Editing North Beach, San Francisco (section)

== History ==
[[File:View of North Beach, from Telegraph Hill, 1856.jpg|left|thumb|View of North Beach from [[Telegraph Hill, San Francisco|Telegraph Hill]], 1856]]
[[File:Title- North Beach (6350719409).jpg|thumb|left|North Beach after the 1906 earthquake]]

Originally, the city's northeast shoreline extended only to what is today Taylor and Francisco streets. The area largely known today as North Beach ''was'' an actual beach, filled in with [[Land reclamation|land fill]] around the late 19th century. Warehouses, fishing wharves, and docks were then built on the newly formed shoreline. Due to the proximity of the docks, the southern half of the neighborhood south of Broadway was home of the infamous Barbary Coast.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FZiUg_Xz2I0C&q=%22Legitimate%20theatre%22&pg=PA41|title=The Italian Theatre in San Francisco|first=Lawrence|last=Estavan|date=January 1, 1991|publisher=Wildside Press LLC|isbn=9780893704643|access-date=November 20, 2016|via=Google Books}}</ref>

In 1890, Elizabeth Ashe and Alice Griffith founded what would become the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center to help fight illness, illiteracy and poor conditions in North Beach and lobbied hard for better recreation opportunities for neighborhood children. In 1907, the city formed its first playground commission with the idea of carving out space for recreation areas specifically for kids. The first playground commission picked two sites, including the North Beach Playground. The plan included an outdoor swimming pool, which was financed by diverting funds from a fire department cistern planned for Powell and Lombard, perhaps the first publicly financed public pool in the city. In 1910, the North Beach playground and pool was constructed. The three youngest of the nine DiMaggio kids, [[Vince DiMaggio|Vince]], [[Joe DiMaggio|Joe]] and [[Dom DiMaggio|Dom]], grew up playing baseball there in the 1920s and became professional baseball players.<ref name="dimaggioplayground">{{cite web |title=History DiMaggio Playground: Your North Beach Neighborhood Park and Playground |url=http://dimaggioplayground.org/history/ |website=dimaggioplayground.org |publisher=Friends of Joe DiMaggio Playground |access-date=January 22, 2022}}</ref>

After the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] reconstruction, a large number of Italian immigrants created the Italian character of the neighborhood that still exists. Prominent Italian Americans that came from the neighborhood include baseball legend [[Joe DiMaggio]] who grew up in the neighborhood<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|last=Donati|first=Silvia|date=September 28, 2018|title=Where to Find Italy in America: San Francisco's North Beach|url=https://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/where-find-italy-america-san-franciscos-north-beach|access-date=October 6, 2020|website=ITALY Magazine|language=en}}</ref> and briefly returned to live there with his wife [[Marilyn Monroe]] during the 1950s, as well as former San Francisco mayor and politician [[Joseph Alioto]] plus others from the prominent Alioto family.

North Beach was home to the first lesbian bar in San Francisco, [[Mona's 440 Club]]. Mona Sargeant and her husband Jimmie opened Mona's in 1936 in a North Beach basement as a small underground bar celebrating the end of [[Prohibition]]. Once Mona's gained enough popularity between the gay community and tourists, the club moved to a much larger location at 440 Broadway Street. The club remained Mona's 440 until the mid-1950s.

During the 1950s, many of the neighborhood's cafes and bars became the home and epicenter of the [[Beat Generation]]<ref name=":1" /> and gave rise to the [[San Francisco Renaissance]]. The term "[[beatnik]]" originated from the scene here and was coined in a derogatory fashion by famed ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'' columnist [[Herb Caen]]. Many of that generation's most famous writers and personalities such as [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Allen Ginsberg]], [[Gregory Corso]], [[Neal Cassady]] lived in the neighborhood. Another poet from this generation, [[Lawrence Ferlinghetti]], founded the [[City Lights Bookstore]] that still exists today on the corner of Broadway and Columbus as an official historic landmark and serves as one of the main focal points of this generation.

During the 1960s a notable night spot was [[The Committee (improv group)|The Committee]], an [[improvisational comedy|improvisational theater]] group founded by alumni of [[The Second City]] in Chicago. The Committee opened April 10, 1963, at 622 Broadway in a 300-seat [[cabaret]] theater.

The Broadway area also created innovations for the strip club industry. The Condor Club, on the corner of Columbus and Broadway, was opened in 1964 as America's first topless bar, which it is again today. The [[Lusty Lady]] was the first striptease club to be structured as a [[worker cooperative]], which meant that it was managed by the dancers who worked at that [[peep-show]] establishment. Broadway strip clubs owe their legacy to the Barbary Coast, which was located just one block south on Pacific Street during the late 19th century.{{Citation needed|date=October 2018}}

{{multiple image
| align = right
| direction = vertical
| caption_align = center
| image1 = Carol Doda Condor Club 1973.jpg
| caption1 = 1973
| image2 = Columbus and Broadway (8219737166).jpg
| caption2 = 2012
| footer_align = left
| footer = [[Carol Doda]]'s [[Condor Club]] at [[Columbus Avenue (San Francisco)|Columbus]] and [[Broadway (San Francisco)|Broadway]]
}}
In the 1970s and 1980s Broadway was the location of many live music clubs, like the Stone, and a [[punk rock]] club called [[Mabuhay Gardens]].<ref>Sharon M. Hannon, ''Punks: A Guide to an American Subculture'' (Santa Barbara CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010), 31. {{ISBN|0313364567}}</ref>

After [[World War II]], and accelerated during the [[Korean War]], the Italian American population has been moving out of the Little Italy sections of North Beach, Telegraph Hill, and Fisherman's Wharf due to suburbanization.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Italian Americans in California: Introduction|url=https://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/italianamericans/|access-date=October 6, 2020|website=bancroft.berkeley.edu}}</ref> Since the 1980s, and much like [[Little Italy, Manhattan|Manhattan's Little Italy]], due to a decrease in emigration from Italy and [[gentrification]], the neighborhood has seen its native Italian American population rapidly shrink.<ref>Richard S. Grayson and Fearghal McGarry, ''Remembering 1916'' (Cambridge UP, 2016), 150. {{ISBN|1107145902}}</ref> The neighborhood has since seen neighboring [[Chinatown, San Francisco|Chinatown]] expanding north into the neighborhood south of Broadway and along [[Stockton Street (San Francisco)|Stockton Street]], causing a major demographic shift to a mix of mostly [[overseas Chinese|Chinese]] and [[Yuppie|young professional]] population, with few Italian Americans remaining.<ref name=":1" />

In 2000 after some negotiations,<ref>{{cite web |title=DIMAGGIO, LLC. v. City & County of San Francisco, 187 F. Supp. 2d 1359 (S.D. Fla. 2000) |url=https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/187/1359/2310227/ |website=law.justia.com |access-date=January 22, 2022 |date=June 29, 2000 }}</ref> the heirs of [[Joe DiMaggio]]'s estate, two granddaughters and their four children, welcomed the renaming of North Beach playground as the Joe DiMaggio North Beach Playground.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Glionna |first1=John |title=San Francisco Park Will Be Named for DiMaggio After All |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-oct-11-mn-34794-story.html |website=latimes.com |publisher=Los Angeles Times |access-date=January 22, 2022 |date=October 11, 2000 }}</ref>  In 2015, the first renovation of the playground in more than 50 years was completed.<ref>{{cite web |author1=Geri Koeppel |title=[New] Joe DiMaggio Playground To Celebrate Opening Nov. 14th |url=https://hoodline.com/2015/11/joe-dimaggio-playground-to-celebrate-opening-nov-14th/ |access-date=January 22, 2022 |date=November 2015 |quote=The highly-anticipated opening of the new Joe DiMaggio Playground (651 Lombard St.) is coming up...}}</ref>

[[Paul Kantner]] of the Jefferson Airplane was living in North Beach in an apartment unit above Al's Attire at the corner of Grant Avenue and Vallejo Street at the time of his death in 2016, and was often a patron of nearby [[Caffe Trieste]].<ref>{{Cite web|title = RIP: Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane Co-Founder & North Beach Regular {{!}} Hoodline|url = http://hoodline.com/2016/01/rip-paul-kantner-jefferson-airplane-co-founder-north-beach-regular|website = hoodline.com|access-date = February 15, 2016}}</ref>