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The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook
Expanded and revised, this 30th-anniversary edition guides readers over the fog-shrouded hills stalked by Sam Spade, the Continental Op, and other legendary characters created by San Francisco’s most famous mystery writer, Dashiell Hammett. Detailing locations of interest, including all of Hammett’s known residences and the majority of settings from The Maltese Falcon, this guidebook contains maps, self-guided tours, and photographs of Hammett-related locations from both then and now. A new preface by Jo Hammett, the detective writer’s daughter and Edgar Award–nominated writer, is also included.
- GenresNonfiction
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 6, 2009
http://www.sfbg.com/category/author/b...
The Dashiell Hammett Tour leads the curious through San Francisco's alluring underbelly
Discover the ways in which the writer's vision still applies to the city today
arts@sfbg.com [1:]
LIT Sometimes when I'm bored walking around Union Square, I wonder how many of the well-heeled white guys heading toward the Financial District are really criminal types who should be followed. Say, maybe some higher-up at Wells Fargo or Citigroup who helped rip off thousands through subprime loans before getting a nice slice of that sweet Wall Street bailout money.
When I'm feeling that way, I'm under the influence of a seminal 20th century writer who spent his most productive years in San Francisco. Here's a passage that sends me there:
She walked on down Post Street to Kearny, stopping, stopping every now and then to look — or to pretend to look — in store windows; while I ambled along sometimes beside her, sometimes, almost by her side, and sometimes in front.
She was trying to check the people around her, trying to determine whether she was being followed or not. But here, in the busy part of town, that gave me no cause for worry. On a less crowded street it might have been different, though not necessarily so.
There are four rules for shadowing: Keep behind your subject as much as possible; never try to hide from him; act in a natural manner no matter what happens; and never meet his eye. Obey them, and, except in unusual circumstances, shadowing is the easiest thing that a sleuth has to do.
The narrator so hep to the ways of the tail is Dashiell Hammett's "Continental Op," an operative for the fictional Continental Detective Agency, whose adventures in print include some of Hammett's finest San Francisco tales.
Don Herron's walking tour of landmarks associated with Hammett's time in San Francisco is well worth making for anyone curious about the history of the author of The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, who helped create hardboiled crime fiction and was one its greatest practitioners. At three to four hours of often hilly trekking, it's a bit of a commitment, but at $10, it's an affordable way to engage in the next best thing to time travel.
Herron, author of books about pulp actioneer Robert Howard and noir craftsman Charles Willeford, has been informally conducting the tour for three decades. It started in 1977 as part of a "free college" known as Communiversity. The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook (2009), which updates earlier versions, is a nifty package that belongs on the shelf of any self-respecting San Francisco denizen with a passion for our city's often twisted past. It's a lively combination of biographical material about Hammett, assorted related trivia that never seems trivial, and Herron's memories from 30 years of accompanying a broad spectrum of writers, fans, and eccentrics through the former stomping grounds of Hammett and his fictional creations.
The tour starts near the former site of the San Francisco Library Main Branch, now the Asian Art Museum. In an era of economic collapse papered over with massive subsidies to the same financial entities that brought us to collapse in the first place, lessons from earlier belt-tightening eras are useful. Hence it's only appropriate to tip our fedoras to the memory of an autodidact left-winger who never finished high school but, by devoting years to reading in public libraries, got a better education than most who did. Though Hammett was making good money from writing crime fiction by the late 1920s, when he lived at 620 Eddy St. in the early 1920s, he couldn't afford books and the library was a lifeline. The 1923 photo on page 66 of the guidebook, of what Heron calls "Hammett's Reading Room" in the old main library branch at 200 Larkin St., is a beaut.
When Hammett and his family lived at 620 Eddy, their landlady was a bootlegger. Hammett's wife later recalled cops rousting people in front of their window to the street. As Herron notes, today's prohibition on hard drugs is about as effective at deterring users as the earlier one on alcohol, and equally effective at creating endless business opportunities for motivated entrepreneurs. If you're not legally blind and are paying any attention at all, it's likely you may see one or two such enterprising businesspeople on the streets of the Hammett tour. It's also a safe bet they might bear a resemblance to the Continental Op's self-description: "My face doesn't scare children, but it's a more or less truthful witness to a life that hasn't been overburdened with refinement and gentility."
The 1920s in San Francisco were wild, wide-open years full of fast living and dodgy characters. The late venerable columnist Herb Caen wrote of the period: "The Hall of Justice was dirty and reeked of evil. The City Hall, the D.A., and the cops ran the town as though they owned it, and they did ... You could play roulette in the Marina, shoot craps on O'Farrell, play poker on Mason, and get rolled at 4 a.m. in a bar on Eddy."
Hammett toiled on his used Underwood typewriter late into the night, creating characters and stories based on what he'd seen in that milieu. During World War I, he contracted both Spanish influenza and tuberculosis. When his TB got so bad that it was hazardous to the health of his wife and baby to maintain a family abode, he moved out and lived in a succession of apartments, including one up the hill from Eddy Street at 891 Post St., at the corner of Hyde. In a corner apartment on the fourth floor of that building, Hammett pounded out his first three novels. If you're lucky, on Herron's tour you'll be buzzed in and get to see where Hammett typed, ate, drank, and smoked furiously — and sometimes pulled down the Murphy bed to sleep. The apartment of The Maltese Falcon's tough detective Sam Spade was based on the snug little dwelling.
The current occupant is Bill Arney, an architect and Hammett fan. When he showed the tour I was on around the small one-bedroom unit, I noticed a great compilation of "crime jazz," soundtrack music from black and white crime movies and TV shows, on top of a pile of CDs. Appropriate, since Arney serves as announcer for the Noir City film festival local mover and shaker Eddie Muller puts on at the Castro Theatre every January.
Hammett left a permanent mark on San Francisco. Specifically, on the block-long street that used to be called Monroe, which runs south off Pine in the block between Powell and Stockton. From what is now called Dashiell Hammett Street, walk east on Bush and on the right, at Burritt Street, just before the Stockton tunnel overpass, ponder the plaque that reads: ON APPROXIMATELY THIS SPOT/MILES ARCHER,/PARTNER OF SAM SPADE,/WAS DONE IN BY/BRIGID O'SHAUGHNESSY.
We are lucky to be in a city that commemorates one of its most accomplished past local residents with a plaque honoring a killing that was a product of that writer's imagination. *
MORE ON SFBG.COM: Johnny Ray Huston's illustrated look at the Vertigo tour
* Volume 44, Issue 32
* Ben Terrall
Source URL: http://www.sfbg.com/2010/05/11/time-t...
Links:
[1:] mailto:arts@sfbg.com
The Dashiell Hammett Tour leads the curious through San Francisco's alluring underbelly
Discover the ways in which the writer's vision still applies to the city today
arts@sfbg.com [1:]
LIT Sometimes when I'm bored walking around Union Square, I wonder how many of the well-heeled white guys heading toward the Financial District are really criminal types who should be followed. Say, maybe some higher-up at Wells Fargo or Citigroup who helped rip off thousands through subprime loans before getting a nice slice of that sweet Wall Street bailout money.
When I'm feeling that way, I'm under the influence of a seminal 20th century writer who spent his most productive years in San Francisco. Here's a passage that sends me there:
She walked on down Post Street to Kearny, stopping, stopping every now and then to look — or to pretend to look — in store windows; while I ambled along sometimes beside her, sometimes, almost by her side, and sometimes in front.
She was trying to check the people around her, trying to determine whether she was being followed or not. But here, in the busy part of town, that gave me no cause for worry. On a less crowded street it might have been different, though not necessarily so.
There are four rules for shadowing: Keep behind your subject as much as possible; never try to hide from him; act in a natural manner no matter what happens; and never meet his eye. Obey them, and, except in unusual circumstances, shadowing is the easiest thing that a sleuth has to do.
The narrator so hep to the ways of the tail is Dashiell Hammett's "Continental Op," an operative for the fictional Continental Detective Agency, whose adventures in print include some of Hammett's finest San Francisco tales.
Don Herron's walking tour of landmarks associated with Hammett's time in San Francisco is well worth making for anyone curious about the history of the author of The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, who helped create hardboiled crime fiction and was one its greatest practitioners. At three to four hours of often hilly trekking, it's a bit of a commitment, but at $10, it's an affordable way to engage in the next best thing to time travel.
Herron, author of books about pulp actioneer Robert Howard and noir craftsman Charles Willeford, has been informally conducting the tour for three decades. It started in 1977 as part of a "free college" known as Communiversity. The Dashiell Hammett Tour: Thirtieth Anniversary Guidebook (2009), which updates earlier versions, is a nifty package that belongs on the shelf of any self-respecting San Francisco denizen with a passion for our city's often twisted past. It's a lively combination of biographical material about Hammett, assorted related trivia that never seems trivial, and Herron's memories from 30 years of accompanying a broad spectrum of writers, fans, and eccentrics through the former stomping grounds of Hammett and his fictional creations.
The tour starts near the former site of the San Francisco Library Main Branch, now the Asian Art Museum. In an era of economic collapse papered over with massive subsidies to the same financial entities that brought us to collapse in the first place, lessons from earlier belt-tightening eras are useful. Hence it's only appropriate to tip our fedoras to the memory of an autodidact left-winger who never finished high school but, by devoting years to reading in public libraries, got a better education than most who did. Though Hammett was making good money from writing crime fiction by the late 1920s, when he lived at 620 Eddy St. in the early 1920s, he couldn't afford books and the library was a lifeline. The 1923 photo on page 66 of the guidebook, of what Heron calls "Hammett's Reading Room" in the old main library branch at 200 Larkin St., is a beaut.
When Hammett and his family lived at 620 Eddy, their landlady was a bootlegger. Hammett's wife later recalled cops rousting people in front of their window to the street. As Herron notes, today's prohibition on hard drugs is about as effective at deterring users as the earlier one on alcohol, and equally effective at creating endless business opportunities for motivated entrepreneurs. If you're not legally blind and are paying any attention at all, it's likely you may see one or two such enterprising businesspeople on the streets of the Hammett tour. It's also a safe bet they might bear a resemblance to the Continental Op's self-description: "My face doesn't scare children, but it's a more or less truthful witness to a life that hasn't been overburdened with refinement and gentility."
The 1920s in San Francisco were wild, wide-open years full of fast living and dodgy characters. The late venerable columnist Herb Caen wrote of the period: "The Hall of Justice was dirty and reeked of evil. The City Hall, the D.A., and the cops ran the town as though they owned it, and they did ... You could play roulette in the Marina, shoot craps on O'Farrell, play poker on Mason, and get rolled at 4 a.m. in a bar on Eddy."
Hammett toiled on his used Underwood typewriter late into the night, creating characters and stories based on what he'd seen in that milieu. During World War I, he contracted both Spanish influenza and tuberculosis. When his TB got so bad that it was hazardous to the health of his wife and baby to maintain a family abode, he moved out and lived in a succession of apartments, including one up the hill from Eddy Street at 891 Post St., at the corner of Hyde. In a corner apartment on the fourth floor of that building, Hammett pounded out his first three novels. If you're lucky, on Herron's tour you'll be buzzed in and get to see where Hammett typed, ate, drank, and smoked furiously — and sometimes pulled down the Murphy bed to sleep. The apartment of The Maltese Falcon's tough detective Sam Spade was based on the snug little dwelling.
The current occupant is Bill Arney, an architect and Hammett fan. When he showed the tour I was on around the small one-bedroom unit, I noticed a great compilation of "crime jazz," soundtrack music from black and white crime movies and TV shows, on top of a pile of CDs. Appropriate, since Arney serves as announcer for the Noir City film festival local mover and shaker Eddie Muller puts on at the Castro Theatre every January.
Hammett left a permanent mark on San Francisco. Specifically, on the block-long street that used to be called Monroe, which runs south off Pine in the block between Powell and Stockton. From what is now called Dashiell Hammett Street, walk east on Bush and on the right, at Burritt Street, just before the Stockton tunnel overpass, ponder the plaque that reads: ON APPROXIMATELY THIS SPOT/MILES ARCHER,/PARTNER OF SAM SPADE,/WAS DONE IN BY/BRIGID O'SHAUGHNESSY.
We are lucky to be in a city that commemorates one of its most accomplished past local residents with a plaque honoring a killing that was a product of that writer's imagination. *
MORE ON SFBG.COM: Johnny Ray Huston's illustrated look at the Vertigo tour
* Volume 44, Issue 32
* Ben Terrall
Source URL: http://www.sfbg.com/2010/05/11/time-t...
Links:
[1:] mailto:arts@sfbg.com
May 29, 2022
Great bio of Dashiell Hammett and step by step walking tour of San Francisco by author Don Herron. The 3 mile or so tour takes you to spots where Hammett lived in the 1920s as well as real places used in many of his stories like "The Maltese Falcon" and many of his "Continental Op" stories.
I also learned that Dashiell is pronounced "Dash-eel" and not "Dash-ul" as most of us pronounce it. The author of course learned this from Hammett's daughter "Jo" who spoke during one his tours and a woman tried to correct her pronunciation! You would thing his own daughter knew how to pronounce his name!
I also learned that Hammett acquired his TB during WWI and signed up again in WWII during which time he was stationed in the Aleutian Islands and nicknamed "Grandpop" or "Pop". While there he served with legendary jazz sax player Bud Freeman.
It's pretty common knowledge that he worked for Pinkerton's prior to his writing career for "Black Mask' where his stories started the Hard-Boiled detective fiction in the 1920s.
If you read "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and compare it to "The Scorched Face" by Hammett you will realize that Hammett based his story on Doyle's but in a far more noirish and gut punching manner.
Erle Stanley Gardner (author and creator of Perry Mason) said that he did some research and believed that Hammett coined the word "Shamus" which has become synonomous with detective and much more interesting and entertaining information.
Highly recommended for fans of Dashiell Hammett's works and Hard Boiled Detectives in general.
I also learned that Dashiell is pronounced "Dash-eel" and not "Dash-ul" as most of us pronounce it. The author of course learned this from Hammett's daughter "Jo" who spoke during one his tours and a woman tried to correct her pronunciation! You would thing his own daughter knew how to pronounce his name!
I also learned that Hammett acquired his TB during WWI and signed up again in WWII during which time he was stationed in the Aleutian Islands and nicknamed "Grandpop" or "Pop". While there he served with legendary jazz sax player Bud Freeman.
It's pretty common knowledge that he worked for Pinkerton's prior to his writing career for "Black Mask' where his stories started the Hard-Boiled detective fiction in the 1920s.
If you read "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and compare it to "The Scorched Face" by Hammett you will realize that Hammett based his story on Doyle's but in a far more noirish and gut punching manner.
Erle Stanley Gardner (author and creator of Perry Mason) said that he did some research and believed that Hammett coined the word "Shamus" which has become synonomous with detective and much more interesting and entertaining information.
Highly recommended for fans of Dashiell Hammett's works and Hard Boiled Detectives in general.
January 24, 2014
This is a great, nerdy, self-published walking tour of important landmarks in the life and writing of Dashiell Hammett. While it does get a little too detailed at times, with deep discussions of which window looks over which street, in general it is a fun, thorough walking tour with great photos and wonderful stories. It's actually quite sad to see how many of the old buildings that still stood in the 1980's (when this book was published) that are now gone, with glassy, modern monstrosities in their place. I'm so glad Don Herron took to the time to create this book and document those buildings for history. This is definitely a precious treasure that I will keep in my library.
September 1, 2019
My friend Aneesa sent me this book she found at a garage sale, because she remembered that my first apartment in San Francisco was on this tour. Thank you, Aneesa! In addition to photos of the buildings on the tour (including 580 McAllister, where I lived in 1988-89), there's a lot of fascinating information in the book, and it's well worth a read, if you are a Hammett fan. This is an early edition, published by the author, and it's a beautiful object, in addition to being a good read. I'll treasure it!
July 18, 2009
Maybe it's not fair to judge having never gotten very far into any of D Hammett's literarature.
But i've read a lot of literary walking tour books and I felt like this one would have been passable as a webpage but is largely unjustifiable as a book.
It's impersonal and bland, it's no credit to the author it intends to honor.
But i've read a lot of literary walking tour books and I felt like this one would have been passable as a webpage but is largely unjustifiable as a book.
It's impersonal and bland, it's no credit to the author it intends to honor.
Read
September 16, 2009About to take the tour.
August 4, 2015
A book recommended by the Frisco tour book. I enjoyed it somewhat. It orients you for the Maltese Falcon if you are able to pay close attention. The tidbits about SF are nice.
August 17, 2015
If you're a Hammett fan it's a good one. But there's probably little that you don't already know.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews