 We would like to welcome Paul Disturheff, a long-term resident of the Haydashbury Native San Franciscan, to the Haydashbury Video Oral History Project. Welcome Paul. Thank you. All right. Well, tell me a little about your early beginnings. Where were you born? I was born in San Francisco St. Joseph's Hospital, which is up in the Buena Vista area. The hospital is gone now, but my family lived on Frederick Street at Stanion, so that was my first home. When was this? From 39 until I think 47. What were your parents' names? My father, Albert Disturheff. He came from Poland in the 1920s, and my mother's family came from Germany in the 1920s, and they all came here because they had relatives who had immigrated here beforehand. This was the place to be. Did you have any brothers and sisters? I've got one brother. What's his name? His name is Donald, and he's 62 years old. Wow. I'm going to go visit him in Arkansas. Wonderful. The wilds of Arkansas. And you're still here. I'm still here. And where are you living present now? I'm living on Parnassus at Cole Street. My family, my father was a baker and worked in various bakeries until the war, and worked in the shipyards. And after the war, I went back to work for a bakery, Blum's Bakery. It was one of these high-end bakeries, and then eventually bought his own shop there at Parnassus and Cole, a coordination bakery. Is that the first name of the bakery? That was the first name. What year are we talking about? That was 1950. That bakery was established in 1906. After the earthquake, all those buildings after the earthquake and fire were established there. The original builder was a man named Schultz. He built that building as a bakery, complete with the brick oven. Wow. So it's got a natural brick oven inside it. Yes. So when my family took it over in the 50s, and they operated for 19 years there. And after them, they sold and the guy who owned it was there about a year or two years. And then the Zen came. I would love to back up a little bit. You were living, did you yourself get married? Do you have any children? Yes. I didn't marry until I was 25 years of age, and I was 1964. I was married at one daughter. She was about 35. What's her name? Her name is Lisa, and one grandchild. What's your grandchild? Dana. Dana. What was your wife's name? Faina. Wow. Her name is Brian. Yes. Just coincidentally. So then, despite of your life happened, and hopefully you'll have more grandchildren, when this is viewed, they'll be grown. You then went through this, got married, children, and you came back to the hate. You came back to the area. Where did you live then? Were you living now or? Where I'm living now. Oh, wonderful. My parents bought some property in the area, so that's essentially my goal minds. That's how I earn my living, is managing these properties. Understand. Not a lot. Sure. Oh, yes. Are any of those properties around the 8 Ashbury? Yes, all three of them. Where are the locations? Same place, the bakery building, and there's another one across the way from there. I live in a set of flats that's adjacent to the bakery building. Great. Have you yourself ever been involved in working in the bakery? Oh, yes. It was all family operation, including my grandmother and my brother, and we all worked in the bakery as kids. Kept the family together. Yes, aged 11. Fried donuts before I went to school. Did you take a few with you? Next time, sir. Wonderful. Do you remember in the early 60s or the late 60s what was going on at the bakery at that point? Well, during the craziness of the hate, there were so many people on the street. It had kind of a festive quality to it, and then it kind of turned ugly. I kind of come into that scene. I went to work as a probation officer in San Mateo County as an adult probation, so we supervised people that were from San Francisco in addition to San Mateo County and was involved with the Hate Ashbury Clinic, which... With David Smith? Yes. He was a neighbor of mine. He lived immediately next door, so I had some conversations with him, and coincidentally where the clinic was located, what had been the site of my dentist. So there used to be a dentist's office in the same location. Right, I'd gone back there a time or two. What is that, Clayton and Ashbury? Right. Amazing. So at that point you weren't working in the bakery anymore? No. But you would be visiting your family? Right. Well, I was living there. So had you ever woken up and walked down the street on a normal day to get somewhere? Would you ever walk through the crowds coming in and out of it? I tried to avoid that. To know where to park the car. Exactly. Have you been in the bakery in the period of that? Had you ever see young people come in and out to grab a donut, to grab coffee or whatever? Sure. So it was one of the places in that area where the public gathered. Did you also have coffee? No, we didn't have coffee. There was on the corner of Karl and Cole, like a thrift shop. I'm hard-pressed to remember who was running, but it was like a giveaway. Free store? Yes. There was some benevolent group that could go and get clothing and things there. So that brought more of the people from the hate up that way. Up that way. Exactly. Up in that district. Exactly. You were mentioning before about Quicksilver, an organization where they were print posters. Yes. I'm very interested firsthand to know anything you could think about that we can learn about that we may not know about. An example is this organization. Well, that's about the extent of it. There was a fellow that was on my caseload that I supervised, lived in the area. And he had a business. Very successful. It was called Outrageous Propaganda. What did they do? They made posters and elbow covers. He did artwork? He did artwork. And he also designed an old radio, a 1920s style radio, which I now see. And he was trying to sell that at the time. It was too expensive to be sold at that time. To really be sold at the time. It was an AMFM, which was, you've got to remember, the 70s. So I mean, that technology was there, but not used. Not used that extensively. What were some of the people he represents? I think you mentioned Quicksilver. You saw a poster? That's the only one. He showed me a couple of things that he was doing. So one was for Quicksilver, man? I remember that one pretty clearly. There was a scene of a prairie scene with a man on horseback, like the Western Union, or the pony express. Exactly. Yeah. Now in your life as you live here, I would love, I mean, your first coming to the Haydash Bay Area was what year? Well, 1939. So from 1939 to present, look at it, it's decades. What do you see that has been kept through all those years? What do you see where we are now? Well, it's changed dramatically. The people have changed. At the time that I was growing up, it was mostly old world Europeans, a lot of Jewish and German, Irish, a scattering of Filipinos, a scattering of blacks and a few Asians, but for the most part, white Europeans, middle class, blue-collar working area. I mean, Hayd Street, there were 12 bars between Masonic and Stanley. And part of the style of a workman at that day is he'd start out in the morning and go have a shot and maybe a coffee before he went to work. And then after work would stop in that bar before they went home. So 12 bars, I mean, that was a staggering amount of bars. There were at least three bakeries and barbershops. Shoe repair stores? Yes. Near where I lived up on Coal Street, there were two shoe repair stores. One of them, the man and his wife, they were German Jews and they lived above their shop. Right. That's how you make it. Exactly. So in the 60s, I was still directed for the 60s. There was a lot of vacancies and apartments and things. What did the 100,000s of people that came here change what was going on from before that? How did it can become the blue-collar worker into all these young people from all over and music on the street? I mean, did you feel that as a native resident that a part of your community was not available to you? Or did you feel you had? It was a vital time. You mentioned vacancies. I sure don't remember that. There were so many people in the area. There were a lot of property owners that had apartments and now you had all these people that were coming into it. So maybe it rented to a couple of people and now there's 20 and they're trashing the place. So I know many of these property owners just ended up walking away from them. Joseph Alioto was the mayor at that time and his wife would come into our bakery. My mother knew her in passing and they were buying up a lot of the property where these property owners had gotten frightened and ran away. Couldn't financially deal with it any longer. Did you ever have any problems yourself with the bakery? No. So I'm going to backtrack. From when the bakery opened, it was called the Carnation Bakery? That's my understanding. And then tell me the progression of the names or what happened approximately what decade, what year? None is not to be exact. From the Carnation Bakery to present. What has happened in that space? Carnation Bakery from 1906 until 1969. It was Carnation. And it was Gallo Carnation. A fellow from the North Beach had bought it and he operated it for less than two years and then he sold it to Tasahara. They decided they were going to bake bread and so the Zen Center became involved with it at that point and then they changed the name to Tasahara Bread Bakery and it remained there that name until 1991 perhaps and then Just Desserts which was a big operation. They called it a marriage. It wasn't a marriage, it was Just Desserts dominated and operated it. And then Just Desserts ran away. They just left. Kept trying to sell it, the owner of it. When was that about when they finished? I think 2002 or so. And what was the change over from that? What's going on present? And now there's a French bakery in there. They belong to Ray. Pascal Rigo has endless numbers of restaurants and bakeries and similar operations in the city. Has it always been a strict bakery? Has it ever had the edge of being a place where you went for coffee as well? No, it's just always been a strict bakery. It was a bakery but under Just Desserts they also serve coffee. So that was the only period? Yeah, that's the only change. So presently it's still operating. Is this French bakery? Yes. It's primarily an outlet. They're not doing any baking on the premises at this point. It's a shame. Yeah, it is a shame. Excuse me. There's the oven. It's still there. It's ready to go. I was at this point really curious if any of your family still lives in San Francisco? Just my daughter and her family, her husband and child. That's the only... Do you have any friends in the neighborhood? Oh, many friends. I mean, living in a neighborhood so long when you walk down the street you're bound to run into a hello here and hello there. Always. And how do you find, how do you find, you being a long-time resident of the hate, you find there are a lot of people like hidden away in their houses. There's a community of people who have been here for a long time. They're still here. Well... Is it completely diluted in very few? Well, it's changed pretty dramatically. I'd say in the last five or six years there are now more families with children. And I use that six-year point that I talked with a woman who's got a six-year-old child. She said when she first had her now six-year-old, she said there were hardly any children. And now they're everywhere you look. There's there's infants two and three years old. So the families have come back to the hate. But the cost of buying anything in this area is staggering. Well, renting that rent control pretty well has some control over it. But fortunately for us up there in that little coal valley area, that's a pretty desirable place to live. So vacancies don't last very long. But is that called coal valley? No, I know somebody coined that. And it's been in the last five or six years or so. Yes, it's probably about like that. I would love for you to think about any of the people you might know in the hate as a friend. Someone who's had a business and any business that still exists that you could remember that's been there a long time. I could think of one, the shoe store on H Street's been there 87 years. If you know of any other businesses in there that have been there at least from the 60s that are still there or been there from before, we would know firsthand. Yeah, I think a cache of glass was on H Street for the longest time. And where is that? What kind of business is that? Now they've moved over on Frederick. Okay, so they're still in the hate now? Yes. I'm sure that rent's probably ran a lot of there. So we've been told that the artists and the creative people can't afford the high rents of corporations that are moving in. And there are associations, Hate Ashbury Land Trust and all these things trying to preserve the buildings and the businesses. There are people who are trying to get it donated as a land trust to preserve the heart of the hate. Had you ever felt the heart of the hate? Do you? No, I don't think so. No. You got into the hate because of family and business and circumstances. Exactly. But one person, even in your walks, in your travels, to your car or to whatever, you may not even know them if they sit there every day and you've seen them for years. Are there those situations where you run into someone? Well, see, I'm so old now that most of them... I don't give you that. Yeah, see, most of those people are gone. They died. So I'm the old timer now. Is there someone you could remember that has passed on that we should remember? Is there anyone who made your day brighter when you saw them and they gave you a smile? Oh, there's always some old timers. There was Henrietta. She lived on coal. I forget what's in there now, but there's something. Henrietta was one of the characters in the street. She was Jewish and she knew Mayer Feinstein. And... She's an older woman? Older woman, yeah. She passed away sometime. But whenever there was some kind of controversy, we had some urban renewal scam that came through in 79. And they wanted everybody to open their house so these inspectors could come in and do these inspections and upgrade your house. There were federal money. And so you'd get these inexpensive loans. Well, not everybody wanted to participate in it. It was kind of some heavy-handed moves on the part of the city to do that. There was some rather threatening letters and intimidate. And then Henrietta, she told her, she said, stick it. You can't come into my house. And if you come here, I'm going to go talk to Mayer Feinstein. And if you lean on me too much, you're going to be on the six o'clock news. Right. She then hired a former district attorney, Helen Ann, who lived in that immediate area. Sure. And she, along with some others, and they went to court and the court ordered that you can't enter somebody's house without a search warrant or unless there's some emergency fire, sewers flowing out of the house. Exactly. I loved her for that. Exactly. Well, it just shows me the independent spirit of those street people or those characters that have been in the hate that are part of the charm of the hate Ashbury. Totally. I would like to know what you see, Paul, what you see yourself, what would you like to see in the future of the hate Ashbury? What would you like to see in the future of the bakery? Do you have any vision on how you would like it to be after you've passed? I mean, I pray you were here with us for many, many more years and I know you will be, but there's always the future. Well, what would you like to see the hate Ashbury? How would you like to see the hands of your bakery whose hands it falls into? What would you like to see in the future? To me, it's your family's life's work. Well, as long as it's somebody that operates it with some integrity and produces good products and treats people well, that's all I would. That's pretty much what you're saying it has been through all your years with that bakery, why you chose one renter rather than another, is what the public gets. So whether you were part of the street or not, I see the same integrity for trying to do the best and that's probably why you are a long-time resident and comfortable in the hate Ashbury, because everybody in the hate is so unique. Whether they were part of a big music scene an art scene or whether they're the name of the next door, there is much more diversity and much more uniqueness in the hate Ashbury than many other areas in the city. And that continues as I said earlier just we have families now that didn't exist five and six years ago. These children will grow up and these children might be second generation hate. Their parents might be born in the hate and other children are being born in the hate. I'm going to ask you a question. Say the world rather we've been so historical, some type of thoughts. Say the world but take your advice. Say they would really listen and this meant something this counted. And people who are interested in the spirit of the hate Ashbury, people who are interested in documenting what happened here, what was the neighborhood like. In 50 years from now or more this tape was viewed as part of a large collection of the hate Ashbury. If the world would listen to you Paul, what advice would you give the world? What advice would you give young people viewing this in the future? Well I think the world is not going to listen, it never has. So your world, whatever your immediate world is, your family and friends and neighbors and just do the best you can for the people that are around you. I think I'd leave my advice at that because I think that's that's some of my... Do what you can. You can't heal the bigger picture, heal what's right around you. Exactly. Well it's been a pleasure Paul to have you here and you've given us a lot of new insights and have barely added to this whole collection and we're really really appreciative and pleased that you've been here and we want to thank you. We may call you again to be part of some other part of it but you're definitely part of this community and now part of this project. So thank you again for being here with us.