The cornerstone of the New Liberation Presbyterian Church that was dedicated 41 years ago this month on San Francisco’s Divisadero Street quotes the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth! Do you not perceive it?”

But even a prophet might not imagine what has happened to Divisadero, once a street for middle-class San Francisco to shop and then a near rival of Fillmore Street when the Western Addition was the Harlem of the West.

Now Divisadero is the main street of NoPa, short for North of the Panhandle, a hip, happening neighborhood of mostly young, mostly white, mostly new San Franciscans.

You don’t have to go far to see it. Only a couple of blocks from the historically black New Liberation church is the year-old Kava Lounge, in a building that has been a church, a mortuary and a 99-cent store. And now it’s a drinking establishment where the beverage of choice is kava, made from the root of a plant that grows in the South Pacific. The Kava Lounge is very cool, a great place to take someone for a nonalcoholic date or a nightcap. It’s dark and soothing, something new in an old location, like Divisadero Street itself.

“Divisadero is the San Franciscan’s street,” said Alva Capia, who scouted the city a year ago to find the perfect spot for San Francisco’s first kava bar. “I looked all over — the Mission, Valencia Street, Polk Street — but this was it.”

The street, he said, is in the center of the city but away from the bustle of downtown. And it has a good vibe.

You have to go there at night to see the street in its glory, the bars and restaurants packed, the sidewalks full of people, lines out the door at the Madrone Art Bar on weekend evenings.

Divisadero is an old street. It was the western boundary of the city 160 years ago, but now it’s young. It may be illegal — or more likely unhip — for anyone over 35 to be on the street after dark. It’s like a college town for postgraduates.

“Divisadero” is the Spanish word for a dividing line, like a frontier, much in the way “Embarcadero” is a place to embark on a voyage. So the name is apt.

You want history? Divisadero has some large and classic Queen Anne Victorians. Also San Francisco’s first parklet.

Back to Gallery Old Divisadero Street now magnet for the young 4 1 of 4 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 2 of 4 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 3 of 4 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle 4 of 4 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle







The heart of the street is the strip between Geary Boulevard south to Haight Street. It is bookended, you might say, by Chicago’s Barbershop at Golden Gate Avenue, and by J.P. Kempt Barber, seven blocks south at Haight and Divisadero. Chicago’s is an upscale shop where the customers are mostly African American; Kempt is an upscale establishment where the clientele is mostly white. Chicago’s Barbershop has been in business for 75 years; Kempt is new to San Francisco.

In between, Divisadero Street is a mix of old San Francisco and the new city. There are traditional corner grocery stores and, between Hayes and Fell, the Bi-Rite Market, a grocery purveyor to the tech boom, where everything is sustainable, gluten-free and pricey. Auto repair shops are just up the street from the Mojo Bicycle Cafe, which offers coffee, beer and bike repairs, or the Vinyl Coffee and Wine Bar at Oak and Divisadero, where 14 of the 20 customers the other evening were tapping away on laptops.

We had a drink there with Charles Dupigny, the newly elected president of the North of Panhandle Neighborhood Association. Dupigny, 31, has lived in the neighborhood since 2010.

Dupigny is upbeat and enthusiastic about the area. He likes the community feel of NoPa. “It’s a city within the city,” he said. And he is fond of Divisadero. “You can get everything you need on this street,” he said.

He likes the creativity he sees in the area. There’s art and music, a weekly farmers’ market and various community events, the next one a nighttime art walk on Divisadero on Feb. 16. “People live here and work here,” Dupigny said.

Like most of the San Franciscans you meet these days, Dupigny came from somewhere else, in his case Sierra Leone. He was drawn to San Francisco because, he said, “here you have the freedom to be who you are.”

But all of that has a price. New people and the money they brought to the area have made San Francisco one of the country’s most expensive cities to live in.

It is one of the factors that have contributed to the population shifts in the city, so that much of the old Western Addition became NoPa, and the working people moved away.

“They always told us there would be a place for our community,” said Carl Payne, a retired Muni man and police officer. “But they didn’t tell us we could afford it.”

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears every Sunday. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf