Ross Alley

This guide to Ross Alley in San Francisco's Chinatown opens on a police raid at the Siberia Club, one of dozens of gambling houses once packed into the city's oldest alley, run by a man contemporaries called the king of Chinatown's gamblers. It traces the iron doors installed to buy gamblers a few extra seconds to hide their cards, the brothels and pawnshops that crowded nearby, and the Tong enforcers who settled scores here. Listen for how the alley's business changed decades later, and what replaced the smell of gunpowder.