Raymond C. Fong has owned and operated Wine Impressions squarely in the middle of the Laurel Heights shopping district on California Street since 1990. Hanging on one of his walls is a framed overhead shot of what the neighborhood used to be—the Laurel Hill cemetery—before the graves were moved en masse nearly a century ago to make room for the homes and shops that are currently in its place.
Fong said he keeps it up to serve as a reminder of how things can change.
For decades, the bulk of his clientele came from nearby University of San Francisco students and wealthy residents in and around the neighborhood.
Now, some 30 years later, there’s one change above all that he’s fixated on. “Everyone got older,” Fong said. “It’s just not a neighborhood where a lot of people leave and new people come in.”
