The year was 1978. I worked in the eclectic North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. Like much of the city, there was a lot of history in this unique portion of the city. Since the mid 50’s, it has been a neighborhood of coffee houses, Italian restaurants and strip clubs. My favorites were Caffe Trieste and the U.S. Restaurant.

Caffe Trieste opened in 1956 and in the 70’s was one of three coffee roasters in the city. I would sit for hours reading the paper and consuming caffeine in large doses. On weekends, the staff and owners would sing opera for the patrons. U.S. Restaurant consisted of just one large counter. It was famous for its huge portions of home style Italian food that they served up at reasonable prices. It was not uncommon to see lines that went out the door and stretched down the block.

I worked as a short order cook at a place called New York City Deli at the corner of Broadway and Kearny in the heart of North Beach. City Lights was right around the corner. The famous combination bookstore and publisher was the headquarters for the beat poets of the day. Its owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti famously published works by such controversial writers as Charles Bukowski. Think Allen Ginsberg performing his classic poem “Howl” at City Lights and you get the picture.

Across the street were the strip clubs. There was the original Condor Club, home of Carol Doda who was the first celebrity stripper in San Francisco. Going down the block were Big Al's, The Hungry I and The Roaring 20's. It was a colorful neighborhood to be sure.

The building I worked in was the former home of Swiss Louis which opened in 1936. The business later re-located to the tourist trap known as Pier 39 in Fisherman’s Warf before the New York City Deli moved in. There was a massage parlor on the 2^nd floor. I used to feed the girls. I remember one of the bouncers always ordered a fried egg sandwich.

One night, someone told me that John Lee Hooker was playing across the street at the Condor Club. I can't say if the name meant anything to me at the time, but the gentleman who told me about Hooker’s appearance at this club was adamant that I should check it out.

I had kind of a vague fascination with blues music after seeing Muddy Waters with his great band along with Paul Butterfield and the group known simply as The Band perform out in the Mission District on Thanksgiving just two years earlier. As it turned out, that evening was my first waltz into the blues. 

So after I cleaned up a bit I wandered over to the Condor Club. I looked at a current picture of the interior and it looks just like I remember it. Everything is red, walls, chairs, everything. Mirrors on the walls and looking like a vintage strip club that opened in 1964 should look, in other words, extremely decadent.

On this night however the club was practically deserted when I walked in, so I got a place at the bar close to the tiny corner stage. On that stage there was an old black man sitting on a chair tuning his guitar.

I remember there was a young woman talking to the musician. As I sat there nursing my expensive cheap drink, the young woman walked from the stage to the bar stool next to me. She asked the bartender for an orange juice and he told her it was $3.75. That was pretty expensive in the late 70's. She told him it was for John Lee and pointed at the stage. The bartender looked into the corner with a gimlet eye and asked for $3.75 again. She explained again that it was for Hooker, but the surly bartender didn’t seem to care.  She looked at the stage and I followed her eyes. The man was thirsty but she had no money. I made a decision and pulled out my wallet and laid a $5.00 bill on the bar for the drink. The young woman thanked me profusely and took the drink back to Hooker.

She leaned in to tell him something and pointed in my direction. He looked up at me without a smile and tipped his hat. I did not try and talk to him, but in hindsight wish that I had.

The place slowly started to fill up, but most of the patrons seemed more interested in the scantily clad waitresses strolling saucily around the joint. I felt that I was almost the only one paying attention to the music. I was transfixed at the gritty raw sound coming from the corner. It was rough and real, what a departure from the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane/Starship shows that I had attended. 1978 marked the beginning of the punk movement which was all the rage, but this music was so much more compelling and visceral.

When Hooker broke into One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer I was truly hooked. The song had been recorded by George Thorogood the year before. I liked that version, but this one had much more impact. He played Boom Boom and I remember his foot stomping on the stage as he sang. The music seemed to fit the scene in a way the usual canned, commercial and, what would someday be called classic rock, could not even approach. This was the good stuff.

I stayed until he stopped playing. I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Occasionally, I have been blessed in that way.

In April of 1978 a full length movie documenting that wonderful Thanksgiving evening in the Mission District in 1976 directed by Martin Scorsese entitled The Last Waltz opened to great critical and commercial success.

In November of that year the city received the shocking news that hundreds of their citizens participated in mass suicide in what was referred to as the Jonestown massacre in the South American country of Guyana. Nine days later San Francisco had its heart and soul ripped out as the popular mayor George Moscone and city councilman Harvey Milk were shot and killed in their offices at City Hall.

Today the North Beach neighborhood is much like it was back in 1978. City Lights and even Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who turned 95 earlier this year, are still around. Topless nightclubs it seems never go out of business and North Beach is still a great place to find fresh roasted coffee, deli’s and great Italian food…and Caffe Trieste is still running strong.

As for John Lee Hooker, he called the bay area his home for many years. More than any of the old blues men, Hooker was the beneficiary of the 80’s and 90’s blues revival. He recorded a series of “comeback” albums at the nearby Russian Hill Studios just a few blocks away from North Beach. His success was due in part to his collaborations with San Franciscan Carlos Santana. Hooker even recorded a version of the Tony Bennett classic I Left My Heart in San Francisco.

The rediscovery of John Lee Hooker would soon take him out of a small corner stage in a North Beach clip joint to headlining major blues festivals all over the world. There is even a nightclub in San Francisco’s Fillmore District called John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom Room where he had his own booth and didn’t get charged $3.75 for an orange juice. John Lee Hooker died on June 21, 2001, in nearby Los Altos, California, at the age of 83.

The music of John Lee Hooker remains with me to this day and the memory of that one evening clearly hasn’t left either. The sound of one man, one voice, one guitar and one foot stomping out the blues will always be with me as well.