A thing of beauty...

I was at Sutro Library (San Francisco) today looking through San Francisco city directories. My grand parents and great grand parents each ran restaurants in the city. I was trying to find the exact location of those restaurants. In the late 1940s my grandparents (Dave & Melvina Davis) operated a small cafe next to the Fox Theater called the Gold Room.

In the following photo (circa 1945 from the San Francisco Public Library web site http://sfpl.org/) shows a crowd outside the Fox Theater. If you look to the left edge of the photo you can see the small sign identifying the Gold Room.

Both of my parents worked at this restaurant before they were married. This is where their famous "hamburger in the face" incident took place.

I knew that the restaurant was next to the Fox Theater, but I never realized what a magical place the theater was. Wow! is all I can say. It was built in 1929 and torn town in 1963. The following picture (from the William Swain Collection http://tinyurl.com/ndzs82) shows the "grand staircase" in the main lobby. What a sad loss of San Francisco. You can see more images of the Fox Theater at http://tinyurl.com/lju7vg.

I have a menu from the Gold Room. When vagrants came into the restaurant begging for money, my grandfather told them he wouldn't give them cash, but if they were truly hungry he would feed them. They could order anything they wanted from the menu.