San Francisco has a "Tenderloin Museum" (Tues-Sun 10-5) and most days offers a one-hour walking tour at 2 pm. (Register for both for $15.)
Website
here.
See my earlier blog on St. Boniface, near my SF office, here.
The museum is nice, covering the older history 1900-1960 but also featuring many stories from the several decades when the Tenderloin Times newspaper was published. The tour covers much of the district, including visiting an active SRO hotel and a dive bar. (For more on that theme, see the 2000 documentary about the Sunshine SRO hotel in NYC on the Bowery;
here.)
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There's a new Sudanese restaurant
Casbah at 295 Eddy. See also several interesting Thai restaurants on Larkin in the block or two south of O'Farrell.
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William Saroyan lived in the Tenderloin and his play The Time of Your Life is set in one of its dive bars.
