Polk Street: Lives in Transition

On Polk Street, the new and old continually collide during a time of radical cultural and economic transition, and tensions can run high. But I found surprising connections between disparate users of the street and the vestiges of a vibrant queer “family” that once spanned the Tenderloin and Polk Gulch. I also found that the presenting these findings had surprising reverberations as a new Polk community coalesces. Through this project, I showcased how personally felt neighborhood changes reflect larger economic and social changes. 

Mayor’s Office for Workforce and Economic Development representative Chris Schulman followed the project closely. He told me how he learned through the project of the strong sense of “family” on Polk Street from the 1960s through the 1980s, “where businesses looked out for newcomers, runaway youth had some options, there was mentoring, there was self-policing, it was safer in a lot of ways,” he told me, adding, “There’s a way to take that spirit and rebuild.” Schulman is now developing ways businesses can provide opportunities for economically marginalized residents through their “Community Benefit District” program.   

With Schulman and others, I also organized a series of professionally facilitated neighborhood dialogues. Representatives of social service organizations, business associations, residents, and city employees came together for the first time and engaged in meaningful discussion. New residents and business leaders learned that a corner liquor store they consider a nuisance for the drug dealing that operates outside its doors is also a vital source of food for residents of nearby single-room occupancy hotels who lack kitchens. And that a diverse neighborhood requires nuanced solutions. Others came to appreciate the important roles business associations play in maintaining neighborhood stability and safety.  

“What I got from those meetings was honoring the fact that people are all working on the same thing from different places and that that was okay,” said Rev. Megan Rohrer, director of WELCOME: A Communal Response to Poverty. Now Rohrer is making headway on plans for much-needed public restrooms that had been stalled for years due to poor neighborhood relations. She is also instituting a program in which homeless and marginally housed guests will record and present their own stories.  
Now I am working with Rohrer on a modern-day “conversation” with the mid-1960s publication Vanguard, produced in the context of a Tenderloin anti-poverty campaign, by what is now considered to be the country’s first gay liberation organization. “People don’t notice when local businesspeople help out the homeless or the days when the homeless people sweep the sidewalks in front of businesses,” Rohrer said. “This project . . . shows those connections.”  

I was able to highlight these connections at a Listening Party this June, where 70+ community members, including Supervisor David Chiu, heard remarkable, sometimes harrowing personal stories from residents across the social strata. Also in attendance were the managers of neighboring Polk Street businesses that have for years been part of a well-publicized feud, one hated for aggressively “cleaning up” the street and another blamed for the area’s transgender prostitution. The former commented on how he had found newfound respect for the latter and the population that gathers at her club. 

Small steps, to be sure, but it is out of such small steps that major social and political advances have emerged from this extraordinary neighborhood.  

By Joey Plaster, June 2009