A three-part series about my upbringing and growing up... to see a new version of Black San Francisco
During the great migration, my grandmother and her siblings sojourned with thousands of Black families. In hopes of escaping Jim Crow laws of the South, hundreds of Black folks packed up their lives in search of the promise of a better life in California. The shipyards and factories were full of jobs that could create a new reality for themselves.
During the 70s in the Ingleside neighborhood where my grandparents and their siblings resided, the population was 60% Black. San Francisco used to be bustling with Black-owned businesses in the 70s and 80s according to my mother.
My aunts and cousins living either in my grandmother’s Ingleside home would each know how to clean a kitchen to the point of inspection and cook at least one signature dish that would become their own.
Both my grandparents would go on to own three businesses: a soul food restaurant in San Mateo which closed in 1982, a barber shop closing when my grandfather passed away in 1983 and by 1987, the remaining family business, an ice cream shop whose name no one can quite recall, would be sold. My family like many Black families in San Francisco not only had the loss of businesses but the transitions in life, several times over until there wasn’t much left to lose.
My grandmother would continue catering for church events and neighbors over the years. The most requested item at every church gathering was a coconut meringue frosted cake, which my grandmother hated eating but could make unmeasured, blindly from memory and with ease. Any doubts that the children and grandchildren raised under my grandmother’s roof were quality, raised with manners or that we did not belong in any room we entered would be removed. Her daughters and grandchildren were ever reminded of the enunciation of our words– the hard pronunciation of “er” in “mother” was often corrected when she entertained her home.
Much like my own family’s business, vestiges of Black businesses ownership would appear here and there throughout the city reminding me that they existed throughout my life. From time to time I can see the shadows of vintage signs that become fashionable for new businesses that have taken over. The traces of decades-old paint across brick, haunting in the most unlikely of places.
By the time I was a teenager, all that was left of those long ago days of the businesses were my grandmother’s recipes, passed down to the grandchildren by verbal instructions in her kitchen while she yelled directions from another room. For the longest time, I believed it must have been bad luck to compliment your own cooking. With those cross yelled instructions we also learned the self-deprecating way of saying the food would be good by proclaiming “I don’t know how it turned out.” Then handing whoever was nearest in the kitchen a spoonful to sing our praises while simultaneously saying it needs more pepper.
My aunts and cousins living either in my grandmother’s Ingleside home would each know how to clean a kitchen to the point of inspection and cook at least one signature dish that would become their own. My mother, brother, and I followed the other great migration when times became downtrodden and were living where many other Black families had been relegated to the housing projects in Bayview/ Hunter’s Point.
By the late 90s, I was waking up to daily neighborhood music rotation of local independent Bay Area rappers — RBL Posse’s “No Bammer Weed”, IMP’s “Scandalous” or Mac Mall’s “My Opinion” as sounds that would be the soundtrack to the world I would come to know. This new space would also mean code-switching to another vernacular for a different version of San Francisco. My grandmother’s heavy conditioning for an enunciated “er” meant I now “talked white”.
Well before cellphones were the norm, towards the end of the month, the landline phone we had would be turned off due to non-payment. Trusted and understanding neighbors would often let me use the phone –if theirs was also turned on that is. If not, there would be nights well after dark when my blue pager would beep, I would trek down a field of glimmering street lights dancing off the broken glass to light the way to the only pay phone in the neighborhood in front of “Bob’s”.
It was on Bob’s pay phone that I found out that I would be the first person in my immediate family to go to college and make a migration of my own out of the city I was so familiar with and called my home.
With a collection of coins in my pocket, I made phone calls to friends so that we could make plans to meet, break up with boyfriends, and ask for rides. Discretion means telling someone to mind their business while you are having a public conversation when you send someone to a pay phone.
In 2006 Robert “Bob” Pinkard was honored by Crissy Field Center as a Community Hero for adding fresh produce to the store’s options. I’m sure over time an apple or two has crossed the threshold of the store filled with soda and banana Now & Laters– which we pronounced “Nounlaters.” Now at 74 years old his memory is still pretty sharp. He remembered the families that had come and gone, the stories they told about how they ended up “On The Hill”, a common colloquialism for the neighborhood. He could vividly recall his own move to California in the 70s from the South. When I last saw him, he even recalled the journalist Patricia Yollin who wrote his original story passed away from cancer in 2020.
By 2010, the number dwindled to 10% according to San Francisco’s Neighborhoods: Socio-Economic Profiles. The population of Black people citywide was down to 5.6% and declining by 2019. And while nationwide Black-owned businesses were increasing into the millions, Black businesses in San Francisco were on the decline to 1.6 by 2017.
“Bob’s” was one of the three remaining Black-owned liquor stores in the Bayview, which includes Ford Liquors on Lane Street and Double Rock Grocery on Ingalls. Bob bought his property in 1974 and converted the garage into a store, where his liquor license has remained intact since 1976. Time seemed to be an illusion, so the store hours would be “open to close.” A group of older Black men outside played dominoes next to an idle barbeque smoker by the door for hot links and burger plates on Friday and Saturday.
It would be many years later that I ever called “Bob’s” by its formal name “Surfside Liquors”. It was on Bob’s pay phone that I found out that I would be the first person in my immediate family to go to college and make a migration of my own out of the city I was so familiar with and called my home.
To be continued…
Brandy Collins is a writer and self-proclaimed Professional Aunty full of Scorpio magic living in the Bay Area.Brandy is a 2019-2020 cohort graduate from the Maynard Institute for Journalism, a correspondent for Oakland Voices, and contributing writer for Oaklandside, Berkeleyside-Nosh, Chronicle Datebook, Thrillist, KCET, The Bold Italic and SF Weekly. She’s also the funny one in the group chat and has a drink named after her. Follow Brandy on twitter @MsBrandyCollins or Instagram @story_soul_collecter