Market Street was once full of flowers. Can new legislation bring them back?
Valerie Chieng arranges a bouquet at her flower stand. Chieng, who is beloved by her regulars, is one of the few outdoor flower stands left in San Francisco and has been carefully crafting arrangements for over 20 years. (Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle)
Valerie Chieng assembles a bouquet at her street-side flower stand, an oasis of color on eerily lifeless Market Street, and points toward the ghosts of her competition. Over 26 years, Chieng has watched her fellow flower vendors shutter their doors and close.
"There was one over there, two over there, one in Crocker Galleria," she says. "Just on Market and Montgomery, (near) this corner, there were nine flower shops."
San Francisco had 120 flower sellers after the turn of the 19th century, most in the downtown corridor. Now there are just four, culled by a slow return to office in the Financial District and Byzantine laws that made it nearly impossible to open a new stand without inheriting one from family. Mayor Daniel Lurie's office on Tuesday quietly introduced an ordinance to streamline the process.
If it passes, the ordinance will ease a restrictive permitting structure - similar to taxi medallions - that has stood in the way of new stands. It's a tiny piece of legislation that will likely affect a few small business owners. But Lurie says it's central to a leap-of-faith philosophy tied to San Francisco's continued rise.
"I say it to my two kids, and I say it to everybody," Lurie says, "if you do the little things well, then the big things will follow."
Valerie Chieng hands Kris Gallimore a bouquet of lilies at her flower stand at the intersection of Montgomery and Post street in San Francisco. Gallimore, who buys Chieng's arrangements every month, is a regular of the flower stand, which is one of the few outdoor stands left in San Francisco. (Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle)
When I moved back to San Francisco in 1999, I walked Market between Fifth Street and the Ferry Building just for the vibes. It seemed as if the past, present and future of a great city assembled on the wide brick sidewalks of the business sector's spinal column. You'd see everything from aspiring rappers selling CDs outside BART stations, to the Brown Twins, happily strolling 
.
But the scene diminished even before the pandemic dealt a final blow. Powell Street cable car turnaround tap dancer Edward Jackson moved on and left his corner behind. Larry the Bucket Man, who entertained by eating fire and pounding plastic pails, died in 2023. The flower sellers, shoe shiners and put-your-name-on-a-grain-of-rice peddlers mostly disappeared.
That walk to the Ferry Building is now alarmingly barren, with a paucity of familiar faces; Chieng, the owner of the rarely open succulents stand near the Embarcadero BART Station and the Halal Cart guy near First Street are among the only regulars that come to mind.
Chieng's high energy does a lot to fill the void. She greets me with a hug, then gives me a hard time for coming during the Valentine's Day rush. Her personal touches are off the charts; when I request a bouquet of her choosing, she asks to see pictures of my wife.
Surrounded by an explosion of radiant roses, peonies and lilies, she talks about the relationships she's built on this corner of downtown.
"I have young kids that don't even talk to people, they're on the phone," she says, "(but) they get off screens to say, ‘Good morning, Val!' Every morning, if you stand here for a half an hour, all you hear is ‘Good morning! Good morning! Good morning!'"
Downtown stands like Chieng's were once hubs of joyful activity. Florist Al Nalbandian manned his stand at Stockton and Geary outside the high-end I Magnin & Co. department store for more than 50 years, signing autographs and pinning carnations on a stream of downtown workers. (The part-time actor, who appeared in "So I Married an Axe Murderer," "The Conversation" and other films, died in 2017.)
March 23, 1971: Al Nalbandian poses at his flower shop on Stockton Street at Geary near Union Square in San Francisco. (Joe Rosenthal/S.F. Chronicle)
Flower work was the perfect job for newcomers; many early stands were staffed by immigrants fleeing the Armenian genocide in the 1910s. It was a sales job that didn't require strong English. The flowers sold themselves.
"People buy most things for their bodies," longtime Market Street florist Ron Camozzi told the Chronicle in 1982. "Flowers they buy for their souls."
But the city rarely made it easy. Police chased unpermitted 1880s florists, who sold roses from bicycle baskets. After flower stands were legalized, the Department of Public Works harassed owners with inspectors who measured how far their bouquets spilled onto sidewalks. In the 1970s, flower stand owners including Nalbandian and Camozzi fought back a 300% permit price increase.
Valerie Chieng arranges a bouquet at one of the last remaining flower stands in San Francisco. The downtown core was once full of similar businesses. (Brontë Wittpenn/S.F. Chronicle)
With the new legislation, which gathered three supervisor co-sponsors on Tuesday then moved to a 30-day discussion period, San Francisco Public Works would collaborate with the Office of Small Businesses to welcome new stands - if the demand exists.
Inside the bustling San Francisco Flower Market on 16th Street, 97-year-old Willy Neve says he's been proudly working in the local flower industry since 1949.
San Franciscans "still like beautiful flowers," Neve says, acknowledging the tech money that flowed into town in the last quarter century. "They like expensive flowers, expensive arrangements. And they don't mind spending the money, too."
As I look around, every stall is filled and members of the public stream in to buy flowers. There's a joyful beauty that once filled city streets.
Lurie says the recent Super Bowl in the Bay Area is a reminder that we can get there again. We saw spontaneous public musical performances, celebrities having an absolute blast on social media and pop-up activations near the NFL's takeover of Moscone Center.
"There was action at all hours," Lurie says, a little wistfully. "We need to build on that."
Chieng is ready. When I ask why she supports a piece of City Hall legislation that could quadruple her competition, she immediately points to the bigger picture.
"More flower stands will bring more people in," she says, glancing up the city's biggest, and currently saddest, street. San Franciscans "want more beauty. They want this corner to look great."
