SF City Guides did not come up with a certified guide, so I will lead an experimental Twain Walk on Saturday, the 29th, time to be determined. Jim Leonard of MT Circle encouraged me to do it. (Don't worry, I was a Gold Rush Guide at the Old Mint Museum before the U.S. Treasury shut it down).
The Walk will start at Mark Twain Place, a short alley next to the infamous TransAmerica Pyramid building, near the Hyatt. It's where stood The Occidental Hotel, the place where he lived as he became famous for the frog tale and the pilgrimage story, and perhaps where he considered suicide.
I NEED, and will WELCOME any help with tales, documented true or fictional, or places you would recommend visiting in the downtown and North Beach district. Send them to me, or bring them to the conference. One recommendation, by Dennis
Kelly, was taking the early morning (4 AM) trip Twain wrote about to the famous Cliff House and Sutro Baths, which would require autos or public transportation. I'm game, but will time and sleep requirements allow? We do plan to stop at a number of author-named alleys up Columbus Avenue from Mark Twain Place. The end of Annie Alley, near the new SF Museum of Modern Art and the Contemporary Jewish Museum, was for a while Mark Twain Plaza, but all sign and signs of it are gone, except one saying "No Roller Skating, Skateboarding or Bicycle Riding".
I'm putting together a sheaf of Xerocopies of notes and pictures of favorite Twain places he stayed, journalized, and imbibed, and publications for which he wrote before he left in 1868, to the relief of the Police, reports noted.
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