When Howard Gee recently walked down Grant Avenue in San Francisco's Chinatown, the din of the bustling neighborhood enveloped him from all sides. Wearing a blue skull cap and a stylishly patchwork chore jacket of indigo Japanese denim, he maneuvered the crowded sidewalk with all the confidence of someone who’d grown up in the neighborhood, which he did.

“This is the housing project I grew up in,” Gee said, staring up at a colorfully painted concrete apartment building on Pacific Avenue that stood out on a street of brick facades where laundry hung from windows. “I can tell you about every single corner of this building.”

It’s a street that holds many ghosts for Gee. It’s where he came of age, riding motorcycles and developing a love for fashion. It’s where he started his career as a clothing impresario. It’s where his father patiently waited three decades for his wife to join him after the Chinese Exclusion Act barred her from coming to the U.S. It’s a neighborhood brimming with memory for Gee.

“So many things to do,” Gee said, pointing to an alley where he and his friends played. “It was never boring.”

Though his store AB Fits in North Beach — "Any Butt Fits" is its nickname — has burnished Gee’s reputation as a purveyor of fine denim jeans and other clothing, he has never strayed far from his humble Chinatown roots. His store sits on North Beach’s Grant Avenue, less than five blocks from where he grew up. His original store was on the same block as his childhood home. His time as a kid running amok on the densely packed streets was a runway for his life in fashion.

“I remember very early on deciding on what to wear, how to express myself that way," Gee said.

These days Gee helps others figure out what they should wear, too. AB Fits has become a destination for lovers of high end denim jeans and other chic clothing which Gee handpicks from makers around the globe. He held up a pair of jeans made in Copenhagen, then chuckled as he grabbed another pair of jeans from a “Swedish company, made in Portugal with Italian fabric, sold in San Francisco by a Chinese person.”

“We have a tendency to buy things that are harder to find,” Gee said. “Our true customers expect to find things in here they never heard of.”

Though Gee’s fashions are at a higher end of the price point, it all fits in with a philosophy instilled in him by his late father, who appreciated a nice suit of clothes.

“My father would always say we were too poor to be cheap, so we would buy the better things,” Gee said. “We like to sell things that are long lasting, worth the money, high function.”

Gee’s parents were married in China through a marriage arranged by their parents. In the late 1920s, the plan was for Gee’s father to come to the U.S., line up a job and apartment before sending for his wife. But his plans hit a snag immediately upon arriving in the Bay Area when he was sent to the Angel Island Immigration Station.

Every day on the island he was subjected to questioning about where he’d come from, who had sponsored him, and his plans for the future. He remained there on the island purgatory for two years.

When he was finally released to begin his life as a free man, Gee’s father lined up a job in a Chinese-owned dry goods store and an apartment in Chinatown. But because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which effectively barred Chinese immigration and citizenship in the U.S. for a half century, his wife was not allowed to join him. In what seems like an unthinkable act of devotion, the couple waited for each other until 1943 when the government repealed the exclusion act, and she was allowed to travel to the U.S.

“My mother and my father waited for each other,” Gee said, shaking his head with disbelief. “I think that was for about 30 years.”

His mother was 50 years old when she arrived in San Francisco, and Gee was born less than a year later.

An early childhood picture showed him on a Big Wheel. Soon after he graduated to bicycles, riding like a daredevil through the crowded Chinatown streets. From there it was motorcycles — he assembled a Honda dirt bike from a box of parts and hit the streets.

But as his passion grew for motorcycles, so did his love of fashion. He remembered frequenting a clothing store that sold jeans. He was particularly fascinated by a pair of jeans, so special, they were kept in the back in a glass case.

“I remember in the back of the store there were some jeans in a case,” he recalled. “Jeans in a case you might say? Must be expensive. So I studied the label on the jeans.”

When the special pair of pants went on sale, Gee scraped together the money to buy them. The pants became a gateway drug into a world of high denim fashion.

“I realize that I was very comfortable with clothing and communicating with people about clothing," Gee said. "That’s how it first started.”

Of course, as the birthplace of Levi Strauss denim jeans, San Francisco is a jean-loving city. Even the city’s new Mayor Daniel Lurie is a descendant of the Levi Strauss family. It’s become standard uniform for the masses.

“People in this area really love their jeans and love to express themself through their jeans and their clothing," Gee said.

On the floor of his shop, behind the blue Dutch door, Gee is often in action — quietly nudging customers toward certain pieces. He counts celebrities and musicians as customers, yet everyone seems to get the same benefit of his expert eye.

“I think we do pretty good because they keep returning," Gee said.