The Chinaman. For as long as I can remember, the only Chinese restaurant in the suburban southern California town where I grew up was named for this racial slur. No one, including the Chinese owner, seemed to mind. I can’t remember if chop suey was ever on the menu, but standing at the gate to Chinatown in San Francisco, on Grant and Bush Streets still following the Barbary Coast trail, I couldn’t help but link the two. Kitschy and part of the old school food culture many of us have long abandoned.
A few nights earlier I was eating at Incanto, a stellar restaurant in the city’s Noe Valley and ended up standing in the doorway to the kitchen chatting with Chris Cosentino, the restaurant’s talented chef. That’s when he told me that chop suey was invented in San Francisco. “Some time during the Barbary Coast era,” he said.
Or was it? It would make sense that San Francisco would have birthed this kitschy dish. Chinatown boasts the first Asian temple in the United States (on Waverly Place). San Francisco was the first place Chinese immigrants flocked to, hoping to strike it rich in the rush for gold. It had to have been invented here. So, on a whim, I decided to find out.
I went into the first restaurant I encountered. The young female servers in the Utopia Café had dystopian looks on their faces when I asked if they had chop suey on the menu. “Chop suey?” a woman repeated in a tone of such befuddlement, as if I had suggested we defecate on the floor together and then invent a dish out of it and call it “Chinese food.”
Which is one story how chop suey was supposedly invented. Well, sort of, minus the excrement. In author Herbert Asbury’s “The Barbary Coast,” which I happened to have in my bag, he claims chop suey was invented in New York City, created at a banquet for Chinese and non-Chinese. The chef, he wrote, threw together some meat and vegetables and doused it liberally with soy and fish sauce and created something he thought seemed vaguely Chinese but would suit the American palate as well. Chop Suey was, apparently, born.
In New Asia restaurant no one would talk to me. Or they didn’t speak English (or were pretending not to). It didn’t help that I was holding a journalists notepad and a pen. When I asked about chop suey I only received blank stares in return.
Finally, at Yee’s on Grant St., a lead. A young waiter new exactly what I was talking about. “Yes, it may have been invented here,” he said. “I’ve heard this story. But we don’t make it anymore. No one wants this dish.”
“It’s cheap stuff,” barked an old man sitting at a cash register. “Cheap stuff.”
He was right. Chop suey reeked of a dish that consists of leftover ingredients. It’s a combination of indistinguishable products – vegetables and meat and sauces – that somehow contains hints of Chinese cuisine for the naive palate.
Everyone at Yee’s shrugged when I asked where I might find it and, more importantly, if they know where it was invented.
I was ready to give up. I put my notepad back in my pocket and started walking back toward the Chinatown gate, ready to resume my Barbary Coast trail journey.
And then I spotted it: above the door of New Woey Loy Goey on Jackson and Grant Streets, two words: chop suey. I descended the stairs and accosted the first waiter I saw. Chop suey! I said. The waiter motioned for me to sit down. But I had a question: where was it invented? Sadly, he didn’t speak English. Neither did anyone at the restaurant. Instead, he just kept showing me the words “chop suey” on the menu. The fact is, I didn’t want to eat it. I just wanted to find out its origins, to find out if it was a product of the Barbary Coast.
Later that night at home, an internet search revealed new information: one source claims it really was invented in Barbary Coast-era San Francisco; a poor chef would take scraps and throw it all together for his own meals. Another story corroborated Asbury’s New York theory. And yet another said that it really came from China.
We may never know the answer to the origins of chop suey. Especially because it, like restaurants named “The Chinaman” have long faded from the American culinary landscape. For better or worse (probably the former).
When city plans exceed reality, or the money dries up, or people simply leave in a mass exodus, skyscrapers vacate and slowly decay. High winds thrash through broken windows. Rats live undisturbed amongst decades old rubble. Stairways lead to doors that may never open again. The ghost of ambition’s past arrives in the present like a howling specter, creating eyesores, dangerous conditions, and free housing for opportunistic urban survivalists.
These abandoned skyscrapers range from forsaken structures aborted long before their doors opened to icons from a bygone era. While a slumper like Detroit has its fair share of empty giants, even cities with tiger cub economic growth like Bangkok are not immune to the plague of creepy abandoned high-rises. South America brings vertical favelas to the list, and Poland has a tower named after a pop-culture villain. And even San Francisco, a city with a high recreational scooter to human ratio and droves of individuals who see the world just beyond the tip of their nose, has its very own abandoned skyscraper.
From North Korea to Venezuela, these structures differ in their stories and circumstance, but each is a fine glimpse at post-apocalyptic urban decay.
%Gallery-126853%
Michigan Central Station Location: Detroit, USA Stories: 18 floors Story: The Central Station was finished during the advent of the automobile – 1913. The Beaux-Arts style of the classical building recalls a time when Detroit possessed the resources and momentum to rightfully emulate Parisian architecture. Its old school ambition is not lost on current Detroit residents but its function certainly is. It is a doorway into a forgotten world and a poster-boy for urban decay. The graffiti and dilapidation tells the story not just of Detroit’s acrimonious decline but also the abandonment of rail travel in the United States. At its peak during the 1940’s, 200 trains left this station daily. Today, none. While rail travel is receiving some political buzz in Washington, the fate of this gorgeous structure is uncertain. Many have flirted with re-purposing the old building, from the Detroit Police to casino developers, but for the moment it stands quietly on the outskirts of the modern world like an old ornate wrench that fits no bolt. Abandoned since: 1988
Ryugyong Hotel Location: Pyongyang, North Korea Stories: 105 floors Story: This massive pyramidal structure (above, furthest left) is a 105 story symbol for the absurdist ambitions of Kim Jong Il and the hermit kingdom. It has been under construction (on and off) for decades. It has been called the world’s most hideous hotel. It is an unnecessary extravagance in a country that can barely feed its people. The project was abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union due to Soviet subsidies to North Korea coming to an end. The hollow shell stood vacant for decades, just towering above the city – a failure too large to ignore but too painful to acknowledge. The North Koreans spent years denying the structure’s existence, removing it from photographs and excluding it from maps of Pyongyang. Too much shame, it seems, in the very obvious failure. Construction on the structure resumed recently with Egyptian architectural firm Orascom leading the project. It is slated for completion in 2012, to sync with the 100th birthday of Eternal President Kim Il Sung, deceased since 1994. Abandoned since: 1992, currently under construction
Tower of David Location: Caracas, Venezuela Stories: 45 floors Story:The Tower of David, one of the tallest buildings in Latin America, is the quintessential slum-scraper. There is no government interference, just 2500 squatters carving up its 45 stories for purposes ranging from housing to business. The building includes apartments, home-brew PlayStation arcades, beauty salons, and perhaps the most suspicious dentistry operation in the new world. While the current occupants have yet to climb higher than the 30th floor, it is only a matter of time before the anarchic housing market pushes residences higher towards the dilapidated rooftop helipad – a symbol from Caracas’ forgotten banking boom. Abandoned since: 1994, never completed
Buffalo Central Terminal Location: Buffalo, USA Stories: 20 Story: The Buffalo Central terminal has been looted for artifacts, vandalized by bored delinquents, used for art exhibitions, explored by ghost hunters, and even sold for $1. It is a gorgeous old structure plagued by a series of humiliating footnotes, caught in a perpetual fall from grace. But it was not always so. At a time, the Buffalo Central Terminal was an important hub servicing hundreds of trains daily. Still an Art Deco architectural masterpiece, the structure possesses a prominent tower worthy of superlatives, and its halls are said to be haunted by ghostly apparitions waiting for trains that will never arrive. Last Halloween, the TV show Ghost Hunters filmed a 6 hour marathon in the creepy old building. It is possible to tour the structure and even get hitched in its lofty halls. Click here for more information. Abandoned since: 1980
Szkieletor (Skelator) Location: Krakow, Poland
Stories: 20 floors Story: The tallest building in Krakow is a a hulking skeleton of a structure unofficially named after the villain from He-man – a show extremely popular in Poland in the early 1980’s. Construction began in 1975, but the Pols ran into economic troubles. Today, the building is primarily a backdrop in which to drape massive advertisements. It is also a constant reminder of the decades old malfeasance of Skelator – an urban Castle Grayskull looming on the Polish horizon. Abandoned since: 1981, never completed
PacBell Building Location: San Francisco, USA Stories: 26 Story: Once the tallest building in San Francisco, the PacBell building is a Neo-Gothic marvel abandoned last decade. Completed in 1925, the giant is capped with 13 foot tall art deco Eagles looking out over the great San Francisco expanse. While the building was purchased in 2007 for $118 million, it has since been left to decay quietly in its own upscale way. Unlike most abandoned skyscrapers though, this one still has some life in it. Security guards patrol the ground floor, and the tower is lit up at night. A couple of brave urban explorers over at Bearings snuck past the guard and explored the tower’s heights. Check out their first hand account of the abandoned skyscraper. The PacBell Building will likely be repurposed into condominiums in the coming years. Abandoned since: 2005
Edificio Sao Vito Location: Sao Paolo, Brazil Stories: 27 floors Story: The original vertical favela arrived on the scene in the late fifties with the intention of providing housing to Sao Paolo’s middle class community and expats. Before long though, the building fell into disrepair and became an overpopulated den of urban plight – a favela that sprawled up. As basic services and utilities declined over the years, tenants began disposing their garbage out the window and obtaining illegal electricity. Many of the Edificio’s 624 apartment units were split into two – stressing the already shaky infrastructure of the building known as “Balança mas não Cai” (It shakes but does not fall). By the eighties, the tap water was polluted and only one of the three elevators partially worked – making its way halfway up the building. Edificio Sao Vito was formally evacuated in 2004, though crackheads and drug dealers have taken to the abandoned structure like moths to a flame. Allegedly, the Mayor of Sao Paolo tried to demolish the building because it obstructed his otherwise pleasant view. While this bit of urban lore may or may not be true, the building has been flirting with demolition for the last decade. At the time of reading its graffiti flecked concrete walls may simply be dust. Abandoned since: 2004
Book Tower Location: Detroit, USA Stories: 38 floors Story: Construction began on the Book Tower in 1916, just a few years after Henry Ford transformed auto-making forever with assembly line production. It is the old style of high-rise – more a kin of masonry than a child of steel and glass. For years, the classic structure with an ornate copper roof stood for the old world extravagance of Detroit. Now, it has taken on an altogether different metaphorical role as a sad reminder of when the eminent address spoke for the industrialist success of one of America’s finest cities. The property has changed hands many times in the last decade and plans exist to drop hundreds of millions in restoring the old-school giant. Abandoned since: 2009
Sathorn Unique Location: Bangkok, Thailand Stories: 49 Story: During the Thai tiger economy of the 1990’s, skyscrapers grew all over Bangkok in a display of Thailand’s new-found economic prominence. This one never completely grew up. Crows circle the pinnacle and rats call its lower levels home. Locals, convinced its hallways are haunted, stay out of the ghostscraper. Expat urban spelunkers have explored the building and returned to Khao San Road with stories from its upper reaches. The verdict: it is a dilapidated mess. The future of the Sathorn Unique remains unclear but perhaps someday it will be finished. For now, it looms on the Bangkok skyline with many other abandoned skeletal structures. Abandoned since: 1997
Sterick Building Location: Memphis, USA Stories: 29 floors Story: Once the tallest building in the southern United States, the original “Queen of Memphis” is a ghostly skyscraper, boarded up and decaying from the inside. The late Gothic architectural marvel once shuttled around thousands of workers, from stockbrokers to barbers, in its eight high-speed elevators. It has been the domain of urban explorers and desperate vagrants ever since being completely abandoned in the late nineteen-eighties. While inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places preserves its era appropriate charms, the future of the towering structure is unclear. Perhaps a redevelopment boom in downtown Memphis will reignite a need for the large ghostscraper. Abandoned since: 1980s
San Francisco is one of the only major cities in the United States without a museum dedicated to its history. All that will change next year when the old U.S. Mint on Fifth and Mission Streets will be converted into a state-of-the-art museum showcasing the city’s rich history. It’s an appropriate building for such a place-its construction was the result of the Gold Rush, which, of course, has a strong Barbary Coast connection. It’s also where the Barbary Coast trail-the series of self-guided, sidewalk-implanted medallions-begins. Which is fitting because the mint is essentially a money factory. And that’s what brought the world here in the first place, one giant plea for a better, more comfortable life.
Prior to the Gold Rush, San Francisco was a small town that mostly used barter as well as Mexican reals, Dutch gilders and even Indian rupees, as a form of currency.
So the government built a mint in 1852 to start producing US currency. But the supply of gold and silver that was coming in from the hills was too much. That’s when this majestic mint was constructed. Built between 1869-1873, the new mint produced 59 percent of America’s gold and silver coinage in its first year of operation. It’s also worth mentioning, it is one of the few buildings to withstand the 1906 earthquake and fire.
The mint also happens to be my first physical stop on my search to find the remnants of the Barbary Coast. This is one of the more obvious markers. But there are others-more subtle indicators-along the trail that I’ll be following this month. I take my last look at the mint, as MUNI busses roar past me and morning commuters whisk by on their way to work, and take a step toward Market Street, knowing the next time I’m back the building will be transformed into a gleaming new history museum of San Francisco.
How many miscreants does it take to coin a new word? Apparently, many. Dig, if you will, the picture: Gamblers, saloon keepers, thieves, pickpockets, conmen, murderers, pimps and prostitutes, shyster politicians and lawyers. These were the people who made up the Barbary Coast in San Francisco, people who didn’t mine for gold, but who set up shop to strip the newly rich or the desperate-to-be-rich of their money. And because many of the people who rushed into California for gold were not used to having money, it was easy to get them to part with it.
Which is how the Barbary Coast gave birth to another word: hoodlum. Scholars have said the word comes an old German word “huddellump” which means “ruffian.” Others say it evolved from the dictum “huddle ’em,” a call for gangs to attack Chinese immigrants. It could have even been the name of a particular gang, as the local newspaper “Golden Era” reported on February 16, 1868: “The police have recently been investigating the proceedings of a gang of thieving boys who denominate themselves and are known to the world as the Hoodlum Gang.”
In fact, the word was always used as a proper noun (that is, with a capital H), thus referring to a gang of young thugs and brawlers. The first time it appeared with a lower case h, though, was in a Sacramento newspaper. Five years after that, “hoodlum” was in use all over the United States.
…Or so it was in the last half of the 19th Century. This was a different kind of San Francisco. Well, okay, city by the bay is still wild, but not in the same detrimental way. This wasn’t the San Francisco of pot-smoking, orgy-attending crystal-rubbing hippies on Haight. There were no bears getting frisky in Castro bars; no party-till-dawn clubbers in Soma. San Francisco of 150 years ago was filled with petty thieves and prostitutes, sailors and sojourners, Chinese opium smokers and cheats; it was a city of ill repute. And the epicenter of it all was a neighborhood called the Barbary Coast.
Named because the neighborhood’s infamy reminded observers of the dangerous, pirate-swarmed North African waters and the feared Berber cameleers who lingered just off the southern Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast occupied what is today parts of Chinatown, Jackson Square, North Beach, and the Financial District. These days, the area is much more civilized. But there was a time when San Fracisco was the wildest city in America, thanks to the salacious and cut throat world of the Barbary Coast.
Unfortunately for fans of debauchery and unlawfulness (and, really, who’s not?), this infamous 19th-century San Francisco neighborhood eventually disappeared from the map; sunk by the 1906 earthquake and then its dark heart pierced by the silver dagger of political reforms and “vice squads” that wiped the grime from the area for good by the second decade fo the 20th century.
I’m going to be spending much of August in San Francisco trying to dig it back up. The leftover physical remnants as well as the lingering cultural relics born out of the area.
Fortunately, I’ll have a few people to help me with the digging during this month-long series on Gadling.
A few years ago, the city created a 4-mile Barbary Coast Trail, where 20 bronze medallions embedded in the sidewalk wend through Chinatown and Little Italy and other parts of downtown to take visitors by historic pubs, the first Asian temple in North America, the recently restored old U.S. mint, and old St. Mary’s Cathedral, built in 1854, whose entryway still shows an engraved warning to young men about the brothels that once surrounded the area. Historian Daniel Bacon leads regular tours of the trail.
But that’s not all. Celebrity chef Tyler Florence’s new restaurant, Wayfare Tavern, intentionally harkens back to the days of the Barbary Coast. So does the Comstock Saloon, a restaurant with an emphasis on cocktails that embraces mid-19th-century San Francisco history (it’s named after a famous Gold Rusher). Both restaurants are right on the Barbary Coast trail. On top of all that, some denizens of the area have been lobbying to officially re-name this part of town the Barbary Coast again. Five years ago they founded the Barbary Coast Neighborhood Association and, recently, the San Francisco Board of Realtors recognized it as an official neighborhood.
During the month I’ll be visiting these spots that are leading a resurgent interest in all things Barbary Coast. In the meantime, there’ll be some primer posts on what made the Barbary Coast so infamous and the cultural legacy you didn’t know the neighborhood had contributed to popular culture and the American lexicon.