San Francisco Chronicle, CA
April 22 2004

SAN FRANCISCO
A dynasty built with petals and stems
Family has operated flower stands on S.F. streets for nearly a
century

Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer

In an age where every store comes in a big box, and they all seem
part of some giant chain, it’s hard to imagine a family business
where the product is as perishable as the flowers of springtime, and
the store is on the sidewalk.

That’s the world of San Francisco’s premier small businesses — a
half dozen or so flower stands — that have graced the downtown area
for more than a century, in good times and bad.

“I think of this as the heartbeat of the city,” said Harvey
Nalbandian, who runs Paul’s Flowers at Powell and Market streets,
where the cable cars turn around and thousands of people walk by
every day.

The flower stand has been on the block for 88 years, ever since Paul
Nalbandian, an Armenian immigrant, opened for business. “My father
came to the city in 1915 for the World’s Fair,” said Harvey. “He
liked it so much, he stayed.”

After the old man died during World War II, Harvey’s older brother,
Albert, took over the Powell Street stand, but he bought another
flower operation from Mike Egian, an old-timer and a relative of the
Nalbandians. Harvey took over on Powell Street, and Al went into
business at Stockton and Geary, near the famous old I. Magnin store.

The stand was named after the store. I. Magnin is gone, but the
flower stand is still there, and so is Al.

“This my 59th year on this corner,” said Al, who, like his brother,
runs a seven-day-a-week operation. “I come in six days a week and
relieve my helper on the seventh,” said Al.

The two can’t go on forever; Albert is 82, and Harvey is 79. Both of
them say they are getting tired, but both don’t plan to quit any time
soon. Both men are native San Franciscans. Both wear ties to work
every day; Harvey wears a brown hat.

Both men went to college, Albert to the University of San Francisco,
Harvey to UC Davis. Albert majored in drama, Harvey in agricultural
science. But flowers were in their blood.

“It’s family pride that keeps these things going,” said Albert.

The origins of flower stands are lost in the mists of the city’s
past, but sidewalk flowers have been around since at least the turn
of the last century and were always part of the city’s charm.

More than a hundred years ago, flower vendors set up stands along
Kearny Street, a street that was more important then than it is now.
They took them down at night and stored flowers in boxes for the next
day. Flower stands sprang up in front of every office building; they
were everywhere, and the sellers jockeyed for position.

It must have been a flowerly mess, because in 1904 the city decided
to regulate the stands. They cleaned up their act, set up
semi-permanent stands and became as famous as the cable cars as a
symbol of San Francisco.

Flower vendors will tell you that San Francisco is the only city in
the country, maybe the world, with year-round flower stands. It’s the
climate, they say. The April days, alternately misty and sunny, are
perfect. It’s not freezing in winter, not hot in summer — not like
Paris in the summer, when it sizzles.

“San Franciscans buy more flowers than citizens of any other American
city,” wrote Charles Caldwell Dobie in 1933. “Every street corner in
the shopping district is ablaze with blossoms.”

“In the days of my father, people bought violets by the dozen,” said
Harvey. “That’s a thing of the past.”

Now, however, the market has shifted. Flowers are sold in
supermarkets, in malls, in BART stations, even in corner stores. It’s
made it tough on the little guy on the sidewalk who is an island of
bright color amid the rivers of people that flow up and down the
city’s streets.

“The whole world walks by here,” said Margaret Karssli, who is
Harvey’s assistant at Powell and Market. “Where else can you see
people from all over the world?” She pauses. “And some from other
planets.”

At Powell and Market, Harvey’s flowers compete for attention with the
cable cars, with street musicians, with a bare-chested tap dancer,
with street preachers, with street hustlers, with sirens, cops and
sometimes robbers.

The business is eclectic. On a slow afternoon the other day, a
customer came fresh from an ATM machine to buy a big bouquet of
lilies and ferns for $18. The next man had only 65 cents, so he got a
single rose for 50 cents. “You see all kinds,” said Margaret.

Harvey’s stand does all right; it’s a living, he said. Al says much
the same thing, but the flower business is famously dependent on
public mood, even on the weather. The March heat wave was a killer;
flower stands everywhere had to throw out their goods, or give them
to charity.

Rainy days are slow; Mondays are slow. Grant Avenue, once the flower
capital of the city, is slow these days. The business has ebbs and
flows. On Grant and Post Street, the Giants Dugout store is empty and
covered with graffiti, and the nearby flower stand is open only
intermittently.

Another Post Street stand seems to be abandoned: The shutters are up.
The cash register is covered with dust. A newspaper sitting on the
tiny counter is 3 months old.

Everyone says business is kind of off, that this Easter season laid
an egg. “It’s the dot-com bust,” said Rebecca Johnson, who has been
helping out at the stand just across Stockton Street from Albert
Nalbandian’s enterprise.

Al thinks it’s the war, gloomy times. “We’re doing the best we can,”
said Patricia Lee, who runs a stand at Stockton and O’Farrell
streets, “We have a good corner here.”

One thing about flowers — they cheer you up. “Most times people buy
flowers for a happy reason,” said Johnson, who has been selling them
for 19 years.

“We’ll do well this week,” she said brightly. “It’s National
Secretary’s Week. No, wait. They don’t have that any more. Now, it’s
Executive Assistants Week. Wednesday was Administrative Professional
Day, and you know what they say about a rose by any other name.”

One of the things that make the job worth doing, the flower people
agree, is the product.

“Philosophers, poets and lovers have praised flowers for a thousand
years, ” said Harvey. He likes to quote a note he got from a lady
friend at the turn of the year. “I hope 2004 will bring you every
good thing … may the year be for you as beautiful as a flower.”

E-mail Carl Nolte at cnolte@sfchronicle.com.