 All right, it's seven o'clock. I still see the numbers trickling in, but we'll get on with the library news and then turn it over. So welcome, this is part of our huge summer stride events. So we appreciate you joining us for summer stride. And we appreciate Total SF for partnering with us on the Total SF Book Club. And this is a quarterly curated book club. So you can look forward to many more events with Total SF. All right, and other library news we have. As I mentioned, it is summer stride. There still is time to sign up for summer stride, and it's not just for kids, it's for all ages. Do your 20s hours reading. Get that iconic SFPL summer stride tote bag. And a big shout out to our friends at the San Francisco Public Library who make all of this possible and lots more to come. We want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Aloni Tribal people and acknowledge the many raw, mutish Aloni Tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards of the lands in which we reside here in our beautiful Bay Area. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations with whom we live together. And we do this at the library by providing all sorts of reading lists, websites, factual, useful, entertainment, even resources. So that is in that chat box that we'll put, we'll continue to put links in the chat box all night. We have a couple literary campaigns coming up on the same page as a bi-monthly read that we do at SFPL, encouraging all of San Francisco to read the same book. Our July and August selection has been Jacqueline Woodson read at the Bone. And we will have a book club on this on Monday. So come by for that, 7 p.m. And if you Google Jacqueline Woodson SFPL YouTube, you will find her speaking from August 12th this summer. And that will only be up on our YouTube for two more days. So definitely check that out. Tomorrow night, our third in a series with SF Neon and the Tenderloin Museum, we'll be talking about San Francisco Neon in film. And then straight after summer stride, we slide into Viva. So celebrating Latinx Heritage Month, we have authors. We have poets. We have more authors and poets. We have punk rockers. And we have queers. Yay, punk rock and queer. Lia. So come slide through for that, check it out. We will be having our on the same page, we'll be celebrating September and October, Carla Conejo, Bill Linciacino, and the Undocute Americans. And she will be in conversation with Jonathan Blitzer on October 26th. And as I mentioned, Total SF is here to stay. They'll also be joining us in October for our Thursday at noon film series, the longest running film series in San Francisco. I'm just gonna say it as it is. That series has been around forever. So every day in October, four films about San Francisco join us for that. And then November. And yeah, notice where we're having this, the Coret auditorium in person is back. And we'll also have a streaming option for those of you who cannot make it to the Coret. And you know, the Coret's a nice big, spacey environment we can space out and listen to some great authors. So November, Why We Swim, and February, 2022, Charlie Jane Anders. So we're really looking forward to some more events with our friends at Total SF. And I think all of you do know what Total SF is and you're here for it. But if you don't know, they do a lot of things. Heather and Peter, they have a podcast. They have a movie night at Balboa, which is really fun. And they have this book club. And now they're partnering with us again for film. So they do a lot of exploring. They rode the bus to every library, right? Correct, every branch you went to. So they're whimsical, they're fun. They're Peter Knight, Peter, Heartlove, and Heather Knight. Welcome. Thank you so much for having us. We're excited to be here. Anyone who has been to one of our Total SF movie nights knows we love kicking them off with memorable musical performances. We once had a duet at the Balboa Theater with a bagpiper and a cable car bell ringer. And it is still being talked about today. But tonight is no exception. We have Daniel Handler, who has agreed to carry on this tradition on the accordion. Take it away, Daniel. Thank you. I just happen to have the accordion right here. Funny. Yeah, I should duet with the cable car driver. I never thought about it, and I'm gonna try it. All right, well, I learned a new song for you this evening. And I added some lyrics to it. The song is inspired by a question that is asked on the back of today's book. If you have all your copies here, you can turn them around and see them. And you can see that there's a quite piercing question. And here it is. ["Darling, You Gotta Let Me Know"] Darling, you gotta let me know Should I stay or should I go If you say that you are mine I'll be here till the end of time So you gotta let me know Should I stay or should I go But the real question's this now Should you be leaving San Francisco Are you getting what you need Or is it bye-bye London breed Does the fog just bring you woe Maybe then it's time to go You used to love it in my mission Now you check your intuition Even hate streets getting steep You want the sunset, you go deep If you can't get noe or casserole Maybe, baby, time to go Twitter's Harley payin' rents While sleep will sleep and homemade tents Infrastructure's really sinkin' The school board's arguing about Lincoln If you don't have an IPO Might be time to pack and go I can't hear you, but I know there's thunderous- That was amazing. That was really cool. The cable cars. Goodness. Well, with that- It's the sound of the clash. They decided not to board traditional rock lineup. That was fantastic. With that monumental beginning, let's welcome everyone to the second total SF Book Club, the celebration of San Francisco, public libraries, independent bookstores, reading, cocktails, and this month, accordion covers of the clash songs. That was fantastic. When did you write that thing? I wrote that today instead of working. A day well spent. We'll be one day later with your next book, but it was worth it. We're here to welcome two of our favorite San Franciscans, maybe ever starting with Daniel Handler. He's published books under the name Lemony Snicket. Several of his books have been set in San Francisco, including the most recent one, Bottle Grove. He's also an author of his word. We begged him to play down our total SF event here, and here he is, he delivered. Welcome, Daniel Handler. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. We also have the amazing writer, Gary Camilla. He's the author of Cool Gray, City of Love and the Spirits of San Francisco. He's also a historian who has a great column every weekend in the San Francisco Chronicle called Portals of the Past. Welcome, Gary. Thanks, Heather and Peter. Nice to be here. Hi, Daniel. Hello, Gary. Great job. Well, thank you very much. It is a great job. It beats working. Infrastructure sinking, rhyming with Lincoln was a stroke of rare genius. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I can't imagine why the class didn't keep me on. Well, as we chat with Daniel and Gary, we'd love to invite the audience to submit questions in the Q&A box on your screen, and we will get to those a bit later on. And along with our partners at the San Francisco Public Library and Green Apple Books, we'd like to thank Nick Petrolakis, who created the official cocktail again for the book club. This month it is the Golden Gate. It's blending brandy with champagne and orange juice and enough grenadine to get that international orange hue inspired by our book for the evening, The End of the Golden Gate. So many good authors in this book, so many places. I'm imagining some local bat signal went up for authors in the Bay Area. Gary, how'd you get involved with The End of the Golden Gate? And how did this book come together? Oh, well, Chronicle Books just called me up. And Mark Tauber asked if I wanted to be involved writing an essay for it and writing the introduction for it. So I was excited. It's obviously this theme, which Daniel just enunciated on the accordion and vocals of, should I stay or should I go, has been kind of the hot button subject at dinner parties with friends in the media, in the international media for years. But I guess no book had actually taken it on head on. So I was excited to be involved in it. Daniel, same question. When did you get the bat signal? Well, I got the bat signal through email, which I guess is how bat signals come nowadays. But I mean, I think, and from talking to other computers, I think we all got this thing where I don't know who they got first, but they convinced us all that we were all doing it at the same time, which is very San Franciscan to me. And so as soon as I heard that Michelle T was doing it and Bethalistic, and who else, Bonnie Swee, and all the great people who were in this, I knew that I had to be on board. And I had actually published shortly before they contacted me an essay about Bottle Grove, my novel, and about living in San Francisco for so long, and about the changes taking place. And so with a few tweaks here and there, I have the essay already, which is, that's always handy, when you can just hand something that they've been asking you for. Well, speaking of your essay on marriage writing and a changing city, could you treat us with a no accordion, but just an excerpt from your essay? Sure. I just happen to have a copy right here, Mark. You're so prepared. Funny you should mention that. I'll read just a little bit. I always feel a little reading on Zoom goes a long way. An early version of the cover for Bottle Grove, my novel, about marriage and the tech industry in San Francisco had a photograph of the city skyline, but the image was outdated. The trouble is, the publisher told me, if they used a more recent one with all the new buildings that have popped up lately, people wouldn't know of San Francisco. I know the feeling. I look at old photographs of my wife and me, and I can't believe it's us. It's not just that we're younger. It's that I can't quite grasp what it was we were doing. We ate a lot of black beans because they were cheap, and I remember, for instance, being very busy on weekend afternoons, but we had no children or anything else to be responsible about, so I can't figure out what we were busy doing. We lived mostly in tiny apartments, but sometimes got on our nerves. Now we live in a house that could likely fit all of our previous apartments inside, and yet we still manage, on occasion, to drive each other bonkers. We've changed a lot along with the city that's our home. Some personal landmarks in San Francisco have vanished. Let's pause and light a candle for our drug books, for streetlight records, for Josie's cabaret and juice joint. While the homeless population has grown, and after a parade of mayors promising a parade of changes seems very tragically settled in, many artist friends have been priced out of the city, but the alarming thing to me isn't just that artists aren't able to afford the city, but that the idea of artists affording the city seems somehow outdated. It's hard to chart the specific changes in my city because everything is changing, and San Francisco is part of everything. Bottle Grove came from my wondering what marriages are made of, conceived at a time when a changing definition of marriage was the subject of national debate. And as I hit the age when friends started getting divorced, revealing portraits of relationships that were sometimes vastly different or eerily identical to my own. You marry one person, but you stay married to another. A city becomes a different city, whether you stay or leave. That's lovely, thank you for reading that. And Gary, you wrote the introduction, Requiem's for a Dream, as well as an essay, San Francisco is my home. Both of those are in the book, and can you read from one of them? Sure, I just happen to have the book here also, not to be outdone. So I'm talking about why I'm not leaving San Francisco, and I come to three reasons. And the third is change, or more precisely, learning to embrace change. This has not been easy. My imaginary San Francisco, the place I visit in my mind, is inhabited by a ghostly tribe of wise Native Americans, bold 49ers, exuberant pioneers, suave anti-heroes, rebellious beats, and intellectual hippies. And that dream city also happens to look like a 1949 film noir version of San Francisco, with nothing but beautiful post-quake skyscrapers adorning the skyline, women in dresses and gloves stopping at flower stands on Powell Street, hard-boiled journalists in fedoras, cracking wise with laughing doormen, fruit vendors speaking Italian in North Beach, and cheap apartments in Bernal Heights. Coming to terms with the actual San Francisco, which is now populated not by a platonic exaltation of mavericks and dreamers, but by an Aristotelian army of systems analysts from Ohio, and where the most visible building is not the Clay Jones, but the Salesforce tower has taken some effort, but I've made the adjustment. Three things helped me do it. First, I have a deathly horror of becoming a grumpy old man, an aging boho version of Mr. Wilson, yelling at Dennis the menace, now metamorphosed as a tech bro to get off my lawn. The fact that in this scenario, Dennis the coder now owns the lawn, and I am yelling at him from the window of my 450 square foot apartment is all the more reason I am determined not to go down that road. Envy, especially unacknowledged Envy, is an unhipped emotion. I'll just leave it at that. That was lovely, both of you, thank you. I wanna start by asking you, when you tell people you love San Francisco, what's your starting point? Are there things you love about San Francisco that haven't changed? And I'll start with you, Daniel. Oh, lots. I mean, first of all, I'll acknowledge that I'm such a ridiculous fan of San Francisco, that I am frequently saying, oh, you can't, this is the best in San Francisco, you can't get this anywhere else. No one else really understands it. And then someone will say to me, like, that's sparkling water, that's available everywhere. But I think for me that, because I love to walk around this city, I think the physical beauty of where we are, of our location and of that, I guess by the necessity of a small-ish peninsula that we're all kind of crammed in here, is what makes me feel the delight of it. When people visit here, I take them for walks. And always just the magic of kind of walking so quickly from one neighborhood to another. Oh, we were just in the castle and now we're in the mission and now where are we? That feels really magic. And then just the kind of deep natural beauty that seems incongruable in San Francisco. I mean, I always think that what passes is like as completely secondary beauty in San Francisco would have like a shrine build around it in so many other places. And I think that's something that all of the change that we're unsure we'll get to later can't really affect. It's beautiful. Gary, Gary, same question. When you tell people you love San Francisco, what's your starting point? Yeah, it's actually pretty much the same answer as Daniel's. I think that the sheer physical beauty of San Francisco, it's stunning terrain. It's incredible setting. It's a magnificent bay. It's the hills that are constantly erupting all over the landscape. The fact that the neighborhoods change so dramatically, so fast. All of that is just one of the unique urban places in the world, not just in the United States. I haven't been to every great city in the world but I've been to quite a few of the really majestically beautiful places. And really, probably the only city that I would say was drop dead more beautiful in its setting than San Francisco was Rio. And when I was in Rio, I got robbed five times. So, which is I still love Rio despite that. And some of that was foolish behavior, wandering around like I like to do. How many days were you in Rio? I was in Rio for about a week or so but I was traveling with my cousin who's six foot six and has red hair. And he was like an enormous neon sign saying I am not Brazilian. Whereas I could kind of pass, there's a lot of half Japanese people in Brazil and especially when I was in the sort of down dressed, nobody bothered me unless I opened my big fat mouth. But my cousin, I could not get away from him. So, and it was a tough time too. Everyone says in Rio, the crime is so tied to the value of the currency and they were just having a really bad time. So, I didn't get hurt but I did have to run away from a couple of guys carrying knives and things like that. But anyway, it's a stunning setting. I mean, it's just outrageous but the fact that San Francisco's even in that conversation is just amazing. And yeah, when people come to town, the two places that I always take people are the lands and walk, which is, you know, bar none, the most beautiful, stunning natural walk in the city. And then the Philbert steps on the other side of Telegraph, on the Eastern side of Telegraph Hill, which is an incredible sort of combination of nature gardens and, you know, beautiful old houses. And I love the contrast of the city that you'll just be walking down any banal street on any given corner and you'll look out in the distance and you'll see some, you know, mountain that there's places where you can see places no one's ever set foot in the Marine Headlands. And you can see that from some funky corner in San Francisco and that contrast is just intoxicating to me. So, and if you grow weary of whatever the scene is, whatever the cultural, political moment, the socioeconomic moment of the city, you always have recourse to just check out and go into that place. And that's a great solace about San Francisco. Somebody just said in the chat box, they thought you said Reno. So they were a little confused, but they figured out it was Rio. No, the biggest little city in the world cannot quite be said to be the most beautiful place in the world. Probably not. So these past awful 18 months, most of us have been sticking pretty close to home. And I was wondering how that has changed your relationship with San Francisco, whether you came to appreciate it more in any way? And if you discovered anything new about the city because we had to spend so much time here. Gary, you wanna take that? Sure. Yeah, I mean, I actually found it kind of strangely intoxicating, especially the beginning of the pandemic. I write about this in the introduction to my new book, A Spirits of San Francisco with the artist Paul Madonna. I just happened to be recovering from having one of my replaced knees re-replaced. And I would just come from being laid up over my mother's house. I came back to San Francisco and just at that moment, London Breed issued the shelter at home order. And but I needed to get out and walk to rehab my leg. And so I was wandering around this completely, bizarrely intoxicatingly empty city. I felt like I was in a D'Curico painting. And it was really a strange combination of obviously being aware of this terrible gravity of this pandemic and not taking that lightly. But as an urbanist and a lover of the city, it was like this thrill to sort of feel that you had the streets all to yourself and that it became almost like this stage set. So that was really intoxicating and exciting for me. But not to say that I was like fiddling while Rome burns because I knew that this also meant there were many small businesses and many people that were struggling, people were getting sick. So it was a serious thing. But at the same time, the city did present this completely unique face. So I went through a lot of sort of psychological different places during the course of the pandemic. But I live alone, I like to walk. So a lot of my life during the pandemic didn't really change that much and sort of intensified a lot of the things that I liked to do anyway. And of course, it got much harder as we began to see some of the great businesses close and just the changes that were wrought in the city. But I'm glad that we, as many, that we came through it as well as we did. And Daniel, how about you? Did your relationship with the city change during the pandemic? Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the kind of new thing that I discovered about the city was what stuff looked like early in the morning, particularly at the beginning when we knew so little and like, but I mean, outdoor situations seemed terrifying for a while, which now seems, now that we're smarter, seems very distant. But yeah, I would get up really early in the morning and take my dog to Ocean Beach or drive to a remote neighborhood and walk around. And I just, there'd been so many places I hadn't been at like six in the morning. And that kind of was a, I mean, it was both eerie because it was often kind of a tense situation, particularly in the beginning when I just thought like, oh, what if someone walks by and, but also a beautiful one. And then the more I talked to people who were in less wonderful locations, frankly, the more I treasured where it was that we were. I just knew so many people who were someplace where they couldn't get to a park or to a large area to get around where the neighborhoods were so densely packed that that didn't feel safe. A lot of places where getting food was a much more kind of dramatic enterprise. And I just felt how deeply lucky we were. And as things kind of started to relax a little bit and you could take small trips at first during the day and then kind of other places around the Bay Area, that just felt like a luxury too when so many people were really stuck someplace and just to be able to get a point raised for the day or something felt like such a magical thing. So I think I began to feel even luckier to be in San Francisco and even luckier within my own kind of privileged situation within big in San Francisco. Yeah, it's, if you read the East Coast media we're hell on earth. We've been taking so many hits lately. I'm wondering, I associate both of you so much with San Francisco. I'm wondering what's the closest you've ever gotten to packing it up and just leaving for good? Has that ever happened? Gary, I'll ask you. No, I can't say that I've ever really come close to that. I just, nothing, and yeah, there's, as I say in my essay in the book, for those that think that the current tech invasion, as some call it and the gentrification and all the social changes that have come with that are the first time this has happened. They weren't here in the go-go 80s when the stock brokers were flaunting their capitalist garb on Union and Chestnut Street more shamelessly even than the current crowd. So, if you have a deep allegiance to a place and a deep allegiance to a place and a deep knowledge of it, which I think we get as we stay longer, some of this stuff starts to look more like waves, not like tsunamis, just like regular waves of history that you, and some of them you like, some of them you don't like, but the main point I make in my essay in the book is that this is my home, and I've really felt that it's my home for a really long time. And one doesn't lightly leave one's home, regardless of the changes that it goes through. So, no, there was never a time when I really considered going somewhere else. I'm a native Californian, I grew up in the Bay Area. It's pretty hard to leave here. This is a pretty amazing place even with, I will say this, that the fires and what's happening in the air lately is about as disturbing to me as anything that has happened in my whole life here. It's starting to get to be like we can almost count on anywhere from a few weeks to more than a month of deeply unhealthy, disturbing, unbeautiful, nasty air. And that was the last thing that any of us ever thought would happen in a city that sits right at the edge of the Pacific Ocean and is constantly being washed clean by westerly winds. So that's really a serious problem. And it's not one that anyone has any answers for. It's still not gonna make me leave, but it certainly has, it's a dark, literal dark cloud over the city. Same question to you, Daniel. Have you ever come close to leaving for good? I mean, I guess just playing off Gary's point, there was that time last year where the skies turned Martian because of the fires. And I really had a deep moment of, if you're not gonna leave when the sky has turned scarlet, like I don't think you're gonna leave. I mean, that was such a spooky time. I was actually up in Booneville when it first struck and I was so alarming, but I came back to San Francisco and kind of brought it with me. And it was the first time that I felt like, oh yeah, the sky, you can't really, you can't outrun the sky in your automobile. And it was, as Gary said, a really terrifying time. It felt so inescapable. It wasn't something that you could get away from the way you beat the heat or you beat the rain or you beat whatever. But I had this moment of thinking, like I guess I'm never going to leave. If this is what's pushing me out, I'm not going. And I mean, I should, the asterisk is that I did live for a few years in New York. I never felt at home there and I always felt very drawn back here. And then to a certain extent, like anything else for the things that feel objectionable, I feel obliged to stay and fight them as best I can. And so it's going to take, I don't know if it'll take something larger than Martian skies to throw me out here. And particularly kind of from where I'm coming from and what I do for a living to watch so many artists get pushed out, I feel obliged to stay here and do what I can for the art scene here and to try to make that easier for me because when I was young and scruffy and trying to be an artist, there was so much that I didn't appreciate about the fact that that space had been made for me to do that. And I'd like to pass that on. I might just spend too much time on Twitter, but it seems like San Franciscans themselves are complaining as much, if not more than ever about our city. Even really little things, you know, road closures or Ferris wheels can get people all riled up. I was wondering if you think that's a new phenomenon or has it always been this way where people seem to just be complaining about San Francisco constantly, even if they've lived here for a while. Daniel? But I mean, I think, you know, it's home. So you complain about home, right? It's like, it's, and I think I react when someone else, when someone not from San Francisco, insult San Francisco, that feels like if someone's talking about my mother, like I can talk about my mother, but you can't talk about my mother. And like San Franciscans can complain about San Francisco, but like I don't wanna hear it. I particularly don't wanna hear it from like Atherton. And so, yeah, I think it's part of it. I mean, I think Twitter has become like a 24 seven customer complaint line that's going on, but people who are like, my ice cream is now it's just no good. And like my friend hurt me and I don't like this movie. Like that seems to be like the digital culture which up Twitter anyway, which I'm not a fully fledged participant in. But yeah, I think there's a certain, like there's gotta be a certain amount of bitching that comes with home, right? And that sometimes in fact, when things run too smoothly in San Francisco, I think like, well, that's no fun. Like, wow, you're like, you fixed something? Well, what am I gonna complain about now? I remember when they tore up Octavia and I said, this better be so much easier to get off the highway. And now you're tearing it up and then it was, it was easier. I thought, oh, you did it well, that's no fun. What an unusual phenomena that the city fixed something well. I'm glad you can remember an example. How about you, Gary? Yeah, I think that there's, I agree with Daniel, there's always been coveching and it's a lot easier to take from natives than from interlopers, newcomers who often, you know, you feel like they may not actually know enough to even compare. On the other hand, everybody's entitled to an opinion, just no matter how long you've been here, there's nothing worse than people pulling their beards at somebody that's been here for a short period of time. And, you know, there's no like a length of time that entitles you to speak or have authority. I do think actually that probably, and I'm not on Twitter for my sins. So I miss out on the million mosquito bites of Twitter. But I think that there's probably just from what I pick up from talking to people and, you know, reading letters to the editor and just, you know, the way that information comes in other than Twitter or social media, which I don't do very much of, I think there's probably is a little bit more complaining now. And I think that that is a function of a bunch of things. A lot of it has to do with ongoing homeless crisis, which I never obviously is this intractable problem that's incredibly hard to solve. And it's become more visible, it became even more visible under COVID. And the contrast with the extreme wealth, you know, has caused a lot of people to sort of just register that dissonance in the city in a really, you know, really painful way. People are aware of that. And then just the sheer economic changes in the city, the fact that it's, this is the biggest kind of change in its demographics that I've seen in the 50 plus years that I've lived here. And so that's a big undeniable change when you have a city where the median income is well over six figures, that's going to rub a lot of people the wrong way. It's gonna have a lot of effects that are gonna bother a lot of people. And so I think, yeah, I think there's more, there's more complaining, there's more concern about garbage on the streets, about dysfunctional, you know, infrastructure and things that don't work. And then that's all exacerbated by the fact that it's so expensive. So yeah, I think there's more complaining and some of it's justified. You know, I love the book, we're kind of talking about hot takes and how Twitter and social media has given everybody like a real quick ability to process really simple thoughts in a quick way. And this book kind of does the opposite of that for me. I felt empathy and for people who San Francisco took something from them and for those who love it in the way that I love it or explain it in a new way, I wasn't thinking that's like a support group in a celebration. I did wanna ask, so your fellow authors here, as much as you got a chance to read them all, were there ideas and thoughts that stuck out to you that resonate with you from this book and whoever wants to go? Yeah, there were a lot. I mean, I was just struck, and I said this in the introduction, this theme, you ask a few dozen writers to write on what does San Francisco mean to you personally and the changes that it's gone through and how does that, what do you think about that? It's really a way for somebody that's a good writer who can access some deep parts of themselves. It's an autobiographical question. It gives you an opportunity to write a self-portrait whether it's conscious or not. And a lot of these essays were really deep revelations of people's feelings and how they've changed and how they remain the same. So I loved the sort of touchstone aspect of the theme of the book and how it really produced these very personal essays all over the map. And some of them had perspectives that I agreed with more and others that I didn't, but it was delightful and thought-provoking and inspiring at times to see the way that a bunch of different human beings who happen to be writers respond to this question that touches on some of your deepest feelings about your own life, your past, your vision, your youthful idealism, your the changes you go through as you buy houses, get married, get older. All of that comes out in these essays. And I found that really a nice achievement of the book. I was really reminded by what a sanctuary this city is. I mean, I think if you, I was born here and grew up here and I think that when that happens, you forget how many people come here. And that also, I think particularly when you're young, I mean, it's in a way, a little way, we do this nationally too, that the story of people coming here is more about the destination when you're young and then you get to hear more about where they're from and what they might be fleeing or otherwise. And that there's so many people here who have found a space where they get to be who they wanted to be. And that's always easy to say, and I think it's something that we say a lot about San Francisco, but a lot of the essays in here are about, this is where I got to come alive, even when they then had to leave. There are a lot of essays that said, this is where I got to do this thing. I wasn't able to be this kind of person. And that makes me proud. And that's, I think part of the worry about what we're talking about too is that it's very, it's easy to pay kind of lip service to affordability. Like, oh, it's getting so expensive. And yes, it is getting so expensive, but that really when it begins to cross the line for what the city has to offer people that they can't get anywhere else if that actually becomes unaffordable, that's a really dangerous line to me. And so I found the reminders in this book of like, I came here for this, the very individual stories about I wanted to come here and do this and it was possible that was, that's very moving. Looking back on the past year and a half, what would you both say San Francisco did right and did wrong during this very tumultuous time? And what lessons do you hope that we carry forward? Daniel? Well, I mean, I remember when San Francisco shut down that so many friends I had who lived elsewhere were like, what are you doing? That's the craziest thing we've ever heard. You're all gonna like stay indoors. How's that gonna work? And I think the COVID rates that we kept for so long in San Francisco seemed to go hand in hand with that early shutdown as far as we know, as far as we're still learning about it. So that felt like something right. I have a son in public school and that was really, really tough. The schools closing and the watching the school board not only fail to make steps in the right direction but become kind of a figure of national shame as they continued to kind of trip over the roller skates that they put on the stairs for themselves was really tough. And particularly I think because it's hard not to identify with my son's problems, I think that would be the same anyway, but I went to high school in San Francisco and so I feel like that was being denied him for such a long period of time. And then it was being denied by people who seemed not really interested in having a conversation, not really interested in thinking creatively about a solution. And it's really tough. I mean, it's an unprecedented pandemic and so I try to give a lot of people breaks about what they could have done differently because we don't, you know, there was so much not to know but I think to feel like there wasn't an open conversation about that but that it was just like this wrong-headed, closed-mindedness that was happening over and over again was really, really tough. Yeah, I'd echo what Daniel said. I think we handled the science and sort of following rational rules that are being imposed for the good of all. What a shocking notion, you know, it seems like about 25 or 35% of the country, you know, they want to all retroactively go back and not get measles shots and not get all the shots that are prevented like massive epidemics from destroying, you know, the entire fabric of civilization in this country. Oh, that's an infringement on individual liberty. So thank God that, you know, we didn't have to deal with, you know, that kind of nonsense and that ideological extremity which has nothing to do with genuine freedom at all. It's only taking one half of the freedom equation and ignoring the one that freedom has to also be responsible. So San Francisco has always been, you know, it's a center of great universities, it's pretty rational, some of it's a class thing, it's well-educated, but for a number of reasons, we did really well with the pandemic. I think, I don't know if we're still kind of tied with Seattle, we were, I haven't really kept up on the latest, but we were, one of them had one of the lowest rates in the country. So that was really a feather in our civic cap. And yes, the school board, the fact that the excessive slowness to reopen when science was, you know, excessive caution in that way to the great detriment of so many of school children. And then with the absurd and egregious antics of the school board with their meaningless symbolic gestures of racial rectitude, many of which were completely ludicrous and did not help anyone. And just, and it was a complete time waste and a resource waste when, you know, children needed to be going back to school. So that was not the city's finest hour. I would add that I think a lot of the spatial uses that the city creatively came up with, you know, the parklets, the slow streets, and obviously some of that is changing now. And, you know, to my, in my view, I wish they would keep the closed streets open in general. I mean, there's each case is an individual one, but I, you know, I think that when you have an opportunity to move away from car culture and move to pedestrian culture, it's a good thing. Even if there's some inconvenience, you know, I live in North Beach and all the parklets have made it harder for me to park there. I don't care, you know, like you have to make some sacrifices in a city for things that improve the quality of life in really fundamental ways. But I love the fact that, you know, people are drinking outside, they're hanging out outside. We've almost become a little bit of New Orleans. You know, I think I'd like to see the Go Cup, that famous New Orleans institution of the booze on the street become a, not only legal, but celebrated, and I think it's very much in the San Francisco tradition, bring those Golden Gate cocktails out of their, out of their indoor corrals and onto the boulevards. So I think a lot of that stuff was really smart and enhanced the quality of life of the city. And I hope a lot of it stays, and seems like at least the parklets and the outdoor expansions of the businesses, a lot of that is going to stay, which I think is great. Well, with Go Cups, which is always a great place for the conversation to go to, but we do a little audience Q&A, and then we have a lightning round at the end. Heather, I'm gonna start, I picked one here. For Daniel and Gary, are there specific parts of the city, and this is from Josephine, are there specific parts of the city that have inspired your writing? Do you ever sit outdoors, or go to specific places in San Francisco to write? Josephine has a little note for Daniel there too. And thank you both for sharing your love of the city. I will say that for me personally, probably the hardest aspect of the pandemic is that I am used to writing outside of my house. I write in libraries, I write in cafes, I write in like kind of crappy, diner-y restaurants that let you sit for a long time. And it was really, really hard for that to stop. I'm so grateful that there's little pockets that feel like you can do that once more, that you can sit and work for an extended period of time. That was really hard to stop. I would do ridiculous self-hypnosis. That was part of my kind of early morning drives is that I would get home and be like, I'm in a new place now. I commuted to my same place, and I was not able to fool myself at all. So I used to stay publicly, some of the cafes where I work, and then people started visiting me there. And I'm always happy to meet a visitor, but I also have to get some work done. So I'm not gonna be any more specific than that. But I love working in a library, I love working in a cafe. And because if you're interested in people, it's hard to do that when you work at home. So I leave the house every day to work. Yeah, for me, it's almost like an occupational requirement that I be inspired by every different part of San Francisco in the introduction to Cool Gray City of Love. I say that I basically took the city and arbitrarily decided that everything within this 46.2 square miles was interesting by definition. And whether that, so obviously I have my favorite places and the ones that I walk in the most, but one of the joys of living in a big alien, you know, unknown city, and all of them are like that once you start to really move around is discovering things that are jarring and dissonant. And yeah, whether it's the strange little cafe that lets you sit there, I can totally understand why Daniel likes to work in places like that. You know, defamiliarization is a huge, wonderful thing about cities that they don't stay in this. They're like a Heraclitian river. They keep changing as you move through them. They're not the same every day. And so yeah, I mean, I love, I happen to really love North Beach, wandering around there where I live. I love wandering through the Mission and Bernal Heights. These are some of my, you know, go-to places, but I love walking in the park, out in the sunset and obscure hills all over the city, just the discovery of places that even ones you've been to many times, if it's like the rotation method, if you wait a few years, you won't remember it anyway. So it's an endless feast, you know, cities are feasts. And once, years ago, I sort of made this mental adjustment in my mind where it really did become sort of a combination of feeling like Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, that, you know, you're wandering around like Huck Finn, but you've got this kind of like historical or analytical brain that's looking at things like Tom Sawyer and that combination is a fun one. And I've, you know, it's kind of what I like to do in the city and I've, you know, been able to write about that quite a bit and have fun doing it. So it's been great. We have one question I like, doesn't have a name with it, but San Francisco likes to think of itself as so progressive, yet so much NIMBYism prevents us from building housing to shelter people. How do we get back to the more open-hearted, free-wheeling days of the past in which someone like Emperor Norton was accepted? Gary, any ideas? Ooh, well, boy, that's kind of two big issues there. I mean, one is the question of NIMBYism and the question of building housing. Obviously a discussion that has traditionally very much split the left, excuse me, in San Francisco because we have a large contingent of progressives who are opposed to development because they, for various reasons, they think they're gonna destroy the aesthetics, they don't like development because it's capitalist and then the more interesting argument is that the market forces don't apply here anyway because there's too much demand. So no matter how much you build, you're not going to bring prices down. I don't happen to agree with that argument. I think we saw prices come down when COVID, when people began to leave, we actually saw the rents take a drop. So I think the laws of supply and demand do apply here, but they don't apply as much as they do in some places. And it's gonna be really hard and it will require changes on about five levels in the city to ever make housing affordable here. And everything, all of the things that hold it up are good things in certain ways, like union construction. Nobody wants union workers to lose their high-paying jobs, but if we don't build housing that's modular, which is cheaper, you can't, right now, it costs $850,000 the last time I looked to build a two-bedroom new apartment in San Francisco. That doesn't pencil out to becoming affordable unless it's subsidized. Subsidized housing is a whole nother issue. We need more of that too, but ideally we want organically affordable housing. So I'm a proponent of building more, but I recognize the difficulties, that structural difficulties, even if you build a lot in getting the prices down. So that piece, I'm kind of more of on what used to be considered the right. I think that actually now a lot of people on the left have begun to realize, oh, there was some pretty serious problems with zoning, single-family housing, and how that was racially exclusionary. And I think that conversation has become much more open about that issue. But so I think that's gonna be an on, probably will continue to be the hot button subject in this town as to how to make it more like the days of Emperor Norton. I think John Law, my friend John Law in the book said it best. It's like, there's stuff going on. There's young people doing things. And if you get caught up in too much nostalgia, I think he describes it as like French, creepily French kissing your own past, which is a great line. And so there's Emperor Norton's out there right now. In fact, there's a bit too many bloody Emperor Norton. Let's not forget that Emperor Norton was a complete lunatic. But the eccentricity, there's still some quick, alive, artistic, funky stuff going on in this town. And it's our duty as people who love this town and love its past and wanna keep it alive and vibrant to find it and keep it going. Yeah, I think I also got distracted by the Emperor Norton part of the question. You know, one of the maintain, like weird and unusual culture is important, but I'm not sure exactly how that started with housing. And then with Emperor Norton in particular, I feel like how you thought everybody was doing in that era is, I mean, talk about a kind of rosy-eyed view of the past. I think there are plenty of people who are very, very glad to be living in the 21st century rather than then. And I mean, I wish I had a real smart, coherent answer on fixing housing. I just know that it is a great shame of San Francisco that we have not figured out how to deal with something that is such an enormous problem. I live near some of the new buildings on the kind of Castro-ish end of Market Street and I have watched various builders and schemers jump through various loopholes. So that housing that was described as something that might be really beneficial has not been at all, but I certainly don't have a solution to it. But I mean, I do think that it's a great, great shame to be living in a wealthy culture of San Francisco and to not have that be a fundamental concern for so many people who ought to have it. This is of course shaped like every other large intractable problem all over the world. And so if I had a solution, I would like to think that I would be writing it down rather than making things up. Well, sadly we did not solve the housing conundrum here today, but we do have just a couple more quick lightning round questions for you. All right. Both of you have done our traditional lightning round that appears in our total SF podcast. Everybody who's listening should check it out. There's new episodes every Friday available wherever you get your podcasts. So we've done a different version tonight and just real quick answers to spend our final few minutes together. What is your favorite San Francisco landmark? Daniel Hamlet. Oh, my favorite San Francisco landmark. I'm gonna say Corona Heights. And Gary. Oh, boy. I'm gonna say the Art Institute Tower. Oh, unusual choices. What is the most underrated San Francisco neighborhood? Gary. The most underrated neighborhood is around the Nittal-Tuk-Dian part of Eureka Valley that's around Seward Street and all of the intricate Nittal streets that are just to the east of market as it goes up the hill above Castro. I just love that there's the Pemberton steps and that there's just all these wonderful steps, the Vulcan steps. Some of that's on the other side of market, but that whole middle part of Eureka Valley is just charming and a lot of people don't know about it. And Daniel? I think I'm gonna go Glen Park. I think that's an underrated neighborhood. I agree. Heather, what's your answer for that? Glen Park. What drives you craziest about San Francisco, Daniel? What drives me craziest about San Francisco? I don't know. I mean, I guess large intractable social problems that drives me craziest about San Francisco if that seems like an understatement, but I'm gonna go with that. There's not too much that I find annoying about San Francisco, yeah. How about you, Gary? Well, I guess I do find it annoying when people who aren't from San Francisco say they're from San Francisco. Yeah. When they say, oh, you're from San Francisco, I'm from San Francisco. And I say, oh, where did you go to high school? And they say, Palo Alto High. I don't like that. That is annoying. Oh boy. Probably going down Battery Street to get onto the Bay Bridge under normal conditions is a horrific and hellish experience that there is no easy way around. And I really don't, I'm not somebody that likes to complain about traffic because traffic is part of city life, but there's been times when it's literally taken me an hour to go like four blocks and that's a little painful. I did have a hilarious experience the other day. It's something that I dearly love, but it was extremely irritating at the time. I was actually trying to get onto the bridge, going down from on the east side of a telegraph hill and critical mass came by. And I decided there was a gentleman in front of me and I said, how many more are coming? And he goes, oh, it looks like it's, I can't see the end of it. So in my infinite wisdom, I decided I'm gonna outrun them. And I like turned my car around, shot up over Knob Hill, went down Hyde Street. And when I got to market and cross, they had caught up with me and they blocked me again. I actually had to laugh. It was completely hilarious. And I'm all for critical mass and the great Chris Carlson, one of our urban treasures, one of the founders. But on that particular moment, I was extremely irritated. Speaking of Emperor Norton, who is your favorite all-time San Francisco character? Gary. Oh, wow. Well, I think I'll choose a really evil one just for fun. The evil gray brothers who are the infamous quarry men of San Francisco who are responsible for the eastern side of Telegraph Hill looking like it does and a number of other quarries. They were such rogues that they would just blast away. They were politically connected and it was a corrupt time. And they would just blast away and huge boulders would fall down and smash into people's houses. Everyone would complain and they would just continue to do it. But in a great case of cosmic justice, this impoverished Italian worker came up to one of the gray brothers over at 29th and near Aud Castro where there's a big quarry cut there. And he said, my wife, she's starving, she's pregnant. You haven't paid me in months. And I think it was George Gray, one of these rogues laughed in his face and the guy pulled out a gun and killed him. And then he was put on trial and he was acquitted to the chairs of 100 spectators who carried him out of the courtroom. So not to be advocating murder but it did seem like a poetic justice for Mr. Gray. Yeah. Daniel, who's your favorite San Francisco character? I'm gonna say the residents. I first saw them late at night on KQED and then I saw them perform when I was in high school and I think they embody something deep and mysterious and beautiful about this town. Last question, what is a suggestion for us for a future total SF book club pick? So either buy a San Francisco author or about San Francisco. Daniel, you can say one of your own if you want. Well, I mean, I would love to propose Bottle Grove and come back and chat with you sometime if that's what we're gonna do it. But I would have to say, I read a lot and reread a lot during the pandemic, the work of Barry Gifford and I think he's like an undersung San Francisco writer. So I'll say, yeah, I'll say a book by Barry Gifford. And Gary? There's an extraordinary book by one of the deans of San Francisco history, Richard Dillon, and he wrote just an amazing book, somewhat dated in certain places but just astonishing reporting and research. It's about the Tong War era in Chinatown and it's called The Hatchet Man and that's just a fascinating book. And the other one I'd recommend is there was a Chronicle columnist from the 1940s. He was a very fine writer and he's kind of forgotten now. He was kind of the herb cane of his day. His name was Robert O'Brien and he wrote the Riptides column for the Chronicle but he wrote a really excellent book called This is San Francisco. So that's a nice one to unearth as well. I've got one more question that's been coming up in the Q&A and in the comments. You're a lot of people complimenting your artwork behind you. Could you each pick one piece of artwork and tell us the significance of it? Daniel? Sir, I'm astonished that I don't, I can't really see the artwork in the background. I trust that it's beautiful but he's appropriately noirishly lit. But over here you'll see a painting by Carson Ellis, an illustrator I've worked with. She's perhaps best known for drawing all of the album covers for the Decemberists and it is a portrait of Herman Melville and she did it for The New Yorker. I turned the page of The New Yorker and I called Carson Ellis and I said, I wanna buy that painting of Herman Melville that you did in The New Yorker and she said, I'm sorry it's been sold. And I was like, how can it, I just got The New Yorker. How can it possibly been sold? It had been sold to Lisa Brown, my wife, who'd seen it online and we were trying to buy it for each other and so it worked out well and it ended up in my office. I guess I won. Oh my God, that's like gift to the magi. Fantastic. Gary, you went dark there. There was some artwork behind you. Yeah, let me see if I can illuminate it a bit here. There we go. I knew he had electrical power. Yes, indeed. So I sort of idiotically collect art about San Francisco which is sort of like carrying coals to new castle. I should really like just put art of something else up but that particular painting there is just something I found on, I think on eBay and it's kind of this mid century modern style but I love this kind of unique perspective it has because it foregrounds the curving pier, the muni pier at Aquatic Park which is one of my absolute favorite places in the city. And if there's happened to be any wealthy tech magnets watching, if you wouldn't mind unpeeling $60 million to repair it, that would be most appreciated. I called up the National Park Service and said, hey, are you guys gonna ever fix that? And the guy told me, oh well, that's actually about most of our annual national budget for repairs. So I don't think we're gonna see that happen anytime soon but it's sad because it's literally falling apart and every year they like put the little fences further into the center of it. It's just, it's a real treasure of the city. Aquatic Park's one of the great places in the city that fantastic nautical building by the Musa brothers the building that looks like a ship. So that painting foregrounds that perspective and that makes me happy because I think that's one of the happiest places that little toy beach in San Francisco. It's a wonderful place. Well, great answers. Thank you very much for sharing that. And Total Asset Book Club is gonna keep going. I just wanna let everybody know our fall selection. We'll be reading Why We Swim. Wonderful book, I've started it out. It's by Bonnie Tsoy. And of course she's one of the authors of End of the Golden Gate. That'll be at 6 p.m. Tuesday, November 17th at the library live. It's already at the, I'm sure you'll see in the chat a link shared. We're very excited about that. Heather and I have already agreed partly inspired by our podcast that you can check out on Total SF with Daniel. Heather and I both agreed to go swimming in the bay with Bonnie and maybe we can make that some kind of group event. We'll have Bonnie on our podcast soon, but very excited about that. Got it, unmute. Thank you all so much for joining us tonight. Thanks to Anisa Malady, Michelle Jeffers and Michael Lambert with the SF Public Library. And thanks to our partners at Green Apple Books. Huge thanks to Daniel Handler, especially for the amazing accordion performance and Gary Kamiah. And thank you all for joining us. Good night. Good night. Thanks guys, good night. Thank you, thank you everyone. Bye. Bye.