Over 3,600 businesses make up the tapestry of Bayview, but ask the average passerby about where to eat or shop in Bayview and the answer usually leads you back to Third Street, the neighborhood’s main corridor. Third Street doesn’t just get attention from Bayview residents, it’s been the primary recipient of recent storefront opportunity grants and city-funded street markets in that neighborhood.
The prominence of Third Street’s retail ecosystem isn’t without reason. Of the roughly five-mile street that sweeps from Mission Bay to downtown, the two miles passing through Bayview have the neighborhood’s largest cluster of restaurants, liquor stores, cafes, bars, hair salons and barber shops, most of them between Evans and Jamestown Avenues. Plus the only Muni line connecting this southeastern part of the city to downtown runs along Third Street.
Go a block or two off Third Street and you’ll find mostly residential buildings and industrial facilities dominate the area. But tucked in between the wholesale grocers, autobody shops and industrial buildings are a smattering of local small businesses and long-standing restaurants that don’t get the attention of their Third Street counterparts.
So beyond Third Street, what Bayview businesses do community members vouch for?
City bus driver and Bayview native Cesena Walker gets a glimpse of many of those overlooked businesses on her route, the 15 Bayview Hunters Point Express, which goes beyond Third Street to Hunters Point and India Basin.
Walker’s favorite non-Third Street business is The Old Clam House, at 299 Bayshore Blvd., where she likes to enjoy a warm bowl of chowder.
Established in 1861, The Old Clam House is the oldest continuously operating restaurant in San Francisco. It’s the kind of restaurant that still takes reservations on a weathered pad of paper; the bartender, Kevin Slotemaker, compares his job to working in a museum. The ownership changed in 2010, but The Old Clam House has kept its nostalgic maritime decor, curtained booths and red gingham tablecloths reminiscent of the past.
Walker said she would recommend the restaurant, “for a couple that’s trying to know each other.”
“They serve good food and the manners are good,” she said.
In between shifts at Friends of the Children, a local nonprofit on Third Street, Abigail Tobin’s favorite place to get a drink or smoothie is Cafe Alma at 888 Innes Ave., the sister restaurant to All Good Pizza and Tato on Third Street.
“I feel like it’s always the same people working,” she said, “They always remember you. “Plus, she said, she likes to support Cafe Alma because they are woman-owned.
Lashanta King, who grew up in Bayview and now works at the Public Utilities Commission, frequently finds herself back at Cafe Alma on her lunch breaks for their tuna sandwich and salads.
“There’s like little pockets,” Tobin said about restaurants and businesses tucked into the fabric of the neighborhood. “I feel like you have to find them or know someone.”
Charles Watson may be one of those people. Watson has lived in Bayview all his life and now works in the neighborhood as a seasoned security guard at the Southeast Community Center. He enjoys a meal with his wife at the cash-only Two Jack’s Seafood at 984 Gilman Ave., across the way from Candlestick Park.
The business survives its sister restaurant Two Jack’s Nik’s Place, a registered legacy business in the Lower Haight that closed in 2022. But the humble takeout location in Bayview is still keeping second-generation owner Nikki Cooper’s family legacy alive.
Tobin is also a fan of Vasquez Coffee at 50 Mendell St., another off-Third, women-and-Latino-owned cafe, which opened in 1992.
In October, the coffee shop, along with five other Bayview-Hunters Point businesses, received a legacy award from the Office of Small Business Legacy Business Program, which allows them to receive grants, support and recognition from the city.
Lamar Wilson, a South City resident who passes through Bayview on his way to work downtown, is a big Vasquez Coffee fan. A customer for twelve years, the barista refers to Wilson now as “friend.” His hot latte with brown sugar — the same order he gets every day — is often already prepared before he gets the chance to order it.
Wilson recommends the sandwiches, but his favorite part of the business doesn’t have to do with the menu.
“It’s the people. They make the food better, even better than what it is,” he said.
Sergio Cabrales, owner of the 80-year-old Heise’s Plumbing around the corner at 1610 Evans Ave., is another Vasquez Coffee devotee.
“We come here almost every day,” he said, pointing to his daughter and one of his employees. Cabrales said his favorite menu item is “everything,” though on this particular morning he was enjoying an egg and cheese croissant.
Cabrales, who grew up in the Excelsior and has worked in Bayview since his company relocated to the neighborhood two years ago, has a list of favorite spots beyond Third Street.
One of them is Quality Rentals, a mom-and-pop equipment rental and repair business at 1595 Fairfax Ave. which is Cabrales’ go-to place when he needs equipment — and only a short walk away from Vasquez Coffee.
Then there’s Craftsmen and Wolves the Den, a coffee shop at 1598 Yosemite Ave. “I eat there almost every morning when I cook out here,” said Traniece Naira, who owns a Bayview catering business, California Sweet Chicken.
Naira, an Oakland resident who introduces herself as “the chicken lady,” grew up in nearby Potrero Hill, and has been cooking her signature chicken wings out of a trailer in Bayview for the past eight years. Craftsmen and Wolves, she said, serves her favorite breakfast — a cornbread muffin with a poached egg inside.
There’s no question that Third Street offers a street-level view of the most visible retail and food businesses in the neighborhood.
But if you know where to look, there are also powerful examples of community tucked away in the places that aren’t always on display.
“It’s the community. When you come in and everybody knows you, you know them,” said Wilson, describing his favorite off-Third business. “It’s like you’re coming home.”
