Pacific Avenue - The Barbary Coast

A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.

This block of Pacific Avenue, then called Pacific Street, was the heart of the Barbary Coast. Sailors gave the district its name in the 1860s, borrowing it from the pirate coast of North Africa, and for half a century it was a maze of saloons, dance halls, gambling dens and brothels. Legend says drunken sailors were drugged here and carried aboard outbound ships, a practice called shanghaiing. The stories grew in the telling, but crews really were forced onto ships along this waterfront.

After 1906 the district was rebuilt within months as a livelier but tamer nightlife strip that musicians nicknamed Terrific Street, and early jazz and dances like the Turkey Trot flourished here. At 555 Pacific, look for the entry of the old Hippodrome dance hall, decorated with plaster reliefs of dancing figures. A 1913 crackdown and the 1917 Red Light Abatement Act brought the Barbary Coast era to an end.

More on Wikipedia: Barbary Coast, San Francisco · Shanghaiing

Stops on this tour

  1. Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
  2. Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
  3. Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
  4. North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
  5. Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
  6. Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
  7. The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
  8. Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
  9. Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
  10. Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
  11. The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
  12. The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
  13. Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
  14. South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom