Cafe Bakery and Restaurant Interview

Image taken from: "CAFE BAKERY & RESTAURANT" City Data. Web. 03 May 2011. <http://www.city-data.com/businesses/834205437-cafe-bakery-restaurant-san-francisco-ca.html>.

Café Bakery and Restaurant

1365 Noriega St (Between 20th Ave and 21st Ave)

San Francisco, CA 94122

My brother helped me with getting an interview from his friend Kevin Tang who is the son of the owners of Café Bakery and Restaurant. I basically interviewed him through Facebook asking variations of the questions from our interview questions list. He had trouble asking some questions with his mom, but would try to help with anything in the future.


-Raymond Zhou

1. Is Café Bakery a family run business?

When my parents first opened this place, it was just a bakery run by both my parents with some help from other family members. My mom currently runs the bakery side and my dad runs the restaurant side. No one else from my family works here now.

2. Are your parents 1^st generation in the US?

I am actually 1^st generation, but my parents first immigrated here from China in 1989.

3. When did Café Bakery first open and when did you guys add the restaurant side?

Café Bakery first opened in 1994, but the restaurant side wasn’t added until about 1996.

4. What motivated your parents to open this place?

There were no Chinese bakeries in the neighborhood and thought it would a good business to invest in because there were no Chinese bakeries nearby. Business was slow and not working the way they planned. My uncle suggested they could try selling more than just baked goods which is when the bakery became a small restaurant.

other resources on dispersement on chinese enclaves

After the repeal of the Exclusion Act in 1944, the Chinese population began to signifigantly increase. This caused Chinatown, the main Chinese community, to become overpopulated which created a need for the community to expand across San Francisco.  Chinese communities began to pop up all over the Sunset and Richmond districts during the late 60's to 80's.

 The exclusion acts were repealed in 1944, when the U.S. needed China as an ally in World War II. Immigration was still effectively restricted by tiny quotas, until the 1965 Immigration Act which repealed all quotas in favor of a family-based reunification policy. Since then, many Chinese immigrants have come to San Francisco, revitalizing not only Chinatown but creating new Chinese neighborhoods in the Richmond and Sunset Districts. Many have come seeking refuge from political instability in China, in the wake of the Revolution of 1949, and most recently from Hong Kong, where the handover of the former British colony to China in 1997 prompted many to migrate. Chinatown is unique in San Francisco for being a homogeneous neighborhood that has remained Chinese for a century. With the recent changes, however, there has been growing diversity of immigrants from different parts of China and Chinese territories, creating some friction between old-timers and newcomers.


http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Chinese_Immigration^^^


http://www.magicaljourneys.com/USA/usa-interest-california-sanfrancisco-chinatown.html

http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2002/aug/california/asian/index.html ... i know this one is regarding Irving but it also pretains to chinese communities in the sunset

http://www.pbs.org/kqed/chinatown/resourceguide/story.html

Found our answer!!

Do I get a pat on the back or something?

1960s–present
In the 1960s, the shifting of underutilized national immigration quotas brought in another huge wave of immigrants mostly from Hong Kong, which changed San Francisco Chinatown from predominantly Say Yip Wah(Cantonese sub-dialect of Hoisan and 3 other towns)-speaking to Sam Yip Wah(major Cantonese)-speaking. The end of the Vietnam War brought a wave of Vietnamese refugees of Chinese descent, who put their own stamp on San Francisco Chinatown. There were areas where many Chinese in Northern California living outside of San Francisco Chinatown, could maintain small communities or even individual business, but except for Oakland, they did not set up any special town with shopping and restaurants. Nonetheless, the historic rights of property owners to deed or sell their property to whom was exercised in sufficient numbers to keep the Chinese community from spreading outside of its early development. However, the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for property owners to deed their rights so that certain groups were excluded. These rulings allowed the enlargement of Chinatown and an increase of the Chinese population of the city. At the same time, the declining white population of the city as a result of White Flight combined to change the demographics of the city. Neighborhoods that were once predominately white, such as Richmond District and Sunset District and in other suburbs across the San Francisco Bay Area became centers of new Chinese immigrant communities. This included new immigrant groups such as Mandarin-speaking immigrants from Taiwan who have tended to settled in suburban Millbrae, Cupertino, Milpitas, and Mountain View – avoiding San Francisco as well as Oakland entirely. This suburbanization continues today. With these changes came a weakening of the Tongs traditional grip on Chinese life. The newer Chinese groups often came from areas outside of the Tongs' control. As a result, the influence of the Tongs and criminal groups associated with them, such as the Triads, grew weaker in Chinatown and the Chinese community in general. However, the presence of the Triads remained significant in the immigrant community, and in the summer of 1977, an ongoing rivalry between two Triads erupted in violence and bloodshed, culminating in a shooting spree at the Golden Dragon Restaurant on Washington Street (華盛頓街). Five people were killed and eleven wounded. The incident has become infamously known as the Golden Dragon massacre.^[18] The Golden Dragon closed in January 2006 because of a failed inspection of the restaurant, and is now the Imperial Palace Restaurant.^[19]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_San_Francisco

Email from Western Neighborhoods Project

Hi JeRevien,
You could try to research census data (Ask at the SF State library how to do this), but I can tell you from my experience that you're pretty close to being right that the early 1980s is when Asian businesses started to move in. There were definitely restaurants before, but the cluster of Chinese groceries, etc around 30th-32nd Avenue came in the 1980s and exploded in the mid-1990s. Outer Irving Street went through a similar change, a bit earlier than Noriega.
Woody LaBounty
Western Neighborhoods Project
300 Taraval Street, Suite A
San Francisco, CA  94116-1953
415-661-1000
http://www.outsidelands.org/


On May 1, 2011, at 1:18 PM, JeRevien Richeson wrote:
> from: JeRevien Richeson
> email: jricheson12@yahoo.com
> message: Hello,  My name is JeRevien Richeson and I am a student at San Francisco State University. I am currently doing a research project regarding Asian American communities in San Francisco. In specific, my group and I have chosen Noriega Street as our research focus. We have had a tough time finding previous research on Noriega street and we are glad to have found your website. However, we are still stuck in a rutt trying to find more information on the community. We have researched the current demographics of the neighborhood and come to find that it is predominently a Chinese community. Previous to finding your website, we could only trace most of the community back to the late 80's and it seemed as though it had always been mostly Chinese. Since we have found that this community has only developed into an ethnic enclave recently, we need information on when the community began to change.Hence, we were wondering if you, or anyone else, could help us answer some questi!
> ons regarding the Noriega street area.   Thank You,  JeRevien Richeson
> from: formhandler
> referrer: http://www.outsidelands.org/wnp-ten-years.php

Research Paper Thesis/ jobs

Ok so, I beleive were getting closer to finalizaing our thesis, but in the meantime, research, research , research. Also we need those interviews from everyone ASAP, those are what will help us develop our paper, hence it is extremely important that we get those and post them on our blog. Please be posting all information you may find regarding our research topic! From looking at the Western Neighborhoods Project we have developed a basic thesis:

---What sparked the change between demographics in the Noriega St. community. White( European, American) to Chinese.


In light of the newly configured thesis, I believe we can divide up the greater parts of our paper now.Each person will have one numbered focus:

1) Intro/ Conclusion(grammar, revising, transitions, etc.)
2)Past history of causasian demographics and businesses in the area.
3) Current information on demographics and businesses in the area.
4)Transition from Caucasian to Chinese area.
5)Transition for Caucasian to Chinese area.

Also, please keep in mind we need to finalize our thesis by tuesday and divide our jobs up then too. In addition to this, we should have our parts written by no later than this friday. We also need to discuss a time, in class on tuesday, that we can meet up this coming weekend to get everything together for the paper and presentation. We will be doing a video, so we will need two people collaborating on that as well. Video should be done and finalized by the tuesday before we present.



--JeRevien Richeson

Interview

I am going to contact Polly Ann Ice Cream for an interview.
And here is a video made by Western Neighborhood Project:

-- Joyce Ku

Images from Outsidelands

The Infant Shelter, later the Conservatory of Music, visible in center. Looking southeast from Noriega Street to 20th Avenue, 1930.

Sunset Restaurant, 1243 Noriega Street, October 2006

The Hibernia Bank located on 22nd Avenue and Noriega Street, circa January 1976. Bank robbery conducted by Patty Hearst and the SLA on April 15th, 1974. Later merged with Bank of America only to close down.

Bendix Laundrette at 1842 Noriega Street, circa 1951.

21st Avenue and Noriega Street, circa 1993.

Sunset Central Market on the Southwest corner of 20th Avenue and Noriega Street, circa 1930s. An East West Bank now stands in its place.

Carriage Market on 25th Avenue and Noriega Street with owner Ed Canardo in front, circa 1995. A Walgreens now stands in its place.