Pacific Heights     The power was still out in Pacific Heights. Candlelight flickered in the windows on Buchanan Street. Neighbors who had lived side-by-side for years, stood bundled up against the cold on their porches and in the street, meeting for the first time. One man had set up his Kettle Bar B Q […]

The Haight By the time Daniel arrived at the record store, the EMT’s were strapping Bobby Lee down to a gurney with Patrick looking nervously on. “Danny!” Patrick cried as Daniel took him in his arms. “Are you OK?” Daniel whispered. “Yeah. I did what you said and he started breathing again.” “Good work. What […]

North Beach San Franciscans are resilient people.While many are natives of the city, many more have come from other less beautiful, less tolerant places. They are willing to suffer shifting fault lines every few decades for the pleasures of living in one of the world’s most charming cities. The fog had dissipated. Sirens could still […]

The Bridge      Traffic was light on the Golden Gate Bridge at 1:30. In the eight years she had worked as a toll taker, Barbara had never grown tired of watching the milky white fog roll over Wolf Back Ridge onto the roadway, sometimes so dense only the orange tips of the bridge towers […]

The Marina In 1912 thousands of tons of sand were dredged up from the ocean floor and deposited at the northern edge of the city overlooking Alcatraz Island. A seawall had been constructed to enclose a boat harbor and the area came to be known as the Marina district. Little did the engineers know when […]

DOWNTOWN      People say you can tell when an earthquake is coming by the weather or the strange behavior of animals. It’s little more than superstition, searching for light in the darkness. With all of our technological accomplishments, we still have no way of predicting exactly when an earthquake will occur. When they do, […]

BOBBY LEE •Tuesday, January 19th•      Bobby Lee drove toward the Haight past the tree lined swath of park known as the Panhandle. Although it no longer resembled the free love, psychedelic Haight-Ashbury of the 60’s, it was the only district of the city that still felt a little like home to him. The […]

‘Be careful what you want. You just might get it,’ her mother used to say. Ruth had wanted money and prestige and the stability that came with them but hadn’t realized how much she would have to sacrifice to have them. She loved Eric, as much as she could love anyone, but she was driven […]

RUTH “Mr. Roger’s is here.” “Send him in,” Ruth McKinney instructed her assistant, hand cupped over the mouthpiece of her telephone. “Tom, I’ll call you back later. You too. Bye.” “Hey, babe,” her client greeted her, lowering his lean, six-foot-two frame into a chair. “How have you been, Bobby Lee?” “Up to my ass in […]

ERIC      Eric rummaged through his laundry hamper to find a pair of black socks that didn’t smell too bad. As usual he was running late. He hadn’t been sleeping well for a week and was hitting the snooze button every morning. He could hear his neighbor’s six year old son racing his Hotwheels […]