day 1
12 blocks beat
Start // PACIFIC STREET // Chinatown
01
M
Most Hammett locations take place in downtown San Francisco. In close proximity to The Flood building where The Continental Op. Detective Agency was located. I’m pretty sure SF was much smaller and close knit in the roaring 20’s when most all his stories took place. His stories resonated with the locals and he became kind of a big deal in his day. They even have a street or alley named after the man himself. I suppose this book wouldn’t be complete without mention or a small feature of the alley or street sign dawning the gods name.
After dropping the kids in North Beach, I made my way to Chinatown as I knew the first stop of this self-made tour would be the Stockton Street Tunnel. Parking would be a problem so I decided to grab a spot in Chinatown and hoof it the rest of the way. I had my wifes shoes with me cause she needed them cobbled. I knew of a shoe repair place at the mouth of the tunnel on the downtown side. My first stop.
the tunnel’s mouth a man was hunkered on Where Bush Street roofed Stockton before his heels before a billboard that held adslipping downhill to Chinatown, Spade paid vertisements of a moving picture and a gashis fare and left the taxicab. San Franoline across the front of a gap between two cisco’s night-fog, thin, clammy, and penestore-buildings. The hunkered man’s head trant, blurred the street. A few yards from was bent almost to the sidewalk so he could where Spade had dismissed the taxicab a look under the billboard. A hand flat on the small group of men stood looking up an alpaving, a hand clenched on the billboard’s ley. Two women stood with a man on the othgreen frame, held him in this grotesque poer side of Bush Street, looking at the alsition. Two other men stood awkwardly toley. There were faces at windows. gether at one end of the billboard, peeping Spade crossed the sidewalk between ironthrough the few inches of space between it railed hatchways that opened above bare and the building at that end. ugly stairs, went to the paraThe building at the other end pet, and, resting his hands on pg. II. Death in the Fog / The MalteseFalcon. I know the Tun- had a blank grey sidewall that the damp coping, looked down into Stockton Street. An auto- nel well. I always thought it was looked down on the lot behind a cool spot, a tunnel running un- the billboard. Lights flickered mobile popped out of the tunnel beneath him with a roaring der a large section of the city. A on the sidewall, and the shadows of men moving among lights. swish, as if it had been blown pretty impressive construction out, and ran away. Not far from given the geography of the location. This should be the start of the tour. The Tunnel is a great metaphor for the journey in creating this book.
12 min.