SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA SECRETS: Caffe Trieste

This series highlights off-the-beaten-track great things to do in the San Francisco Bay Area, that cost little or no money.

Caffe Trieste has been my favorite North Beach haunt for many years. Also the favorite of the Beat Poets (the City Lights Bookstore is just across the street), and Lawrence Ferlinghetti still hangs there on a regularly.

The beginnings: In 1956 Gianni Giotta and his wife, recent immigrants from near Trieste (now part of Italy), opened this caffe -- the first espresso house on the West Coast. Before (during, and after) it was a hangout for poets and writers, it was a meeting place for the various clusters of Italian immigrants populating the North Beach section of San Francisco. Espresso in the morning, red wine in the afternoon and evening, and centrally located near the heat of North Beach, what a recipe for good times.

The caffe management is now into the third Giotta generation, but Papa Gianni's presence is keenly felt. Not only is the caffe known for espresso, conversation, and writing, but it also has a long tradition of live MUSIC.

The North Beach Italians were (and are) into mandolin music, Papa Gianni was (and still is) into opera -- not the San Francisco opera house kind, but the kind where Papa, his famiy and cohorts break into song at will. Over time, the opera stints are more organized, with a sound system and an online schedule of events.

But I want to tell you about the mandolin music, unfortunately less known, but equally embraced by Italian immigrants to North Beach. My mandolinist friend Janice Fournier told me about her mandolin group, Mattinata di Matteo, that plays every Saturday morning at the Caffe. This is easy listening music, good for waking up, visiting with friends, and reading the Saturday Times. That is, if you can resist the temptation to dance to a polka, waltz or mazurka.

There is much more than meets the eye to this mandolin music of North Beach. For example, it all got started in barber shops. To learn more about this culture and to decifer the title of the book, read Sheri Magnano Crawford's Mandolins, like Salami (2005). Not available on Amazon, but you can order through the Elderly Instruments website.