Last night, I got off work a bit early and headed over to Orvis on Sutter Street, only to find it gone, except for the awning and a few “Sale” signs taped to the glass. No note. No farewell. I realized that there are no longer any fly shops in the entire city of San Francisco. There are plenty of culprits I could blame: the Internet. Big catalogers. San Francisco’s high cost of living. The retail economics of dozens of square feet devoted to two-dollar packets of dubbing and a thousand dollars tied up in flies that match a bug that hatches for maybe a month every year. The truth is, I fish so infrequently now, it should hardly matter to me, but last night, I was pretty bummed.
My first job out of college was at a San Francisco fly shop. In the early 1990s, despite a crappy economy, there were three shops in the city, and two of them were on the same block in the Financial District. At lunchtime, both Orvis and Fly Fishing Outfitters would be so crowded with suits from all over downtown that if either shop had had a machine dispensing numbered tickets, I would not have been surprised. Customers from both stores could be found testing rods in the same alley that is now occupied by the revelers of an Irish restaurant. San Francisco felt like the epicenter of fly fishing — the magazine you’re reading now was headquartered south of Market Street, and Richard Anderson would personally bring stacks of new issues to the shops. Scott Powr-Ply had only recently been making rods on Clementina Street, and plenty of people still re-membered when Winston had its shop on Third Street.
Apart from two years employed by Scott in Berkeley and one year during the dot-com boom at an ad agency in San Jose, my entire adult working life has been in San Francisco, always within walking distance of a fly shop. Absent the opportunity actually to fish, I could count on these shops to help me find a few moments to restore my soul, introduce colleagues to our sport (not to mention prove to them that I once had a cooler career), pick up some hooks, or buy a fishing license that I would come to use less and less every year as work and family inevitably conspired to dominate my life.
While I never really became one of those lunchtime regulars at either shop, and I have never completely missed my life on the other side of the glass counters full of reels, I have always viewed the San Francisco fly shops as home. I was sad to find Orvis, the city’s last fly shop, gone. I can’t help but feel that I could have helped.
Seriously, if you have a local fly shop that you like, go make a substantial purchase this weekend, or book a trip through it, or do something else to support it. Because if that shop goes away, I promise you, you’re going to miss it.
