These 80-Year-Olds Run The Coolest Inn in San Francisco - Joan Hull and John Phillips, The Parsonage [San Francisco Sundays]

Josiah: There are few things that bring me more happiness than finding hospitality providers who don't get a lot of press coverage but should because they're working tirelessly every day to delight their guests. Today's conversation was a treat for me because I had the chance to interview Joan Hull and John Phillips, the proprietors of The Parsonage, a small urban inn close to where I live in San Francisco. As you know, I love this city, but one of the things I'm challenged by are how few hotels there are outside of the downtown core, so I'm delighted that they're in the neighborhood. I actually discovered the Parsonage when my mother-in-law visited and wanted a place to stay that was close by. It was so cool to see it then, and John kindly invited us to breakfast, which was amazing to experience even though I wasn't a guest there. Over breakfast, got to know a couple from Nevada who was visiting, and to be honest, I think at first glance, they didn't seem like the type of folks who would love San Francisco, but that couldn't be further from the truth. In getting to know them, it was clear how the power of hospitality had gotten rid of any kind of preconceptions of the city and caused them to, I think, have a really, really good time here. So, all that to say, Joan and John really embody the spirit of warm, gracious hosts, so I invite you to join me in hearing their story today. I think you'll be inspired by what it can look like to not only provide hospitality as a business, but as a way of life. 

Joan: It's not a bed and breakfast in the old sense of the word, which is the aging widow with an extra bedroom giving you something in the kitchen in the morning. I like urban inn.

John: It has a little more structure to it, I think, so that people know that if they were in, in my definition, you're expecting to have a nice room with a bathroom. You don't have mysteries about what's going to happen to you. Are you going to have to walk down the hall to use the bathtub? where in early bed and breakfast that I visited in England in particular, you just quite didn't know. And the place usually smelled like bacon grease. And at one time there was a bathtub that you had to put coins in to get hot water, you know, as a result. So in seems more structured, I guess, to me. We don't, the only thing that's different than a hotel, I think significantly different than a hotel, is that there's no staffed front desk. And so we need to keep track of people coming and going and making sure that they're comfortable entering the space.

Joan: Breakfast is the time when we relate most fully to our guests because it's multi-coursed and people have choices to make. We're in and out, refreshing coffee and tea and granola, taking breakfast orders. Will you have bacon with your French toast this morning? Or how would you like your eggs? John has been cooking breakfast since he was seven years old. He used to get up early with his father, who worked very long hours. And it would give them some time alone and also give his mother a break. She could get an extra hour in on the pillow. So he is an accomplished breakfast cook.

Josiah: I can attest to that. Incredible, incredible food. I absolutely love that. Joan, we were talking before about some of the history of the place, and we don't need to go through the entire history, but I would love to hear why you decided to buy it, and a little bit of the story of where you both entered the picture.

Joan: Why did you buy this place? I saw it first. It was an 1883 Victorian, 23 rooms and a barn. that had been in the original family for what was then 100 years.

Josiah: A barn. And we're in the heart of San Francisco for our listeners. We're in the heart of San Francisco. There was a barn on this property.

Joan: Oh, yes. There were two horses, a cow, and a groomsman who had a room off of the hayloft. Anyway, I and it was very dusty. But it was in its original state. The over mantles were in place. The Carrara marble fireplaces had never been abused. The anaglypt had never been overpainted. It was crisp. The chandeliers were mostly original. It was very unusual to find a house in such pristine condition. The neighborhood was dicey in those days. The freeway was up, the public housing was outdated up the hill, and it was not a desirable neighborhood by most people's standards. I'm a New Yorker, and New Yorkers are pretty good at distinguishing between dangerous and unsavory. And the neighborhood was not dangerous, but it was unsavory.

Josiah: How do you distinguish? How do you define that difference?

Joan: Well, there were needles in the driveway and hookers on the corner. who were always, but we never called the cops on them or anything, and they were always cooperative with us. If we were having a big party or entertaining some dignitary, we'd ask them to move to another corner, and they always did.

Josiah: So both of your stories fascinate me because you were a minister, Joan, right? And then, John, you were working in public service and housing. Yes. How do you find your way to the hospitality business?

Joan: Well, when we bought the house, we created an apartment downstairs because we knew an income stream would be helpful. But we never developed the top floor, which were the servants' quarters. And there were seven in staff up there and one big bathroom with a cistern. They pumped water up into the cistern and there was a gravity flow down. So the way we occupied the house for the first 15, 20 years, was as a four-bedroom family house. We just had big spaces downstairs, and we had two girls, and John and I had a room, and we had a guest room, and that was it. It wasn't until I retired in the mid-90s and didn't quite know what to do with myself that, because we didn't want to leave San Francisco for me to find another Unitarian church.

Josiah: Why do you want to leave? What kept you here?

Joan: Well, the city and the friendships we made, you don't have those years very many times. So anyway, it was a family house until about the time I retired. The neighborhood had changed. The projects up the hill had been redone and the freeway was about to come down. And of course, when that happened, the neighborhood, the sun fell on the neighborhood and everything was changed. So we, the girls by then had moved out, so we repainted their rooms despite friends who said, oh no, no, you can never touch their rooms until they're out of college.

John: We were almost with paintbrushes immediately.

Joan: And just word of mouth. And it was fun. It's still, we get wonderful people. We get people who are not looking for Hiltons. They're not looking for room service. They're looking for character. And, of course, the neighborhood is wonderfully central with all of the arts surrounding us, the opera, the symphony, the jazz center.

Josiah: Location's incredible.

Joan: I absolutely love it. And a great transportation hub.

Josiah: It's an amazing place to be. And I would love to hear both of you on this. I might ask you first, John, in the sense of kind of what do you want your guests to feel while they're here? Because we're recording at your dining room table and you both host breakfast here. And for me, that felt like such a big part of the guest experience. But what do you want your guests to feel?

John: Well, I want them to feel pampered, and I want them to feel at ease. I think it's important when you, I think empathy is a big part of in keeping and that somebody's taken a risk to choose a Victorian bed and breakfast versus a Hilton hotel. They're coming to the front door and they don't know what's going to happen to them, you know? And so I think it's really important to each guest who comes to the front door. I try to stop even if I'm in a hurry. and have other things I could be doing, I try to stop and make sure that I slow down and that people get a sense of where they are, that they're welcomed in various rooms of the house, that we don't collect money from them until the day before they leave. we try to explain things that will make them at ease. Then we take them to the rooms and try to explain a little bit of the history of each of the rooms, in that each of the rooms is named after famous San Francisco women, but they are also furnished in different styles. So people who like furniture are sometimes interested in that, others couldn't care less. But you sort of try to find out what people's interests are and then feed those interests. At breakfast you can say, let's see, somebody's here to go to one of the museums where you can mention the other museums that there are to go to. So that's sort of trying to meet each person at where they are is, I think, crucial to people being comfortable.

Josiah: I love that notion of meeting people where they are, right? And that seems like it's important for the, for hospitality, both professionally when you're running a place like this, but personally too, it feels just a good way to live. I love that. Joan, what comes up for you when you think about what you want to provide?

Joan: We, you know, we greet guests in the foyer and I always take them into the parlors. and point out that there are lots of books on San Francisco. There's a bar that they're welcome to, so that while they can't ring us for room service, if they want a sherry, they come down. And it's lovely to walk in in the evening and find people waiting for their Uber or friends to pick them up and they're sitting there enjoying a sherry and then they invite their friends in to have a second sherry.

Josiah: Why do you offer this? Because it feels like a lot of places charge for everything that you know.

Joan: No, no, no.

Josiah: Why do you offer these things for free or breakfast for as part of the experience?

John: We have a flat rate that we charge for each room and one of the things I don't like when I travel is that sense of being nickel-and-dimed, that you're going to be the most offensive is being charged for Wi-Fi, I think. Really? So we don't, Nicole and I, we try to be generous, reasonable and generous, and the guests tend to respond in a reasonable and serious way.

Joan: We want them to feel at home and that they can pick up a book and stretch out on a couch and read. The New York Times is always available in paper.

Josiah: I wonder if I could get your thoughts on how you think of balancing this notion of feeling at home while also feeling in San Francisco, because you have such a great collection of books about San Francisco. And so I'm trying to think how to phrase this, but it feels like I'm both, I can relax here, but I'm not like actually at home. I feel like you're introducing people to San Francisco. Does that make sense? Does it come with attention?

John: I think so. I think because often the guests are curious about it, and they've never talked to a San Franciscan before because they just flew into the airport, right? And so some people are more curious than others. Some people come with a plan, and they know exactly what they're going to do every five minutes. Others just come and say, you know, well, Tell me what I should do today. what's going on today. So each person is different in what their needs are, but the pleasure that I derive, we derive, is from trying to fulfill those interests. And if you feel like they've really done it, that's personally satisfying to us. And very seldom is it impossible.

Joan: Very rarely. Very rarely. Someone makes the wrong choice and should have been at the Hilton. Right. But we're quick to help them find other arrangements.

John: We've never charged for the other days that they would have stayed here. If they're not happy, we'd rather have them be happy somewhere else. And so I think people never feel that they're back to the nickel and diming thing. They never feel like they're gaining more and more debt as they sit there. And we invite people, if there's room at the table, we say, you know, bring your kid over, if that's who's in the neighborhood, or bring your mother over for breakfast. And we don't charge for that. You know, it feels part of the making it a family place. is to keep the money just in that single category and that's taken care of. But the main interest is the interaction.

Josiah: You've been running this place for a while. Has that sort of operating, way of operating worked out for you?

John: Absolutely. If one run, go ahead.

Joan: I don't think we do it any other way. We would be terrible at running a commercial hotel.

Josiah: It's just not us. But this place seems to be doing well and it feels like it has good word of mouth.

Joan: We're having fun and that's what makes it work.

John: So what we knew when we got into it was if you're going to have a bed and breakfast, which is five rooms or less, five sleeping rooms or less, in San Francisco, you've got to do most of the work yourself. So you can't hire a breakfast cook and you can't… So you have to like to work, too, and both of us are workers. So, you know, Joan irons sheets for the beds, and I do the shopping and cooking most breakfasts.

Joan: John is in charge of the bathrooms. He cleans all the bathrooms on his hands and knees. He does not believe in mops.

John: So I just, both of us come from working, families where work is a value. And I think we pass that on to our kids as well. So it's, but you have to like to work. And the other thing that I think is an interesting topic is where are your boundaries for privacy?

Joan: How do you think about that? Good point.

John: Yeah, where are your boundaries for privacy? And you need to sort of, you as an innkeeper, need to sort of make that clear. But our boundaries are pretty small. And I remember being sitting either here or in the parlor with friends, and the front door will open, the front door will close, somebody will walk by, and my friend would say to me, you don't know who's in your house. Well, I do know who's in my house, but some people are not comfortable with that level of openness. And neither of us are particularly private people. So we're willing to share information and thoughts with people who are coming and going. But I do think if you're going to do something in the house in which you live, you need to be thinking about what is your tolerance for having other people around.

Josiah: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Well, it sounds like you both were sort of wired in the work that you did, your prior lives, your prior careers, were wired such that made this, it seemed like a natural fit, but I'm curious in the years since opening up this place as an urban inn, as a bed and breakfast, how have you thought about, I guess, developing or evolving as people so that you can offer this sort of hospitality if that makes sense?

Joan: It keeps renewing itself. People respond to what we do. We get thank you notes. I don't think the Hilton gets very many thank-you notes. We get Christmas cards. But most of all, it's the interaction with guests. They appreciate John's breakfast. They appreciate tucking themselves into freshly ironed sheets the first night anyway.

John: And many of them are just fascinated by all of the objects and the furniture that is here in that Most places that people live, you can't fit the scale of what our pieces of furniture are as they would be totally out of place. And we're fortunate enough to have very 14-and-a-half-foot ceilings and lovely open spaces so that they can take interesting pieces of furniture and they don't have to be utilitarian. and that's a luxury and people are curious about it and if that's their area of interest. I had a woman from New Orleans here a couple of weeks ago, and she spied a case, a naturalist case, that's in the parlor. And she said, I just love that piece. And I said, well, we bought it in New Orleans. So people bring their tastes with them, you know, for what they what they're particularly looking for.

Josiah: That's such a good story, and I wonder, has there been sort of a guiding North Star as you've been collecting furniture and art? Because Joan, we were talking a little bit before we started recording, and you gave me a little bit of a tour, such a range of art and… It's us.

Joan: It's modern and traditional, and we, our taste is not so much Victorian as Georgian. But the whole house is a reflection of our taste, our travels, things that amuse us. And when the right people come, they're entertained and amused too.

Josiah: I love that. I wonder if you could speak a little bit about what you see as the power of hospitality because during the breakfast, I was able to join. There were people that I thought at first glance were maybe from different sides of the political spectrum. And San Francisco is an interesting city in that everyone has a very strong opinion about it. And sometimes when I meet someone, maybe that, for whatever reason, makes me think that maybe they're not going to like the city for whatever reason they're here. And I found over breakfast in the hospitality that you were providing, people were connecting with each other. And I felt like their perception of the city was changed by hospitality. And you must see this a lot. Do you feel like there's something about the power of bringing people into your place? That's an interesting point.

John: Yeah, we have people, I mean, you know, there's so much talk about negative things of San Francisco. We, last week, we had newlyweds. He was 81 and she's 76, and they had, this was their honeymoon trip. But they thought that San Francisco worked so well. They said the buses, they live in Manhattan, right? And the buses are so fast here. They get you from one place to the other. And they had so many positive things. People are so friendly. They stop and talk to you. You can talk on the bus. And what they were seeing, perhaps as newlyweds, but they were just seeing something that was much more positive than the kind of news cycle that we get of San Francisco falling apart. And, you know, people don't. Occasionally they say there's a lot of homeless people here, and we agree with that, and I do my little rap about homelessness in San Francisco and all the efforts that have been made to deal with it. But they generally find it as a really positive place, which it is. You know, it's just a lovely place to live and to be. And it's interesting, I think that energy gets passed on at the breakfast table. Because so people will say if they come down and they've had a negative experience, they saw something they didn't like, then they begin to hear other people talking about things that they did like. So it sort of balances it out. And you'll hear one guest suggesting to another, where to avoid or what not to do and also things to make sure to do and sort of reassuring one another about adventures that they can have here. So I do think the breakfast table helps with people's sense of security and excitement about being in the city.

Joan: A round table. It's intentionally a round table. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. If it were a rectangular table, you'd be talking to the two people across the way. And this is a round table, and we can sit 10, 11 is tight. And if we have an overflow, we'll put a family in the library. But the roundtable for dinner parties and breakfasts for guests is a key. I couldn't recommend it more highly.

John: Yeah, and people, oddly, I guess it's from the way all of us are raised, is that if you're sitting at the end of the table, people tend to defer to you, so your opinions are stronger than people that sit on the side so a round table allows you to everyone to be equal when they sit down in fact this round sits on top of the original rectangular table that was here when the women lived here before we bought the house but we had the round made immediately to change for our own personal use because the dinner party is but

Joan: Far more convivial.

Josiah: That's amazing. Before we go, I would love to get your advice on how we can be better neighbors to each other, better residents of San Francisco. And then for folks who are listening that are in other cities, I'm still curious on this because I feel you've been here for decades, you've been running this business. You've been showing hospitality. And I feel like we could all do better if we show up in our neighborhoods as active participants and have this welcoming sort of spirit. And so I'm curious, I'd love to hear from both of you, me starting with you, Joan, what comes to mind in terms of advice on how we can show up and, you know, be better to the people around us?

Joan: Oh, it's hard to define. You go ahead, John.

John: I believe in civility and treating people well and greeting one another. I think it's a series of little things. treating neighborhoods with respect so that, you know, you're just not driving through it. You're realizing that people live there and they have a life and sort of respecting that. But in general, I feel like if each of us is civil to one another, using that traditional word, the whole civilization is improved. And a lot of it has to do with respect and tolerance for all of us, because we're all a little strange.

Josiah: I think it starts at tables like this, in places like this, where we get to meet each other and maybe people that live a little differently or think a little differently. There's nothing like being together with someone to expand your mind a little bit.

John: Yes. you know, as animals we tend to want to reinforce our stereotypes. And so if you beat somebody that crashes that stereotype, that changes your world, and it's really a gift. So I do think that being able to really communicate with strangers for a while over breakfast, over a meal, can alter your worldview just a little bit.

Joan: I think the key is enjoying what you do. And not everyone has that privilege, but we do. And I think that that is evident to everyone who comes here. We really have a good time.

John: Yeah, I was raised on that. I remember when my father was an engineer and when he was advising us as we grew up, he'd always say, find something you like and do it. And it was never find something you like and make a lot of money. That was not the objective. It was to have a pleasing work life. And this is what could be a better retirement. A lot of jobs were not retired, but were no longer doing our office jobs. And we're no longer supervising other people, which is a big, big change. And we're no longer, I was, every September when we set the annual goals, I celebrate the fact that I'm no longer doing management by objectives. And so there are many pleasures, and you can just really do what pleases you. And if you do it well, people appreciate it. So it's a wonderful retirement. We meet new people, and you know, for two 80-year-olds, it often doesn't, you begin, your world begins to get smaller. interesting so you kind of see this with others where they're the world is smaller and we're because a lot of people aren't interested in talking to old people but you don't have a role that gets you interaction with interacting with people of different ages and we have a role that allows us to do that so it's It keeps us young, I think, in many ways. And it's nice for people to meet young people meet old people who are not boring. And so it goes both ways.

Josiah: You both feel like you have so much life, so much happiness that radiates from you both. And it's really cool to hear that. So I appreciate you sharing your stories because it inspires me. It shows me what's possible when you live this way, you work this way, you provide hospitality coming from that place. So thank you both for taking the time.

Joan: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.