In defense of Pier 39. May it rise after the pandemic kitschier than ever
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Richard Nixon. The Zodiac Killer. The Embarcadero Freeway. The Oil Crisis. The Bee Gees.
Nothing
else from the 1970s got worse reviews in the pages of The San Francisco Chronicle than Pier 39. The waterfront tourist center, upon its arrival in 1978, the greatest existential crisis in the city’s history larger than an earthquake and fire that destroyed half of San Francisco in 1906. (For all its horrors, no one compared the earthquake to prostitution.)
“Tourism kills, believe me,” columnist Charles McCabe wrote unironically on Nov. 20, 1978. “My objection is that the City Fathers (and a mother or two) have caved in wholly before the idea of tourism, which I happened to think is the worst thing that has happened to San Francisco. … These strangers tend to treat these amenities with much the same regard as a john pays to a whore.”