 Hello, friends. Welcome. We're going to get started just momentarily. Hello, everybody. Hello. Hello. And this is meeting format. We are live on YouTube. So if you don't want your beautiful face on YouTube, keep your camera off. And we'll get started here in just a quick moment. Yes. Welcome everybody. Welcome. And the link to tonight's document and to the YouTube recording so you can watch it later. So nice to be here with you all tonight. All right, we'll get started and I will keep in person as we go along. And this is such the perfect free holding event and with two very, very San Francisco folks. So I'm excited tonight to welcome you to Bob Calhoun and all your balls in Congo. So first some library news. We want to. I think we've lost an ESA momentarily. Hello, everybody. And ESA said, I'm just going to admit the people who are coming in and hopefully they're not horrible monsters. That should be in the pages of this book. I said before we started that she is beaming in from a rural area and that it is possible that she might have some outages and she just did and she was about to introduce our event and talk about the library. I am ill equipped to talk about the library except to say that it is a fabulous. Okay. Are you back. Are you there. Oh no. Okay, we needed the library copy. You know, yes. So we're supposed to, we're supposed to be giving a spiel of something to say something about the library. I know that that part of the library spiel. And here she is again. So maybe she can do it. Are you back. You're on mute. And he said. Sorry about this. Okay. This this time. And let's try this one last time I switched Wi-Fi networks. There we go. All right. Welcome to the unceded land of the Aloni tribal people. Our library wants to acknowledge that this is the ancestor homeland of the raw nutrition alone peoples, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland as uninvited guests. We affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples, and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors elders and relatives of the raw nutrition community. We have some library news tomorrow night. We have our final Filipino American History Month with the amazing artwork of Ali of all the bowls, not all the bowls of Lydia Ortiz, who if you don't follow her Instagram. I definitely encourage you to do so. Her work is gorgeous and beautiful and vibrant. And I hope you all come out and support this amazing artist. And you can see her poster in our work on our website and all of our libraries. The crew from SF Chronicle will be live that's right in the correct auditorium. Come on out. We have lots of space we can spread out. We can be socially distanced. And we can enjoy the author convo with author Bonnie sweet. And they'll be talking about the book why we swim and Heather night and Peter heart love have both taken the plunge. So come here about their experience. And if you can't make it out or you're just not ready to make it out we will understand that. And you can catch this event on zoom as well. And then just some quick other November events coming out. The amazing and iconic Malcolm Mark Owen, who was the founder of payday books will be zooming in with friends, amazing human beings that will be with him. And this amazing human is not in the best of health so this is going to be one of our last opportunities I fear to experience and witness his brilliance and genius and just, you know, humane just a most humane and just a human I've ever seen. So come on out and support that. And then that next Sunday, the seventh again we're trying for live in the correct auditorium. And it's a heyday month for November will be celebrating black Panther done. And his book, making a revolution, and his daughter and Steve Wasserman who is the current director of a day will be in combo. And I think I'm going to stop there so I don't lose any more and I'm going to introduce alia and Bob. Like I said I think is the perfect book for our pre Halloween, our national holiday in San Francisco. Bob Calhoun is a San Francisco Bay Area author journalist and former punk wrestler and deep Cheryl MC. In 2015 he has recounted our city's most gruesome and lurid events in his regular weekly column acid weekly column. Yesterday's crime is punk wrestling memoir fear blood and cornmeal is a national bestseller that wired called breezy and hilarious. And in the wake of shattering conventions, commerce cosplay and conflict on the expert floor was spun off into a long running column and video feature for meetings today. The trade magazine of the meeting and conventions industry. The book is also appeared in SF crime salon dot com Roger eager dot com doctor and old Italian. And next up all your bowls which I feel like we should just put all your honor payroll because she is our friend of the library for sure. Maria has been we hosted her she was our on the same page which is a five monthly read at our library, and we were so stoked about her book. And then she came out and talked with total SF crew and her book if you haven't read it home baked my mom marijuana and the stoning of San Francisco is amazing. And it was the winner of a golden poppy award for nonfiction from the California independent book sellers and a finalist for the national book critics circle award in autobiography. It's home grown San Francisco, the work has been published in the best American essays, the New York Times, full and appetite salon and more. And all the has received fellowships from the McDowell and you cross foundation, and has twice been awarded the Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship. All right, without further ado, let's turn it over to our amazing guests for the night. Bob, it's all you. Hi everybody. Thank you so much, Anissa for hosting us and braving the technological insecurity of zoom. After all this time, it remains a roller coaster and an adventure. And thank you everybody who's tuning in for bearing with us. You know, it's, it's what we have to do these days. Hey, hey, hey everybody, hey, hey everybody in library land library land library land, you know, you know, I'd, you know, I'd like to thank the San Francisco Public Library because it this book wouldn't exist without their microfilm readers on the fifth floor and, you know, the especially their high tech microfilm readers, of course, you know, just me bringing this thumb drive up to the fifth floor and downloading PDFs of microfilm every day and, and then San Francisco Public Library finally made the chronicle available digitally. So I didn't have to go there as much anymore but whether I was going there or not they they made murders that made us available so I'd like to thank them and thank everybody for coming by tonight and thank you Alia for for moderating me. Consider yourself moderating. Yes, I what where would we be without the San Francisco Public Library agree on that totally I'm so happy to do this with you and have wanted to do this sense along before the book came out I absolutely love the murders that made us this is such a great book. I mean I got to read ever all the San Francisco history books, but I also I love dark histories, and I love true crime and so this was going to hit on all levels I knew that it would. And it's, it's especially meaningful to me that it comes from a homegrown Sanford, well homegrown Bay Area. I was born at UCSF, I just, I probably spent more time and outlying, you know, border County, San Diego County of my life then, then San Francisco itself but yeah I'm one of the weirdos as I believe you are that was that was born and born in San Francisco so. Yeah, yeah I mean it matters. I think it really matters when you're going to access a place from its dark history. I was thinking today about that fabulous line from the film The Last Black Man and San Francisco where he says you, you, you're not allowed to hate San Francisco until you were born in San Francisco, I'm paraphrasing, but it's so meaningful to have a book like this come really from within the city and and so I appreciate that. I think that, you know, I was kind of obligated by birth to write home baked and there's a way in which you were obligated by birth to write the murders that made us that it, it seems as though the inspiration came from a family story. I mean, my mother was once suspected of a murder she was a murder suspect and get to that in a little more detail later, but she, she died in 2009. And one thing if you have a parent that that past especially when you're still somewhat young because I mean I was just 40. So I mean it's not really young but it's young for losing a parent. And I realized like that there were all these stories that she would tell, and they were just always there for my whole life like just her going on about this or that again oh yeah you know. And I realized that you know I should have when she was still lucid enough to tell them, tell these stories like should have gotten them on tape or should have really just gotten those stories one more time. And I hadn't done that I didn't didn't think to do it until it was kind of too late even when she was alive she, you know, and, and but the story about the murder was one that she didn't really talk about very much and let me preface it a little bit. My family. This is about 10 years before I was born they lived in Crocker Amazon, right on the daily city San Francisco border. Dan white country and white country was about to say that. They left San Francisco before they could vote for Dan white and so that I don't need to even broach the subject of what my, my Nixon voting parents, how they would have fallen in those races. Anyway, so yeah there was a, there was this August Norrie he was a kind of local handyman kind of lethario type he was a. He was a minor league baseball player like he played for like the beer bottling team, and couldn't quite make it onto the seals or the giants like he, he just, he had good slow pitches but not a good fastball or I forget something like that he just couldn't quite quite make a good athlete, Arthur Murray dance instructor, and but he like did like gardening he was like a kind of kind of handyman gardener. And one day he was up on San Bruno mountain dumping on clippings because it was 1959 and everybody just dumped along clippings everywhere. And he was shot 18 times by a revolver which means the person who shot him. Had to, like if they showed a gun they had to reload twice. Like that's, you know, 666 you know, the number of the beast. So yeah he was shot. Should I just read the character because I'm going to. I'm holding back too much and I'm kind of sounding weird because I'm like, not wanting to repeat myself too much but don't be weird. I am weird though. Don't be weird. Okay, please read the excerpt. Okay, yeah. Well, I'll talk a little bit more about how in more ways than one this started the murders that made us and started me writing true crime. Let me get a drink of water. Ladies and gentlemen he is having a drink of water, a drink of water. After one, my mother, the murder suspect. My mother Jackie Calhoun only talked about the murder sparingly her hushed tones when she did stood in sharp contrast to how she spoke of everything else. Tales of a fight at the laundromat over the dryers, or that time the doctor and at her hypochondriac friend were retold often and an excruciating detail. My mother loved to gossip, and though the murder was her juiciest story by far, it was different. It was serious. The details of the murder that she told me were muddled in my mind by the names of friends and acquaintances she knew before I was born. From what I remember a friend of the families was shot in his truck by some crazy woman he picked up somewhere. I remember a stupid fool or a stupid bitch depending on the telling that my mom could know this little detail didn't make sense, because the murder took place in the suburban woods somewhere on the Bay Area Peninsula. But there was one detail of the murder that really stuck out in my mind. My mom spoke of growing suspicion among her click of suburbanites as the murder investigation dragged on unsolved for months. She started to suspect everybody, friends, neighbors she said, you didn't know who to trust, you wondered who could have done it. I always meant to write an article or even a novel out of all that backyard paranoia, but I never thought of asking my mom to retell the story of the murder until it was too late. She passed away in October 2009 after cancer had shrunk her down to almost nothing. My last conversations with her were about the hallucinations brought on by her steady supply of painkillers, or my pleading with her to drink her damned insurer. I've never tasted insurer, but it must be horrible. Elderly people would rather die than drink it. During those final days, I never asked my mom to murder or about anything else for that matter. The story of how she moved to San Francisco from Oklahoma in the 1940s, divorced my dad in the 70s, or that time in the 50s when she went to the black cat, a seminal gay bar with my dad and uncle, and all the men hit on them and ignored her. I know these stories well enough to tell you about them, but I only have recollections of her recollections, usually delivered from her favorite chair as she lit a smoke. Details are scant and murky. My dad Leo Calhoun is in good health, but he's pushing 80. I asked him about the murder while we were having lunch at a Peruvian restaurant in Redwood City, a once working class bay area suburb that's being gobbled up by Silicon Valley. Do you remember the murder my mom used to talk about I asked. I think it happened back when you both lived in the Redwood City Hills, or maybe it was South San Francisco. I got the impression it happened out in the woods somewhere, but not too far out there. August Norrie, he answered, letting the victim's name hang in the air for a while. You know, your mother was questioned in the murder investigation, he said. She matched the suspect's description. A blonde was seen leaving the scene of the murder in Norrie's car, your mother was blonde, and we lived next door to the Norrie's back then. They were looking for someone who was having an affair with him. And this was a shock to say the least. My mother never mentioned being braced by homicide dicks. I'd remember that anyone would remember that. Great. And what a way into this dark and and often salacious. In the best of ways history of San Francisco. I've been thinking in regards to this book about how I mean I love dark history I think a lot of people do and crime and true crime. But I've been thinking about the particular choice to explore a city through its criminal heart or through its underbelly. And what that might reveal about a place that's different. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that having having written this wonderful dark history. You know, it was it's kind of funny because it starts with that story. And that story was something I tried to shop around to, you know, San Francisco magazine it still exists that the chronicle, and even the weekly and nobody really wanted it. And it wasn't, it wasn't really because of the story they all the editors thought it was good but it was they had other things in the pipeline other true crime stuff. And then SF Weekly, like one of the editors there later on came to me and said, can you write a regular true crime series. And so it was just me just coming up with random crime stories to write about every week. And people seem to want a collection of it and that's when I started thinking of arranging the stories I had and then adding others into a chronology of San Francisco through crime, because there was stories all over the place from 1850 to 1970. And or to, you know, to even more recently to even 2019 now where the book ends. Yeah, and, and I think, you know, you could write a history of any American city or any city through crime, I think you could definitely do it for Chicago, or New York, or maybe Albuquerque, New Mexico. But I think San Francisco really lends itself to this because crime and punishment is woven into the, you know, it's basically the Anglo American city that is San Francisco. I'm not talking about what existed before then the Spanish or Mexican city but the Anglo American city. It starts with the vigilantes in 1851. And the idea of crime and punishment are kind of our foundational event. That's where it starts. So you start with, you start basically with this kind of really thin line between who are the criminals and who are bringing justice. The people are bringing justice are in those days are pretty criminal. So I just think that. I don't know that has changed all that I don't know if it has either but yeah you just have have that there like you begin with that issue right away with the vigilantes so it just lends itself to that and then you know other stories like you I found I could think about like arts movies music definitely music through crime like you can there there are crimes at the edge of all of these things all of these music scenes all of these art scenes political scenes definitely in politics. Oh and a big way in politics from the 1850s through now or through definitely through fajita gate at the very least. You know you have you know you have, you can tell stories about other things while you're telling stories about the crime I mean David Talbot did that to a large degree and in season of the witch. But he's focused on like maybe 25 years where I go a little bit longer in a shorter book somehow, but I go a little bit longer than that. Yeah, you know I just found like, like I didn't you know I could be writing about crime but also writing about other things and then just telling the story of not just San Francisco but the Bay Area I do wander a bit. Sometimes la gets brought in but it's only from a San Francisco lens. Yes, or a Bay Area lens. You had rules for yourself. I can talk about the Night Stalker but I got to talk about the Night Stalker San Francisco visits, and I feel like that worked really well. Reading it. And of course the Bay Area I mean San Francisco is a bigger place than the city of San Francisco especially now. These days, the city is so much integrated with the city and there are moments when the city feels like a suburb of Silicon Valley. So we really are more of a, I don't know what the word is. It's more of an amoeba than ever I guess. But I really delighted in reading this book at like, you know I don't think a lot about where the street names of Brannon and Broderick and these characters who these characters were that we use their names every day, just getting around town. And it turns out that Brannon was this horrible grifter, and they're all awful. And so, and not just awful in like the powerful white man sense but also just criminal I mean they were, they were, they were violating all kinds of laws and treaties and basic decency and now there are, you know, our lift directions. Well, you know, Brannon, he basically, you know, as a legend of Brandon goes he like took tithe money from the Mormons he was a high up in the Mormon church and he parlayed tithe money into into basically gold rush supplies. And, you know, some of that there are these histories that that say well that that's overblown or that's printing the legend. But I mean the thing with the vigilantes is, is that they often were trying to hang the wrong people are just like they, they were after this Australian gang the Sydney ducks but after a while anybody with a with a funny accent with a foreign accent was good enough for hanging they must have done something. You know, so I am on team Broderick though I you know it might just be be you know my Irish heritage you know he's like the Irish New Yorker, and he's like into rigging ballot boxes with false bottom ballots but you know he's a little bit more honest he's a little bit more honest than the other side that he was often opposed to in his grifting, and he liked to hang out in bars and he died in a in a duel with with, you know, pro slave Democrats it's that old Democratic schism Democratic Party schism. So yeah he's kind of to me he's like the quintessential or the blueprint for the San Francisco liberal where he's willing he's willing to rig elections and do all this kind of underhanded stuff but he still fights the good fight at the, at the right time. He still earns his liberal bonafides fighting against making California into a slave state so. I feel that I feel that you just said something essentially true about this about this that alone but that was perfect. But I do want to judge on something else that you mentioned that that really strikes me about this book and about about writing about crime in in general and why it's interesting. It's like there's the top surface which is that it's it's salacious and fun and who doesn't love a rollicking story it's thrilling it's a little scary something horrible happens. But it doesn't happen to you. It was a long time ago so it's fun it's safe to go there. What I find really emerges about the crimes of yesterday is that we through going through these newspaper archives the old sources. What really emerges are the prejudices of the day it's the way the story was told, then. I feel like you do a lot of, of really great work with that. And in fact, the, the piece that we were talking the other the other section that we're talking about that you might read I feel like touches on this about jazz mania, where the end the way that the piece is depicted in the media the kind of play that the, the history makers of the moment which is to say the media the people who are writing the stories that will read 50 years later 100 years later are telling the story through a very specific lens with a very specific agenda. Hearst. Yeah, some of the Hearst examiner stuff. Like that was always, you know the Hearst examiner in LA to it was, you know, some of the 30s and 40s Hearst, Hearst stuff. I mean the chron too. I mean it's just. You all did it though I mean the New York Times was as yellow as can be I mean they all did it. Yeah, but it was it was definitely kind of eye opening, just the, just the level of, of sometimes just out now racism. Yeah, like you know reading about about the destruction of the Fillmore district just when the examiner starts calling for that when it was still Japan town or or a little Tokyo, as it's called and just you know, these slump. Yeah, I'm not even going to quote this stuff but you know you can imagine. The reason part of the reason though I love quoting these old newspaper articles is I'm naturally kind of a humorist. You know, and and I just want to work in satire and things but you're dealing with people. You're dealing with these terrible events and these tragedies and these horrors that were you know vested upon people so I had to pick my spots. You could, you know, I hope that this doesn't happen but you know I never wanted to look like I was making light of the of the crime itself, or definitely of the victims. So the media and the political reaction to these things are that where I can where I can go to work on that. Yeah, and they do it themselves in a way. Yeah, they set themselves up and you deliver the punchline but you just have to quote some of this stuff. You know just like to run the quote this is what they said in the chron or the examiner or the Oakland trip or any of them. Do you want to read the jazz mania. Let me read about the jazz girl we all love the jazz girl. I was talking about like which other section because I've been doing a lot of these readings live, and it's kind of weird because I've been booked at like the Alameda audience audities market and it's like I'm live entertainment and I'm doing sets. So thankfully this book is broken up into all these little stories. And so I can just rattle off a bunch of these weird little stories, you know, for an audience. You know, so it's it's it's kind of cool that for this one I get to read a couple of different ones but we were talking about little dick or the jazz girl and we're going 20th century. You know we aren't going to spend to you know let's go 20th century so okay. This is on page 70 if you want to follow along a fit of jazz mania. Dorothy Ellingson was off to an early start. By the time she was 12 she was already knocking back gin and running with jazz musicians at the new Shanghai cafe and prohibition era Chinatown. After four years of this her mother Anna Ellingson finally put her foot down. On January 13 1925, Anna tried to keep her daughter from running wild at jazz parties quote unquote. It didn't work. Dorothy got her brother's army pistol shot her mother in the back of the head and pilfered $45 from her mother's purse on her way out the door. She spent the rest of the night partying at a friend's apartment while her mother's corpse grew cold in the family's Richmond district flat. When Ellingson was arrested two days later newspapers as far away from the murder scene as New York and Miami carried the story of the 16 year old Swedish girl who killed her mother in a fit of jazz mania. Matricide moved newsprint and reporters dub Ellingson the moth girl, the jazz girl murderer, or my personal favorite, the jazz baby mother slayer. Jazz mania somehow never made it into the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, although it was floated as a legit defense at the time. In the wake of the murder prohibition officials promised raids on San Francisco's jazz land, described as the wickedest spot in America, this kindergarten advice was just off Bartlett Street in the mission. Police also combed through Ellingson's diary and charged some of her boyfriends in the jazz scene with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Keith Lord, a banjo picker with the Frisco five told police, she said she was 19. Some things never change. Ellingson's trial began in March 1925. After collapsing in the courtroom several times and threatening to choke her own attorney. She was sent to Napa State Hospital for treatment in April before returning to San Francisco later that summer to resume the trial. Despite Ellingson's courtroom histrionics. Dr. Joe Don ball chief defense alienist testified Ellingson was slightly abnormal, but completely sane. In 1922 1925, Ellingson was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years in San Quentin, which held women women prisoners until 1932. Ellingson was released on parole in February 1932 after serving six years and six months. I deeply regret that I never did appreciate my parents she said upon her release. Two years later, she attempted suicide after being accused of stealing jewelry and a black velvet dress from a roommate. All charges from this incident were dismissed. Ellingson got married two years later and became a mother herself having two children. She died on September 16 1967. I want to say before anything else because like forgetting to mention this folks out there if you have a question for Bob, please type it in the chat and in 15 minutes or so we'll have an open Q&A. So I'll be happy to pass your questions along to him. And, and we can discuss them as a family. That's a nice family story. Bob. Yeah. This is baby mother slayer. No, but I do, I do love how you work with these with the old headlines and, and, and it and it highlights, it highlights the concern moral concerns of the day it certainly highlights the racism today of the day you touched on. You touched of course on the redevelopment agency, the destruction of the film or jazz district this was a little bit after that came a little bit after this. But is probably one of the most criminal events in our civic history, particularly in the sense of the crimes that it spawned in a way. Yeah, I write about Charles Sullivan who was the person who made the film or into the film or the film or auditorium. He was a black black music promoter. And he was actually the, his story is really interesting. Usually he's brought up as a conduit to Bill Graham, because he does give Bill Graham a star. And every time I tried to write about Graham and that, and you know, the Grateful Dead and all that I just got really, really bored. You know, it's like, okay, I'm just, I'm going to, I'm going to do what's usually done with Charles Sullivan is he's, he's, he's just kind of skipped over or he's like a character in Bill Graham's life I'm just going to make Bill Graham a character in his life. And, you know, he sold the film or out to Bill Graham because the film or district was being torn down it was being destroyed for urban renewal. One of the great tragedies and kind of the great crime, a great crime itself, but perpetrated by city leaders and and redevelopment agencies and and Congress, United States Congress that these funds were approved and the black people and and even some Japanese people were moved on out for, for new buildings they destroyed all the Victorians which some of them are left or are you know on the front of the beginning of full house is a full house is at the sitcom. I'm not being good 80s per, but yeah it's like the whitest sitcom ever you know there's those those four painted ladies that are left from that destruction. Charles Sullivan, you know, his story is really intense because his mother sold him as a slave, like this is way after the Civil War. She sold him to another black family to like work on their farm as basically like an indentured servant or a slave, and Charles Sullivan escapes when he's a teenager. He comes to LA then San Francisco can't find work as a machinist he can't get in the machinist union because they won't let a black man into these unions, even with the war starting ends up becoming a show for for rich lady in in Hillsborough socks away all his money and starts buying bars and bars are a really good investment after the war is over and bars and liquor stores and then later jukeboxes. They're all great investments after the war is over and he becomes as wealthy as an African American in San Francisco can be and he ends up creating the Fillmore. He's also one of the first people or maybe the first person concert promoter to book live music at the Cow Palace. So he starts arena rock with booking James Brown and and Ray Charles at the Cow Palace and he books the whole circuit on the west coast. And in 1966 like he's a guy who always carried a lot of cash around he would just have like the gate from these shows like as much as six or $7,000 which don't make me look at an inflation calculator just know it's like 50,000 now. He's shot out in south of market over by the Cal train station and left his body is discovered later and he supposedly had a police with about 6k in it. That was gone. So it was probably just a robbery probably somebody who knew or set him up to take the money. And the murder is still unsolved. It was never really closed and Sullivan just didn't really get you know it's kind of funny, like August Norrie, like made headlines for days and days and days. You know just some guy cleaning up lawns out in daily city but Charles Sullivan just one. Oh, he was he was shot. Nobody knows who did it. It was just a one day headline. Some of the others earlier stories about him and his him him basically being being sold into slavery were done by Warren Henkel a couple years earlier, and those provided a lot of great research material so thank you Warren for that. Thanks for for following that story and so but yeah the urban renewal the destruction of the film where I was able to tell that story while telling the story of Charles Sullivan. And as you said how it led to other crimes in the book some I'm not sure if it's the authors of of the book Harlem of the West, but somebody, some one of the, one of the voices in that book says that because the black neighborhood was destroyed the the film or that's what that's what gave rise to Jim Jones. Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know where I picked that up either but it's, it's, it's, it's a piece of the puzzle that fits so well that it's hard to not, it's hard to not just completely understand that I mean, not only the people's temple but we were talking. This is this is not so much in the book we were talking separately about the zebra killings and someone is asking in the in the comments here about the zebra killings. But that a lot of the destruction of a thriving black neighborhood with huge cultural resources community resources going generations deep at that point. And so we left this gaping hole and then where do people turn. And that leaves room for people like Jim Jones to come in and at the beginning he was really building social projects that helped a lot of people at the beginning because they're coming together of races that for a period of time. And so he filled a much needed space drug rehab senior housing. I mean all this stuff and you cover it very well in in your book I think you make that connection and beautifully. I want to move, move on because of time but when one of the things that I, I really love about this and it's kind of on the topic that we're on already. Is like, so you tell a lot of stories that I've never heard before and I have so many questions for you about how you found them like the jazz girl I don't know how you found that story and I do want to ask. But I also want to talk about how you handle the big stories that we all know. We all know the people's temple story or most of us do at least Patty Hurston the SLA the milk and Moscone assassinations really big headline stuff that that's been widely consumed. There's somebody who's written about these topics myself, and you and I have talked about this. I go like oh God do I have to read another chapter about this topic I've already read everything I've already written about it myself I'm tired of it. You found really interesting angles and side stories that I hadn't heard before and I'd like to hear about your process how you figured that out. Why. With with people's temple. I mean one thing you're avoiding in this is just kind of like recreating Wikipedia. If I'm just going to say this thing happened and here's who did what to whom and when, then I'm just kind of giving you what you have through Wikipedia, where with people's temple I had known about these like murders that happened. Like a lot of people met violent a lot of people involved with people's temple met violent ends after Guyana. And so I, I had wanted to focus on that that was like, originally a little series I did in my weekly column, which you know I called it the last victims of Jonestown, where, you know there's the, the couple they were actually people blowers who turned up dead a year after Guyana. There was this kind of crooked private eye that worked with the concerned relatives of, you know, like former people's temple members as well as he was kind of double agent for them and Jim Jones. And, you know, may have provided the extra boost of paranoia to Jim Jones to start the to start the massacre to start to start the guy on a tragedy. And then there was also another former people's temple member that did a mass shooting at a grammar school in Los Angeles in the 80s. And so you just have these and there's other ones I didn't even mention there was that there was another people's temple member who called the press conference and killed himself in front of the press and that's one that I didn't get to like there's there's even more of them than I write about. Those were, I, I never really, you know, like, like I said, there is an intro to the people's temple chapter definitely in the Jim Jones chapter there's an intro to explain what the whole thing is. And, but I wanted to in the same thing, you know, the same thing to a degree like I was a little more interested with the SLA and the murder of Marcus Foster, the, the superintendent of schools in Oakland that's in the U.N. and and the Symeonies Liberation Army killed before they kidnapped Patricia Hurst. And, although I do write about Patricia Hurst as well. I found the angle I found with Patricia Hurst was just believing Patricia Hurst instead of the endless Jeffrey Tubin debate of like, you know, how brainwashed was she and all that kind of stuff it's like no she was really really horribly abused but I'm kind of the tracks a little bit but it was like, like you mentioned Richard Ramirez it was like, you know, he came up to San Francisco and he murdered and assaulted this couple out close to Daily City. And that was that was near the end of his reign of terror. So I work in his, his end in Los Angeles and East LA because I love the story where the people of East LA rise up against him. It's like my favorite part of that. So I had to get that in there and luckily they were within, you know, a few weeks of each other so I could just kind of tell Richard Ramirez from San Francisco through his end. It is a great moment in the book when that happens. So I have so many more questions for you and I can't I can't stand it but we're actually getting to where I should open up. So let me see one more question that I could ask of my own. I, I'm just, I'm, I just want to know how you found these damn stories. I just as a researcher myself. How did you do it. And how did you decide I want to say that for anyone who hasn't read this book. One of the things that really impresses me about it is that you've done a really, I think conscientious job with diversity. There's diversity among the victims and diversity among also the aggressors and and and so you capture a wide range of experiences I think you've filtered that really beautifully. I'm just curious like how did you. How did you make your list. How did you call it down. Well it's some of it. Some of it was like I said like I think the reason SF Weekly had me doing this stuff was because I, you know, I'm now older and so I just kind of know this stuff my mom was a gossip she was she would talk about some of these. Some of the ones that were contemporary to her anyway she would talk about some of this stuff even when she wasn't involved in it. And so it's just kind of in my head. But yeah, I also would I mean some of it's kind of sick because I would just be like, okay I'm going to search like this Oakland Tribune and, and, you know, San Mateo Times or Bay Area news for necrophilia turns up you know, cannibalism. Great story by the way. Yeah that I was not expecting that Menlo Park, which is, you know, I just was not expecting necrophilia necrophilia to be in Menlo Park to be in the same thing, but yeah necrophilia and Menlo Park folks the the corpse mutilators of Menlo Park is in there. You know, and sometimes like it was actually in a weird way. Like I used to do these things with the Google News Archive which was just random scan newspapers so I was kind of feeding off a lot of, a lot of AP stories but I would just look for San Francisco stories and, you know, the thing about the KKK membership in the SFPD is there was like, you know, just kind of KKK stories at the time I wrote it and I was like what's what is there any history here in San Francisco and it turns out there was and I would just be kind of looking for like key buzzwords in the news digital newspaper archives I had and just trying to find things or just finding places like like you know there's the Golden Gate Park stuff there's a whole chapter on like 80s Golden Gate Park kind of body dumps but you know that the history goes back farther. So I just looked for a place like I tried so hard to find a murder or a drug ring or anything at Playland at the beach. Oh, and I just couldn't find it I can find stuff at the zoo there's stuff that they're you know it's animals that get killed but those are crimes those are murders. I found the deaths of the orangutans shortly after the zoo was founded. And there's a lot of weird stuff at the zoo, but I just couldn't find like any, anything like there was an accident where somebody was like nearly decapitated on the big roller coaster but I just couldn't find crimes at Playland but I would look at other places or other neighborhoods for crimes and just see what was there. You know as a kid growing up here, there was a long period when I lived just a couple of blocks from Golden Gate Park and I would go climb the climb through the trees and explore the park and roam around as a kid. You know in the 80s and parents weren't helicoptering in those days. But I remember also they're always being a slight undercurrent of it of it being kind of ominous you just knew. You just knew that the bushes the shrubs, the trees could hide things and you capture it so beautifully in this one sentence I mark. This is about the founding of Golden Gate Park, and then he says, after 20 some odd years of meticulous landscaping all those newly planted trees came to provide excellent cover for corpse disposal and lonely suicide. Yes, I felt that as a child without without knowing it but there was that there was that feeling I love your Golden Gate Park section. It's horrible and I love it. It's terrible. Yeah, I actually I had a professor at Kenyatta College in Redwood City of all things. He was an anthropology professor and he was actually called to help his friend who was the corner in San Francisco open up the barrels from the mid 80s. Oh, that was like I just see that's what I mean is I just kind of have been around long enough that I remember what was up with those bodies in the barrels and also, hey, people I know on Facebook and Twitter would also feed me. I should probably have three extra pages of acknowledgments for people just asking like, hey what about that and that would that would end up that ends up being a chapter or a section of a chapter in the book just people asking that stuff. Um, so we should open this up. There's a whole bunch of questions. Okay. Um, let's see. There's a ton of them. And I just somebody wants to know. And we were just talking about this Bob. Why not the zebra killers. You know, I wrote three drafts of a potential chapter on the zebra killers. I would keep coming back to it, but that case touches on so many different things. I mean it talks touches on race and religion. And to do the zebra killers and I still I still hope that enough copies of this book sell that in five 10 years I could do the revised and expanded edition and maybe the zebra killers will be in that. But for me to do that to do a chapter on the zebra killers I feel that it had to be my best writing and it just wasn't by the time of deadline. And also I had given a lot of space to Dan White and sin queue in my brain and so after a while I was just fried. I know I'm making excuses here but the I just never it never clicked it never felt right I never felt like I was adding something that needed to be added to that story. And it was also always spiraling out of control because you know you have the death of Elijah Muhammad around that time the founder of the nation of Islam, his son Herbert Muhammad takes over for a while. And just like, you know, they just like it was going to be one of those things where I'd have to write 30,000 words and shrink it down to three. And I just it just never, you know, never quite clicked and yeah like I said I if I'm going to write about it would have to be. I'd have to feel as good about it as I did about about my Dan White chapter or various other chapters like when I had to Dan White and milk and Moscone in Jonestown and those those big terrible things of the 70s. I wanted it to be my best among my best writing so it just it just never got there. I'm sorry. Next time next time zebra killers probably I don't know. It's a tough subject and I am I am personally waiting for somebody to tackle it, but it has to be handled in in exactly the right way, in a way that can, as you say encompass all of the complexity of that story. And handle it with care I think it would be very. I think I think you made. I don't know. It seems like a smart call I don't think that's a 3000 word piece. You know, it's it deserves a longer treatment and the proper longer treatment hasn't been written yet so maybe the person who suggested that is is the one for the job I don't know. I also didn't get the Mitchell brothers in there so they probably would come more. Yeah, I didn't I just. Yeah, I know I was. Nobody's asked me about that people asked me about zebra killers nobody asked me about the Mitchell or. So here's a here's a softball question Bob, your introduction mentioned past activities were those at Annie social club incredibly strange wrestling and or zeitgeist cream corn wrestling. I don't know about zeitgeist cream corn wrestling that might have been before after my time. You know I had tortillas thrown at me but they weren't creamed in any way until they mixed with the beer but yeah, yeah it would be incredibly strange wrestling and then shows at Annie social club and shows with Arno correlator. Definitely the ISW and stinkies peep show stuff at this covered wagon before it was any social club. Yeah that's that's those are my salad days there. They're in my first book beer blood and cornmeal seven years of incredibly strange wrestling now available at your San Francisco library. You know they might chat. Yeah, they might have a copy of it that's fraying apart at the scenes. I hope it's holding together hope your blood and corn meals holding together in the SFPL collection. That could only minutes mean it's been well loved and read many times. Someone would like to know here Bailey oh hi Bailey Bailey would like to know if there was any murder or crime happening in mirror woods. You know there must be. I just don't know it off the top of my head. I mean your woods has to be as much of a God I'm going to sound terrible like like cops that James Elroy talks to like your woods has to be as much of a body dump site is Golden Gate Park, but I don't have a mirror woods crime. If I was still writing this stuff I would be right now, looking through newspapers calm and the Chronicle archive on SFPL.org, looking from your woods and body or corpse parentheses, you know, just to see. Oh, here's a question. Here's a, here's a question. I bet you didn't see comic. What do you think of the recent possible zodiac killer identified. You know, I don't really think much of it. I mean I read through it. I don't know. I've spent a lot of time in Vallejo recently, because there's a bookstore there that that's why is my name blanking on her bookstore. It will come to me in a second. They're really really doing really well for me and I also was interviewed by the Vallejo Times Herald about this book. So the zodiac killer starts in Vallejo. And you also realize that Napa in Lake Berry Esso where some of the other murders were isn't very far and and everything and I'm just like any suspect that comes from looking at the San Francisco composite drawing and doesn't really place them in Vallejo. I don't think is right. It's if it isn't like Arthur Lee Allen or one of those suspects from Vallejo it's somebody from there. And they are crimes of opportunity. I think we also attach too much genius or too much. Well not premeditation the murders are premeditated but I think like people attach this kind of criminal genius to zodiac that I think he backed into or looked into. If they find patterns in the killings that I don't think were intentional or even really there they were just like he's stalking in the area that he was familiar with, and where he thought he wouldn't be hurt, or wouldn't be captured or wouldn't be caught. And that just happens to be in these places that you know where they're in different counties and different jurisdictions I think that was accidental, but he launched a hell of a media campaign he really did some amazing media management for himself. I hear that man for a publicist. He definitely could get a letter in the paper. He definitely could but. Oh yeah, but yeah I just don't take a page from the zodiac. I would like to, you know that the victims families or the people that you know I have talked to people that that new victims new zodiac victims and went to high school with them and I would like to see them get some closure but I don't think this is it. I do hope I'm wrong, you know I hope I hope these people figured it out but I just don't think it's going to come from the composite drawing or the ciphers I think it's it's it's in a narrow circle of Vallejo and Benisha. A question from Vernon a long time reader of yours, who would like to know if you hazard a guess as to why dirty Harry was set in San Francisco. Well, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a cop fantasy of zodiac it's like you know dirty Harry's able to kill Scorpio. You know, it's it's a kind of it's kind of it's a fantasy, you know, that that the viewers of dirty Harry myself included feel, feel that the world is out of control or or you know definitely my parents would have watched it this way. And it is the kind of Hollywood kind of, you know Clint you know he was in westerns before he was in crime movies. He was rowdy eights and raw hide rowdy eights finally gets gets the zodiac, and in a way that never happened that you know. So, so yeah that's that's why it was here is because it's it's it's a riff on so yeah. And Clint he is a Bay Area guy. He is from Oakland. I didn't know that still. And if, and if he's watching, I don't care. That's the best question because we are out of time. This is this comes from a couple of people actually who would like to know in all of your research what was the most surprising thing or what led you in a direction that was completely unexpected. That's a really good question. And I don't really have an answer of it, and I will maybe post it on Twitter or on my website when I do because this is going to be one of those and those those. It's not an annoying question it's a great question. But to me, it's going to be one of those things where 10 minutes after I'm not doing this talk I'm going to think of something brilliant to say. You know something that really gets to that but these stories would always. And I can remember like the frustrating ones. You know, look, this is going to sound kind of weird. When I was researching Charles Sullivan the founder of the Fillmore I had this notion in my head, because the way I stuff I had read about it. It was like Bill Graham, like how to deal with Charles Sullivan where something happened to Charles Bill Graham will get control of the Fillmore. So I did start with the idea that was Bill Graham, or should have Bill Graham been a suspect in that murder. And it turned out when I did more research that no Charles had seen the writing on the wall for that neighborhood and was kind of looking to get out and if these crazy white kids want to go see this psychedelic music then who is he to stop them. You know, there were there when I had finished the research that that terrible idea was luckily done away with. But yeah, you have to you know you have to just keep keep reading and keep digging at sources until you find it but that was that was the research question I had started with doing some of that research was like it, you know, like what if Bill Graham did it and once I had read better accounts of of the Fillmore and Charles Sullivan's business that that didn't make sense anymore. So that was completely just, you know, any notion of that but I did, I did start from a terrible terrible place. Bill Graham's an icon of American music and American music promotion but just the way that I think some of the kind of quicker accounts made it sound like that that was a possibility like hey wait a minute. They had some deal that only you know was like a Perry Mason thing but it turned out no real life was not like that. And thank, thank God for that. But yeah, the stories that went totally different directions I mean I just would sometimes some of these stories I just would work on like I try to write about them and not be able to. And, and then a year later I would be so I just keep working on them and they would keep surprising me they never really, you know, they never they, you know, they were they were they often weren't what I thought they were when I started reading and researching them. Stephanie shattuck adds the man gave out free apples he was not a murderer. Yeah, yeah. No it was a terrible hypothesis. Okay, I'm so glad that I'm not just always talking about my crackpot theory that that you know this happened. But you do, you do have some villainous musicians in your book, as well as villains of all kinds, we're running out of time so so I think that we're supposed to wrap it up now. But I want to say for anybody who hasn't read this book, it is, it's delightful in both the worst and the best ways. So I hope that I hope that you will check it out. There are thrills and spills and horror and redemption and all of that. And I'm proud to talk with you about it Bob. Thank you Ali thank you so much. And thanks Anissa for for bringing us all together here and have hosting this event at San Francisco Public Library. Oh my gosh thank you I totally needed this event it was so fun. I told you it was a perfect pre Halloween event and I see the love coming here in the chat. And one more time in the chat links to tonight's event you can want to get on YouTube links to our presenters their books their handles their socials, find them track them. Instagram and Twitter. So, friends, library community. Love you. Love you weirdos. All right friends have a wonderful evening.