Cabbages and Marble Orchards - 10/28 at SFPL

Holy Cross Cemetery Walking Tour Pix - 10/11/09

Photos from the Colma Cemetery Bike Ride 9/27/09

“City of Souls” - Colma Cemetery Bike Ride - Sunday, September 23

Click for full size.
More info on Facebook
More info on sfpl.org

Also Known As: Locations in Alive in Necropolis

Doug Dorst has provided handy notes to help you place some of the spots whose names have been changed in the book...to protect the innocent. *Spoiler Alert - You may want to finish the book before you read these!*

Fern Grotto is in Cypress Lawn Cemetery, on the east side. Go in the main entrance (under the archway, where Featherstone was found), head up the hill to your right, and you’ll see it on your right after a couple hundred yards or so.

The Death’s Door Tavern is loosely based on the Globe Tavern, 379 Mission St. in Daly City.

The Hard Ten is based on The Page (formerly Chances, and before that, another name that I’ve since forgotten). 298 Divisadero (@ Page). (ed. note - did you know we're having One City One Book One Bar at The Page on 10/12/09? More info if you scroll down here.)

Mia’s apartment is on Grove Street, near Broderick. I used to live on Baker between Grove and Fulton, and I’d walk down Grove with my dog twice a day (en route to Alamo Square Park).

The DiMaio house is at a nonexistent address on Buena Vista Park Ave. West. Interesting thing about Buena Vista Park itself - if you look closely at the stones that line the walking paths, you can find some with letters and numbers. These are pieces of old tombstones that were “repurposed” after the cemeteries were taken out. I’m told that old stones were also used in the retaining wall at Fort Point.

Neptune, where Mercer’s gang gathers, is loosely based on Mars (798 Brannan @ 7th St.). The SF Writers’ Grotto folks used to gather here for a weekly happy hour. This was back when I was working as a lawyer, and I really enjoyed having this social connection to other writers in town.

The Tonga Room, where Toronto proposes to Mia, is at 950 Mason (bottom floor of Fairmont Hotel).

The San Francisco Zen Center, where Toronto has a moment of grace, is at 300 Page (@ Laguna).

Tombstones

Colma, the primary location of Doug Dorst’s Alive in Necropolis, is home to many of San Francisco’s 19th and early 20th century dead – moved from the city starting in 1921 when SF’s powers that be decided land within city limits was too valuable to be wasted as forever-tenancies for the deceased.

The bodies themselves were moved to the San Mateo city – now the area where living San Franciscans flock to Target and Home Depot on weekends. But the rubble? Much of that went to the Marina. First loaded with what remained after the devastation of the 1906 Earthquake, what is now one of San Francisco’s priciest neighborhoods was also the dumping grounds for the remains of the city’s cemeteries. Unclaimed tombstones, mausoleums, cemetery walls, benches, and more, ended up as the breakwater for the pleasure boats of today. Next time you take a trip to the Wave Organ, remember to make your remembrances to our city’s citizens of the past!

Coming soon!
19th century Odd Fellows’ Cemetery Tombstones Display
These Odd Fellows’ Cemetery tombstone fragments were unearthed in San Francisco backyards. The Odd Fellows’ Cemetery was dedicated in 1865. In 1933, the bodies were removed to the Greenlawn Cemetery in Colma. Most of the stonework was used to construct the seawall at Aquatic Park, although some odds and ends were left behind.
September – November 2009
San Francisco Main Library – San Francisco History Center
100 Larkin St., 6th Floor

Announcing....20+ One City One Book Events!

Here are just a few of the many programs planned for Fall 2009....for the full schedule, including events for teens, a film series, a tombstone display in the History Center and more, visit the Events Page.

“City of Souls” - Colma Cemetery Bike Ride
Co-sponsored by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.
See the cemeteries and gravesites of historic figures that inspired Doug Dorst’s Alive in Necropolis. After the tour, there will be an option to ride back to San Francisco with the group. Tour leader Chris Carlsson is the Director of FoundSF.org, a living archive of San Francisco history, and the author of books on San Francisco. Rain cancels (atmospheric heavy fog does not!). Bring weather appropriate gear, lots of water and a bag lunch for this hilly ride! Please RSVP to sfplprogram@gmail.com or (415) 557-4295.
Sunday, September 27 – 12-3 p.m.
Meet at Colma BART Station

Documentary Films - Trina Lopez's A Second and Final Rest: The History of San Francisco's Lost Cemeteries and Justin Schein's Gravediggers
A Second Final Rest exhumes the hidden history of how this modern metropolis managed to systematically relocate nearly all of its burial grounds to make room for the living. In Schein’s Gravediggers we meet the men who have devoted their lives to tending the graves of Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma.
Filmmaker Trina Lopez will appear in person for a Q & A.
Tuesday, September 29 - 6 p.m.
San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium
100 Larkin St.

Notable Figures of San Francisco: Free Cemetery Walking Tour in Colma - Co-sponsored by the San Francisco History Association
Joining the tour, led by Monica Williams of Holy Cross Cemetery, will be Doug Dorst, author of San Francisco’s One City One Book 2009 selection Alive in Necropolis, a remarkable and original novel set primarily in Colma’s cemeteries. For more information visit SF History Association.
Sunday, October 11 – 11 a.m.
Holy Cross Cemetery - 1500 Mission Road, Colma

Spirits, Tarot & the Page …One City One Book One Bar
Help the San Francisco Public Library fête this year’s One City One Book pick. It’s only fitting that we’ll be celebrating this can’t-put-down supernatural thriller with custom “Necropolis” cocktails, free Tarot card readings, and a live reading from Dorst himself. The Page Bar inspired a bar on the pages of Alive in Necropolis – have you spotted it yet? Book sales by Green Apple Books.
Monday, October 12 – 6–8 p.m.
The Page, 298 Divisadero St. at Page Street, San Francisco; 21 and over

One City One Book and Litquake present: Doug Dorst in conversation with Adam Johnson, with special guests foolsFURY
Join us for an insightful discussion between our One City One Book author and local author and Stanford University lecturer Adam Johnson. foolsFURY Theater Company, under the direction of Ben Yalom, will open the evening with a staged reading of an excerpt from Alive in Necropolis. After the conversation, there will be lots of time for audience questions and Doug Dorst will sign books. Book sales by Book Bay.
Tuesday, October 13 – 6 p.m.
San Francisco Main Library, Koret Auditorium – 100 Larkin St.

Complete schedule available at the One City One Book Events Page.

Colma's Molloy's Bar: For Wakes of the Irish

When I was attending UC Berkeley in the late 1980s, a friend introduced me to the splendors of Colma. She and I were both interested in photography, and as righteous members of the artistically-minded-Bauhaus-listening set, we fell prey to the lure of the iconography of the cemetery.

We took semi-regular trips across the bay, down the 280, and past the looming Toys R Us giraffe sign to wander around taking pictures of Colma’s elaborately sculpted crypts and memorial stones and imagining the lives of those there entombed.

But none of the photographs that I took during those trips to Colma are as evocative as this image of “Molloy’s Bar” from the SFPL’s San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection. Although the photograph is ostensibly an image of the wall in a bar, the mirror that centers the composition reveals the forlorn-looking backs of bar patrons hunched over their drinks. The back of the photo is marked, “For Wakes of the Irish” and one can only imagine these bleak backs are connected to hands holding glasses raised in the honor of the dead.

Especially significant is the fact that the image is caught in a mirror, something that shows us the world in reverse and that, for many, has a touch of the “other” world, whether the world of the future, the dead, or Alice’s upside-down through the looking glass world. This image, of backs and mirrors, certainly sums up at least part of the living’s experience of Colma.

-Elise Proulx, Litquake

What's Creepier than Schoolyard Rhymes Sung by Little Girls?

Nothing, that's what! You must listen to this, which KALW re-aired in June.

Doug Dorst guided radio producer and all-around cool guy Roman Mars around the sprawling, perfectly manicured cemetery that provides the backdrop to the opening scene in Alive in Necropolis.

Colma Photos from San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection

In preparing for One City One Book, staff at San Francisco Public Library and in the Historical Photo Collection have found a variety of terrific photos of San Francisco and Colma cemeteries in the photo archives. We'll be featuring them in a variety of OCOB09 materials.

Here are a few peeks:



Odd Fellows Cemetery, SF







Holy Cross Cemetery, Colma






Sunset View, Potter's Field, Colma










Pet's Rest Cemetery, Colma






More SF cemetery photos available here!