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Nancy Peters, manager of City Lights Books, remembers the day about a year ago when someone took an ax to the weathered wooden sculpture that fronted the Old Spaghetti Factory on Green Street near Grant Avenue in North Beach.
"That said something about the passing of an era and the sensitivity of the new people coming in," she recalls.
A year later, the Victorian memorabilia of the Old Spaghetti Factory have given way to a sculpture of a police car crashing through a brick wall at a new restaurant called Cars.
The jigsaw of triangular blocks that encases cappuccino parlors, bakeries, delicatessens, ravioli factories and sweatshops in San Francisco's North Beach has so far escaped the northern march of Montgomery Street's highrises. Controls limiting building heights to 40 feet -- up to 65 feet for specially approved projects -- have kept big-time development out of the area. Moratoriums limiting the number of financial institutions and the conversion of residential properties to commercial have also stemmed the high-rise tide.
But as commercial rents increase from as little as 60 cents to more than $2.50 per square foot, longtime business owners doubt that North Beach will escape the wash of trendy businesses and chain stores flooding the city.
The Board of Supervisors has temporarily stopped the opening of a Carl's Jr. hamburger restaurant on the northeast corner of Columbus Avenue and Broadway, and Supervisor Richard Hongisto last month called for study of a proposed one-year, citywide freeze on new fast-food restaurants in San Francisco. But many older North Beach business owners say the franchises have already won.
"There's nothing to preserve anymore," says Vern Agoyan, who was forced last year to close Ray's, a restaurant and bar he had owned for...