Basic Information : Synopsis : Expectations : Thoughts : Evaluation : Book Group : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : Table of Contents : References
Basic Information:
Author: Gary Kamiya
Edition: epub on Libby from the Los Angeles Public Library
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 9781608199600 (ISBN10: 1608199606)
Start Date: February 3, 2024
Read Date: February 24, 2024
385 pages
Genre: History, Short Stories, San Francisco, Walking
Language Warning: Low to Moderate
Rated Overall: 4½ out of 5
History: 4 out of 5
Synopsis:
Kamiya lays out San Francisco in a grid of 49 squares. He then tells stories about each square. Some are gold rush stories, some of the Native Americas and some much more modern. All are interesting. In essence this is a series of short stories tied together to talk about how come San Francisco is like it is today.
Date Became Aware of Book: December 2023
Why do I want to read this book: I saw this book in San Francisco. Then saw it on another list. So I asked for it on Libby-there was a wait list. It sounded like a detail description for parts of San Francisco which I had not visited. Maybe there would be something which I would like to see.
What do I think I will get out of it? Possibly adding to what i want to see in San Francisco.
Thoughts:
Because of my father, San Francisco will always be The City and never Frisco or even San Fran.
The title of this book comes from a line in a George Sterling poem.
Preface
This book begins and ends with walking. Its spirit is ambulatory—the product of the countless explorations I have made across San Francisco on foot. He describes his methodology and reasons. The reasons started out as trying to get himself oriented in Golden Gate Park-that took him 20 days, at about an hour or two a day. He divided it up into sections, explored each section until he knew it. He realized that he only knew bits and pieces of his city, San Francisco. So he did the same thing. What drove him to do this? Curiosity. His role model? John Muir and how he explored the Sierra Nevada, just to do it.
Interesting way to figure out a city. I wonder how far we can carry this out. Such as, can we do this with Fresno? With Yosemite? (this gets a bit harder as Yosemite is big and rugged.) Still the idea is there. How much do I really know about what is around me?
A whimless city is a diminished city, a city whose mysteries are kept under lock and key, a city that repeats itself like a scratched record. I like this statement. Can I really wander around Fresno? Or do I only go places with a purpose?
I discovered that systematic flitting, if not the secret to human happiness, is a pretty good start.
He did not include everything into this book. He divided up the City into 1,000 sections and probably touched at least every section. He does not claim to have explored it all. This is not a guidebook, but a set of thoughts on the City.
Man’s maturity,” Nietzsche wrote, “consists of regaining the seriousness one had when a child at play.”
The real treasures are right under our noses. We just need to look.
Introduction
In the spirit of Hokusai and Rivière, this book is a series of 49 portraits of San Francisco. Both of these artists presented a series of views on a subject. Kamiya is doing the same with San Francisco, or at least something similar.
It is not a strictly chronological tale. There is a historical through-line here, but it is constantly interrupted and intersected. Space trumps time. Actually as I read this book, the order is somewhat whimsical. It is wherever he decides to start talking. In the previous chapter he talks about opening up a map and going wherever a dart lands-figuratively.
He notes a poem at Alice Marble Park-this is really George Sterling Park which is where the title comes from: The Cool, Grey City of Love” by George Sterling
Chapter 1: The Outer Limits
Talks about the Farallon Islands. Most of the chapter is a description of the islands. But he does say that San Francisco from the ocean side is not too impressive. From the Bay side it is. Also that San Francisco grew from the Bay, not the ocean.
Chapter 2: Adventures in the Skin Trade
Talks about the Tenderloin. It is in the center of San Francisco, full of misfits and the oddballs of the City. Why does the City allow it to continue? it’s simply an inescapable consequence of their laudable commitment to defend society’s most vulnerable members. Nobody has figured out how to serve the “deserving” without including everybody else. Kamiya notes that my subsequent experiences in the Tenderloin have involved some kind of sin.
He then describes the vibe of the area. There is a lot here which would not be considered PG, but not quite R rated.
He then gives the history of the area, going back to 1847. Going from dunes to development in 20 years. And by the 1880’s brothels were opened up. 1906 destroyed the Tenderloin. Most of the deprivation was not dangerous, just low class. But in the 1980’s it became dangerous as well.
Chapter 3: The Alcatraz Triangle
Talks about three rocks just to the north of Alcatraz-Harding, Arch and Shag Rocks. They were dynamited in 1901 as a hazard to navigation. But they had been destination points. The fact that there was a Gold Rush–era aquatic thrill ride in the middle of the bay is an odd footnote to San Francisco history.
This gives Kamiya the opportunity to talk about the ancient history of the region.
Chapter 4: Stairway to Heaven
About the Filbert stairs. We came close to walking this in December 2023, but did the Greenwich Stairs instead.
San Francisco is filled with steps and staircases, shortcuts and obscure passages. These walkways constitute a kind of alternative and secret grid, a human-size way of moving through the city. This seems about right. In December 2023, and since then, we made a point of going up and down several sets of staircases, just because they were there. It was a fun way to explore parts of the City. A delicious, slightly illicit quality hangs over stairways; walking on them has a faint whiff of climbing over the neighbor’s fence, an essential tactic in reclaiming one’s city and one’s soul.
Kamiya grows absolutely lyrical about the stairs in this city. He considers the Filbert Steps as being the best in the City. He notes the harmony between the human and the natural in these stairs.
The Filbert Steps run between Coit Tower and the waterfront, but they take you to the best destination of all: nowhere. On those worn steps, surrounded by fuchsia and redwood and magnolia and cypress and roses, the city fades away. You and this verdant dell are all that’s left, a green thought in a green shade.
Chapter 5: The Harbor at the End of the World
Talks about why Drake’s Bay, which Drake thought was San Francisco Bay should be considered the end of the world. It sits on a different tectonic plate than San Francisco. San Francisco remained pretty much hidden as ships sailed up and down the California coast. Its entire early history is one of futility—missed opportunities, blind alleys, roads that led nowhere, farcical mistakes, and enormous events that it had nothing to do with.
Kamiya talks about the various near misses of explorers, trying to find the Bay. Some even thought that the peninsula or even California was an island. The name California comes from an early Spanish novel about an Amazon queen called Calafia. Know, then, that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise, and it was peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they lived in the fashion of Amazons.
More history of exploration.
Chapter 6: The Canyon
Kamiya talks about Mystery Hills. This is not a name of a ridge or a set of hills, rather his name for hills he cannot identify. This gets him talking about Glen Canyon-this is a mystery gorge. Few know about it. It is the wildest part of San Francisco. Called the Little Switzerland. Islais Creek runs through it. More history of the area.
Chapter 7: The Temple
Palace of Fine Arts-created in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition and to show the world that San Francisco was back from the 1906 earthquake. It is the only building left from this. Created by Bernard Maybeck.
Chapter 8: The Long March
History of finding San Francisco and the first European settlement. This was in the Richmond District at a place called Mountain Lake-which we walked by in October 2024. Then the area around Mission Dolores was established around the time of the Americans declaring their independence. Also around the time of the celebration of Saint Francis.
Chapter 9: The Borrowed City
Weather and microclimates.
Chapter 10: The Lost River
The author talks about how San Francisco did not have a natural beauty originally. Instead it was built upon. San Francisco is the urban equivalent of an English garden, an artful blend of wildness and cultivation.
Mission Bay is an example of this. He talks about how it was transformed from wetlands into prime real estate. But you can still see parts of the water now. The Oakland Museum has published a Creek and Watershed map.
Cities are museums of time, and to live in them is to be haunted by the places they once were.
Chapter 11: Our Lady of Sorrows
Mission Dolores-oldest building in San Francisco. The Indians who lived around there were mostly wiped out due to disease. Last descendant died in the 1920’s. The idea of the Spanish was to emancipate the Indians after 10 years of service. That did not work out. Most of the Indians did not take to the Spanish ways. In 1834 the missions were secularized by Mexico.
Kamiya goes further into the relations of the Indians and Missions.
Chapter 12: Maximum City
Kamiya talks about the iconic scenes from the City. And then he says that Every tourist has felt the letdown of being unable to see some world-historical monument because they’re trapped inside a guidebook’s description of it. He notes that a city, including San Francisco, has a tendency to be reimagined by its postcards.
Today there is a sense that San Francisco has become too expensive to be anything else but a high-priced, large playground. Money has a homogenizing effect. San Francisco feels less eccentric, and a lot less blue-collar, than it used to.
He asks, has San Fancisco lost its soul? Its vibe? He takes a cable car tour of the City to help him answer the question. The two most popular lines, the north-south Powell-Hyde and Powell-Mason lines, carry almost exclusively tourists, but the east-west California Street line carries quite a few locals, people who live on Nob Hill or the southern edge of Pacific Heights and work in the Financial District. Kamiya then takes us on a tour of the California Street line, showing that there are different neighborhoods living side by side.
Chapter 13: Outside Sands
This chapter talks about Baker Beach. This is where Burning Man started. It used to be a gay pickup place.
Chapter 14: Pluto on the Pacific
Background on the Presidio. Was not an illustrious outpost of the Spanish Empire. Also goes through how the Spanish designated their races. The Presidio went downhill fast. More is told about it.
Chapter 15: The Chronicler
Talks about the impact which Herb Cain had on the City. He loved the City and was a great newspaper man. He brought a perspective to what he talked about. Also humor and poetry. The lesson he left for Kamiya was: You gotta enjoy it, all of it.
He defended those who were indefensible. He hobnobbed with the upper-crust. He could see where San Francisco needed to change, but never turned against her. He taught us how to grow old.
Chapter 16: The Country in the City
Talks about a walk which Guy Debord and Ivan Chtcheglov did around Paris-Wikipedia does not talk about these walks. The idea was to walk the city in a different way than what they normally did-to disorient themselves and see the city from a different perspective. They called these walks dérives, or creative drifts. Debord thought these walks were part of a new science: psychogeography.
Kamiya realized that when you took away the wackiness of what they were doing, this was what Kamiya was doing. He then goes on and talks about Bernal Heights. San Francisco is made up of forced neighborhoods-forced because of the terrain. Bernal Heights vibe is like the Gold Rush. The hill this is based upon is barren and is 433’ high. Talks about the eccentricness of the area. This includes a trail which goes 100’ above Highway 280. The streets tend to jut out at strange angles. He lived here for a while.
Kamiya likes to go to high spots in town and look for bare spots and explore them.
Chapter 17: Huck’s Hideaway
Talks about the writers who have inhabited San Francisco, especially in Yerba Buena-meaning Good Herb.Talks about the change from Spanish rule to Mexican to United States.
Talks about William Richardson who became the first resident of Yerba Buena. He was an English sailor who jumped ship in 1822. Married the Commandant's daughter.
Dick-Young Apartments-825 Grant St. Site of William Richardson tent.
Juana Briones-lived just outside of the Presidio on Lyons street.
Portsmouth Square-ground zero of San Francisco
There is a bike route called The Wiggle which connects Mission Dolores and the Presidio.
Chapter 18: The Dead City
Explorers live for the moments of discovery. The places of discovery for Kamiya are the wastelands of the City, the places which no one wants to go to. A city without wastelands is a city without soul. These are places which were once vibrant and now are left to rot away or places of discard.
In this chapter he is looking at many of the discarded docks and shipyards. He goes to Indian Basin and Hunters Point. Hunters Point is not an area most people visit. Even cab drivers would not go there particularly after dark.
Lots of history about the place. He notes that the buildings he was seeing were once big and strong. Now they were desolate. When he saw a sign saying “Toilet”, the place became personal, full of people’s lives. His conclusion were: it struck me that wastelands were not always what they seemed
Chapter 19: The Bridge
Talks about the Golden Gate Bridge and the different views. He notes that like all great human creations, …[it] reflects and distills and deepens whatever one brings to it. The bridge gets hidden often in the fog. And from that perspective, San Francisco was an undesirable location for the Indians.
The bridge is a showcase of man over nature. It shows the American spirit of subduing nature. It is a metaphor for the City in that on one side is man the other side is the world. When the soldiers came home from war aboard a ship, passing under the bridge meant they had come home.
Chapter 20: Californio Dreaming
Point Rincon-First&Harrison St
Point Rincon was a popular recreation site in the early days of San Francisco. Talked about those who had wealth in the early days, before the gold rush when San Francisco still belonged to Mexico. There was class distinctions. Everybody had status over the Indians while those who were new to the area was less than the Californio’s/mestizos who posed as coming from Spain. The higher up, the less work they did.
A Lot of intercultural marriages, mostly white men marrying Hispanic women.
When Americans came over the Sierra, there was conflict. Texas held a lot of the key to it. Californios were called greasers.
Chapter 21: The Puertozuela
Low point between Nob and Russian Hills, called The Puertozuela.
Anybody who has been in San Francisco knows, avoid the hills, if possible. Every low point in San Francisco’s terrain collects history the way a fence in the desert collects tumbleweeds. I just like this imagery. The Puertozuela means low pass. In the middle of it was something called The New Russian Hill Market.
Chapter 22: The Lotus-Eaters
Yerba Buena
Juana Briones - her ghostly presence lives on in the rectangular notch, now occupied by six houses, that dents the Lyon Street wall marking the Presidio’s borders. We walked along this wall in Dec 2023. Did not notice the dents, but now we will need to go back there again. I also remember this name around the area which I grew up in, but I do not have any specifics.
Talks about several of the early people in this neighborhood-along the lines of the 1830’s. Also some background about the impact of Texas being annexed into the United States.
Chapter 23: The Last Roll
Talks about the Cable Car Barn. Mason between Washington and Pacific. Then talks about the vigilanties. This is the area where the vigilantes were. Talks about putting the cable cars away for the night.
Chapter 24: The Farce
Talks about San Francisco’s role in the Bear Flag Revolt, including the storming of Vallejo’s residence in Sonoma. Talks about where the current California flag gets the term California Republic. The Mexican-American war was just an excuse for the United States to expand. Ulysses S. Grant, who gained his first combat experience in the war, later wrote, “To this day [I] regard the war … as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”
Chapter 25: A Streetcar to Subduction
Billy Goat Hill-30th and Castro
Clyde Wahrhaftig-geologist. Studied San Francisco, particularly Golden Gate Park.
geology is just stargazing while looking down.
A Streetcar to Subduction, Wahrhaftig takes the reader on a guided tour, via public transportation and foot, to seven geological sites in San Francisco and the Bay Area. The book can be gotten off of the Advanced Earth and Space Science site.
Billy Goat Hill has three of the most important San Francisco rock formations. Talks about the three types of rocks: pillow basalt, radiolarian chert, and graywacke. Also talks about the various terrane-I think this may be something like strata. But as far as geography, it is not impressive. Goats used to be grazed on the hill.
Conclusion of the chapter was that Kamiya will never be able to tell rocks apart, but that when he sees a rock, it will no longer be just a rock to him.
There is also a Gold Mine Hill.
Chapter 26: The Delirium
Portsmouth Square, Washington and Kearny Streets
Talks about the impact of the Gold Rush on San Francisco. Talks about Sam Brannan. The male population of San Francisco took a steep nose dive with almost all able bodied men going to the gold fields within weeks. Ships were deserted and the Bay filled with them. Over 47 ships are buried in the cove to the east of San Francisco where they rotted. Winter of 1849-50 was the wettest on record-all was mud. No paved streets or sidewalks. People sank 4’ in the mud. Drinking and gambling were the two favorite pastimes in the city. Over half of the women in the City were prostitutes-700 out of 1,200.
House at 825 Francisco Street was made out of salvaged timber from the ships.
Chapter 27: The Balcony
Larsen Hill-Is this Lassen Peak where Lassen park is?
In those youthful days, I went for straight beauty. I had not yet learned to appreciate the charms of the banal. Isn’t this true of all of us? We get used to what seems uninteresting, but never give the common a chance to shine. This is true of places, and of people.
There is a dividing line of peaks between East and West San Francisco: Mount Sutro, Twin Peaks, Mount Davidson and Diamond Heights.
There are four hills that make up Golden Gate Heights: Lassen Peak (Grandview Park), Rocky Outcrop, Golden Gate Heights Park and Hawk Hill. We have gone up to Grandview via the 16th St stairs. These are built on the sand dunes which once dominated the City.
He then talks about the more prosaic views-stucco walls, gas station lined streets, … He notes that he does not know how to make them seem beautiful, but given the right atmosphere, they are.
Chapter 28: City Limits
2629 Bayshore Boulevard-San Francisco-San Mateo County Line
This area in South San Francisco is a lost world. Its claim to fame is the Malvina Reyonds song, Little Boxes. He intends to walk the County border line. Starts off at Mussel Rock/Fort Funston Beach. The San Andreas Fault goes into the ocean here. Walking the line is harder than appears on the maps. There is a monument close to Lake Merced where David Terry, former California Supreme Court Justice shot Senator David Broderick in the last major duel in the United States.
Patty Heart hid around here at 625 Morse Street. Visitacion Valley-a very dangerous place.
He describes a lot of the area he goes through, places which he never knew about.
He then visits a bar right on the county line. The owners had painted a line going down the bar, one side being in San Francisco, the other San Mateo-7 Mile House and a variety of other names. San Francisco had a 2am alcohol cutoff time. San Mateo did not. Patrons would step over the line to continue drinking. Kamiya is given a tour of the building and some of the history.
Chapter 29: The Torch
Palace Hotel, New Montgomery and Market St
Area was where the 49ers camped and called Happy Valley, but to those who were there then, it was not a happy place. Death from dysentery often happened, as high as 1 out 5 died within six months of getting to San Francisco. Greed brought them to San Francisco, but what they found was a freedom from all of their past life. This led to a kind of very loose morals. .
Chapter 30: The Park
Kamiya notes that Parks are infallible signs of civilization. Golden Gate Park is a result of San Francisco realizing that it could not always be a wild city. At the very beginning, the city’s lawless, every-man-for-himself ethos was liberating. But Hobbes soon replaced Rousseau.
Early on corruption and crime went hand in hand. The San Francisco business formed the largest vigilante group with 6,000 people in the United States.
The city was not attractive, nor was there anything in the city to make it interesting. This led the City to have Olmstead come in and design a park. The result is Golden Gate Park. Talks about how the planners overcame the sand dunes and created the park. How Golden Gate Park seems like it is wild and unknowable, but it is almost all man-made. cities always violate nature meaning that they need to subdue nature in order for them to create a city.
Chapter 31: Hill of Hate
Pacific Union Club, Mason and Suchman Streets
Pacific Union is an all male private club. This is the last remaining building on Nob Hill from before the 1906 earthquake. While living up there was a status symbol, it was also a place which irritated the common folk, enough to riot against them.
Talks about the place silver had and how the prices were manipulated.
Talks about Nob Hill-maybe a corruption of nabob, meaning wealthy person. It is very steep.
Talked about the race riots against the Chinese because the rich were hiring cheap Chinese to work.
Linden Towers-in Menlo Park. Is this still around today?
Calvinist admiration for wealth-what does this phrase mean? Is the desire for wealth part of Calvinism?
Chapter 32: Happy Trails
Tank Hill, Clarendon and Belgrave Ave
Unlike most other cities, there are dirt trails which are not part of a park throughout the city. These are the informal trails which residents use as shortcuts. Such as a trail at the end of Filbert and Varennes Ave. There is a gate which asks you to shut it, there is a trail which leads around to the north onto Telegraph Hill. Or there is one besides 275 Beacon St which ends up on Walter Haas Playground. There are even unpaved streets in places.
Great cities invite you to love them in extreme close-up, to love every inch of them.
Chapter 33: The Balloon
Vallejo Street east of Florence Street-Ina Donna Coolbrith Park. Close to the Vallejo Steps. Best view of downtown. Coolbrith was a friend of Bret Harte and Charles Warren Stoddard.
Talks about a local magazine called the Lark.
Fun, like friendship, leaves no tangible traces
Chapter 34: The Front Door
The Ferry Building-best way to see this building: at night, in the fog and from the water. The Ferry Building is how the majority of people came to The City before the Bay Bridge was built. Also about the same time, San Francisco was transformed from being a city of workers to a city of executives.
Mel Scott-city planner did a survey in 1961 which showed how different the Bay and the City had become.
Chapter 35: A Tale of Two Earthquakes
274 Shipley Street, Between Fifth&Sixth. Talks about the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes and the impacts they made on the city. He draws on reports for the 1906 and his own personal experiences for 1986.
During the 1906 earthquake, the fire chief died when the building was partially destroyed.History might have been different if he had survived.
Arnold Genthe-photographer of the 1906 earthquake. One of his photos was voted one of the 10 best news photographs of all time.
A hydrant at 20th and Church worked. This golden hydrant is still there. It is painted gold every April 18.
The remains of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake was similar to the bombed out cities of World War II.
Duino Elegies[book], Rilke wrote, “For beauty’s nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure.”
San Francisco offers a rare gift: a chance to live face-to-face with the inhuman universe. That gift comes at a price. But it is one that those of us who live here are willing to pay. To dance on the brink of the world
Chapter 36: City Beautiful
Downtowns are usually invisible. What does he mean by this? He says that usually we are too busy to notice it. Or do they just seem so impersonal that they do not exude any reason to be noticed? He notes that before 1950, the skyline of San Francisco followed the contours of the hills they were built on. With the skyscrapers which have been built, we have lost the contour of the hills and see only the high rises.
He talks about Union Square. Grant Avenue realize that they are walking down a street that a leading California architectural journal once called the greatest architectural street in the world. … Urban architecture turns out to be the last cheap thrill. All you need is a little curiosity, and a few books, and you get a free lifetime pass to an entirely new city.
There is a San Francisco architecture, not just the houses which are out there, but also the buildings built after 1906.
Daniel Burnham designed the 1893 World Exposition’s White City in San Francisco. In 1904, Mayor Phelan invited him to upgrade the look of the city. From Twin Peaks, he looked down and made his design. Daniel Burnham famously said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.” His design was to make San Francisco to be the Paris with hills. While after the 1906 earthquake his ideas were not implemented, they did influence how San Francisco was rebuilt. Around Union Square much of the influence is still shown. Kamiya goes on and talks about the buildings around there.
Chapter 37: Trying to Find Chinatown
Tien Hou Temple, 125 Waverly Place
Childhood visions don’t die; they become ghosts. … For me, everything that is unknown and alluring and intricate and deep and wondrous about cities, especially cities at night, goes back to that flickering neon memory.
He notes that at night, Chinatown looks magical. During the day, it is a slum.
The Chinese did not intend to stay-the Chinese government could execute their families back home, if they did. hoodlums (the word, of uncertain etymology, originated in San Francisco). There was much prejudice against the Chinese.
Kamiya goes over how Chinatown was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. Deception is an odd quality to be the foundation of a legendary neighborhood … Even the cheesiest and most artificial historical object becomes authentic once it gets old enough. … Chinatown’s appearance captures one critical moment in the long process by which an immigrant group, once outsiders and subjected to bigotry, intolerance, and violence, becomes a part of America.
After the 1906 earthquake, and the realization that San Francisco needed the Chinese-not an opinion by default, a magazine published this: We have unwittingly perhaps held up to the public gaze for too long the more sensational phases of Chinese life. We have concentrated our vision over much on the differences between their lives and ours … and thus the racial gulf that separates the yellow and white peoples of the earth becomes increasingly widened instead of being bridged.”
Kamiya notes that there is a lot there which you would currently call a slum. But there is almost no crime in that area. He then goes into the dynamics about how the rental situation there works.
Chapter 38: Deserted Cities of the Heart
Great Highway and Balboa-Playland
16 places which are no more.
Chapter 39: Port of Embarkation
Talks about the part San Francisco played in World War II and how the war impacted San Francisco.
Chapter 40: The End of the Road
Talks about Jack Kerouc and Alan Ginsberg. The book On the Road is taken from part of Kerouc’s journey. The beat writers town it was. A lot about North Beach. The Moloch section of the Howl poem was about San Francisco in the Ginsberg poem. Artists here are always at risk of merely gesturing at the self-sufficient world. San Francisco was the perfect place for the beats.
Chapter 41: The Haunted House
Talks about the odd arrangement of swank meeting unswank meeting Jazz around this area. Also a line of transplanted Victorian houses. Also talks about a black neighborhood and Japanese neighborhood-there is a mention of Livingston and Cortez. Talks about the effects of the interment on San Francisco. It was a boom for Blacks as they were able to take over some of the functions the Japanese did. This led to jazz coming into play in San Francisco.
Raises the question, does concentration of ethnicities make racism easier?
When the Japanese came back, it was a different city. Only about a third returned. They were met with employers who would not hire them. Some workers would not work with them.
Also there was urban renewal which cut down older neighborhoods, usually minority, including the Japanese.
Marcus Books was the oldest Black owned bookstore in America.
Chapter 42: If You Were a Bird
Lily Pond, Hippie Hill, Golden Gate Park
Talks about the 1967 Summer of Love. The hippies did not appear out of a void. They were creatures of a disturbed leisure society. The establishment did not welcome this, but certain elements, like the Chronicle did. The whole experience seems to be summed up with this: What if it isn’t as it seems … as acid has shown me life ought to be. He suggests that there is no one place which epitomizes this Summer. But maybe a tour of places in Golden Gate Park: Children’s Playground, Hippie Hill, Lily Pond.
Chapter 43: The Greatest of These
Talks about Gays in San Francisco and the effect of the AIDS crisis.
Chapter 44: Rota Fortunae
South Park was central to bums before the .com boom. Then the rich kids. After the .com bust, Then it became a quiet park. Talks about the effects of the .com era. Compare it to the Gold Rush days.
Chapter 45: The Sand Castle
Aquatic Park used to be Black Point Cove. It was created from the remains of Chinatown after the 1906 earthquake and the sand from building the Union Square underground garage.
Chapter 46: Taking It to the Streets
sacramento and Leidesdorff street
He follows how San Francisco has become unaffordable rich. There are almost no working class people, only the very rich and the very poor. He asks questions, like, what makes San Francisco San Francisco? What happens when the artists cannot live there? Let alone teachers and cops? But the city has experienced booms before and survived.
Who was Justin Herman?
At a deeper level, the Occupy movement was driven by a sense that the fundamental American social contract—the promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you will do all right—had broken down.
Talks about the protests in the financial district.
Chapter 47: Genius Loci
Lawn at the base of Coit Tower, Telegraph Hill
Telegraph Hill is not a major hill in San Francisco, but it is the hill which most people think of in San Francisco. It is the most eastward and has a sheer face towards the Bay. The Filbert Steps and Greenwich Street Stairs are the most celebrated-the Greenwich steps we went up the last time we were in the City. The Irish and Italians inhabit the flanks of the hill.
Telegraph Hill is part of Kamiya morning routine. He is a regular.
Chapter 48: Dancing on the Brink of the World
600 southeast of Candlestick Park
The first people of San Francisco were the Yelamu which were part of the Ohlone Indians. Strong emphasis on family and tribe. What is a man?” a Pomo Indian once asked. “A man is nothing. Without his family he is of less importance than a bug crossing the trail, of less importance than spit or dung.
One of the things left behind are the shell mounds. There are 18 in San Francisco and 425 in the Bay Area. Several sites, mostly in the south city. Crocker Mound, the largest shell mound known, is near Hunters Point.
There are other places, but most are built over. Over the next few weeks I checked out several other sites, but none of them brought the Yelamu alive. The changes had been too great. I went on to other things.
In a Maidu myth, it is said that Earthmaker told the people he had just created, “Living in a country that is little, not big, you will be content.” This is common, not only for the Yelamu, but also for anybody who enjoys their neighborhood.
Chapter 49: Lands End
Lands End, about a half mile from Eagle View.
San Francisco begins and ends at Lands End. He takes us along the trail from Sutro Baths to the Golden Gate Bridge. Sherri and I have walked this before, and with Andrea. He is right. It is a beautiful, pleasant walk. Look out at low tide where Mile Rock Beach is and see if there are any shipwrecks visible.
He ends his love ode to San Francisco with I have spent much of my life exploring San Francisco. But perhaps it is better not to see everything. To let a small mystery stand in for the great one. To know that somewhere far below, down there where the sea crashes endlessly into the land, is a rock that I will never climb
Evaluation:
Normally when I see or write in my evaluations of a book that this book is “well researched”. It can mean anything between a history where the author had made sure they knew what they were talking about to couldn’t you have written something a bit more readable with maybe the citations less prominent?
Gary Kamiya’s book Cool Gray City of Love is well researched but instead of something dry, he weaves his references into the flow of his stories. San Francisco is a seven mile by seven mile square with a few pieces like the Farallons and the Bay islands thrown in. Kamiya has plotted San Francisco into a grid and shows us both what each square is like today as well as its history and how that area got to be what it is today. But this is not just a recitation of facts and history, but in Kamiya’s hands each of these areas becomes a story.
In places he takes us back to the Gold Rush Day or even earlier to when the Spanish held the area or the Native Americans. And then he moves us to World War II or even his own experiences in the City. Most of the stories are fascinating. Admittedly some of these stories are drier than others. But all are personal to him.
If you are looking for a tour book of San Francisco, this is not it. But maybe if you are somewhat familiar with The City, use this book to enhance your wandering around.
Notes from my book group:
Which part of San Francisco did you want to visit after reading this book? And which part did you want to stay away from?
Kamiya’s methodology was to go around this city in small chunks and understand its present and past. How much do you really know about what is around your home?
In talking about the Filbert stairs, he says that they take you to the best destination of all: nowhere.. Do you ever explore your home area without a stated purpose? What did you find which you did not expect?
In talking about the Tenderloin, an area which man would say is full of deprivation, he notes that the Tenderloin is simply an inescapable consequence of their laudable commitment to defend society’s most vulnerable members. How do you react to this statement? Who is he talking about as being vulnerable members?
Cities are museums of time, and to live in them is to be haunted by the places they once were. Explain this statement. Where do you find that your city acts like a museum?
Cities have a tendency to have their image created by postcards and news reports. Can you gain a “true” image of a place? How? How does your home place differ from its popular image?
Every low point in San Francisco’s terrain collects history the way a fence in the desert collects tumbleweeds. What are the natural points of settlement in your area? Why? What history do you find there?
Great cities invite you to love them in extreme close-up, to love every inch of them. Where do you feel welcome in your area? Where do you feel like you are not wanted? Why?
Childhood visions don’t die; they become ghosts. Kamiya goes on and talks about what he remembers of Chinatown from his youth. What outstanding memories do you have of the place where you were raised?
Kamiya talks about how during the Japanese internment, Blacks migrated into neighborhoods and lived in close proximity to each other and also took over many of the functions the Japanese did. Does concentration of ethnicities make racism easier?
What makes a city unique? (Kamiya’s question was more like what makes San Francisco San Francisco?) What happens when ordinary people can no longer afford to live there? What happens to the characteristics of that city?
How do you want your life to change because you read this book?
Many of these questions are either from or adapted from LitLovers.
Why the title of Cool, Grey, City of Love?
Does this book work as a guide to San Francisco?
Every story has a world view. Were you able to identify this story’s world view? What was it? How did it affect the story?
Why do you think the author wrote this book?
What would you ask the author if you had a chance?
What “takeaways” did you have from this book?
What central ideas does the author present?
Describe the culture talked about in the book.
How did this book affect your view of the world?
What questions did you ask yourself after reading this book?
Talk about specific passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?
What was memorable?
New Words:
- stolid-having or expressing little or no feeling
- cassoulet-a stew made with meat and beans.
- clochard-a beggar or vagrant.
- semiotician-a person who studies the meaning and use of signs and symbols
- Basij-A paramilitary volunteer militia established in Iran in 1979
- sybaritic-fond of sensuous luxury or pleasure; self-indulgent.
- Concomitantly-at the same time; simultaneously.
- somnolescent-inclined to or needing sleep; drowsy
- nankeen-a yellowish cotton cloth.
- pulperee-Potpourri is a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant materials used to provide a gentle natural scent, commonly in residential settings.
- Götterdämmerung-Twilight of the Gods
- palimpsest-a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.
- bacchanalia-the Roman festival of Bacchus.
- deux chevaux-a very small, inexpensive automobile
- “Walking” By Thoreau
- Watermark by Joseph Brodsky
- The Cool, Grey City of Love, by George Sterling
- Moby-Dick, Melville
- Paul Groth writes in Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States
- George Sanders character in Rebecca
- Ozu’s Late Spring
- those in San Francisco. According to Adah Bakalinsky, author of the delightful little book Stairway Walks in San Francisco
- Las sergas de Esplandián (The Exploits of Esplandian), written by Garcia Odoñez de Montalvo
- Amadis of Gaul
- Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn
- Weather of the San Francisco Bay Region, Harold Gilliam
- Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night
- Nancy Olmsted recounts the saga of this lost world in Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco’s Mission Bay
- Philip J. Dreyfus notes in Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco
- Malcolm Margolin, author of the classic The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco–Monterey Bay Area
- Jane Jacobs nailed it 51 years ago in The Death and Life of Great American Cities
- Barbara Voss notes in The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Race and Sexuality in Colonial San Francisco
- John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- William Heath Davis’s Sixty Years in California,
- Richard Henry Dana’s elegiac 1840 classic Two Years Before the Mast
- Jack Kerouac sang the praises of the similarly integrated Marin City projects in On the Road
- Kevin Starr writes in Golden Gate: The Life and Times of America’s Greatest Bridge
- Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez puts it in the final words of her 1929 book Spanish Arcadia
- Douglas Monroy points out in his superb study, Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California
- Leonard Pitt, in his classic 1966 study The Decline of the Californios
- Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop. It
- Roger Lotchin notes in his superb San Francisco 1846–1856: From Hamlet to City,
- California: A Study of American Character, published in 1886 and still one of the finest books ever written about California, the philosopher Josiah Royce
- A Streetcar to Subduction, and Other Plate Tectonic Trips by Public Transport in San Francisco
- Doris Sloan, author of Geology of the San Francisco Bay Region,
- The Annals of San Francisco, the
- Mountains and Molehills, the English adventurer Frank Marryat
- Mud, Blood, and Gold: San Francisco in 1849, historian Rand Richards
- J. S. Holliday notes in his classic study The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience,
- The Land of Gold: Reality vs. Fiction, Hinton Rowan
- 1855 Annals of San Francisco saw
- The Shirley Letters, perhaps the finest literary document to come out of the gold rush, Louise Clappe
- John Hittell’s 1878 History of San Francisco
- Marcel Camus’s Black Orpheus
- Burgess the man, comes across in his little book Bayside Bohemia
- Nancy Olmsted’s The Ferry Building: Witness to a Century of Change
- San Francisco in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City by the Bay, an
- Ariel Rubissow Okamoto and Kathleen M. Wong note in Natural History of San Francisco Bay
- American environmental movement. In The Country in the City, Richard Walker
- William James, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience
- Dennis Smith argues in San Francisco Is Burning: The Untold Story of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire that
- Michael Corbett argues in his fascinating 1979 book Splendid Survivors: San Francisco’s Downtown Architectural Heritage
- Riis’s How the Other Half Lives
- As Erica Y. Z. Pan points out in The Impact of the 1906 Earthquake on San Francisco’s Chinatown
- Philip P. Choy notes in The Architecture of San Francisco Chinatown
- The Bad City in the Good War: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Diego, Roger Lotchin
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
- had just finished his first novel, titled The Town and the City.
- On the Road
- Bill Morgan’s The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour provides
- Steven Watson notes in his superb history of the Beats, The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1944–1960
- Albert Broussard notes in Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900–1954,
- Harlem of the West: The Fillmore Jazz Era, by Elizabeth Pepin and Lewis Watts
- The San Francisco Bay Area: A Metropolis in Perspective, he
- Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock.
- David Talbot recounts in Season of the Witch
- Jack Fritscher’s 1990 “memoir-novel” Some Dance to Remember
- Josh Sides notes in Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco
- Randy Shilts argues in his groundbreaking book And the Band Played On,
- Plays Well with Others, his novel about being a young gay artist in AIDS-ravaged 1980s New York, Allan Gurganus
- Roughing It, the
- The Wind in the Willows
- A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas
- Charles Warren Stoddard spent his childhood on the hill, leaving an elegiac description of it in his 1902 memoir In the Footsteps of the Padres
- The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, Frank Kermode
- Randall Milliken, an expert on the Yelamu and author of an authoritative study of the destruction of Bay Area Indian culture, A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1769–1810, estimates
- Paul Auster recorded one of his characters’ movements through Manhattan in City of Glass
- Hunter S. Thompson holed up to write Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.
- Mythologies by Roland Barthes
- The Haight-Ashbury: A History by Charles Perry
Good Quotes:
- First Line: This book begins and ends with walking.
- Last Line: To know that somewhere far below, down there where the sea crashes endlessly into the land, is a rock that I will never climb.
- A whimless city is a diminished city, a city whose mysteries are kept under lock and key, a city that repeats itself like a scratched record. Chp Preface
- The real treasures are right under our noses. Chp Preface
- A delicious, slightly illicit quality hangs over stairways; walking on them has a faint whiff of climbing over the neighbor’s fence, an essential tactic in reclaiming one’s city and one’s soul. Chapter 4: Stairway to Heaven
- Cities are museums of time, and to live in them is to be haunted by the places they once were. Chp Chapter 10: The Lost River
- A city without wastelands is a city without soul. Chapter 18: The Dead City
- Parks are infallible signs of civilization. Chapter 30: The Park
- Great cities invite you to love them in extreme close-up, to love every inch of them. Chapter 32: Happy Trails
- Fun, like friendship, leaves no tangible traces. Chapter 33: The Balloon
- Urban architecture turns out to be the last cheap thrill. All you need is a little curiosity, and a few books, and you get a free lifetime pass to an entirely new city. Chapter 36: City Beautiful
- Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. David Burnham, as quoted in “Stirred By Burnham, Democracy Champion” Chicago Record-Herald Oct 15, 1910
- Childhood visions don’t die; they become ghosts. Chapter 37: Trying to Find Chinatown
- Even the cheesiest and most artificial historical object becomes authentic once it gets old enough. Chapter 37: Trying to Find Chinatown
- I have spent much of my life exploring San Francisco. But perhaps it is better not to see everything. To let a small mystery stand in for the great one. To know that somewhere far below, down there where the sea crashes endlessly into the land, is a rock that I will never climb. Chp Chapter 49: Lands End
- Map
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Outer Limits Chapter
- 2: Adventures in the Skin Trade Chapter
- 3: The Alcatraz Triangle
- Chapter 4: Stairway to Heaven
- Chapter 5: The Harbor at the End of the World
- Chapter 6: The Canyon
- Chapter 7: The Temple
- Chapter 8: The Long March
- Chapter 9: The Borrowed City
- Chapter 10: The Lost River
- Chapter 11: Our Lady of Sorrows
- Chapter 12: Maximum City
- Chapter 13: Outside Sands
- Chapter 14: Pluto on the Pacific
- Chapter 15: The Chronicler
- Chapter 16: The Country in the City
- Chapter 17: Huck’s Hideaway
- Chapter 18: The Dead City
- Chapter 19: The Bridge
- Chapter 20: Californio Dreaming
- Chapter 21: The Puertozuela
- Chapter 22: The Lotus-Eaters
- Chapter 23: The Last Roll
- Chapter 24: The Farce
- Chapter 25: A Streetcar to Subduction
- Chapter 26: The Delirium
- Chapter 27: The Balcony
- Chapter 28: City Limits
- Chapter 29: The Torch
- Chapter 30: The Park
- Chapter 31: Hill of Hate
- Chapter 32: Happy Trails
- Chapter 33: The Balloon
- Chapter 34: The Front Door
- Chapter 35: A Tale of Two Earthquakes Chapter 36: City Beautiful
- Chapter 37: Trying to Find Chinatown
- Chapter 38: Deserted Cities of the Heart
- Chapter 39: Port of Embarkation
- Chapter 40: The End of the Road
- Chapter 41: The Haunted House
- Chapter 42: If You Were a Bird
- Chapter 43: The Greatest of These
- Chapter 44: Rota Fortunae
- Chapter 45: The Sand Castle
- Chapter 46: Taking It to the Streets
- Chapter 47: Genius Loci
- Chapter 48: Dancing on the Brink of the World
- Chapter 49: Lands End
- Acknowledgments
- Select Bibliography
- A Note on the Author
- By the Same Author
References:
- Publisher's Web Site for Book
- Amazon-Book
- Amazon-Author
- Barnes and Noble
- GoodReads-Book
- GoodReads-Author
- New York Times Review
- San Francisco Chronicle Review
- Publisher’s Weekly
- YouTube
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