Who Gets to Stay? Inside the Starship House of the Sunset

What happens when a home becomes more than real estate?

Welcome to the home of Jim Kirk (yes, that’s really his name), who lives in a house that has become memory, identity, and community all at once.

In this episode of The Sunset Connection, I record on location inside one of the most unusual homes in San Francisco’s Sunset District, known by neighbors as the “Starship House.”

Jim grew up in the Sunset and never really left. Over decades, he transformed his family home into something layered and deeply personal: part art installation, part time capsule, part gathering space. Kids wander in. Neighbors stop by. Stories live in every corner.

But now, the future of the house is uncertain.

This conversation isn’t just about one property. It’s about legacy. It’s about neighborhood change. It’s about what happens when rising costs, shifting priorities, and time itself collide with the places that hold our history.

What kind of Sunset are we building, and who gets to stay?

I’m Jessica J. Ho, and this is The Sunset Connection.

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The Sunset Connection — exploring the stories and histories that connect us.

Transcript

When A House Becomes Memory

Jessica J. Ho 0:03

What happens when a house becomes more than real estate? When it becomes memory, identity, and a question about what comes next. Today I'm recording on location in the Sunset District inside a home that feels like a cross-section of this neighborhood's past and its uncertain future. Lately, a lot of people have been asking me what I've been up to. And honestly, I've been doing a lot of real estate, but real estate isn't just contracts and escrow timelines. It's history, it's kids playing in the street, it's roller skating rinks. It's the version of the Sunset that some longtime residents still carry with them. And then there's Jim Kirk. Yes, that's really his name. Jim grew up here. He never really left. Over the years, he's transformed his family home into something layered and unmistakably personal. Walls covered in signs, artwork, objects collected over decades. Everything has a story. Now he's trying to figure out what happens to that story next.

Jim Kirk 1:02

Um, so are we rolling now? We're rolling. We're rolling. Uh you want to start with questions? Yes. Okay, go for it.

Jessica J. Ho 1:09

Yeah, so um, welcome back to the Sunset Connection. I am actually sitting in a very unique house. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a realtor. There is a really amazing home in the outer sunset that everyone needs to see. Uh and it would be just, I don't even know what it's called.

Jim Kirk 1:28

What do you what what would you call the uh they call the Starship House? Somebody called it a like a living art piece.

Jessica J. Ho 1:34

A living art museum.

Jim Kirk 1:35

A living art museum, yeah. And right now we're sitting on the bridge of the Enterprise from Star Trek.

Jessica J. Ho 1:41

So Yeah, like for listeners of the podcast, um, they can't see where we're sitting, but could you describe it to us?

Jim Kirk 1:47

I built the bridge of the Enterprise from Star Trek from 1966, the TV series. Um, and this is the bridge where they controlled the ship. And I built it actually for a film that I wrote. The inspiration behind the film was, I mean, partially because my name is Jim Kirk, like the captain of the original series. Um, another part of the inspiration was the fact that when they built the set back in 1966, it was pretty, you know, low budget. So I knew that I could probably pull it off because I built the whole thing out of Christmas lights and foam core and and two by fours and whatnot. But the real inspiration was the film touches on how do we get to that future. 300 years in our future, where Gene Roddenberry pictured this really positive outcome of our civilization. That was kind of the inspiration was how do we get there from like where we are today?

Jessica J. Ho 2:38

And for context, we are sitting in his backyard. Literally, if you've ever been to a Sunset home, it can be pretty boring in those yards. And he has transformed it into a starship, and he has games outside, and people come by all the time. It is in quite a lively setting.

Jim Kirk 2:56

Well, see, when I was a kid, we had Playland out here. There was the arcade of the Cliffhouse, there was the ice skating rink on 48th Avenue.

Jessica J. Ho 3:03

There was the bowling alley, right?

Building The Enterprise Set

Jim Kirk 3:05

The bowling alley. There was all these things. I don't know. Maybe I feel like my house is kind of trying to keep that that alive, like where there's kind of an open feeling and fun things for people to do, and people come here and they meet one another, and it's just kind of an open, open space for people. And so people love coming here. I feel like there's something for everybody. There's um, yeah, they call it the Starship House, but it's not just about Star Trek. It's it's it's got a little bit of everything. It's got you know rock and roll history, it's got the history of our neighborhood. I built a model of the Cliffhouse, you know, that used to with the old Cliffhouse that we used to have here. Um a lot of stuff is there's a lot of stuff about Playland and um Sutro. There's a concept we're building an amphitheater where the Sutro Baths used to be. I made a whole model diorama of that.

Jessica J. Ho 3:57

Right before we started this interview, people who are walking by after having lunch at underdogs too, and there's also, you know, neighborhood kids just like walk by and you know, they banter and they know each other. It's a really lovely community feeling that we get, I think, when we're here. So can I kind of start from the beginning and can you tell me a little bit more about where you were born and how you kind of came to the Sunset District?

Jim Kirk 4:25

So I was born here in the Sunset. My mother is from the East Bay, my father's Santa Monica, and they met here in the in the city. I grew up down at a Golden Gate Park.

Jessica J. Ho 4:36

You said your home was one of the first homes in the Sunset District.

Jim Kirk 4:39

That house I grew up in was built in 1911, 45th, between Lincoln and Irving. And ever since I was a kid, I've just always been like an artist.

Jessica J. Ho 4:48

And you said that when you were young you really wanted to be an archaeologist.

Keeping Playland’s Spirit Alive

Jim Kirk 4:56

I studied Egyptology, like you know, the discovery of King Tut's tomb, and I just was always fascinated by all that, you know, ancient history and just history in general. Um and so I would I would dig holes in the backyard, like excavating, hoping to find something um right there on 45th between Lincoln and Irving down by the Golden Gate Park. And that, like I said, that house was built in 1911. So it was one of the first homes built out here. Um, and I actually found some relics from the past. I've got a dog skull. I had the whole skeleton, but I still have the skull, and the dog tag reads 1915. So that dog is 110 years old, one of the first dogs that probably lived in the sunset. Um, there's also an Egyptian coin that I found that probably came from the Sutro Museum uh because it's 120 years. Yeah, the coin is 120 years old. Of course, when I was a kid, I thought it was thousands of years old, you know, and I was so excited to find this, you know, Egyptian coin. I love to create stuff and make stuff, and then so now, you know, 50 years later, my house has turned into like all my this is a collection of all my creations, all my collections. And so, yeah, this is just kind of what I do.

Jessica J. Ho 6:14

I just like to make stuff and were your parents really supportive of your artistic uh streak?

Jim Kirk 6:19

You know, my parents were. Um, my parents was separated when I was a little guy, and I had the stepfather, Tony Janeiro, he was an amazing guy. He was a professional boxer, he was in World War II. He was just an incredible guy, but he he wasn't the artist artistic type. Where my parents were actually my father's an artist, my mother's an artist, and so they were always very supportive. Uh, my stepfather not so much, but he he was a very strong influence on my life. So I was fortunate that way. They they let me kind of explore things and and kind of think for myself. And when I was a teenager, I used to move furniture and haul garbage. We'd go to these homes where we'd have to pull everything out. Um, it was almost like being an archaeologist because as a little kid I wanted to be an archaeologist. So that job I had when I was a teenager, um I used to find some really cool stuff, and that's part of my collection here is some of the stuff that I found over the years. I spent a lot of my teenage years out here in the sunset going to rock concerts, I play the guitar, and that was kind of the scene out here.

Jessica J. Ho 7:22

And you went to Lincoln High School, right?

Jim Kirk 7:23

I went to Lincoln High School, but that's what we would do. We would on the weekends, we'd go down to the beach, and we'd there's a lot of kegger parties, and then we'd go to all the rock concerts at the Cow Palace, and um, but yeah, I've been collecting and creating since I was a little guy. So my house is just filled with all these, you know, collections and creation creations that I've done over the years. So yeah, it's quite a thing to see.

Jessica J. Ho 7:50

And uh so you mentioned the house that you're living in, it which is um on 46th Avenue between Taraval and Santiago, it was owned by your your family.

Early Sunset Roots And Finds

Jim Kirk 7:59

Yeah, so growing up, this was um I grew up, like I said, down by the Golden Gate Park, and this house here on 46th in Terrabell that was my uncle's house. And so it's been in the family for three generations now. Um, it belonged to my uncle. Then when he passed away, my mom ended up with the house after we sold the other house. Um she ended up here, and then 25 years ago, I moved into the downstairs portion of the house. You know, I took care of my mom. We took care of each other. I had a place to live, and I would help her pay the bills, I would help her get through her appointments, take her grocery shopping, take her to church, take her to our doctor appointments, and we were just there for each other. And and so when she passed away, it's been about I don't know, seven, seven, eight years now. Um, after she passed away, a couple years went by, and my sisters, they don't even live in San Francisco, and they they sold the property, which I I can understand, you know, the property all these properties sell for a lot of money now. But I I always just assumed that I would keep the house in the family, and because my sisters, they have kids, and they could have inherited the property, and I don't know. I just kind of assumed we'd just keep it in the family, but that that wasn't the case. And uh fortunately, uh there I found this really nice couple that bought the house five years ago, and I've been working with them. Uh we do Airbnb upstairs to bring in money to, you know, to pay for to pay for the house, you know, to keep it going. So I run the Airbnb upstairs, I host it, I clean it, I um I take care of that, and I've also helped them on some of their other properties. Um But we've got you know, we've got a really I've got a really good relationship with the people who bought the house, but they're at the point where they they want to get out, they want to sell. And that was always understood from the beginning that they might want to want to sell it. Um so that's where I'm at now with it. I need to figure out how to basically how to buy it. And like we talked about, it's it's turned into kind of my house is kind of like a community center. But the community comes over, people come through, walk through, talk to one another, meet one another, all the kids in the neighborhood love to come here. So it's kind of already like a little community center, but I'd like to see it turn into an actual landmark, like maybe a some kind of after school program or maybe an art space where where, you know, the whole there's the whole upstairs to the house where we do the Airbnb. That could potentially be like a maker space, um, maybe an after-school thing for the parents to bring their kids. Um, but that's what I'm that's where I'm at with it now. And I need to I need to figure out what we're gonna do because the people who bought the house, they do want to sell. So we're kind of at a at a turning point right now. Well, and um we've had a lot of publicity lately. Western Neighborhoods Project, the new District 4 supervisor Alan Wong was here. Um, and I've got a lot of interest in the house, a lot of support. Um, but what that you know, what it's gonna turn into, we don't know yet.

Jessica J. Ho 11:09

Tell me about Java Beach and your history with them.

Family House Across Generations

Jim Kirk 11:13

I've been working for Java Beach now for 20 plus years, and me and Pat built the park at Java Beach, the little community park across the street from Java. Um So yeah, and Java Beach has been a big part of my life and a big part of the community. It's it's like that's it used to be a bar there when I was a kid. And now when since Pat took it over like 30 years ago, it's it's this coffee shop where people come and they meet one another and they just hang out and it's just it's incredible what it's done for the neighborhood and what it's done for me being a part of that. Um but yeah, I still work for them doing repairs and whatnot, painting and stuff.

Jessica J. Ho 11:53

So when you say the community, um do we know do you know like how many people that you're referring to that are like still here in in the Sunset District?

Jim Kirk 12:03

You know, a lot of the people that I grew up with here are not here anymore. I mean, Pat's still here. There's there's a group of people that have been here the whole time. Um but it's a lot of people I grew up with the 80s were kind of a wild time. There was a lot of drinking, and a lot I mean, a lot of the people that I grew up with either went to prison or they passed away or or they did, you know, do well for themselves. Like Metallica, they they used to hang out here all the time, and oh yeah, you'd see James Hetfield walking down the street or Kirk Hammett, and they obviously have done very well and they've moved on. Um But yeah, a lot of the original members of the Sunset out here are not here anymore. But Pat is one of the uh you know one of the original guys out here, and he's just done incredible things with that corner at Judah Street and turn it into a real community, community feeling where people come and they hang out, and there's been so many people that have gotten to know one another there. Um and then the park that we build across the street is a place where people can just come and hang out and yeah, it's been great being a part of that.

Jessica J. Ho 13:15

If you could wave a magical wand, like what would you like the future of the sunset to look like?

Jim Kirk 13:23

Well, uh, like I said earlier that when I was a kid here, we had a ice skating rink on 48th Avenue, we had the arcade up at the Cliffhouse, we had Playland at the beach, um stuff like that where the kids had somewhere to go. Kind of like what my house has become. Like it's a place where they can come and play games and learn about stuff. And um, I'd like to see more of that. Like I feel like everything they're building is either a housing project or a coffee shop. I'd like to see more focus on fun activities for the kids. Like the Sloat Garden Center, that building there, they want to turn that into uh and into a big housing project, which is you know, it's good to have housing, but they could turn that into like an arcade, a bowling alley. I don't know, something something really fun, like we like we used to have out here. Something fun.

Jessica J. Ho 14:18

What about for the adults too?

Jim Kirk 14:21

I feel like we've got plenty for the adults too. I mean, there's so many bars and restaurants and but I mean the adults could enjoy stuff like that too. If we had like another an ice skating rink or an arcade.

From Sale To Community Hub

Jessica J. Ho 14:32

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about your home and your life and how the sunset's been a big part of it.

Jim Kirk 14:42

Of course, yeah, and it's my pleasure. Um, and I appreciate your time, and I appreciate everyone who is showing an interest in the house. Like I said, I don't know what's gonna become of it, but hopefully we can make something happen here where the house can keep going. This one thing I can't imagine moving it. It's become like a part of the neighborhood, and just physically trying to move it would be next to impossible.

Jessica J. Ho 15:06

Sitting there, surrounded by decades of collective objects, I kept thinking homes like these aren't just structures, they're archives. As this neighborhood changes, these conversations matter more than ever. What kind of sunset are we building and who gets to stay? I'm Jessica J. Ho, and this is the Sunset Connection.