Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I was getting my car worked on, and took a long stroll from Geary and Masonic all the way to Booksmith on Haight St. I stumbled on this book and was absolutely floored by the amazing photographs, the detailed interviews, and the comprehensive history of the long-lost Fillmore District in full flush. My mother worked in two of the clubs back in the 1940's: the California Theatre Club, which was run by family members, and the New Orleans Swing Room. My mother is 87 now and her eyesight is failing, so I had to read much of the book to her. She remembers all of it. People she went to high school, old friends and workmates. She saw Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Earl Grant, many of the greats before they got their big breaks. My father's submarine came in from the Pacific here, and he immediately started picking out names and faces. It was like old home week for them. The well-known and unknown musicians that made the Fillmore what it was. The book covers how much of this history was literally snatched from the dumpster, so intent were the city fathers on destroying this neighborhood. I remember the Fillmore from about 1968, before the now infamous "Redevelopment" made the Fillmore look like Dresden, gutting a vibrant yet neglected multiracial community. Period photographs fill the book, and contemporary interviews with those who were there flesh out the images - it seems that no one was left out. This is one of the best books I've ever seen about San Francisco, particularly the long neglected history of African-American San Francisco and a city that is, as we speak, vanishing and being replaced with a facade of what people think San Francisco should be like.
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