On a single block of Vallejo Street between Webster and Buchanan, eighteen of the nineteen homes have a working piano. The nineteenth resident, a retired neurosurgeon, has a 1937 Mason & Hamlin in storage and says she will retrieve it when her shoulder heals.
I learned this from Donald Choi, 67, who has tuned pianos in Pacific Heights since 1989. Six of the eighteen pianos on the Vallejo block are his clients. He has tuned them, on average, twice a year for the last 24 years.
“I started keeping a list because the families wanted to coordinate the tunings,” he says. “If I am there for the Petersons, the Wangs next door call me. Why pay a separate trip charge.”
The pianos range from a 1922 Steinway L (the Wangs) to a 2018 Yamaha upright (the Petersons’ daughter, age 14, who is “extremely diligent and not very musical,” in her father’s words). One house has two pianos: a Bechstein in the front parlor and a Wurlitzer spinet in the kitchen.
“The kitchen piano is for the kids,” Donald says. “Mrs. Henderson plays the Bechstein. The kids bang on the Wurlitzer. It is more in tune than you would expect because nobody pretends to take it seriously.”
On the Tuesday I shadowed him, Donald tuned three pianos in five hours. He charged a flat $215 per piano. He has not raised his rates since 2019. He says he could charge double in this neighborhood and nobody would object. He says he has no interest in doing that.
“These houses are full of pianos because the families decided, at some point, to keep them,” he says. “The piano is the part of the house the family hands down. I am part of how that gets done. The price should not be the part anyone notices.”
