Saturday morning at the Farmers’ Market the Green Party’s Pam Webster handed me a flyer with a picture on it of the house where I’d lived as an undergraduate. I’d forgotten just what a fine house it was. There was the big bay window of the high-ceilinged front room where we had many fine parties. The glassed-in front porch was a perfect place to store our bikes. My housemates and I had three bedrooms on the first floor, which housed three to six of us depending on whose boyfriends were in (unauthorized) residence. Upstairs in the garrett lived mysterious seldom-seen older men (at least 30 years old) by reputation jazz musicians who played for beatniks in North Beach. On the far right could be glimpsed some foliage which might have been the enormous and prolific fig tree in the large back yard. I was surprised and pleased to learn that the house’s comfortable design was attributed to a woman architect (Ida M. Legal), and that it had been built in 1889. We paid big bucks in 1959 to live in this marvelous residence: $90 a month, split three ways. The only problem: next to the picture was the ominous legend in big black type: DEMOLISHED 1963.
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