San Francisco labels many of its districts with the (usually capitalized) definite article. True San Franciscans still call their city “The City” as though there is no other in the world. The Richmond is referred to as a “neighborhood”. So are “The Mission”, “The Sunset”, “The Castro”, and “The Western Addition”. Other neighborhoods, especially some of the swankier ones, do not adopt the definite article: they are simply called “Nob Hill”, “St. Francis Wood”, or “Sea Cliff” – which is geographically within The Richmond, but which can be considered as distinct from it as Monaco is from France. The more affluent neighborhoods seem to disdain the word “neighborhood” along with the article “The”. You would have thought that the reverse would be true.
The Richmond is also known as “The Avenues”. This is probably because it has so many of them. The neighborhood is built on a rectangular grid containing forty-eight avenues running in one direction, with a smaller number of longer streets at right angles to them. The avenues of The Richmond stretch from Arguello Boulevard in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. The streets crossing these avenues are named Lake, California, Clement, Geary, Anza, Balboa, Cabrillo, and Fulton. The fifth and sixth of these are named for Spanish conquistadores, the seventh for a Portuguese mariner, whose name actually was João Rodrigues Cabrilho. But because he sailed for the Spanish king when he discovered parts of California, his name is recorded in these parts in its Spanish configuration.
Sometimes the neighborhood known as The Sunset is called “The Avenues” as well, and this may cause confusion in some people’s minds between The Richmond and The Sunset. But The Sunset, though it also has most of the same Avenues as The Richmond, lies south of the Golden Gate Park and is separated quite effectively from The Richmond by that broad and healthy swath of green.
As this piece is principally about The Richmond, we will say no more of The Sunset except this: that in the 60s and 70s many Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong settled in The Richmond, buying homes and apartment blocks, opening groceries, meat markets and restaurants, and both in reality and realty turning a big part of it into a second Chinatown far from the original near The City’s financial district. They liked The Richmond, it has been reported, because the name contains the word “rich” in it. (Interestingly enough, Vancouver, British Columbia has a Richmond district as well, and it is just as popular with its Chinese immigrants.) Though many Chinese also lived and did business in The Sunset, the name had less appeal, because it is not lucky-sounding like ‘rich’ and also because the ‘sun-setting’ bit was not deemed efficacious for business success. Still, the Chinese community has thrived in both neighborhoods, so this story about the diminished appeal of The Sunset’s name may be apocryphal.
The Richmond has always supported an ethnically diverse population, from the immigrant Russians, Eastern European Jews, and Irish of the 1920s to the 1950s, to the more recent Chinese and Vietnamese arrivals in the 1960s and 1970s. A short distance from the bustling commercial centers and cluttered sidewalks of Clement Street and Geary Boulevard, the homes on the Avenues display an equally diverse mix of building styles, from stately Victorian Queen Annes to boxy modern apartment blocks to elegant mansions built to fine architectural plans.
Living in The Richmond has definite advantages. Good inexpensive restaurants and bars abound, and are usually located within easy walking distance of the residential areas. The bus lines provide frequent and inexpensive public transportation to San Francisco’s downtown, and transfers are available to take you to other neighborhoods throughout The City. There are excellent small bookstores and two of the most famous museums in California – the new De Young Museum and the Museum of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, with its unsurpassed view of the Golden Gate. And above all, The Richmond abuts the exquisite Golden Gate Park, one of the premier green areas on the entire West Coast.
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