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Great Star Theater
The Great Star Theater, formerly known as Great China Theater, is a 410-seat theater located at 636 Jackson Street in San Francisco's Chinatown. It was built in 1925 for the Chinese opera and is the last Chinese theater in any Chinatown in the United States.
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40 m
Barbary Coast, San Francisco
The Barbary Coast was a red-light district during the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries in San Francisco that featured dance halls, concert saloons, bars, jazz clubs, variety shows, and brothels. Its nine block area was centered on a three block stretch of Pacific Street, now Pacific Avenue, between Montgomery and Stockton Streets. Pacific Street was the first street to cut through the hills of San Francisco, starting near Portsmouth Square and continuing east to the first shipping docks at Buena Vista Cove.
The Barbary Coast was born during the California gold rush, when the population of San Francisco was growing at an exponential rate due to the rapid influx of tens of thousands of miners trying to find gold. The early decades of the Barbary Coast were marred by persistent lawlessness, gambling, administrative graft, vigilante justice, and prostitution; however with the passage of time, the city's government gained strength and competence, and the Barbary Coast's maturing entertainment scene of dance halls and jazz clubs influenced American culture. The Barbary Coast's century-long evolution passed through many substantial incarnations due to the city's rapid cultural development during the transition to the 20th century. Its former location now is overlapped by Chinatown, North Beach, and Jackson Square.
58 m
Hungry I
The Hungry I (stylized as hungry i) was a nightclub in San Francisco, California, originally located in the North Beach neighborhood. It played a major role in the history of stand-up comedy in the United States. It was launched by Eric "Big Daddy" Nord, who sold it to Enrico Banducci in 1951. The club moved to Ghirardelli Square in 1967 and operated mostly as a rock music venue until it closed in 1970.
The name of the nightclub was reused later as a strip club in San Francisco, from the late 1960s until 2019.
62 m
Ma-Tsu Temple (San Francisco)
The Ma-Tsu Temple is a Taoist temple in San Francisco's Chinatown. Founded in 1986, it is dedicated to Matsu and has foundational ties to the Chaotian Temple in Beigang, Yunlin, Taiwan.
Its founding has been described as reflective of both a change in Chinese American demographics following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the rise of a transnational Taiwanese-American community economically enabled by the Taiwan Miracle of the 1980s.
The temple was originally located on Grant Avenue before moving to its present location on Becket Street in 1996. It is not to be confused with the Tin How Temple two blocks to the south, which is likewise dedicated to Matsu (carrying one of her popular names in Cantonese), but was founded in 1910 and is the oldest extant Taoist temple in Chinatown.
74 m
Ping Yuen
Ping Yuen and North Ping Yuen (sometimes collectively called The Pings) form a four-building public housing complex in the north end of Chinatown, San Francisco along Pacific Avenue. In total, there are 434 apartments. The three Pings on the south side of Pacific (West, Central, and East Ping Yuen) were dedicated in 1951, and the North Ping Yuen building followed a decade later in 1961. Some of the largest murals in Chinatown are painted on Ping Yuen, which are prominent landmark buildings taller than the typical two- or three-story Chinatown buildings that date back to the early 1900s.
The formal effort to build Ping Yuen started in 1939 after Chinatown was called "the worst [slum] in the world"; it was the first public housing project completed in the neighborhood, and unlike the typical single room occupancy housing of Chinatown, featured private bathrooms and kitchens for each apartment when the first building opened in 1951. Like most buildings in Chinatown, it was designed by western architects with Chinese thematic elements.
Although it was touted as potentially drawing more tourists to the area, it soon became known as a dangerous place, with the July 4 shooting over fireworks sales that occurred at Ping Yuen leading to the Golden Dragon massacre of 1977. The murder of Julia Wong in 1978 inspired residents to go on a rent strike, led by future mayor Ed Lee, for improvements to building maintenance and security. Ownership of Ping Yuen passed from the city to the Chinatown Community Development Center in 2016, which is continuing to work with residents' associations to improve conditions.