Do you live at 891 Post, 620 Eddy, 1155 Leavenworth, or 20 Dashiell Hammett? If you do, you're walking the hallowed halls of one of Dashiell Hammett's apartments. But there's nary a neighborhood without notable literary significance in San Francisco, as illustrated by this informative interactive literary map assembled by The Chronicle.
The maps spans the Bay Area and details such literary factoids like Jack London's birth (in a house that was located at 615 Third Street in San Francisco) and grisly deaths (science fiction writer Robert Duncan Milne was run over by a cable car while drunkenly crossing the street at Market and Montgomery). Toggle over to the "Passages" section of the map for a lovely collection of Bay Area literary mentions, from The Joy Luck Club to The Kite Runner to (ahem, Fremont) to Divisadero:
"I come from Divisadero Street. Divisadero, from the Spanish word for 'division,' the street that at one time was the dividing line between San Francisco and the fields of the Presidio. Or it might derive from the word 'divisar', meaning 'to gaze at something from a distance.' "
Absent is the memorable first paragraph of Hunter S. Thomson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, which we'll include here, just for kicks:
January '73Dawn is coming up in San Francisco now: 6:09 AM. I can hear the rumble of early morning buses under my window at the Seal Rock Inn ... out here at the far end of Geary Street: This is the end of the line, for buses and everything else, the western edge of America. From my desk I can see the dark jagged hump of "Seal Rock" looming out of the ocean in the grey morning light. About 200 seals have been barking out there most of the night. Staying in this place with the windows open is like living next to a dog pound.
Get your literary fix for the day over at The Chronicle's map, which also includes a list of independent bookstores, local authors working today, and upcoming Litquake events.
[Chron]
