Virginia Jourdan Recalls 500 Francisco St.
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3.9 Collective Community Story
plain
2019-10-23T02:28:13-07:00
I was born and raised in San Francisco and, as a little child, I lived on 500 Francisco Street, which is down in North Beach. Fisherman's Wharf was our playground and we used to go to Aquatic Beach and run around looking at all the tourists.
There were projects that my family lived in. It was three stories, so it wasn't a very tall building, and it was made out of cement. The whole building was a tan color. It was three separate complexes, but they were connected by walkways, so as children, we used to play and go from one building to the next. Because we were little - I was around 4 or 5 years old - just walking to the next building seem like a great distance. I went back to go visit the building [and] walking to the next building - it was nothing, but when I was much smaller, it seemed far away.
The community was predominantly African-American. There were a lot of children there so we had fun playing in the complex and playing in the playground. We did a lot of things together. My beautician lived in that building, so she would come to our house and do my hair in the kitchen. My mother's hair, different neighbors’ hair. As I grew older, my mother [and] my father saved up enough money to finally buy a house in San Francisco. I think the house that they bought was $12,000. We moved to Ingleside. We did keep in touch with one of our neighbors for a very long time. It's no longer there. They tore it down and did a redevelopment. I think it might have been torn down about five years ago. There are apartments there now.
500 Francisco is now the site of North Beach Place low income apartments.
