It’s not uncommon for a single comment to set me on a googling spree. It also used to be just as uncommon for me not to blog about each of my research escapades, but with Facebook, I can share link after link in a new habit I call “Wall Vomiting” and feel like I’ve shared all sides of my adventure. I realized that habit is the cause of my blogging decrease, and today I’m taking steps to make it stop.

This morning started like most Sundays. I felt like I woke up too early and rather than fall back asleep, I stared at the ceiling sorting out some kind of mental crisis. Today’s topic: Christmas shopping. I stalled until 8am and rolled myself over to the computer where I could start tracking down all these gift ideas. I didn’t get far before needing to phone my mom for advice about pregnancy (not my own, so we’re clear), which landed me a conversation with a cousin who was visiting them from Seattle. She told me about a recent visit to Deception Pass, and my gift hunt took a significant detour. Before I got far, I had a call from another friend with a crisis. Finally, a little after 10, I got around to laundry.

As I was walking down the steps on the side of the building toward the laundry room, I heard a man’s voice yell, “Hey!” I froze, started to look up to the windows that overlooked and wondered what in the world was happening. “Down here,” he said. I looked over the railing and there stood a man. Why was he telling me where he was, I thought. He explained he was painting the underside of the stairs and after some introductions, I finally made it to the laundry room. Before I had all the clothes in the dryer, I heard, “Oh, hey Mindy.” I poked my head out and the man, my landlord’s brother (co-landlord?), started telling me about the trouble they’d had getting a permit to build the top floor suite. A part of me wanted to say, “Well, clearly not enough trouble since those annoying frat boys are living there.” He went on for awhile and drifted out. At the lull, I had 2 choices: a generic “oh wow” or a thoughtful question. As soon as the question escaped my lips, I immediately thought What were you thinking?. He rose from his chair, clearly excited that I had asked more, and 20 minutes later he finally decided he should get back to painting.

The conversation reached beyond building permits in the 80s to the filled land that constitutes most of Marina to why “Laguna St” was named “Laguna”. It turned out to be an interesting conversation. The brothers were picking between my present building & a 22-unit structure near the Palace of Fine Arts back in the early 80s. However, it seems while I was hiding in my basement during our big tornado of ‘89, the latter was being shaken off its foundation during the quake of ‘89. It was in the heart of the Marina, which is also the heart of filled land, so the building had to be torn down. I had assumed that the entire neighborhood existed on such “land”, but he said our place was barely scratched by that quake. They added retaining walls and 3 I-beams as a precaution, but he theorized that since a military base (Fort Mason) was within a block, it seemed logical that the military would have a little bit higher grade land for their base. I saw some sense in that statement.

The googling spree was on. I found a liquefaction map showing susceptibility to the ground turning to mush, essentially. Indeed, our building seemed to be in the yellow zone. Not perfect, but much better than the 2 levels higher red a few blocks away. Encouraging. He further questioned if the area of Moscone Recreation Center nearby was once the site of a lagoon, since the bordering street was called Laguna. His prediction was not quite accurate but the search to find if he had been revealed some quite interesting discoveries.

I found a collection of high quality scans of historic maps of San Francisco, thinking they might show the locations of such lagoons. This map from 1911 was absolutely pristine. It showed that the area a few blocks from present day Moscone, then called Lobos Square, was essentially a giant bathtub. A man had built a retaining wall in the early 1910s, hoping to make the area an industrial park but ran out of sand before it was quite finished. Some developers purchased the land to finish his job, which would end up being the location of the 1915 Exposition. Specifically, The Tower of Jewels was located on the land at Lobos Square (Moscone), so every time I walk to Safeway, I’m walking by the location highlighted by the pennant which hangs in my apartment. My great grandparents attended the Exposition, so when my grandparents passed on, I held on to the “Tower of Jewels” pennant I found in the attic. It makes it that much more special.

My search stretched on. I finally found the list of the seven hills of San Francisco which Jack Kerouac referenced throughout “On the Road”, which always made me think of 7-hill road near where I grew up. Turns out, there are 44 named hills in the city. I read about the main ones and discovered gardens that stretch for blocks in Russian Hill with pedestrian-only lanes that exist where they couldn’t build roads. I discovered there are ruins of an old observatory atop Strawberry Hill in Golden Gate Park which provides a 360-degree view of the city. I confirmed that Sutro Tower does not exist on Mount Sutro. There are also two opposite climates on each side of Twin Peaks.

So much to discover in a city that is only 49 square miles, and I found all these great walking spots just in time for winter. If you really break it down, there are well over 100 neighborhoods in the city, but in my own neighborhood, the Marina Safeway I visit every week was the first such modern concept store, built in June 1959. It remains nearly the same as the day it was built. On a similar note, I found another map of CA from 1860 which contains an illustrated panoramic of San Francisco. In the top left, you’ll see a small structure at the top of an open area. A bit east of that structure is the current entrance to Golden Gate Bridge. It looks a bit naked without it.

As I immersed myself deeper in the history of San Francisco, I came across a rather recent article from 2001, with a title that was just too good not to steal: Forgive me, for I Live in the Marina. It seems the battle I find myself fighting today whenever someone asks where I live is not a new one. I was a bit amazed at how perfectly they captured the aspects of outward denial and inward embrace of living in a place outsiders affectionately refer to as “the marina, ugh”. It seems that my spot in the Marina is quite special. I exist a mere two buildings from the bounds called “the golden box”, a 3-block by 3-block uncommon stretch of bedrock and sandstone in the neighborhood. Now I can rest easy that if we do have another 1906, I won’t be sleeping in the middle of the sinkhole, but on a cliff of sandstone at its perimeter. However, in looking at SOMA, I could be working in the sinkhole.

I’ll also be sleeping because I think my two-week illness is at least nearing some kind of close. Eight days of a sore throat, a few days with no voice at all, and now a week of a funny voice, as a result of some congestion that won’t quite go away. Hopefully, one day soon. But now it’s nearly 2 pm and I need to return my first library book, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”, which I could only stretch over 2 days. As I walk the few blocks to the library, I shall try to imagine The Tower of Jewels with its great height and glistening facade, standing in place of the library back in the time of my next book, “The Great Gatsby.”