Art Agnos stepped off a Greyhound Bus in San Francisco on Labor Day weekend in 1966 as the son of a shoeshine man.
Christ “Christy” Agnos, a Greek immigrant, sold cigars, blocked men’s hats and, yes, shined shoes in a storefront in Springfield, Mass. Art shined shoes next to his father until Christy died of cancer in 1955. Art, 16, went on shining shoes alone and his mother, Mary, blocked and cleaned the hats.
“I couldn’t date certain girls in high school because my father shined shoes for a living and cleaned hats. I never got over that,” says Agnos, now 87. “Springfield was a good city, a nice city to grow up in. But I came here to look for a better life. Our family did not belong to the right class: I could never have been mayor of Springfield.”
At mid-day on the corner of Connecticut and 20th, just outside Loard’s Ice Cream, a friends, family and awho’s who of San Francisco’s political yesteryear cheered as Agnos yanked a strand of twine. A small, silver sign was unveiled reading “Art Agnos Way.”
San Francisco is a place to reinvent yourself. It’s a place to be who you are. And it’s a place to do big things. Ten years after stepping off the bus, Agnos was elected to the state legislature. Eleven years after that, he was elected mayor. And, 39 years after that — today, in fact — his name went up on a street sign.
The sign is here because of the things he did after stepping off that bus in ’66: Among them, shepherding San Francisco through the weeks and months after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and making the politically fateful — and damaging — decision to raze the Embarcadero Freeway and re-open San Francisco’s waterfront.
In San Francisco, said Agnos, “Nobody asked me where I went to school.” (For the record: Bates College undergrad, Florida State for the master’s in social work; all three of Christ and Mary Agnos’ children went to college or beyond).
“People asked me who I was and what I did and how I was going to get involved in the city,” Agnos continued. “Man, I loved that.”
Potrero Hill, and Connecticut Street, said Agnos, “had people on it who were my teachers about San Francisco and the West Coast. They oriented me, exposed me to so much, taught me so much about this city. I was propelled by them into public service. When I got married, they celebrated with me. When I got shot, they looked out for me.”
Yes, shot. “Art Agnos Way” is a stone’s throw from both where Agnos has long lived — and where he nearly died.
On Dec. 13, 1973, Agnos, a field representative for Assemblyman Leo McCarthy, was finishing up a community meeting near Wisconsin and 23rd in Potrero Hill. And while he was talking to a group of women he heard “firecrackers going off.” People scattered.
“The women started running away … and asking me to come with them,” Agnos recounted in a TV news interview shortly after the incident. “I started chasing them to calm them down and reassure them that no one was going to hurt them. At that point they told me the man was trying to kill me.”
Agnos turned and saw a man standing eight or 10 yards off and staring at him, blankly, still holding a gun. “He probably was trying to figure out why I didn’t fall,” Agnos said at the time. “Mainly because I didn’t know I’d been shot.”
The “Zebra Killers,” a group of fanatical extremist Black revolutionaries targeting random white people across the city, murdered at least 15 San Franciscans. Another seven were gravely wounded. Of those, Agnos said, he was the only victim who wasn’t permanently disabled; had his shooter held the gun level instead of pointing down, the bullets would’ve pierced Agnos’ heart and he would’ve died at age 35, just up the street from his street sign.
Many years ago, Agnos told me that being shot felt a bit like taking an elbow to the chest when you’re going up for a rebound. He didn’t, at the time, mention the year of medical hardships and a deeply unpleasant recovery that followed his attempted murder. When asked by a 1970s TV interviewer if the experience would keep him from going out and working with the people in his neighborhood, Agnos immediately replied “Not at all. Not at all.”
“If anything it’s gonna just put me back on the street working as hard as I can to continue developing programs that the community thinks they need,” he said. “So that we can establish the services that people need to put an end to the kinds of conditions that would lead a man or two men or a group of men to hate somebody so much to do this kind of thing.”
Remember, what was important was where you were going.
The unveiling of Art Agnos Way was something of a hot ticket. Rep. Nancy Pelosi was there. So was Mayor Daniel Lurie. Mayor Willie Brown — who, like Agnos, got his start shining shoes — RSVP’d but did not show. He purportedly had trouble getting a taxi. “Willie Brown is late as usual,” Agnos told the crowd, which laughed knowingly.
The legislation to, in Yogi Berra’s words, make this day necessary, was carried by Potrero’s home supervisor, Shamann Walton. Former Board President and longtime Agnos ally Aaron Peskin was the master of ceremonies.
It was, as so many San Francisco political fêtes tend to be, an extremely tight-knit affair. At one point Pelosi pointed into the crowd at Agnos’ son, Steve. “I babysat you!” she said. “I remember!” Steve replied.
Agnos was honored, he said, but, in a discussion last week, seemed a bit sheepish at all the fuss. He’d just wanted to have a neighborhood affair in his longtime neighborhood. “This isn’t worth your time!” he protested. “Send an intern.”
The unveiling of a small sign is indeed a small affair, albeit a pleasant one. But there are larger issues at play, which is why Agnos is still politically involved generations after last holding elective office. When Christ and Mary Agnos’ son stepped off the bus 60 years ago, he could land a two-bedroom apartment (with a deck and a fireplace) for $150 a month ($1,532 in 2026 dollars). He could wander through a blue-collar neighborhood that reminded him of home, and just bump into and befriend folks like Jim Herman, who’d go on to be national president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
Agnos could tell you better than most that present-day San Francisco is far safer than its prior iterations. Crime, particularly violent crime, is at near-historic lows. The notion of a racial terror operation preying on indiscriminate victims is now near-incomprehensible; Fox News would surely cover it the way networks covered the Iran Hostage Crisis.
So, that’s for the good. But Agnos could also tell you that Potrero Hill is no longer the affordable blue-collar haven that nurtured him when he needed it the most.
“That’s why I fight so hard, in part, to keep this city the way it is,” he says. “This is a city that lets you be who you want to be.”
This has been Agnos’ fight for the past 60 years. “The same fight that sustains my Dad,” Steve Agnos said today, “is the fight necessary to sustain San Francisco.”
“Look at the view,” Art Agnos mused today. “I love it every time. It’s changing — not just the skyline. But I still love it.”
As a social worker and a cub politician, he’d head down the hill and wonder “What can I do today down there to make that place a little better?” As mayor, he’d think “What are they going to do to me today?”
Art Agnos will be 88 in September. Steve Agnos sends him material about centenarians like Mel Brooks and Dick Van Dyke who remain lucid and active into their 11th decade. But we are only immortal for a limited time.
“I hope one day,” said Agnos, addressing the crowd, “when I’m no longer here and someone is here eating an ice cream and says ‘Who was that guy?’ some of you will respond: ‘He was one of us.’”
Agnos paused and tightened his jaw. He took a deep breath and composed himself. So did everyone else.
“He was a neighbor. Who lived with us while he fulfilled the Ancient Greek promise of the Athenians when they became citizens of their city. They said ‘I promise to leave my city better than I found it.’”
Art Agnos kept this promise. And now he has the sign to prove it.
