While walking past Cafe Trieste I spotted this handsome young man and said, “That’s a sharp hat sir. You look like you know a few things about this hood.”

“This is my spot, I’m here 5 days a week. Where you from?”

“I live here, over in Hayes Valley. I don’t make it to this neighborhood much-”

“This is the neighborhood you should be living in.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because the Cafe’s right here. My neighbor is the manager of the store down the street so I come over and he comes with me.”

“Have any good stories from hanging out here?”

“Well, I was here the first day it opened in 1956. Before the Trieste, it was another cafe called The Piccalo, and I was here the first day that opened in 1952.”

“What was the neighborhood like in the 50s?”

“A lot like this. A little more active…a lot less concerned about the stock market.”

“What about you? What are you into?”

“I had an architectural practice. The last 4 years I worked, I worked for a world famous engineer named T.Y. Lin. We were doing work in Russia before the United States had diplomatic relations with the country. We were doing work in Uruguay, other places, Central America. I was living in the the east bay, working 10 hours a day in that office and TY said, ‘Why don’t you live in San Francisco?’ and I said, ‘I can’t afford it.’ ‘How many hours a day do you spend traveling?’ and I said ‘Two.’ Then he said, ‘If you move to San Francisco we’ll pay half the rent.’ So I moved and got a nice little apartment around the way, got to walk to work, and instead of working ten hours a day I worked twelve hours a day. But it was so interesting in that office you could twelve hours and it would seem like four.”

“Because you loved what you did?”

“That’s right.”

“Well they say ‘If you love what you do you never work a day in your life.’”

“That’s right.”