By Emma Krasov. Photography by Yuri Krasov
Just in time for Halloween, Stretchy Pants Food Tours of San Francisco, a walking tour company, focused on introducing city’s unique, family-owned restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and bars to the general public, adds some ghost stories to the many fascinating narratives on local history, presented alongside generous tastings in historical and otherwise notable culinary establishments.
New spooky adventures for Halloween weekend include Haunted Chinatown Cocktail Tour (Halloween pop-up) October 30 and 31 at 7pm and 9:30pm, and a three-hour Gourmet Ghost Tour of North Beach, October 31 at 4 pm.
Let me elaborate on the latter, based on a thrilling personal experience!
Gourmet Ghost Tour of North Beach with Stretchy Pants covers the neighborhood of “Little Italy,” where pizza joints and pasta parlors invite passersby to grab a table on a sidewalk, indulge in authentic toppings and sauces, and observe one of the most beautiful neighborhoods of the gorgeous City by the Bay, with its cozy turn-of-the-century architecture, monuments of the past epochs and modern times, and various places with checkered history that gave San Francisco her reputation of a wild temptress of a city.
In general, food tours, no matter how educational and historical, must start with a treat (and continue with more of those!) The trick is to balance the relaxed pace of multiple tastings with enjoyable walks on busy city streets, while conveying lots of interesting information, plus some chilling ghost stories, along the way. That’s a challenge Stretchy Pants’ tour guides face every single time.
Dale Scott, a guide extraordinaire, does it perfectly!
Upon meeting by San Remo Hotel on Mason Street, our group entered the Fior d’Italia Restaurant inside, where over a plate of amatriciana—one of the most traditional Roman dishes with housemade bucatini—Dale gave us a brief history of the oldest continuously operating Italian restaurant in North America, opened 140 years ago, in 1886. At the time, the restaurant service included a top floor brothel, and throughout its long history survived three fires in 1893, 1906, and 2005.
We’ve also learned that San Remo Hotel, built by A.P. Giannini, the founder of Bank of Italy (later Bank of America) had been originally named, “New California Hotel.” Why this name? Just because it opened as a boarding house soon after the catastrophic earthquake and fire of 1906, and was intended to host laborers and dockworkers who came to San Francisco from all over the U.S. to help rebuild the city. The new hotel started its activities with serving soup under a tent to people displaced by the disaster, and its former owner, William DelMonte, who died at the age of 109 in 2016, was the oldest living survivor of the devastating earthquake.
By the mid-20th century, San Remo turned to a residential hotel, frequented by the bohemian types. Some artists even paid their rent with their own artworks. It continues to function as a regular city hotel today, not only as a roof for Fior d’Italia Restaurant, known for its housemade pasta dishes and classic cocktails, but also as a hotbed of ghost activity, being a staple in the old San Francisco, and carrying a hefty weight of human fates, misfortunes, and adventures, inseparable from the area.
“San Francisco is one of the most haunted big cities in North America,” says Dale. “It lends itself to all three likely reasons for ghostly appearances—tragic deaths, unfinished businesses, and disturbed resting places. With more than three thousand people perished over a two-day period during the great earthquake, and even before that, with Gold Rush murders and abuses, and the infamous Barbary Coast kidnappings and robberies, this dangerous, filthy, shanty boom town, which was San Francisco at the time, it appeared to be the wildest West of the Wild West, where every imaginable vice and crime existed in their worst forms. Obviously, ghost stories were just writing themselves. Even the city cemeteries, unable to hold down all the dead, far outnumbering the living, were relocated to the suburb of Colma, to the south of San Francisco.”
I won’t be dishing out any spoilers here, but during a Gourmet Ghost Tour of North Beach, your Stretchy Pants guide will share very detailed accounts of San Remo hauntings, observed by multiple guests in some of the hotel rooms, a restaurant Fior d’Italia haunting stemming from a 1911 double murder at a wedding, and other related poltergeist stories, abundant in this part of the city.
You’ll hear about the rich Italian history in North Beach, about San Francisco’s fishing industry on the Fisherman’s Wharf, established by the Italians; about the massive landfill efforts during and after the 1849 Gold Rush, when a series of newly created streets were laid out atop of sunken ships, over what was once open water, giving Front Street, Water Street, Seawall Place, and Channel Street their names; about a baseball legend, and a favorite son of North Beach, Joe DiMaggio; and about a discovery of Russian sailors’ graves that gave a name to Russian Hill.
You’ll see remarkable city landmarks, like the San Francisco Art Institute, built by the famous architect Arthur Brown Jr, in 1927. His other world-famous buildings include San Francisco City Hall, Coit Tower (visible from where you’ll stand), Temple Emanu-El, and Berkeley City Hall.
You’ll visit Washington Square Park, and the Benjamin Franklin statue, donated to the city by Henry Cogswell, head of the local chapter of the Anti-Saloon League in 1877; one of San Francisco’s original parks, Il giardino; Saints Peter and Paul Church, called the “Italian Cathedral of The West;” a legendary Liguria Bakery, founded in 1911, and you’ll even try their heavenly grilled eggplant focaccia, popular with the locals and out-of-towners since the 1960s.
You’ll discover a sordid history of “shanghaiing” in Gold Rush era; pay your respects to the Beatnik movement of young poets and writers, like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, who rejected postwar consumerism and cultural conformity, and brought San Francisco to the front lines of the 1950s-1960s cultural battles for artistic freedom and authentic self-expression, and observe their hangout, Caffe Trieste, in operation since 1951—the first espresso house on the West Coast, still organizing poetry and live music performances today. (F.F. Coppola wrote “The Godfather” by hand at his own table in the back here).
You’ll stop by the Condor Club, a jazz joint from 1958, made famous by Carol Doda, a 19 year-old waitress, who became the first U.S. topless dancer, and performed here through the 1980s.
Everywhere you go with your guide you’ll hear amazing facts, colloquial anecdotes, historical references, urban legends, and mysterious ghost stories.
And of course, you’ll taste the most delicious treats all the way, like Il Casaro Pizza’s Margherita from a 2014 wood-fired oven imported from Naples, Italy, which fires at over 900 F!
For a sweet finale, you’ll stop at Cavalli Café, where the airy tiramisu is still made the traditional way with real espresso, not coffee liquor.
Stretchy Pants Food Tours of San Francisco offers multiple public and private tours in different San Francisco neighborhoods every week. Reserve your Halloween treats tour at: (415) 545-8276 or www.stretchy-pants.com.
