Darryl Hickey

I operate a tour boat from Fisherman’s Wharf. It’s called the Serendipity. I was originally a fisherman out here for 23 years. I fished salmon and tuna. I’d range anywhere from San Diego to Washington for the tuna. See these boats over here? See the big poles? It’s basically a big fishing pole. It comes down at a 45-degree angle. It’s just to keep the hooks far away from the boat. For tuna, I’d go out about 100 miles, stay out there about two weeks at a time, just fishing with hooks. This boat will hold 11 tons of fish. It’s refrigerated. We’d freeze the tuna up solid. It holds 700 gallons of fuel. It’s actually a pretty big boat but most of it’s under water. It’s a deep round bottom boat. Then about four or five years ago, this guy a couple boats down started these boat rides. I thought this would be a little bit easier than fishing. So about four years ago, I got my license and started doing these boat rides out under the Golden Gate and around Alcatraz.

I had to get a license through the Coast Guard. You gotta’ take these tests. If you’re gonna’ take passengers out, you need a special license.

These are some of the most seaworthy boats in the world here. It’s a fishing boat designed to go out in the ocean, take a beating and come back. That’s why fishermen like these types of boats, because they’re so seaworthy. See how it’s pointy at the end? There’s a reason for that. When the wave comes from the back, it’ll go into it like the bow; whereas, with a square stern, it will hit it and come over. Also, it’s much more efficient going through the water. It doesn’t drag water. It’s like a fish going through the water. I paid $30,000 for it back in 1983. It’s only worth $20,000 today because I sold the fishing permits.

I make a lot more money doing tours than I did fishing. It’s a lot better. But fishing was so much fun. When the weather’s good and you’re catching fish and you’re making lots of money real quick and just having a good time. But it’s feast or famine. Sometimes you go out there and it’s rougher than hell. You’re risking your life and not making anything. Overall, what I’m doing now is real nice. We go under the Golden Gate and around Alcatraz. The weather’s always real nice, especially for this boat because it’s such a heavy old fishing boat. It’s just a real heavy, slow…like a big old Cadillac rides. It just plods along.

For this racket, my average workday goes like this: I get down here around 9 o’clock or so and uncover my chairs. The most I can take is six people. I get up here and start asking people if they want to go for a boat ride. I usually get a couple people. On a good day I can do about five or six round trips. Right now it’s pretty slow so I’m working on the boat. I got some competitors around here. These guys take about thirty or forty people. I’m the only one who takes six or less. You can pretty much do what you want. You don’t have to go under the Golden Gate. You can go over to Angel Island or just charter the whole boat for a day at $40 an hour and ride around to Tiburon. I escort a lot of swimmers.

Graphic Designer

Rick Musson

My title is Executive Director of Denis Ko Production Art but I’m really just one of the key grunts in the place. In addition to wearing one hat as a designer, computer designer, I’m the staff writer. My background is actually in economics. I was supposed to go work for Wells Fargo to become their chief economist one day and decided I didn’t want to do that. So I entered the wonderful world of advertising and grew up mostly on the marketing side heading up both market research functions. Now, I work with Denis Ko on marketing the company.

Our office is about two hundred and ninety feet out on the Embarcadero Pier 9. I say two hundred and ninety feet out because the company next door is called Three Hundred Feet Out. They’re a web design firm. This used to be a working longshoreman’s warehouse for the Port of San Francisco. Warehouseman used to be called lumpers because they used to lump the heavy stuff. Then over the years, because maritime was dying out, at least on the San Francisco side of the Bay, a lot of small business started taking over a lot of these warehouses. We have law firms here. We have several graphic design companies. There is very little blue-collar stuff going on here.

The problem, at least for a company like ours, is the short-term nature of the lease. Maritime gets preference; they can get a lease of twenty years but the maximum lease for us is five years. Since Port tenants have to make a lot of leasehold improvements on their own the problem is coming up with the funding; you have to try to convince the bank that although your lease is only five years.

One of the nice things is being able to walk out on the deck or toss a line out on the Bay and fish for bullheads or whatever. They’re throwbacks. One time, we were pulling an all-nighter for a client, one of the agencies in town. It was about 3AM and Dennis was out taking a smoke on the deck when all of a sudden we hear this thrashing in the water. At first, it almost sounded like someone had fallen and was struggling. But it kept up and we shined a line down onto the water and it was just a school of anchovies. So everybody got their poles and put as many hooks on the line as they could and started casting them out.

Both Denis and I ride the Harbor Bay ferry to work. Most days we never have to cross the street into the City.

Owner and proprietor of the Ramp Restaurant and San Francisco Boat Works

Mike Denman

I grew up in Seattle and my family was great friends with the Foss family. The Foss family ran Foss Tug & Barge, an old family operation, one of the real pioneers in the tugboat business on this Coast. Henry Foss was a great pal of my Dad’s. We used to spend all our summers out on the Foss boat called the Thea Foss. It used to be John Barrymore’s 1930’s cruiser, a beautiful boat. Foss Tug still exists, although they’ve joined forces with Dillingham and various other operations. They used to be just a Northwest operation. With Crowley kind of vacating the Bay, tug companies like Foss have moved in. They’re the green and whites you see on the Bay. Henry Foss’ mother was the original "Tug Boat Annie." "Tug Boat Annie" was a historical figure in the tugboat industry. Books have been written about "Tug Boat Annie". She was a character. She ran her own tug and was one of those waterfront characters of yore. All of their tugs were named after family. That was before the modern tractor tugs. The first fellow captured in WWII was Drew Foss, operating a tug at Wake Island and the Japanese overran Wake and captured him and he spent the rest of the war on Wake Island, maybe in Japan, under the threat of death to operate some other tug boats. He became very controversial. He worked for them part-time at the end of a gun barrel.

In 1983, I think it was, my partner and I began operating the Boat Works under a short-term lease from the Port. Then, in 1985, we started operating the Ramp and were eventually able to get a long-term lease from the Port of San Francisco.

The Ramp’s history is that it started as a bait shop when they launched a lot of boats on the ramp at this location for sport fishing. That’s when fishing was hot in the Bay. People came in, launched the boat and came back for bait. Somebody probably put in a hot dog machine. Somebody else put in a hamburger grill and it evolved over time as a waterfront dive. It’s still a waterfront dive, a little cleaned up and a little expanded.

We try to maintain it as a dive because there aren’t many left and that’s what people want and that’s the charm of the thing. There used to be a lot of them on the waterfront simply because the waterfront was much different in the old days. There were a lot of eateries on the waterfront that catered to longshoreman, local characters, fairly primitive spots where you could get a hamburger and beer and hang out. They all went away with the way the City developed and the loss of the finger piers and with the coming of containerization. There isn’t much of that left anymore. Anybody going to start up a restaurant today is tempted to go into the high end of it so this is the last of the old joints. It’s got a niche that people just really want and remember and it’s part of the history of San Francisco. Come down and enjoy it.