San Francisco is a city of neighborhoods - each one of them like a small town, with a main street lined with restaurants, shops and bank branches. There is a firehouse, a library, a couple of bars, a coffeehouse or two, some churches and a Muni bus line.

Some are famous: North Beach, the Castro, Chinatown. But I'll bet you four bits that most San Franciscans couldn't even tell you where the Portola district is.

The Portola is tucked away in the southeastern corner of the city, between Bernal Heights and the Bayview. Thousands of cars and trucks roar right by the Portola every day on Bayshore Freeway. It's just off to the right on the way out of town.

'San Francisco incognito'

"Everything out here is a secret," says Kate Connell, a librarian at City College who lives in the Portola and loves it. The district is part of the working-class rim of the city that geographer and historian Gray Brechin calls "San Francisco incognito."

Sam Spade looked for the Maltese Falcon in downtown San Francisco, but the Maltese consulate is on San Bruno Avenue, the Portola's main street. The Portola also has its own public radio station, KALW, 91.7 on the FM dial, tucked away in a corner of the neighborhood. It has its own neighborhood landmark, too - the aqua blue La Grande water tank that towers over McLaren Park.

The Portola is one of the few neighborhoods in the United States that has a Maltese presence. Immigrants from the island of Malta in the Mediterranean came to San Francisco in the 1920s and formed a small ethnic island around San Bruno Avenue. They opened grocery stores and small businesses and prospered. At one time, said Barbara Fenech, who grew up there, about half the families in or near the Portola district were Maltese.

The Maltese were part of the waves of new people who have swept over San Francisco ever since the city began - and the Portola is like San Francisco in microcosm.

According to Rayna Garibaldi, who wrote a book on the Portola, the district formally began in 1869, when an outfit called the University Homestead Association named a 263-foot-tall hill University Mound and laid out the most educated streets in San Francisco: Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Princeton, Dartmouth, Holyoke, Bowdoin.

But the Portola was considered out in the country, and growth was slow. About 100 years ago, right after the 1906 fire and earthquake, the Portola started to fill up.

The first settlers were Jewish: there were two temples, and the Portola was sometimes called "Little Jerusalem." There were Kosher delis on unpaved San Bruno Road, and a settlement house run by the Council of Jewish Women.

Later, Italians moved into the Portola, then Maltese, then African Americans and Asians. Now about half of the 13,000 or so people in the Portola are Asian. "Like any other place, things change," said Fenech. One example: the Congregation Mokum Israel is now a Ukranian Catholic Church. The Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus on Felton Street has a Star of David on one stained glass window.

A bit of everything

When Fenech and her Maltese family were growing up, the Portola was "a city within a city," she said. "You had everything out here - two furniture stores, clothing stores, cleaners, bakeries, a big movie theater."

The theater - a big 1927 movie palace called the Avenue - closed years ago, but much of the rest is still there. But it's a different city.

The Lido Pastry, famous for its St. Honore cake, much favored for special occasions by Italians, is now a Central American bakery, and the specialty is Pan Salvadoreno.

Chinese lions guard the entrance to restaurants that once served Italian food; there are a couple of Mexican restaurants, and Johnson's Bar-B-Que won national prizes for best ribs and pork. Johnson's is also famous for its "thermal nuclear sauce," a local invention.

San Bruno Avenue is not the place you'd take your visiting Aunt Laura to show her the wonders of San Francisco. You know the city and county of San Francisco? This is the county.

"My mother thought the Portola was way out in the sticks," said Garibaldi, who wrote the book. "I like the feeling of community here. Change is good. The Portola welcomes everybody, and that's good. I like it here."

Carl Nolte occasionally went to the Avenue movie house in the Portola district as a kid.