Meet Jason Feng, perhaps San Francisco’s last newsstand owner

Regulars expect to find Jason Feng sitting in the green box no bigger than a tool shed, peering out from the middle doorway with a red news rack on one side and a yellow news rack on the other. What they might not know is that Feng oversees possibly the last newsstand in San Francisco.

Positioned at the intersection of Columbus Avenue, Stockton and Green streets, Feng sells newspapers seven days a week. His inventory — mostly the San Francisco Chronicle and Sing Tao Daily — reflects the geography. He’s in North Beach but close to Chinatown

Customers, almost exclusively over 60, come and go every few minutes, bringing daily sales to 30 or 40 newspapers, according to Feng, a 55-year-old who lives nearby in Chinatown.

“In the earlier years, we sold some 80 papers a day. Now it’s getting fewer and fewer and fewer. Where do you think those people have possibly gone?” Feng asked in Chinese. “Usually if a regular doesn’t come for a few days, the probability is that they have passed away.” 

“It’s winter now, older adults pass away more easily,” he adds, grimly. 

Nevertheless, Feng, who took over the green newsstand from his retired uncle in the midst of the pandemic, plans to remain. It beats driving for Uber, he said. What happens when he takes a vacation? He gets a friend to look after the booth. “It’s not that complicated,” he said.

Around 10 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, trucks delivering to the neighborhood grocery store and seniors dragging shopping carts made their way around Feng’s stand. 

His patronage is evenly divided into English- and Chinese-speaking customers. Feng, who hangs two Italian flags in the stall, believes sales would drop if he moved the newsstand to Chinatown, where many seniors kill time by reading newspapers but don’t like paying for them

“Chinese-language newspapers don’t sell well in Chinatown,” he said. “The elderly there struggle financially now and wouldn’t buy much.” That wasn’t always the case. Years ago, he said, a newsstand in front of the Ping Yuen affordable housing buildings sold hundreds of newspapers a day. 

Back then, the best-selling newspapers in Chinatown — the San Francisco Chronicle and Sing Tao Daily — were sold as a set, or “twins” for less than $2, Feng said in Cantonese.

Nowadays, the Chronicle alone runs $3, plus another $1 for Sing Tao. “That was at least seven or eight years ago,” said Feng. “A lot of the older-generation Chinese Americans in Chinatown knew English. Now they’re all in heaven.”

Feng also misses his peers in the newsstand business — there used to be four news racks at his intersection even just a few years ago, he said. Now there’s only one newsrack left, plus Feng’s newsstand. “Do you know why they are removing these newsracks?” he asks. “They were convenient for the elderly who didn’t want to walk far.” 

Feng hasn’t been able to find the answer to his question in the two Chinese-language newspapers, Sing Tao Daily and World Journal, that he reads religiously while sitting in his stall from 6 a.m. to noon every day.