Walk A Crooked Mile - Expendable
Then … The FBI agents follow communist sympathizer Radchek to a house in the Hayes Valley/Lower Haight district where he has rented a room in a Victorian Italianate building with three identical side-by-side units - 151, 153 and 155 Octavia Street bordering Rose Street (map).
and Now, that building has been torn down, replaced as has so often happened with a contemporary structure, 200 Rose Street, contributing no architectural interest whatsoever. Because of its ground floor garages this is one of the thousands of so-called ‘soft’ structures in San Francisco that are vulnerable to the next big earthquake unlike the extant solidly magnificent Victorians still standing across Rose Street.
Radchek climbs the middle set of stairs. Later he tells a contact that he is staying at “153 Octavia Street, 2nd floor front” which is the correct and precise address; unusual for a film script not to use a fictitious address, even back then.
Then … Ahead, Page street crosses in this view down Octavia from the newel post of the staircase above and that’s the Page Street Market on the corner at 198 Page.
Later … this 1991 view across Page and down Octavia shows dramatic changes. By 1959 the double-decker Central Freeway had been built after widening Octavia by razing several blocks of houses on its east side. The Page Street Market would have been under the freeway at the right edge of this photo.
and Now, another dramatic change! The freeway, damaged in the 1989 earthquake, was closed in 1996 and torn down in the early 2000’s, transforming Octavia into a wide, tree-lined road free of concrete blight.
O’Hara wiretaps Radchek’s phone and hears him speak to a contact - ‘Igor’. Not much to go on, but a definite lead.
Shortly afterwards they find, apparently deemed expendable by his contacts, Radchek’s murdered body in his room. The search for the FBI agent’s killer goes on.