I’m running late, White Rabbit-style, so let’s make this post all business and even skip the illos — if you want to see lots of cool shots of Fritz, hop over to Will Hart’s Flickr archive, especially nice for the annotated pics of Fritz in old Hollywood movies. (Will’s name last popped up on this site c/o his E. Hoffmann Price archive, also worth checking out.)
Anyway, this coming Sunday October 28, we will meet for the Fritz Leiber Tour at 1p.m. on the corner of Shannon alley and Geary — north side of the street, approximately at 550 Geary, adjacent to the parking lot (and between Taylor and Jones).
Bring ten bucks for the tour — also bring either a MUNI pass or change for the bus, since we’ll be recreating the movements of hero Franz Westen from the novel of supernatural dread Our Lady of Darkness, and will have to hop across town to get to Corona Heights where the ashes of the sorceror Thibaut de Castries were buried by Dashiell Hammett, Clark Ashton Smith, and a couple of other guys (yeah, it’s a good book).
If you have any trouble walking at all, my honest advise is to skip this one — we go up and over Corona Heights (as essential a site for the Leiber Tour as Burritt alley is for the Hammett walks), and while it’s not Mount Everest, I wouldn’t say it is easy. But the view from the hill is great.
I figure this tour will last at least four hours, maybe more, so if interested, allow enough time to take it in.
And if you miss this one, I may do another one in a few years, assuming by that time I am capable of clambering up and over Corona Heights. I was thinking the last one I did, four or five years back, was the last — but never say never.
