I moved into the giant, easygoing flat at 1116 Valencia Street above the Lucca ravioli factory between 22^nd and 23^rd Streets on August 1, 1978. There were four of us to start with, all students at San Francisco State University. We all had jobs, too, working our way through college.

Valencia in 1978 was cheap and convenient. That was it – it was all about convenience. It was a straight shot to SF State on the 26 Valencia bus, about the same downtown for jobs. There was a Muni bus stop right in front of our building. We called it variously the Home for Wayward Boys or Tortilla Flats.

Lucca parking lot opposite Photo 1979 Gregory Kerwin

We’d take the bus to work, or home from a night of roaming the city, chasing New Wave bands North Beach to the Tenderloin to South of Market. In the morning you could crawl onto the 26 and pass out, then wake up at the end of the line right in front of State. It took exactly half an hour door-to-door and you could set your watch by the 30-minute ride.

In July 1978 I met with the three other guys to plan our move together, a couple of people I knew and a friend they’d met in the dorms. SFSU had 30,000 students per semester but no student community or anything like a campus life. San Francisco is a smallish and crowded town – when in the 1950s State moved to a large new campus on the outer edges of the neighborhoods, there was no provision for a “student ghetto.” No cheap housing, no used-book stores, no espresso bars, no pizza joints, no hangouts. It was designed as a commuter college, and that was our experience. But who cares – we were free in San Francisco!

So in July we met at Sirloin & Brew to figure out our shares of the rent – a beer-by-the-pitcher joint on Broadway up by Fisherman’s Wharf, 7-8 miles from the campus but full of SF State students. Over watery beer we made a deal to sort out the rooms, who would get which, and what our rents would be. The new guy brought his pretty blonde high school girlfriend, and that was a new experience for me – I didn’t know anyone who had a steady. This was an incredibly liberating time, transitional between In loco parentis and adulthood, making my own choices, deciding my own course for each day.

Moonrise over Gompers High 1 Photo 1984 Gregory Kerwin

Moonrise over Gompers High 2 Photo 1984 Gregory Kerwin

In August we took over the flat, right above Lucca’s cheese and sauce storeroom. The building was an enormous Victorian, built in 1875 but stuccoed over on the outside, never restored. It stretched a half-block from Valencia to the beginning of San Jose Avenue in the back. We were directly across the street from Samuel Gompers High School, a Moderne factory-looking school with glass block stairwells. Plenty of airy light came in the front of the flat across the broad expanse of Valencia and the Gompers parking lot/basketball courts. Lucca’s parking lot was on the south side, so we had light there too and could open the windows for a cross breeze.

We had a living room and front room with bay windows on Valencia, a central room with sliding doors, a front bathroom with separate WC, a tiny room next to it with a closet that our upstairs neighbors dubbed the “Devo Room,” a large kitchen with a classic white enameled O’Keefe & Merritt gas range (very collectible these days), a dining room, and a large bedroom in the back with its own bathroom. Surfaces and doorframes had been thickly painted and repainted in Navajo White, the standard SF apartment camouflage. There was a single gas wall heater in the landing above the stairway, so we mostly froze in the winter.

Our needs were more or less met by the surrounding neighborhood. Lucca’s deli on the corner of 22^nd provided salame, crusty sourdough baguettes from Cuneo bakery in North Beach, and $2 Italian wine. There was a laundromat a block away, bank outlets (pre-ATM) including a Hibernia Bank office opposite Lucca’s, and corner liquor stores. Taquerias were plentiful, and there was La Rondalla with its perennial Christmas decorations and live Mariachis. Ireland’s 32 bar was around the corner on 22^nd before it moved to Geary, and the Irish Rover down on the corner of 26^th.

I lived at 1116 for eight years. At various times we had three or sometimes five people staying there, migrants coming to or from school, in and out of marriages/relationships. I moved to North Beach in 1986 – my rent when I moved out was $95 a month for the front room.