It's been three years since erstwhile street kid Jim Siegel celebrated four decades in business on Haight Street. Earlier this summer he logged a new benchmark: an official "legacy business" designation for his shop, Distractions, the Haight's steampunk and victoriana costumer of record.

Siegel went into business on Haight Street in 1976, when after years in the neighborhood as "one of those street kids that sat on the street, that was me," he took $5,000 in government aid and used it to open a shop called White Rabbit at 1409 Haight.

"It hadn't been rented since 1968," he said, recalling that the landlord gave it to him for free just to occupy it.

"I was just a street kid with nothing," Siegel said, "it changed my whole life. A lot of kids now don't have the opportunities that were available in the 1970s."

After a few successive business partnerships in other incarnations, Siegel opened Distractions in 1982, and has been in business ever since. By his reckoning he's currently the business owner of longest tenure in the Upper Haight (older businesses have been passed from generation to generation).

Asked whether the designation will change much for the shop's day-to-day life, Siegel said, "we get a sticker on the window, and there are some grants available, but it's more of an honor" than anything else. "I've been here, I've paid the dues."

As someone who recalls the boarded-up windows of the late 60s and 1970s, Siegel said the current climate for business on the street worried him.

"The construction, that's what's going to put everybody out of business," he said. "I know at least five stores that are telling me that if they have a bad summer they'll have to close."

Still, Siegel stays optimistic. "Hopefully things will change for the better," he said.

"I love the neighborhood. I've spent most of my life growing up in it, I had faith in it back when it was all boarded-up Victorians and I have faith in it now. I'm going to try to stick around and make something beautiful, I'm still very proud of it."