|
|
Tour
Boat owner / operator, Fisherman’s Wharf
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.
![](Home.jpg)
|
|
|