 Right. Hi, welcome everyone to a Child's Christmas in San Francisco, which is a conversation with author John Briscoe and Ralph Lewin. My name is Taryn Edwards and I am one of the librarians here at the Mechanics Institute. For those of you who are unfamiliar with mechanics, we are a 166-year-old independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, the oldest in fact designed to serve the public in California. We're also a cultural event center and a world-renowned chess club that is the oldest in the nation. Right now, due to the pandemic, almost all of our activities are virtual, but I encourage you to consider becoming a member with us. It's only $120 a year and with that you help support our continued contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. I'd like to introduce our Chief Executive Officer, Kimberly Scrafano. She joined the Institute in July of 2019 and thanks Kimberly for hosting with me tonight. Sure. Thank you so much. I really appreciate having the opportunity to be part of this great program. I just want to welcome all of our guests and presenters and I'm sure both of these distinguished folks need no introduction, but I will try my best to do them justice. First, it's my honor to welcome John Briscoe, a member of Mechanics Institute for more than 17 years. So thank you for sticking around with us for so long. We really appreciate it. John is a poet, an author, and an attorney and he's also co-owner of Sam's Grill, the fifth oldest restaurant in the United States. He has generously donated wonderful, exquisite food over the years and I heard there was even some delivery, which is which is always wonderful. But more than that, he's published poetry, articles, and prose, including several books. He's also a senior partner at a San Francisco law firm and has argued and tried numerous cases including before the United States Supreme Court. He's also served a special advisor to the United Nations and is a distinguished fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. John is also served on the advisory board of the Creative Writing MFA program at St. Mary's College in California and he sits on the board of several historical societies and other organizations as well. And joining John in conversation about his new book is Ralph Lewin, the previous executive director at Mechanics Institute and Ralph has been instrumental in helping develop Mechanics Institute's stronger partnerships and enhancing programming while he was here. He also previously served as president and CEO of Cal Humanities and currently is the executive director and chair of the Peter E. Haas Junior Family Fund. He's also been on numerous boards focused on cultural and educational endeavors and he joins John in discussing his new book, picking up a bit on the their previous conversation, I believe where they talked about John's book Crush, The Triumph of California Wine. And I was just sort of mentioning that I just got a chance to read John's new book as well and I encourage all of you, if you can, to take a look at it. It was a wonderful read and very beautifully laid out. And now I will turn it over to John and Ralph. Thank you. Oh, thanks very much, Kimberly. Taryn, I just wanted to thank you and your other staff members and the board of Mechanics Institute for inviting me and John to be with you tonight and also thank the audience, many of whom are members of Mechanics Institute and if you're not a member, I ask you to consider joining and if you are a member, man, a Mechanics Institute gift membership is just an incredible holiday gift. It's kind of like a badge of honor that people who love San Francisco should wear. So speaking of honor, what a pleasure to be back with you, John, at Mechanics Institute. Virtually, I wish we were there in person, but so it goes. And Kimberly talked a little bit about your background and one thing I, you know, we've talked a little bit about, but I think what would be interesting to learn a little bit more about is your childhood. This is a child's Christmas in San Francisco. What was your childhood like? You grew up in San Francisco, didn't you? Well, much of my childhood was, and thank you, Ralph, and Kimberly and Taryn. I want to thank you both also for this opportunity. I love Mechanics for the folks in the audience. What's behind Ralph is the magnificent library at the Mechanics Institute, which is to be seen and to be lived in if you haven't seen it before. Yes, much of my early childhood was in San Francisco in North Beach at 630 Lombard Street and it was a magical city that I fell in love with them. I was rusted away to have to live with my parents in Stockton. I was living with my grandmother. We boarded with a lady at 630 Lombard Street and I yearned for the day that I could be free and return to San Francisco. It was a wonderful time. It was magical. The end of the, I was not quite old enough to remember the end of World War II, but I remember well the end of the Korean War. And the city was one magnificent party and everywhere my grandmother and our landlady, Mrs. Giacomozzi, took us. I was the star of the show and I could never figure that out, because, you know, five-year-old kid, six-year-old kid. Until years later when I realized, all these servicemen who were getting ready to muster out, I am the son they hadn't seen in three years or had never seen. And that's why I was such a star. Anyway, kind of hard not to like San Francisco after a start like that. What was North Beach in particular like in those days? What memories do you have of North Beach as kind of a neighborhood in the city, in the place that it held? Very much as it is today oddly, so many people talk about the great changes that have occurred in San Francisco. But as I walked North Beach and for 10, 11 years, my office was right at the foot of Telegraph Hill. So North Beach was a quick walk for lunch and it hasn't changed much. When I was growing up, the boundary between Chinatown and North Beach, Broadway, had been broken. There were a lot of Chinese families in North Beach. And mind you, I'm living with my grandmother who was an Indian woman from Mexico. And our landlady who was a Spaniard, she, her late husband was Italian. So it wasn't an Italian household, but everybody around was Italian and Chinese. And the Wong family lived in the building at the corner of Mason and Lombard, that'd be the northeast corner. And Mr. Wong had the grocery store was down below and they lived upstairs. And Eddie was my good buddy. And what was our playground? Well, right across the streets the Northeast playground and the North Beach branch of the library. So this was the whole world two blocks up was Liguria, Bakery, with the great Italian breads, and St. Peter and Paul Church, of course, and Fisherman's Wharf, not too far, was my world. Beautiful. Were you one of those kids that grew up going to the library and kind of having an inkling from the early age that, you know, storytelling, that writing was going to be part of your life from early on? I don't remember that it was the library, but I do remember storytelling, because storytelling was in the family, both sides of the family, the Irish side as well. And poetry was everywhere. So it was, it was just in me, I can't explain it. Nobody said this is really important, it just was important. It seemed to apprehend it. Well, you certainly have. I mean, you've been prolific as of late in terms of the writing that you've been doing and the publishing. You know, last time we were together at Mechanics, we discussed your book Crush about the history of the wine industry, which I thought was a wonderful, wonderful book and exploration into that part of California's history. Book Prior to Crush, I think was a poetry, right? That's correct. The book Prior to Crush was called The Lost Poems of Chang'an. And these are, I mean, nobody's listening, right? It's just you and me, so like, keep away a secret. It's between us. Okay. These are translations from ancient Chinese 4,650 years ago, which makes them the oldest known poetry on earth, older than the Epic of Gilgamesh, older than the hymns of Anhodwana, which are about 150 years older. This is from Akkad in what's today, Iraq. In truth, I wrote the whole thing. It's a friendly literary hoax, if you will. But it was an attempt to write poetry that you can't write today. There are two types of poetry that are banned by the PC police, if you notice. You and I have had some conversations about this. One is light verse. Oh, no, that's just off limits. You cannot do that. Poetry is a deadly serious thing. It's about those deep internal thoughts that one has while walking the iris center on the college green. Because these thoughts are more important than anything else in the world, right? And the others love poetry. I have no idea because poetry had to have begun as a means to try to express the emotion love in all of its infinite facets. But it was the last time any of us read just good old-fashioned love poetry in poetry magazine, the American Poetry Review in the New Yorker. But the last poems of Chanja, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, that was an effort to find out what would be a very, very old poetry. And it assumed it would be largely love poetry. Why do you think our culture shifted away from, say, love poetry? I have no idea. I mean, I can speculate in the way that, well, maybe it's this, and then 30 seconds later, I realize I'm wrong about it. But it's interesting that just take San Francisco alone, which has been a literary hub since the Gold Rush. Bret Hart founded the Overland Monthly. Gillette Burgess founded The Lark, a literary magazine in 1895. I never saw a purple cow. I hope I'll never see one, but I will tell you anyhow I'd rather see than be one. 70% of Americans knew that poem, and about half of Americans knew it by heart by 1900. But why is life poetry out of fashion? I don't know. Why is left poetry to come back to San Francisco? There was a poet here when I was young and into my college years here named Rod McEwen. And he wrote love poems. The two titles that come readily to mind are Listen to the Warm, and Stanion Street, and Other Sorrows. And these were wildly successful, as I remember. All bookstores carried them, went into 16th, 18th, 20th printings. The guy made money off this poetry. He also was a musician and a songwriter and so forth. But I remember my English teachers in college, Rod McEwen, I don't know, but the academy was trying to diminish this, even though it was so popular. And so if you liked it, you were sneered at by the academy. And if you wanted to become a statistician, you had to get your liking for Rod McEwen's type of poetry out. And maybe the same thing happened with light verse, which like left poetry has been around since poetry has been around. Let's turn a little bit to this new book and I'll hold it up. I hope people can see it. It's kind of fading. Anyway, there it is. And A Child's Christmas in San Francisco, it has, it's chock full of light verse and it's beautiful. And it's, you've had two heavy weights in the poetry world come out and say really great things about the book. Joe Parisi, the former editor of Poetry Magazine called it a big hearted charmer of a book. Robert has the former U.S. poet laureate called it handsome, fiendishly ingenious. And these are wonderful words for this kind of poetry that many are not paying attention to. So you're getting some attention among heavy weights. So that's really wonderful and they have great things to say. What was the genesis of this book, John? I think maybe the Exodus is more important, however I escaped this. But the genesis, Ralph, was nothing more than the same imagination that goes into a great, not that this is great, but that the same imagination that prompts a sculptor to create something and you're not quite sure what it is or a painting or what have you. The genesis literally was recalling one day, I think at the office, it was a Tuesday. And I'm walking through the office and somebody said, happy Tuesday. And I turned at the person and I growled, this was a much younger person than I growled, Tuesday is Red's Tamale Day. And that person just looked at me, shocked. Like, what did you say? And I said, no, you understand. We're back when the last millennium, there was a radio station in San Francisco that everybody listened to. Nobody listened to any other one. It was KSFO. They had the Great Don, Sherwood, Jasbo Collins and so forth. But these commercials would run on the air and you'd hear this absolutely memorable voice that would say, Tuesday is Red's Tamale Day. Well, Red's Tamales were a pre-packaged, I think they were frozen, Tamale. And they were advertised all over San Francisco. I mean, you just couldn't escape that. And there was something so memorable about that voice. I later learned that voice, and you can YouTube it or whatever, that voice was the voice of Mel Blank, the voice of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, all the Warner Brothers voices. The voice of Farms and Merkley, that's Mel Blank too. And there was just something memorable about that because at the playground or at school, if it was Tuesday, we would say Tuesday is Red's Tamale Day. And then poems got made up about it. Or I made up the fact that poems were made up about it. I'm not really sure at this point where the creativity leaves off and the memory resumes. Memory, shaping this book as kind of the Child's Christmas in San Francisco, there's a lot of great writing. And I guess the title is related to Dylan Thomas's work, Child's Christmas in Wales, is that right? Well, I'm shameless about this. Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet, wrote, talk about a charmer of a story. It is just a heartbreak and a charmer of a story, a child's Christmas in Wales. And I will confess that the sound of that title was in my head. And I have to say that Dylan Thomas's wife's name was Caitlyn, and your wife was named for Caitlyn Thomas. There's a connection here. But yes, but this book is nothing like A Child's Christmas in Wales, except that there's a lot of fancy in it, a lot of whimsy, some memory, and some a lot of imagination. Memory seems, to me, it plays a big role. I read the book not once, not twice, but three times now in the past 48 hours I've had it. I really am enchanted with the book. I find that every time I read through it, there's something that I see anew. And that might just be a fraction of myself. But I think it's just a clever and thought provoking book. But one of the things that I find myself wondering about is kind of how you're able to, in my mind, capture some of the essence of San Francisco. And I'm wondering if that's something you sought out to do, or if you think that's right. And if so, how you would think about what is the essence of San Francisco that you capture? I think there is no one essence of San Francisco. It has many essences, which is one of the charming things, the maddening things, the beguiling things, the entrapment things about the city. Nobody writes about Fresno as they write about San Francisco. I mean, William Saroyan came closest, but what did he do? He moved to San Francisco. It's ineffable, a word I love, not sure I exactly know what it means, but it's something like indescribable, ineffable, ineffable. And I was grasping for a whole bunch of things here. The history of food and drink in San Francisco, and not high-brow food drink. I mean, bullpup enchiladas, bullpup tacos, the it's it at Playland. Rets tamales, no, but Roosevelt's tamales, or tortolas or what have you. I mean, this is not cuisine. This is peasant food. This is ordinary food, but it was so San Francisco, and schoolchildren are very inventive, and they do ditties. They haven't been yet told that light versus wrong, right? I mean, kids make up dirty lyrics to songs. They just do. Or funny lyrics, you know, not necessarily dirty, but they go into dirty, and I got into my share of trouble. That's what kids do. And what did the adults drink? Martinis, you know? So it had to be in here. And that great couple, Gino and Esther, you know, the Italian kid who went to Galileo, and the Jewish girl from the Mission District, who of course went to Lowell, you know, and they were the masters. They had the greatest Monday poem forever, but when they broke up, one long night's walking ocean beach, they vowed they would never ever recite that poem again, and only they could do it. Nobody else could remember it, and it's lost for the ages. Tragic. Oh, it is. There's some tragic stuff in here. This one breaks my heart. I mean, you know, I remember when I was at Mechanics Institute, I learned a little bit about Pisco Punch, and Pisco Punch plays a prominent role in the book, and I'm wondering if you could talk about it. I think Saturday is, of course, Pisco Punch Day. And there's a wonderful photo in the book of the House of Pisco. That's kind of hard to come through, but it's a beautiful photo, and there's so many great photos in the book. But I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about Pisco and Pisco Day and maybe the Diddy. Okay. Well, Pisco finds its way. Pisco is a Peruvian brandy. And at Duncan Nichols Bank Exchange Saloon in the Montgomery block, which that's the trans-American pyramid today, I believe. I should know. But anyway, it was served there. The recipe has disappeared, and it's taken on mythic proportions. What was Pisco Punch? And there are so many marbles. I had to actually cut a lot of historical references to Pisco Punch. But the manager of this huge block-long building where the saloon was, Oliver Perry Stigerm, likened Pisco Punch, quote, to the scimitar of Haroon, whose edge was so fine that after a slash, a man walked on unaware that his head had been severed from his body until his knees gave way and he fell to the ground dead. Now, that's something to write about. And many people have. Or experience. There's a whole long article written in the California Historical Society's Journal and 40 years ago, the secrets of Pisco Punch, only in San Francisco. Do we think about stuff like this? Only in San Francisco? My gosh. It's a bit like, where did Drake land? Yeah. I mean, millions and millions of research hours have been spent on that. Obviously, he landed at Drake's Bay. I mean, it's called Drake's Bay. Isn't that where he landed? I don't know. Listen, you dedicated the book to Warren Hinkle, and I know you were good friends with Warren Hinkle. And why did you dedicate this book to him? And maybe you can tell us a little bit about what he meant to you, to writing and to San Francisco. Well, Warren was a dear friend. And I miss him greatly. He died in August of 2016. He was ahead of me at college. He went to USF, the University of San Francisco, distinguished from the University of South Florida. I was appalled to learn that some other upstart school had the same initials. And he was legendary. He took the little college newspaper there and made it one of the finest instruments of journalism in the world. The USF Foghorn became famous. He was a phenomenal writer. He had gone to Reardon High School. When he was the senior and the editor of the Foghorn, senior, maybe junior, a young freshman from St. Ignatius, well, from an orphanage who then got into St. Ignatius, who is at USF and comes in and he wants to be a reporter for the Foghorn. So he has to interview with Warren Hinkle, the great one. And this fellow, bow tie, the sport coat. He shows some writing samples to Hinkle. And Hinkle says, after about 20 minutes of this, he said, well, it's 1130. You've passed the office portion of the interview. Now it's off the remainder of it. Well, what's that? Asked the young student. We're hitting the bars in North Beach. The young student was Kevin Starr. Those two became the closest of friends, the greatest historian of California ever, Kevin, and the wildest writer since when? We've had a lot of wild writers in California in San Francisco. Warren went on to a great career, Hunter S. Thompson. We wouldn't know of Hunter S. Thompson if it weren't for Warren. He was a discoverer of talent. He assigned Hunter S. Thompson to cover the 1970 Kentucky Derby. That story, 50 years old now. That story is considered one of the four or five best sports stories ever written in the 20th century. Now, Hinkle was a fabulous editor. And no one will ever know how much of that story was actually Hinkle as opposed to Thompson. And ESPN has an interview with Warren maybe 10 years before his death about resting that story out of Thompson, getting it, okay? Forcing him to write. Kidnapped him in a hotel room in New York. And it's a fabulous story. But Hinkle valued writing, valued good writing, valued writing for a purpose, and valued writing really well for fun. And I admired him so much for all of this. Martini Monday, the story that's there is in part, in large part, lifted from an essay that he asked me to write a number of years ago. Typical Hinkle called me up. John, John, I need you to do me a favor. And so on and on, you haven't gotten behind the wheel of a car, have you? He was known to have a drink or two. Yeah. No, no, no, I want you to write me a story. And it was the story of the, the true story of the birth of the Martini. Then I thought, okay, I've got three or four months. He said, no, no, I need it Friday. I said, this is Wednesday. And I did it. I did it. And it was great fun. So the story there in the book is 99% historical fact and 1% BS. Nice. We'll leave the readers to guess which 1% is the best. So just staying with the Hinkle connection, this is published by Last Gasps Press, which is a wonderful San Francisco house. Publishers of the weird and wonderful. How did you get connected with Last Gasps and how did you decide that they were a good fit for this book? Well, that's your last question. It might be turned the other way around. How did they decide that this book would be a good fit for their esteemed publishing house? But Ron Turner founded Last Gasps 50 years ago this year. His son, Colin, is doing a lot of the heavy, heavy lifting today and their friends. Ron was a great friend of Warren Hinkle's and of the whole writing and publishing community in San Francisco. He's a marvelous, warm-hearted fellow. And I can't quite remember. I mean, when he asked, when we got serious about this, he said, what genre is this manuscript of yours? And I said, well, it has no known genre. I don't know. Anyway, you look at all these pigeonholes, I can't fit this thing into anyone. Well, how would you describe it? I said, it's a nostalgia for a time that never was. But we talked about it and they publish a lot of weird stuff. The comics are classic. I mean, they're one of the great publishers in the world in that field. But they also published Hinkle's posthumous Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson? Question mark. I mean, what a provocative title because you don't have to look far. Hunter S. Thompson killed himself. But the mere posing of the question asks so many things. This book is a 250, 60 page introduction by Warren about his good friend Hunter S. Thompson and then essays from 30, 40 other people about Thompson, including then Governor Jerry Brown. And it's an absolutely astounding exploration of a literary phenomenon. It's not just Thompson. It's also Hinkle and the whole circle that is all gone now. So I feel very honored to have this book brought out by Last Gasp, particularly in light of not only their 50 years, but that particular book Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson. Well, it seems like a perfect marriage. And I think, not only is the writing it's really poignant, provocative, filled with feeling. But I think it's also a beautiful book in the way it's laid out. And I think the images that were selected are amazing. Can you talk a little bit about some of those images? Yes. And I have to adopt my hat to my editor and the designer, Tom Christon, who I hope is listening. Tom is a remarkable fellow. We've been friends for six or seven years. He edited and designed The Lost Poems of Chancha for me. Tom has a PhD in comparative lit, as I remember, from the University of Wisconsin. So I mean, he's deeply into literature. He was the number two person at North Point Press, ran Mercury House for 10 years. And then for 17 years was the publications director at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. So think of all those magnificent coffee table books and what not. He's also a translator of poetry, of latter 20th century Spanish poetry. And if you liked Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, you can thank Tom. He's the translator of that. Oh, beautiful. But he read the manuscript and he asked if he could do the design working with glass gas. So the dust jacket, which is very arresting and is very deliberately not green and red. The Hughes are not. But he found a very, very old postcard, which is, well, it's no older than 1937 because of the Bay Bridge or 1936. But you can tell by the buildings in the background, he superimposed Santa and the sled. And he laid it out. He came up with the size. He selected the photographs, put her marvelous and laid everything out. I should give a shout out to Bedeen Bakery because Wednesday is sour dough day. And that's Papa Stefano Giordano on page 12. So that's a real, you know, Papa Stefano was the head baker at Bedeen Bakery. And that's him with those numbers. Well, you got just some amazing characters in here. Speaking of amazing characters, Mechanics Institute is filled with them and they usually come up with just wonderful questions. So what I'd like to do at this moment is turn it over to Taryn and Kimberly. And maybe they have some questions to fire at you. Yes, speaking of characters. Let's go back to Warren Hinkel. And Cynthia has a question for you, John. How were you able to beat Warren Hinkel from being the first to write A Child's Christmas in San Francisco? Did you have a conversation about these poems? Yes, we had, we had many conversations about all such things. And Warren just sadly died before me. Otherwise, I'm sure he would have written a much better book than this. So lots of Calamari fueled lunches at Sam's? Well, yeah, Calamari, but we pretended every day was Monday, which meant it was martini day. So we had a, we had a martini for in honor of Hinkel. I have my glass here, which is empty. I've been abstaining on all during this presentation. But yes, we had, we formed what we call the Warren Hinkel Roundtable at Sam's. And Taryn, you sat there at that table. It started at that round table in the corner. It was named by Kevin Starr. But we had, there were dinners, and we talked about San Francisco history, about the importance of history, the importance of literacy, the importance of poetry, how do we impart it to the next generation, the importance of fun in it all, because if it isn't fun, it's not going to take. And so that's one of the reasons that I dedicated this to Warren, because he was all about, you got to make it fun. You got to really tickle the reader or the student or the child. Great answer. I didn't know that that round table in the corner was, was named for him. Well, when we had, yeah, it was the poor man's round table from the Algonquin Hotel. And it was named by Kevin Starr. I mean, Hinkel when he was there, he was always, he was always there until he got very sick. And then he died. He was our chair and included people like Jim Haas, Charles Frockia, Charles Fahlhaber from Berkeley, you know, many people, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. And when Hinkel got sick and then died, Kevin became Kevin Starr. The great historian became our chair. But Kevin died only five months later, January of 2017. And then Ernie Bile, great North Beach flannur, as he called himself. Six four six. That's a great word. I love that word. But Ernie wrote a column for the, he'd been a Chronicle writer. He wrote a column for the Marine at times. He became our chair. And then Ernie died on his 90th birthday. And so we don't have chairs anymore, because when your name's chair, you're going to die soon, it seems like. So there was another question from Cynthia Murray, and it just said, what was your favorite Christmas poem as a child, John? My faith, oh my gosh, I know a Cynthia Murray and God help her if this is the same Cynthia Murray who has tough, but my favorite Christmas poem as I'm not sure I had one. I've that's a very disappointing answer to me, especially, but I done pops into my head. Now, John, what are you doing to make sure that that the literary and historical traditions of San Francisco carry on other than writing books and maybe hosting lunches at Sam's? Well, as you know, I like to support the Mechanics Institute and all that it does to support the literary institutions. And at the San Francisco Historical Society, where I'm lucky enough to be the president now, when we reopen, we have this marvelous museum at 608 Commercial Street, where we've already had literary events until we only got the museum last August. But it's how can we do it? Incidentally, that museum, that building, 608 Commercial Street, that was the first mint west of the Mississippi. It became a United States mint. And Bret Hart was hired, I believe, as the superintendent of the Mint with a nice budget. What did Bret Hart do as the superintendent of the Mint? He founded the Overland Monthly, a fabulous literary magazine right there. I think he spent all his time on that. You look at volume one, 1868, I want to say, the year before the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. And you read, he has poems by Ena Klubreff. She was the first poet laureate of California. A guy named Mark Twain writes all of these stories, the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County. Bret Hart, the luck of roaring camp, and so many other great West Coast writers found it right there. All people who came from someplace else, they weren't native San Franciscans because they were the Olones, and they actually were welcomed into this new society that had come here. But I hope to do my part in the remainder of my life to foster a love and enjoyment of literature. Doing great so far, providing your own. Thank you. Thank you. That's another question. So what do you view as the most magical place in San Francisco during the Christmas season? Oh Kimberly, there are too many magical places in San Francisco, but if I've got to pick one, it's Land's End, where there's the remains of the bridge of the USS San Francisco or Little Sutro Park that hardly anybody knows of that overlooks the Cliff House. These are magical places. Yeah, Little Sutro is a very beautiful place. Yes. So what, there's a question from Will. What is your next book? Do you have anything in the hopper? Well, I've got a book of serious poetry. I've got three. A book of serious poetry, and I don't know what the working title is, maybe cold coffee. Another book of light verse called, what has three super titles and then a title, but let's just call it fish feathers. It's too complicated, but it's light verse. It's poems about animals with names beginning with each letter of the alphabet. It's been done many, many times by other people. But I've been practicing law for going on 49 years and I have a lot of reflections on it. I've been very fortunate to have had some fascinating cases and more fortunate to have met some phenomenal people in the law. And so I'm working on a book titled, tentatively, titled Paper Lawyer, Confessions of a Practicer of the Dark Arts of Law. Sounds like you need to wear a robe with that. I was curious. I noticed, you know, reading the book, which was great. You know, you did it by each day and I, you know, started on a Tuesday, which I thought was really unique. But I really liked when I got to Thursday and there's this great photo of a roller coaster from Playland and, you know, really appreciate the whimsy and sort of tying it to food and was just curious sort of how do you see the, you know, pre-depression era of large amusement parks like Playland and, you know, places like Coney Island and Neptune Beach and how these helped maybe create and maybe shift when they closed sort of some of the culture and experiences of San Francisco? That's a, that's a phenomenal question, Kimberly, and I don't have a ready answer to it. I, your answer assumes that there was a cultural shift and I agree with that. I feel that there was. I remember when, when Playland closed, I remember when the fire destroyed sutro baths. And as a young fella, you know, going out to Playland, that was one of those really inexpensive dates. I don't remember what it cost, but, you know, you could just ride rides and have a lot of laughs, eat some so-so food. This is funny, it was probably awful food, but we have such wonderful memories of it. And it was created by the, the surroundings, Laughing Sal. There's a wonderful photograph of Laughing Sal who reposes at Pier 45 right now, and she was hideous. Why do, why do we all want to go see Laughing Sal and hear her cackle as she bent forward and back and forward and back? I, it, it had some effect as radio must have had some effect as television. I remember adults saying, well, television is rotting the brains of children. And then later I read that Plato, Plato railed against writing, writing things down. No, you're going to rot the brain, memorize. Don't read stuff down. He also didn't like poetry, but a student Aristotle studied it fervently. All right. Now, this is for both you and Ralph, just because you have a, both have a long experience with San Francisco food. Now, my father, he worked for the Veterans Administration in the 70s and 80s, and he would always come home after work. And he would say, yeah, we had a rat burger for lunch. Do you know what that could have been? I have no idea, but I'm dying to know. I don't Ralph, you, you, your turn. You got to feel this. You know, I think it's something that one of my sons would try and feed me, but I, what that is, I'm sorry, Tara, and I'm drawing a blank. Maybe somebody, the audience has an answer for you. I'll pose it in the chat space. So John, you know, I think we're coming towards an end. I just, you know, we're in the middle of this pandemic and, you know, you and a number of your friends and colleagues have done just an amazing job and, and really saving a cultural institution in Sam's Grill. And I know it's a really hard time for restaurants in general, and I'm sure for Sam's Grill. How are you feeling right now and about San Francisco and, you know, what the future holds? I'm feeling very positive. And I think partly because that's the only feeling you one has to have, you know, you can't give up hope, but looking at it objectively, you know, San Francisco began as a city in 1849. It nominally began with the mission and the procedure in 1776, but there was nobody here until the gold rush of 1849. Fewer than 500 people in the census of 1847. In those first couple of years, everything was built of wood and the city burned down six times in two years. Just everything just went through and they, and they rebuilt. And how many times have we heard it said particularly like San Francisco is not like what it used to be. Oh, has it changed? And you know, for the worst and everything else. Can you imagine being here then during one of those six fires, but then take 1906. So you have one of the largest earthquakes in an urban area ever. Population of 400,000, 250,000 are homeless almost overnight. 250,000. We got 8,000 homeless in San Francisco today. And that's a crisis. Oh no, wait, wait, we had 250,000 homeless before. We figured out what to do about it. I have no idea how the city is going to climb out even more recently when organizations like the Mechanics Institute, like the San Francisco Historical Society relied upon great corporate benefactors such as Chevron, Bank of America, right? They leave San Francisco. They stop writing checks to Mechanics Institute, to the symphony, the opera, the Asian Art Museum. So, oh, this is the end. This is the end of culture and arts, because we need that private money. But somehow it changed. Now, we're, we're in the midst of a disaster. A lot of businesses are not going to make it. A lot of nonprofits are not going to make it. It's scary in the non-profit world. Like you, I have one foot in that. You got both feet in that. I'm optimistic, but I have no objective reason to be, except that people who come to San Francisco, they, you know, they drink the water, and we're just going to do it. Beautiful. Thank you. I mean, it's nice to hear that note of that perspective and that hopefulness. It's not always easy in these times, so thank you for that, John. Tara and Kimberly, we have just a few minutes left. I don't know how you'd like to proceed. Well, we have an answer to my rat burger question, which I think is kind of fun. Cynthia says rat burgers were greasy burgers and also good for hangovers. So but I always thought the VA was near the embarked arrow. So I always envisioned giant wharf rats. The VA was Fort Miley out by Sutro Park. No, it had to have been on Bart because he took Bart. You can't take Bart out to the beach. This would have been in the 70s and 80s, so there had to have been some sort of like office or space or something. But anyway, hey, I want to thank you both for coming and sharing your sharing your book, sharing, you know, a fun conversation and, you know, cheers to a happier new year. Cheers indeed. Thank you, Tara and Kimberly and Ralph. Yeah. Thanks to you all and thanks to Mechanics Institute, and I wish you all a very, very happy holiday season. Stay safe, be well. Thank you, everyone. This has been very great. Bye bye. All right. Thanks, everyone. We'll send the video link out tomorrow. So you can share it with your friends and family if you like. And don't forget to pick up a copy of A Child's Christmas in San Francisco by John Briscoe. It is a wonderful last minute gift or stocking stuffer for your loved one for a local or a wannabe local. Anyway, thanks again. Have a nice evening. Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. Bye.