by Randy Shaw on October 6, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
When the original edition of my book, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco, came out in 2015, the neighborhood was on the rise. The Tenderloin Museum opened that year, eciting new businesses like the Black Cat jazz club and Onsen Spa were emerging and Little Saigon thrived.
My January 7, 2020 story, “A Tenderloin Breakthrough in 2020,” identified many of the projects that were revitalizing the neighborhood. I could not imagine that a pandemic would arrive in March. And that Mayor London Breed would use the COVID crisis to halt the neighborhood’s progress.
The Tenderloin’s shifting fortunes required me to update my 2015 book to include the 2015-2025 period. I’ll be talking about my book and how City Hall has a long history of undermining the Tenderloin this Wednesday, October 8, at my alma mater, UC Law SF (formerly Hastings School of Law).
The event details are included in the photo above. Lunch will be provided.
City Hall’s Longtime Opposition
My updated book describes how Mayor Breed’s undermining of the Tenderloin was all too typical of City Hall’s approach to the neighborhood. Consider: City Hall actually closed down the Tenderloin in 1917. That attack on the neighborhood’s bars and working women was short-lived; once Prohibition made all bars illegal in 1920 the Tenderloin’s underground economy soared again.
For decades the Tenderloin was among San Francisco’s most prosperous neighborhoods. Much of the city was hurt by the Great Depression. Not the Tenderloin. It’s bar scene thrived when Prohibition ended in 1933 and its underground economy was stronger than ever.
All of San Francisco boomed during WWII but perhaps only North Beach did better than the Tenderloin. The book includes photos of the many matchbooks from the era’s entertainment venues that dominated the neighborhood. When the war ended and San Francisco’s economy again declined, the Tenderloin still had a powerful underground economy coupled with restaurant and bar patronage from those attending Mid-Market movie theaters.
But City Hall wasn’t happy about the Tenderloin’s success.In researching for my book and the Tenderloin Museum I discovered that the leading books about San Francisco excluded the Tenderloin entirely. The city elite was ashamed of a neighborhood that prospered from gambling and vice (all while partaking of it).
The Tenderloin’s decline began when George Christopher was elected mayor in 1955. He began intentionally wrecking the Tenderloin economy. If you think I’m exaggerating read my book. Christopher was so committed to destroying the Tenderloin that he even tried to close the legendary Blackhawk Jazz Club!
In 1960 there was not a single block of the Tenderloin that the U.S. Census determined to be slum housing. This was a when virtually the entire Mission District and SOMA was considered slums. Yet by the mid-1960’s Mayor Christopher’s attacks combined with Mid-Market’s decline brought the Tenderloin down (it also led to the rise of the city’s LGBTQ movement, described in the book).
The Tenderloin still had Wally Heider Studios, where the Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Creedence Clearwater Revival and other rock legends recorded the nation’s top albums from 1969-73. But a lot of this history was forgotten.
It took nearly fifty years for the neighborhood to get back on track.
That’s why I felt it so important for people to get the facts—through photos and text— about what happened to the Tenderloin during COVID. The Tenderloin was on a path toward revitalization when COVID hit. What the updated edition of my book shows is that Mayor Breed used COVID to turn the Tenderloin into a drug containment zone. That may sound extreme, but I provide the evidence.
The Tenderloin is finally bouncing back, and we have a mayor who wants to support the neighborhood’s revival. But the Tenderloin’s local and national reputation remains tarnished by events that occurred during the 2000-2024 years and by ongoing sidewalk drug activities.
Come to my book event to hear more. The Tenderloin has a rich history and is one of the nation’s great neighborhoods. Many cities once had Tenderloin neighborhoods; only San Francisco’s remains.
My book describes the resistance that preserved the Tenderloin’s low-income and working-class status in an increasingly affluent city. I co-founded the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in 1980, arriving just in time to join the massive campaign against luxury hotels that forever changed the neighborhood.
We’ll have a great discussion about the Tenderloin’s past, present and future at the Wednesday book event. And if you can’t make it, you can buy the updated book here. All book sale proceeds go to the Tenderloin Museum.
I’ve worked fulltime in the Tenderloin for 45 years. I still find it an amazing neighborhood.
Randy Shaw
<I>Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. </I>
