Why Write This Book?

I was born and raised where the rainbow had gone to die; the deserted remnants of Indian land, left far out of view of mainstream society to gather dust and eventually be forgotten all together. But even as a young girl, I knew I belonged in San Francisco. One of the first stories I heard about the city by the bay, affirmed this knowing.

The year was 1956 and The Indian Relocation Act (also known as Public Law 959 or the Adult Vocational Training Program), was instituted. My father was a subject of this legislation.

Reservation Indians were scooped up and taken to large cities such as Los Angeles or San Francisco where they would learn to weld or become mechanics or work at department stores. My father, wearing his white man moccasins, turquoise jewelry and feathers in his hair, found himself in San Francisco, California, assigned to work at Woolworth’s & Company.

The story goes that he was wearing his feather headdress and cheap sunglasses, waiting for a bus, when a young man approached him, camera dangling from his neck, and asked for a picture. He said that would be fine, for a small fee. A dollar bill exchanged hands, the camera flashed and he never boarded the bus that day, or any other day. He never went back to Woolworth’s & Company. He just stood in one place and collected dollar bills in exchange for his non-smiling Indian face on film. That entrepreneurial spirit earned him the moniker of The Street Chief, which was a good compromise for the two worlds that Paul Jacks occupied.

The San Francisco of the sixties was a place inhabited by the likes of The Diggers and Carol Doda. Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane provided the psychedelic soundscape for faeries dancing among the foliage in Golden Gate Park; Haight/Ashbury hippie settlements and the Good Earth Commune. It was a time when an Indian dressed in white man clothes, more than fit in. He was accepted, even embraced.

My first trip to San Francisco was when I was five years old. The only thing my mother remembers, or cares to recount from that outing, was that I stepped into something disgusting and disturbing on Haight Street. My white sandals were ruined and there were no dogs around to blame. To this day, she holds San Francisco in a permanent purgatory of contempt.

It was in the eighties that I landed in San Francisco, to attend the private Jesuit school on the hill, USF and live near the gay enclave on Polk Street, ripe with beauty and horror.

The studio apartment that I inhabited on the 5th floor of an elevator less building came equipped with a Murphy bed that squeaked out of the wall, leaving inch deep gouges on either side as it found its way to the floor. There was a kitchen sink, but no counters, which left me to dry my few mismatched dishes on the fire escape high above the street below. There was, of course, no heat or air, the windows, so laden in paint, opened only marginally and the lone bulb dangling from overhead cast an eerie pallor across the room. But to me, it was beautiful, it was home, it was San Francisco.

And now, some 30 years later, I am writing, a book about a piece of culture that exists in San Francisco. It’s colorful, flamboyant, filled with meaning and promise, and people who are maddening to Republicans and Fox News commentators, alike. They embrace ideas like gay marriage, universal health care, medical marijuana, a living minimum wage, immigrant sanctuary. These people were described as ‘seekers’ by Alan Ginsberg; and I think that fits. They are still here and they are still giving voice to San Francisco values.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are mentioned in any good book about San Francisco, because they have always been part of the spirit and consciousness of the fog drenched city. Their history extends back to a time before the advent of technology, before Reaganomics, before the AIDS epidemic. The seeds of their existence were planted long ago in the hearts and minds of San Franciscans, who embraced a set of values that challenged the mainstream, but eventually emerged as a beacon of enlightenment and hope to its citizens.

I’m not sure the subjects of my next book, (The Sisters--as they are lovingly refered,) could have manifested anywhere but in San Francisco; and so this project is my love letter to them; to those who do more than make outcasts fit in, but accept them...and by doing so, they have changed, (and continue to change) San Francisco and thus the world.

To learn a little bit more about The Sisters, check out this wonderful video that our friend Fred Gebhardt.

#sfsistersbook