Photo of Women’s Building by SanFranAnnie
Yesterday, I thought I’d go check out the Mission district in San Francisco, as I’d never been there before on foot and wanted to try some San Francisco-style Mexican food. Furthermore, my grandma used to live there as a young woman back in the 1930s, so I thought it might be nice to spend some time on the same streets she’d walked so long ago.
I caught the number 33 bus and headed over the hill through a very nice neighborhood with stunning views, then descended into the Eureka Valley, passing through the Castro. I got off the bus across the street from the impressive Mission Dolores High School, which faces Dolores Park, and headed down 18th toward Valencia.
Just a block or two down the street, I noticed a sign sticking out in front of me that said “Women’s Building,” and naturally this aroused my curiosity. There was a group of feminist-looking women hanging out in front of a large, multi-storey building attached to the sign, and one of them, who looked like a 30-something New Yorker, had a familiar look about her, as though I’ve seen her face on some writer profile somewhere or other. She glared at me suspiciously, but having already seen the mural that festooned the building, I couldn’t help but smile with repressed laughter.
The Women’s Building is graced with one of the most hideous, comically grotesque murals I’ve ever seen. Painted in 1994, the Maestra Peace Mural depicts women of diverse ethnicities in various states of self-satisfaction. The style is reminiscent of both Soviet era and 1960s “Age of Aquarius” art, drawing to some extent from socialist realism, but also from New Age, and possibly stylized Aztec paintings as well. It depicts, among other things, oceans flowing out from between a pregnant woman’s legs, a Masai woman who looks like Mr. T, handicapped women frolicking together, and so on. The painters squeezed as many ethnicities as possible into the mural, and a number of utopian themes.
After taking several photos of the mural, I continued on my way to the Mission, still marveling at the scene. I mused that the building may be one of the world headquarters of feminism – it appeared every bit the feminist cathedral, if not the Vatican – and determined to look up its origins later.
The Mission was a bit of a disappointment. Apparently, the area has “gentrified,” so the Mexican character of the neighborhood has declined significantly. Nevertheless, I found myself a little taqueria called “Taqueria La Cumbre,” which bills itself as the home of the Mission-style burrito. Not a bad place as far as Mexican restaurants go, but a little pricey, as the clientele is mostly Anglo. Usually, when I eat foreign food, I try to find a place where the ethnicity of the clientele matches the cuisine. That’s how you get the best deals and most genuine food. I’m sure Californians will find it a bit amusing that anyone could see authentic Mexican food as foreign or exotic by now, but for those of us up in the north woods it still is to a large extent.
After having my fill of the Mission district, I turned back onto 18th and headed toward the Castro to see what all the fuss was about.
The Castro is marked territory these days. You can tell exactly where it begins and ends by rainbow flags that stand along the streets, including the largest rainbow flag I’ve ever seen flying above Harvey Milk Plaza. It’s actually a pretty small neighborhood, smaller than the gay enclave in Seattle, although perhaps it is more specifically gay than Seattle’s Capitol Hill/Pike Pine corridor. It’s a desirable little neighborhood from a real estate perspective, tucked away in a little valley right off Market that provides easy access to downtown. The houses are of the Victorian style common to San Francisco, and fairly well-maintained.
However, it isn’t exactly what one might expect from all the hype. The average age of a Castro resident looks to be somewhere around 50; it is not particularly young. In this way, the neighborhood is kind of pathetic. Basically, you have a lot of middle-aged and older gay men trying to keep appearances up. I suppose they do a better job than straight men on average, but there’s something sad about that level of vanity in mature men. I will say, though, that what the neighborhood lacks in children and youths, it somewhat makes up for in very stylish little dogs, which are quite common in the Castro.
After heading back and seeing the kids to bed, I looked up the San Francisco Women’s Building for some background on my discovery, and found that the building was probably highly relevant to my own family history. So much so, that it may be responsible for my very existence.
It turns out that the building is the old San Francisco Sons of Norway lodge, formerly named Dovre Hall after the Dovre Mountains of Norway, and it was sold to a feminist collective in 1979. Several decades before that, my grandmother, as a young woman, moved from Seattle to live in San Francisco. Her father was a member of the Sons of Norway in Seattle, and helped build the old Seattle lodge. I have little doubt that my grandmother found friends and a place to stay through the Sons of Norway, which was an important resource for the Norwegian immigrant community in the early 20th century. Perhaps she chose to live in the Mission because it was near the lodge, and was a center of San Francisco’s Norwegian community at the time.
Finding the building helped fill in a bit of family history for me, but it also evokes some sadness to see that what a fraternal order ran for the benefit of family and community all those years ago was sold off to a group dedicated to destroying and dismantling family and community in the name of an impossible utopian ideal. What a sad little microcosm of our society.
