Dogpatch Ranch: The Story of a Chinese American Family

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"Dogpatch," one of at least two spots in San Francisco that derive this ubiquitous nickname from the L'il Abner comic strip. This is Tennessee Street between 23rd and 24th Streets, an area that once housed shipyard and other industrial workers, but is a slowly gentrifying area between Potrero Hill and the abandoned shipyards. A few blocks away at the end of 25th Street is Warm Water Cove, aka Tire Beach, aka Toxic Beach.

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Warm Water Cove at the end of 25th Street on the bay, just south of the Potrero Hill power plant was for a long time a sewage outlet, enjoying a decade as the "toxic golf course" when local punks and other underground culture vultures would hit golf balls into the bay from its abandoned shoreline. Now the park has undergone a facelift, a native plant garden has been started...

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and to many artists' chagrin, the city government and local property owners organized a painting party to obliterate the remarkable graffiti gallery that had developed on surrounding walls over a ten year period.

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Abandoned and graffittied MUNI streetcars litter the docks adjacent to Warm Water Cove.

Photos: Chris Carlsson

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