(This is an article that was written for the San Francisco print edition of the Onion, just before it was announced that this local edition would cease publication last week. An abbreviated version of this article was published today on Decider, the Onion's San Francisco and Bay Area entertainment website)
Stepping off a grimy sidewalk in an area of downtown San Francisco known for its dark and mean streets, a man wearing a trench coat and fedora briskly walks down a dead-end alleyway, keenly glancing over his shoulder at the group of people following him, watching his every move. While starting to address his companions, the bearded man suddenly spins in mid-sentence, pulls a pistol from his coat, aims at the nearest person, and pulls the trigger, leading to gasps from the flock of people gathered nearby.
While this could very well be a description of a crime scene from a classic noir thriller, it is in fact part of Don Herron’s Dashiell Hammett Tour, a journey across downtown San Francisco that enthusiastically explores many of the places that Hammett lived at, wrote about, or held an important place in his literary world.
Revered amongst fans as one of the greatest detective novelists of all time, Hammett (1894-1961) briefly worked at Pinkerton’s Detective Agency before plying his trade as an author, so he came to the writing game with more real life experience and background knowledge than many of other literary counterparts. Living in San Francisco during the 1920s, Hammett perfected his hard-boiled prose while renting apartments in the city’s Tenderloin district and writing his soon to be classic work, including “The Maltese Falcon” and his “Continental Op” series, most of which are set in the city itself.
In 1977, Hammett aficionado Don Herron started taking people on an informal walking tour as part of a college project—three decades later, he still leads the tour, which has drawn acclaim from participants the world over, and now a new 30th anniversary edition of his Dashiell Hammett Tour Guidebook (Vince Emery Productions) has just been released.
“I never expected to last thirty years, it wasn’t in my mind anywhere along the way,” laughs Herron, who clearly loves his subject matter. “I’ve never really done it for money; I don’t think this is a good way to get rich. The reason I started is because I really like the stories—if I didn’t like the stories, I wouldn’t bother.”
Starting outside the Main branch of the San Francisco Public Library, the tour combines Herron’s encyclopedic knowledge of the writer and his work with a rapid-fire dispensation of history, anecdotes and passages from the books, all delivered in a tone and manner of speaking that would befit a classic pulp story by Hammett himself.
Sites along the way include the alleyway at Burritt Street where Miles Archer was done in by Brigid O’Shaughnessy, the Geary Theater, where Joel Cairo had tickets to see a play, and the apartment building on Post Street where Hammett actually wrote “The Maltese Falcon”—and was used as the model for Sam Spade’s apartment in the novel.
The new guidebook, which is full of even more background information, detailed maps, and a collection of vintage photographs, also features a great concise biography of Hammett written by Herron, who admires the writer not only for his work, but also his character; during the early 1950s, Hammett was sent to prison for refusing to cooperate with authorities during the communist witch hunts of the time period.
“The idea that appeals to me about Hammett in the McCarthy era is that he was proving that the code presented in his pulp fiction actually meant something to him. He was a stand-up guy, like his detectives. In the stories he wasn’t just saying something he didn’t believe in—I think this gives the fiction that much more credibility.”
The tour ends at John’s Grill, the restaurant where Sam Spade ate dinner in “The Maltese Falcon,” and now serves as an unofficial Hammett museum. Tour participants can relax over a “Bloody Brigid,” and discuss what they saw during the day’s adventure—and as Herron points out, people of all ages come on the tour, dispelling any notion that Hammett is a relic of a bygone era, an author that nobody reads anymore.
“Every now and then I’ll get some people who say that Hammett only appeals to an older generation, and I say ‘Give me a break!’ I have older people, yes, but I have young people coming out constantly who are just discovering the stuff. Hammett is one of these writers who just keeps hitting it with new generations.”
Info Box:
Don Herron’s Dashiell Hammett Tour
Sundays in May and September
(Check for other special dates on website)
Meet at Noon outside the Northwest Corner of the Public Library, 100 Larkin St., San Francisco. (Closest to intersection of Larkin and Fulton).
$10. www.donherron.com
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