![]() In the midst of the merriment, Italian immigrants moved in with their Catholic morality, family values and pizza shops. It was a man's rough world of shanghaied sailors, gold rushers and drifters who kick-started the city's reputation for anarchic hedonism.īy the 1890s Pacific Street was erupting with jazz bars and dance clubs such as the Hippodrome, and in the 1950s the Beat Generation gave North Beach a new bohemian, counter-culture reputation as its writers explored sex, drugs and anti-materialism. North Beach is one of San Francisco's oldest districts, nicknamed the "Barbary Coast" for its early opium dens and saloons. But long before hippie Haight-Asbury and gay Castro, this area defined notoriety. San Francisco has always had a rather louche reputation, not really justified these days: the brothel tunnel now lies beneath a staid artists' supply store, though raunchy plaster satyrs still chase after naked nymphs on its facade. Later still it was the Hippodrome, where flappers danced and cocktails flowed. This building once housed the Red Mill, later tarted up as the Moulin Rouge. ![]() The tunnel is really just a concrete passageway hidden behind a door, but I imagine girls in feathers and frilly drawers fleeing the police, and bootleggers hauling whisky during Prohibition. ![]() I've never before started a culinary tour in a tunnel beneath a brothel, and I'm rather pleased at this first.
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