Coming up fast on July 16, The Tenderloin Museum celebrates its first anniversary — details on the website or the Facebook page. From 10a.m. to 9p.m., free admission, with workshops, talks, jazz, a drag show — the whole historical and contemporary shebang of what makes the Tenderloin the TL.
I’m making a return to the venue in the 5p.m. slot to talk about — who else? — Dashiell Hammett, Reigning Writer of the Mean Streets, who lived in or on the edges of the TL in the 1920s when he created a distinctive American literary genre known as the hard-boiled detective story. Think I have about an hour to fill.
A whole hour.
Only wrinkle will be deciding what to leave out. . . .
I must congratulate the guys and gals of the museum on reaching the one-year mark — and I trust many more to come. Next year — should I live so long — I hit Forty Years on the Mean Streets with the Hammett Tour, so I know what it’s like to put in the time and rack up the mile markers.
If you’re free, come on down for any or all of the festivities.
