Less Bars in North Beach… Does this Mean Less Dumbasses on the Weekends?

Oh, North Beach, how you pain me. On a weekday evening or a sleepy Sunday afternoon, I could spend hours poking through your boutiques, visiting your historic towers and squares, eating my way through the best pasta and gelato, sipping the strongest espresso. You are the most European of San Francisco’s many burgs. Though toursisty, you are not exclusive, nor overpriced. You welcome all ages, all ethnicities. You do not welcome automobiles (parking spot sightings being on par with sightings of Sasquatch) but you offer cable cars, cabs, and some of the best walking in the city.

When I wrote a year ago that North Beach is a national favorite, I meant it. But not on the weekends. On Friday and especially Saturday nights, North Beach becomes more like Miami Beach: throngs of mini-skirted girls tottering around in platform heels; groups of boys whose faces are obscured by sideways baseball caps and 40 ounce beverages of choice obscured by brown paper bags. There can be no hailing a cab, because the street corners are chaos, bridge people fighting it out with tunnel people, cops screaming at drunken passersby. Restaurants are crammed, overflowing with loud mouthed customers who don’t bother to shut those mouths, even when they chew. I don’t see many residents out on weekend nights, unless they are working in a bar or restaurant. And then they just look bitter as Hell.

You can see then why some North Beachians would welcome a plan “to keep North Beach from being overrun by new bars and restaurants.” Chronicle writer C.W. Nevius reports that SF Supes are discussing ”complex legislation [that] would allow a restaurant or bar to replace one that’s closed. But it would prevent new ones from moving into now-empty storefronts.”

Seems like a good idea if what we want is diversity, stuff to do besides stuff our faces and get drunk. And maybe that would draw in less jack-asses on a weekend.

Course, lots of North Beach residents are against the plan. The politics in that charming district are acrimonious in the extreme, at times bordering on a Sorprano’s episode. Fitting, I guess, for an Italian neighborhood.

But what would such a plan do to property values? Would it make North Beach more, or less, desirable– not just to visit, but to actually live in?

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While we’re at it, here are a few choice listings in the North Beach area right now.

780 Union St: Gorgeous 1/1 condo for $849K.

1648 Stockton: 2/1 TIC (Telegraph Hill), on the market over 100 days, for $759K.

2149 Mason St: 2/1 TIC, recently reduced to $719K.

600 Chestnut St., #303: 2/2 condo, absolute heart-of-the-neighborhood location. $839K.

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Photo: MIT.Edu