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For 30 years, from 1933 to 1963, the Black Cat Cafe, located at 710 Montgomery, was the Canessa Building's next door neighbor. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Cat attracted a bohemian clientele of both straight and gay writers, artists and musicians from the neighborhood. Many lived and worked across the street in the historic Montgomery Block building where the Transamerica Pyramid now stands. Just north of the Cat, at 716-718-720 Montgomery, were the studios of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Emmy Lou Packard and Ralph and Peter Stackpole. Regular visitors to the Cat included artists Hassel Smith, Maynard Dixon and Ed Corbett. John Steinbeck and William Saroyan also dropped in from time to time -- as did two veteran police reporters, Neil Hitt of the San Francisco Chronicle and Harry Debolt of the Examiner. According to Jerry Flamm, author of Hometown San Francisco, Hitt and Debolt, "an inseparable pair in the Hall of Justice press room after 5 p.m., would occasionally stroll down one block to the Black Cat for a thirst quencher after advising the police radio dispatcher where they would be in case all hell broke loose somewhere in the city." In the 1950s, Black Cat proprietor Sol Stoumen hired Jose Sarria, a female impersonator, to play host at the Cat every Sunday. Clad in an ornate costume, Sarria performed camp versions of operatic arias. Sarria's performances started drawing a large gay clientele, and police began raiding the bar. Printer Henry Evans' reaction to the Cat was typical of the time. "The Black Cat ... [once] was by far the best place for a wild drunk that an adventurer could hope for," he writes in Bohemian San Francisco (1955). "But ... the place changed hands and the new owner encouraged the fruit and the place went to hell." |
