San Franciscans have a second shot at a new beginning, and boy do we need it

The January spell of weeks when winter felt like summer is over. Rain is in the air and the skies have turned gray. Gray news all around San Francisco, too: The California Historical Society is history, dissolved after 154 years. Books, Inc., the oldest bookseller in the West, is in financial trouble. Empty stores. You know the story.

The western new year — 2025 — has been a bust so far. Maybe it’s time to think of a newer new year. So I took a trip to Chinatown to see what’s new. And to North Beach to see what’s old. A good way to start the Lunar New Year. This is the year of the serpent, by tradition a time of wisdom and adaptability. We could use both.

The beginning of the trip was unpromising, up Kearny from Market, up Sutter Street, right on Stockton Street past blocks of “For Lease” signs, then through the noisy Stockton Tunnel.

Stockton Street was a bit quiet for a holiday period, but it turned out I had missed the new year rush. So I headed down the side streets into the Chinatown alleys — Ross Alley and Waverly Place — decorated with lanterns and flags, the pavement thick with bits of red paper from firecracker new year celebrations.

The Chinatown alleys, usually packed with life and locked doorways, always seem mysterious to western eyes. At this time of the year they also seem to have a new-year vitality as if this old part of the city was starting again.

There was a big celebration on the first day of the new year at Portsmouth Square, with Daniel Lurie, the city’s new mayor, on hand.

I went to a smaller event at the northerly part of Grant Avenue, where Chinatown runs into North Beach.

There were a couple of hundred people here, jammed together on Grant, listening to speeches in English and Cantonese. The sound system was not up to the job but the message was clear: good wishes for a happy and prosperous new year. Tell your friends to come by. We could use the business.

The speeches ended in the roar of a thousand firecrackers and enough white smoke to deter whatever evil spirits might be around.

There were two Chinese lions dancing and a third lion standing by at the entrance to Kerouac Alley. The street is only 60 feet long — one end in Chinatown, the other in Italian-flavored North Beach, two worlds of San Francisco.

“At the front side we faced the western world, at the back we faced the eastern world,’’ Lawrence Ferlinghetti said of the City Lights bookstore at the North Beach end of the alley.  

Just beyond is a three-way intersection where Grant, Columbus Avenue and Broadway all run together.

On the North Beach side a dozen Chinese street musicians were playing, the eastern music drifting over the sounds of the city: traffic, buses, sirens. Just opposite was a neon sign celebrating the raucous days when this corner was ground zero for topless dancing.

It was a new year in Chinatown, but an older time was still the order of the day in North Beach and the two worlds are close together so I headed up a block or two to Green Street for a winter’s day drink at Gino and Carlo and lunch at Sotto Mare, in the heart of North Beach.

 “Sotto Mare” means “under the sea” in Italian and I enjoy the sand dabs there. They are small fish with both eyes on the left side of their heads, a San Francisco kind of fish.

I like to sit at the counter and watch the cooks at work, dicing and slicing, big flames coming up from the gas stoves. The orders are written on paper and come to the cooks zipping on a long wire. Very low tech, very old San Francisco. 

I had a glass of wine while waiting for lunch and got to thinking: Change is in the air for the new year. A band of rain, even a storm, is in the forecast.  And after that, in the second week of February, all the street trees will start to bloom.

There’s a special thing about this wintry season in this part of the world: You get a second chance at a new year.

Carl Nolte’s columns appear in The Chronicle’s Sunday edition. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com