Friend and colleague Matthew Asprey dropped me a line from his current vacation spot somewhere in Malcolm Lowry’s Mexico to report that Dan Herron, author and founder of the San Francisco Dashiell Hammett Tour, the longest-running walking literary tour in the nation, gave a kind plug to Jack London: San Francisco Stories, at his website:
The preface by Rodger Jacobs blurbing Heinhold’s First and Last Chance Saloon, a London hangout, is unexpected, since a good chunk of it covers his work writing quick scenarios for porn movies. Asprey is equally current — not the sort of introductions I’m used to seeing in a Jack London volume. But what the hell, I guess this means Modern Guys like London, too, which is good news for Jack’s continued literary longevity.
I appreciate Heron giving my preface a shout-out but methinks he needs to review the preface again; only the first four graphs and one small graph later in the text touch upon my porn scripting days. The vast majority of my essay is, as he states, about a visit I made to Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon at Jack London Square in Oakland:
Over 100 years later, Heinold’s Saloon is still a watering hole, retaining its original gas lights and a wildly tilting floor, the result of damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake when the pilings beneath the bar settled in the mud and could never be shored up.
Jack London loved to drink at Johnny Heinold’s Saloon and now, I thought to myself as I walked through the door one cool summer day many years past, I am going to sit down and get drunk at the exact same bar where one of my idols traded wild tales with his boisterous drinking companions.
The bar is dimly lit with gas lights. A brownish oily creosote is seeping out of the aged wood and the smoke from the wood-burning stoves and cigarettes has stained the walls.
Herron’s website (and the brief JLSF review) is here.
