the second floor, in an apartment that a building caretaker once lived in \u2014 beneath the stairway to a balcony and behind an innocuous panel \u2014\u00a0there was once a big safe, four or five feet tall. In it, we\u2019re told, were things Wong \u201cdidn\u2019t want anybody to know about.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, your humble narrator texted the new owners. \u201cMy guess is we would have spotted a safe by now,\u201d was the response. \u201cBut I\u2019ll search.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A few hours later, the phone vibrated with an incoming message.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOMG, it\u2019s there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And then an emoji of a mushroom cloud rising from the head of a bewildered face.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And then they called the FBI. Again.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in the safe? Wouldn\u2019t you like to know.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AWhat\u2019s hidden beneath the stairs? Here\u2019s a hint: It\u2019s not Harry Potter. <\/p>\n

\"An\u2018Did you find the safe?\u2019 Eventually, yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nobody knew about the secret passage. That is, after all, the nature of a secret.\u00a0 But there it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[47026,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-471575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-department-of-building-inspection","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471575","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=471575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}