fbpx
Talks

Infinite City: Lost World

Thursday, Dec 9, 2010

7 p.m.

Image: Ira Nowinski, Men Watching Destruction of Milner Hotel, 1974; image courtesy of artist

San Francisco’s South of Market district is a poignant example of a shifting landscape that holds many histories in a small area. The “Lost World” map looks at the few blocks bounded by Second, Fourth, Market, and Folsom streets, and reveals that this sector now known for its museumgoers and shoppers was once the blue-collar heart of San Francisco. By using the footprints and names of long-disappeared hotels, factories, and shops, as well as stunning photographs by Ira Nowinski, the map builds an in-depth panorama of what the neighborhood looked like in 1960.

Time Description
Thursday, December 9, 2010
7:00 p.m.
Phyllis Wattis Theater

When SFMOMA Was a Pawn Shop
Ira Nowinski, photographer
Rebecca Solnit, writer

In the early 1970s, San Francisco-based photographer Ira Nowinski developed a relationship with the men of the South of Market district who were being displaced in the name of the “greater good” of redevelopment. The resulting book, No Vacancy: Urban Renewal and the Elderly, profiles a changing neighborhood and the men who fought for the right to live there. Tonight Nowinski discusses the subject matter of the book as well as the “Lost World” map, which includes two of his breathtaking images.

Saturday, December 11, 2010
3:00 p.m.
Phyllis Wattis Theater

SoMa Before SFMOMA
Ruth Askevold, cartographic specialist, San Francisco Estuary Institute
Chris Carlsson, writer
Estella Habal, historian
Ira Nowinski, photographer
David Solnit, activist
Rebecca Solnit, writer
Richard Walker, geographer

Join us for a trip back in time. This program reveals the South of Market neighborhood’s many faces and phases, as local experts take us backwards through the neighborhood’s many histories. Before the museums and convention centers there were leather-clad punk rockers; anti-gentrification protests and even riots; SRO havens; and the Third Street of Jack Kerouac and Jack London. We revisit the rich Filipino cultural history of the neighborhood and look back to the days when Mission Bay was actually a bay.