Working at a flower stand often means accessorizing other people’s ardor. But, in the case of the Hoogasian dynasty, work around flowers long enough, and they’ll bring the romance to you.
Harold Hoogasian, Sr., met his future wife, Theresa, at the family flower stand on Powell Street on April Fool’s Day, 1949. Harold Hoogasian, Jr., met his future wife, Nikki, at the family’s Post Street stand in 1974. She was accompanying her father, Nick Daphne, a funeral director, who had come to talk business. Flowers and funerals: A match.
The Hoogasian family has sold flowers in the city continually since the 1920s. They designed massive arrangements for Pope John Paul II’s visit to San Francisco in 1987. They’ve looped bouquets of roses around the stage of the Oakland Coliseum in celebration of Nelson Mandela’s appearance in 1990, a few months after being freed after 27 years as a political prisoner. They provided 10,000 carnations that were thrown out of an airplane over the 1991 memorial concert for Bill Graham. They’ve filled (and still do, to this day) Carlos Santana’s regular order: 24 white roses with one red rose in the middle.
In the 1920s, when Misak Hoogasian (more commonly known as “Mike” after he emigrated from Armenia to the United States) began peddling violets, gardenias and posies from a cart downtown, many recent immigrants worked as flower sellers.
As years went on, Mike Hoogasian parlayed his floral-peddling skills into several stands and deputized his now-adult children to run them. From one of them, at Ellis and Powell streets, Harold, Sr., had his eye on a waitress who walked past the stand on her way to work at the coffee shop in the St. Francis Hotel. One day, she marched over to the stand, furious; the bouquet that Harold, Sr., had made for her to take to her sister in the hospital didn’t have a cellophane wrapper, and the hospital had given her a hard time about it being against the rules. “Why didn’t you wrap the flowers?” she said.
“You walk by here every day, and never talk to me;” Harold replied. “I just needed a second chance.” The chance was granted. The two eloped to Reno a few months later.
Harold, Jr., was barely out of kindergarten when he began taking the 1 California line from the family home at 26th Avenue and California Street to the flower stand, where he and his brother Larry made corsages. At school, one of the nuns, outraged that he was dozing in class, threatened to send him “to the Turks.” Harold, Jr., had to get his father to explain what she was talking about. No one in his family had mentioned that they had come to San Francisco because they were fleeing a genocide.
A canny businessman, Harold, Sr., had a policy of only opening stalls on streetcorners where foot traffic was at its highest. But in the early 1950s, Gump’s, a luxury home-goods store, made him an offer. Would he be willing to open a flower stand directly in front of their storefront?
Harold, Sr. didn’t like the sound of that; the store entrance was in the middle of the block. So he cut a deal: If Gump’s would buy $300 worth of flowers a month and provide water, electricity, and a telephone connected to the store’s switchboard, they had a deal. Access to the switchboard meant the stand could host a public telephone, a convenience that guaranteed a steady stream of customers.
Harold, Sr., sold flowers there for nearly 50 years. “He was a fixture at 250 Post St.,” Hoogasian says of his dad, “he was a San Francisco character who wore a suit and tie to work. A classy guy, a true gentleman. He always said he was a member of the upper tier of the lower class.”
In the 1960s, Hoogasian Flowers became one of the top order-producing flower shops in the nation; a location at the Navy Exchange on Treasure Island made them one of the last stateside stops for many Navy trainees leaving for Vietnam.
In 1976, Larry, recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a degree in architecture, built an ambitious display for Hoogasian Flowers at the World Of Plants Exposition at the Cow Palace. The exposition’s organizer, event producer Bill Graham, walked by. ‘My, my, my,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pile of sticks look so good.’”
Thus, a creative partnership that lasted for decades was born. Harold, Jr. remembers organizing the flowers for a Grateful Dead show and being taken to a trailer occupied by an irate Graham, screaming into a telephone.
Expecting the worst, Harold, Jr., waited for his turn to be screamed at. Instead, Graham put his hand over the receiver and leaned over. “Don’t worry,” he confided. “This is just me doing business. Now, can you handle thousands of roses for the Oakland Coliseum mainstage for Nelson Mandela’s visit?’”
By then, Harold, Jr., and Larry were running the business. The brothers began bartering flowers for airtime on local radio stations. “At one point in the late 1970s, our ads were on 17 radio stations, all bartered with flowers! That made all the difference, in terms of our visibility.”
They didn’t tell their parents about their forays into mass marketing. “Mom would have gone berserk if she knew we were spending $20,000 for a quarter-page ad in the Yellow Pages! My folks really didn’t believe in advertising.”
In 1996, Harold, Jr., ran for the Board of Supervisors, and for mayor in 2007. “I’d been working for business rights, trying to make sure we had a good environment for business, which was very hostile then,” he says of his unsuccessful campaign. The city had recently used eminent domain to force the sale of the Cathay Mortuary, owned by his wife’s family, so that the site could be turned into a public park. “We fought 10 years to get a fair price. In the end, we got more. But not fair market … ” his voice trails off. Pleased with the outcome of the recent mayor’s race, he hopes Daniel Lurie will help downtown recover.
Hoogasian’s sister Camille died in 2021. His brother Larry had a catastrophic fall in February 2023, and died a few months later. “He was a great artist and a brother beyond measure,” says Harold, Jr.
Harold, Jr., still works out of the current company headquarters at 615 Seventh St. in SoMa, taking orders, doing arrangements, and making an occasional delivery. If you call in the afternoon to order a bouquet, he will often answer, unless he’s in Hawaii. In 1990 he bought a coffee farm there, and sports a deep tan and a collection of Hawaiian shirts. He smiles easily and often.
He harbors hope that the floral dynasty will outlive him. For now, he keeps the specifics to himself (and visiting writers). “My 13-year-old granddaughter, Siena, is a great floral arranger,” he says. “A natural! But I can’t even bring it up yet,” he says with a twinkle in his eye, “Gotta wait to ask her. At least 10 years!”
As family businesses go, you could do a lot worse. “Some of the best experiences of my life happened there, like meeting my wife,”says Harold, Jr. “What other business can you think of where you are told, on a constant basis, ‘Oh, you made my day!’ ”
What a wonderrful article! I’ve known Harold Jr. since the late-1960’s through our Ham Radio hobby, and was so glad to know more of the business’ history!
Larry Johnson
Portland, OR
Maybe you ought to have asked him about his vehement anti-equality position on simple domestic partnership in San Francisco—to the point of providing funding to eliminate equal access to non-hetero citizens. Never spent another dime with Hoogasian Flowers after that. I’m not aware of a public apology.
You expect an apology because you had a different idea than someone else.