Leo Riegler was born on June 7, 1925 in Vienna, Austria. In April 1939 he and his mother fled the country to England. A year later Riegler moved to a European refugee agricultural settlement in the Dominican Republic. In 1947 he signed up as a crew member on a Danish freighter and in 1948 arrived in Oakland on a Norwegian freighter where he traveled to San Francisco in the back of a laundry truck. He worked at, amongst other places, the Fairmont Hotel[1] and the Emporium[2]. During the Korean War he was drafted. After informing the Draft Board that he was in the country illegally, he left for England before returning legally to San Francisco six months later. He again worked odd jobs. In 1958 he began tending bar at The Coffee Gallery at 1353 Grant, later buying the business and featuring poetry readings and jazz and folk music: Janis Joplin[3] was a regular performer.
The Coffee Gallery was located in the heart of North Beach, known at the time as Little Italy. Located on the northeastern side of the City, North Beach was originally owned by Juana Briones Y Tapia de Miranda (1802-1889), who raised cattle and grew vegetables when San Francisco was still Yerba Buena. Her land was divided by a finger of the San Francisco Bay came inland, creating a long stretch of beach. De Miranda began selling off her land to Italian immigrants who dominated the fishing trade. The beach was eventually filled to make space for warehouses, wharfs and docks. Between world War I[4] and World War II[5] over 60,000 residents in North Beach claimed Italian ancestry with five Italian-language newspapers in circulation during this time. But North Beach has also boasted a thriving nightlife, with a high concentration of night clubs (like Finochio’s[6] and Bimbo’s 365[7]), comedy clubs (like the Purple Onion[8]) and strip clubs (like the Condor[9]).
In 1971 Leo Riegler sold the Coffee Gallery and moved to Spain, only to return to San Francisco a couple of years later where he tended bar at Vesuvio (“Vesuvio’s), a bar located at 255 Columbus, again in North Beach. He later bought the business from Henry Lenoir, a Swiss immigrant who opened Vesuvio’s in 1948. Lenoir catered to artists and filled the interior of the bar with local artwork. Artist Shawn O’Shaughnessy created the tiles that cover the interior walls and bathrooms by lacquering and dying notebook paper used by bartenders and waitresses. Above the front entrance is scrawl which reads “We are itching to get away from Portland Oregon”, referencing a flea infestation that befell Portland in the late 1800s. Shadow boxes honoring regulars who have died stand along the interior walls, and there was once a large cement slab at the entrance end of the bar memorializing those patrons who had been “86’d” (permanently banned). Vesuvio’s is situated on the first floor of the Cavalli Building, former site of A. Cavalli & Co. Bookstore. Built in 1913, the second story was added five years later.
During the Beat Movement[10] in the late 1950’s/early 60’s, Vesuvio’s became the go-to spot for writers and poets like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg[11] and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti owned City Lights Booksellers, located across an alley separating the two businesses. Vesuvio’s and City Lights had a symbiotic relationship throughout the Beat Movement. Lenoir put a sign in Vesuvio’s window that read “Don’t envy the Beatniks…Be one! He sold a “Beatnik Kit” that included black rim glasses, a beret, a pair of sandals, a black turtleneck sweater and a slip-on beard. Vesuvio’s was an art gallery, museum and community meeting place. It not only attracted writers and poets, but became known as a safe haven for Communists, anarchists, homosexuals and Blacks.
Leo Riegler was the managing partner of Vesuvio’s and made his home in North Beach until his death in 2017. Today Vesuvio’s is ranked one of the nation’s top bars and looks very much as it did in the 1950s. The alley between Vesuvio’s and City Lights was renamed Jack Kerouac Alley in 1988 and in 2007 converted to a pedestrian-only alley.
Over generations, Italian-Americans moved out of North Beach and into the neighboring Marina District, giving way to the expansion of North Beach’s neighbor China Town[12]. However, while North Beach is no longer predominantly Italian-American, it still retains the City’s concentration of Italian restaurants, cafes and bakeries, and there are still two major Italian Heritage events held in North Beach each year. The North Beach Festival[13] along Columbus and Grant is held on Father’s Day weekend in June and is one of the largest and oldest street fairs in the nation. The Italian Heritage Parade[14], formerly the Columbus Day Parade, is held in October and remains the nation’s longest running Italian heritage celebration.
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[1] Fairmont Hotel: story coming January 9th [2] Emporium: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3911 [3] Janis Joplin: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=5072 [4] World War I: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4079 [5] World War II: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4222 [6] Finocchio’s: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3359 [7] Bimbo’s 365: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4410 [8] The Purple Onion: story coming March 7th [9] The Condor: story coming August 29th [10] Beat Movement: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4625 [11] Allen Ginsberg: story coming December 13th [12] China Town: story coming October 18th [13] Visit them at https://northbeachfestival.org [14] Visit them at https://sfitalianheritage.org
