potrero view
Photograph by Peter Linenthal, Potrero Hill Archives Project

Photograph by Peter Linenthal, Potrero Hill Archives Project

Linda Wong in front of her store.

February 2010

Hilltop Grocery’s Owner Says She’ll Stay Until She Dies

By Lori Higa

The faded sign identifying Hilltop Grocery has a sad feeling to it; a wistful reminder of bygone days.  The placard is accompanied by vintage ads announcing “7-Up,” “Cold Beer Wine” and “Milk,” recalling cool beverages and retro jingles like “the pause that refreshes.”  Located on 20th Street between Mississippi and Texas streets, Hilltop Grocery was built in 1916.  The store has been owned by Sam and Linda Wong since 1958.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the paucity of information about the place, the store is a bit mysterious, thought by some to be an odd little place, occasionally provoking disparaging reviews on yelp! for the perceived eccentricities of its proprietress, limited product selection and sporadic hours.  It’s ironic that the family that owns the store doesn’t have a computer and has no idea what yelp! is. 

On a gray, icy-cold weekday afternoon punctuated by unusually fierce, howling winds and pounding rain, a knock on Hilltop Grocery’s old-fashioned wooden door brought out its 85-year-old owner, Linda Wong. The tiny and youthful-looking Wong, in a green and white striped knit poncho, walked slowly to open the store’s door on an arthritic knee.  “My husband had a stroke over ten years ago, he’s in a nursing home,” said Wong, who lives in a small in-law attached to the grocery.  Inside, the store has dingy lighting and a rummage sale air about it, with many shelves bare, a few staples, like detergent, toilet paper, and cake mixes, looking lonesome and forlorn, next to other shelves stuffed to the gills with vintage glassware.

Wong, who was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, came to San Francisco in the days when Forbidden City, Chinatown’s own version of the Cotton Club, and Charlie Low’s nightspot still reigned supreme. She found work at a club called the Sky Room near St. Mary’s church in Chinatown, where she met her future husband Sam, who worked as a bartender at the business his parents owned.  To earn money, she took photographs of club patrons.

She and Sam married and started a family.  They bought Hilltop Grocery from an “Italian family who lived at the store” whose name Wong no longer remembers.  “I didn’t want to live in Chinatown.  We liked it here, it was great back then.  We were the third owner,” she asserted.  “It was the typical neighborhood general store,” said Joan Park, Linda’s daughter, who looks too young to be a 37-year veteran and recent retiree of the U.S. Postal Service.  Park and her three siblings grew up in Potrero Hill, attended St. Teresa’s to high school, and “then scattered.”  All got jobs with the post office, “you just can’t beat the benefits,” Park commented, and all currently live on the Hill.

“We sold bread, milk, butter, sandwiches, candy, soda, it was real working class, used to have lots of families,” Park recollected.  “But they all moved away,” said Wong.  “This was years before Safeway, which really cut into our business,” Park remembered, “people counted on the store for everything.  “Mom and dad hung in there…Mom doesn’t want to leave.”

According to Wong the store is open “Nine to five, seven days a week.”  She lamented that she’s “had offers, but I don’t want to sell. I don’t know where I’d go.

Guess I’ll be here ‘til I die,” she said softly.  Still, Wong and her daughter insisted that the store has loyal customers, “neighbors, mostly, but they’re all dying off.”   She continues to buy inventory from the “wholesale store and the beer comes in and out.”  When asked about the vintage drinking glasses and dishware, Wong explained “that’s all from my husband’s nightclub, the Sky Room.  Don’t know what to do with it, just wanted to bring it all up.”

Park remarked that her father, Sam, who is 95, was born and raised in Chinatown.  She and all her siblings were born at Children’s Hospital on California, which is California Pacific Medical Center today.  One of Park’s most interesting memories is when actor Don Johnson filmed a Nash Bridges episode at the store.  “All he did was walk in and out, it took all day to shoot, but it only was a second on TV.”  His partner, “Cheech Marin, was real friendly,” she recalled, but “Don Johnson, he was not that nice...” said Wong, who lives in a small in-law attached to the grocery.  Inside, the the store has dingy lighting and a rummage sale air about it, with many shelves bare, a few staples, like detergent, toilet paper, and cake mixes, looking lonesome and forlorn, next to other shelves stuffed to the gills with vintage glassware.

Wong, who was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, came to San Francisco in the days when Forbidden City, Chinatown’s own version of the Cotton Club, and Charlie Low’s nightspot still reigned supreme. She found work at a club called the Sky Room near St. Mary’s church in Chinatown, where she met her future husband Sam, who worked as a bartender at the business his parents owned.  To earn money, she took photographs of club patrons.

She and Sam married and started a family.  They bought Hilltop Grocery from an “Italian family who lived at the store” whose name Wong no longer remembers.  “I didn’t want to live in Chinatown.  We liked it here, it was great back then.  We were the third owner,” she asserted.  “It was the typical neighborhood general store,” said Joan Park, Linda’s daughter, who looks too young to be a 37-year veteran and recent retiree of the U.S. Postal Service.  Park and her three siblings grew up in Potrero Hill, attended St. Teresa’s, and “then scattered.”  All got jobs with the post office, “you just can’t beat the benefits,” Park commented, and all currently live on the Hill.

“We sold bread, milk, butter, sandwiches, candy, soda, it was real working class, used to have lots of families,” Park recollected.  “But they all moved away,” said Wong.  “This was years before Safeway, which really cut into our business,” Park remembered, “People counted on the store for everything.  Mom and dad hung in there…Mom doesn’t want to leave.”

According to Wong the store is open “Nine to five, seven days a week.”  She lamented that she’s “had offers, but I don’t want to sell. I don’t know where I’d go. Guess I’ll be here ‘til I die,” she said softly.  Still, Wong and her daughter insisted that the store has loyal customers, “neighbors, mostly, but they’re all dying off.”   She continues to buy inventory from the “wholesale store and the beer comes in and out.”  When asked about the vintage drinking glasses and dishware, Wong explained “that’s all from my husband’s nightclub, the Sky Room.  Don’t know what to do with it, just wanted to bring it all up.”

Park remarked that her father, Sam, who is 95, was born and raised in Chinatown.  She and all her siblings were born at Children’s Hospital on California, which is California Pacific Medical Center today.  One of Park’s most interesting memories is when actor Don Johnson filmed a Nash Bridges episode at the store.  “All he did was walk in and out, it took all day to shoot, but it only was a second on TV.”  His partner, “Cheech Marin, was real friendly,” she recalled, but “Don Johnson, he was not that nice...”

 

 

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