Tagged: Tenderloin

The door to the Luggage Store Annex in San Francisco's Tenderloin district is unlocked on the 15th of each month, rain or shine, fog or wind, and a converted tamale cart is rolled onto the sidewalk. The man pushing it into place is Michael Swaine.

“People either call me the Sewing Guy or The Roving Tailor,” he says.

I’m sitting on a brown leather couch inside Studio A at Hyde Street Recording in the Upper Tenderloin. A white baby grand piano sits to my left and a faded blue rug with pink roses lies on the hardwood floor in front of me. If you close your eyes and listen hard enough, you may be able to hear the sounds of San Francisco in the 60s.

Fifty years ago, this building was called Wally Heider Recording. And this room was used by the likes of Crosby Stills Nash and Young, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Starship.

San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood can be a difficult place to live. Almost a quarter of the neighborhood’s residents live below the poverty line. According to the police department, the Tenderloin accounts for more than a third of the city’s drug-related offenses.