I interviewed a man who lived near Duboce Park a couple of years ago. He told me he looked out his window and watched his world change day by day. It’s like that now in San Francisco — something new almost every minute.

Three days ago, The Chronicle had a front-page story about Visa, the credit card company, signing a lease for a 13-story office tower just across McCovey Cove from the ballpark. It’s part of the Giants’ Mission Rock waterfront project, which will transform 28 acres of parking lot into 1,300 units of housing and 1.4 million square feet of office space. That’s enough new people for a small town, and enough office space to fill the Transamerica Pyramid two times.

Wow. I was pretty amazed when I was down there only last month, marveling at the glitzy new Chase Center and the Thrive City gathering space. Not to mention the boxy glass-walled condos in Mission Bay lining the edge of the bay. A group of us on a kind of waterfront walking expedition passed right by the Bay View Boat Club, a funky-looking establishment on Terry Francois Boulevard.

“That’s an old San Francisco place,” I said to my companions. “We’d better check it out before it vanishes.”

I went back the other Tuesday night. The Bay View is a private club. You have to know somebody to get in. That’s not hard if you have been around awhile. “I know Don Prell,” I told the man at the entrance. Prell is one of those San Francisco classics; he used to play bass in the Symphony, and jazz at other times. He plays at the Bay View every Tuesday.

Or did. Now he has to skip Tuesdays when the Warriors are in town, because when Chase Center has a game or an event and Thrive City is thriving, there’s traffic jams and no parking anywhere nearby. Unless you want to pay $40.

The Bay View Boat Club is a blue-collar kind of place, relaxed and easy, where the staff is all volunteers, a beer costs $3, and dues are only $250 a year. So $40 for parking that used to be free is a big deal, and may be a big problem for a little club.

The club is vaguely historic and salty. It was founded years ago on Innes Avenue in the Bayview district when there were lots of boatyards in the area. But the neighborhood changed, and in 1964, the members put the clubhouse on a barge, crewed up a tugboat and floated the club to China Basin. “It was the volunteer spirit of the time,” says Mary Buckman, who is vice commodore. “That was 50 commodores ago, and that spirit is still with us.”

Fifty commodores ago, what is now Mission Bay was a railroad yard; freight trains ran down the streets, and banana boats docked on Mission Creek. The world changed again, and the freight trains vanished, the warehouses closed and the land stood empty, waiting for the next chapter. The Bay View Boat Club and the Mariposa Hunters Point Yacht Club just down the street were surrounded by empty buildings.

But the two clubs flourished in an under-the-radar way — out of sight. The members drank beer, talked about boats, held an occasional regatta. Life went on. “Everyone who walks in the door sees what we are,” Buckman said. “This is old San Francisco the way it was and the way it should be.”

Everyone knows what happened next. “We are on the cusp of a tsunami of change sweeping down Third Street,” neighborhood activist John Borg said the year the ballpark opened.

Change came slowly, then all at once. Even as recently as five years ago, Terry Francois Boulevard was the seacoast of nowhere. “I heard a story about a beloved little house that became surrounded by bigger and bigger buildings,” Buckman said. “Everybody loved it so much they moved it to the country where the little house lived happily after.”

But Buckman said her story has a different ending. “We are going to stay, yes we are. Yes.”

She said the club is too good to lose. “We are being proactive. We arrange our events schedule to work around Chase Center,” Buckman said. The day Chase opened, Bay View members were outside: Prell playing his bass, members asking if anyone was interested in boats. If so, they said, come on down, give us a look.

They are working with the Warriors on the parking situation. They are looking for new members. They are determined.

It was around sunset the other Tuesday. Prell’s Sea Bop quartet was playing — Prell himself on bass, Jerry Logas on sax, Eugene Piner on piano, Jim Bovie on drums.

Prell closed his eyes sometimes, lost in the music. Soft jazz, perfect for an autumn night in what remains of the real San Francisco.

Carl Nolte’s column appears Sundays. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf