NOTHING SHAKING ON THE MEAN STREETS
Keeping his lazy streak working overtime, Don isn’t doing any tours this month where you can just show up, pay ten bucks, and walk the walk. But he knows he needs to get the tour up and going for the next thirty years, so he has chosen a date in March — Sunday March 16, noon start as usual — for a walk open to anyone who wants to go on it. He picked that one out of the battered fedora because it is Palm Sunday, which happens to be the date the late great Charles Willeford passed away. So, in memoriam of one of Don’s favorite writers, the Hammett tour kicks back into gear. Next month.
AT THE NOIR PANEL
A couple of people came up to Don during the noir panel at the Mechanics Institute last month to tell him that they had emailed him off this website and never heard back. Who knows what technological hurdle stood in the way at that moment, but rest assured, if you send Don an email he will answer it (so if you don’t hear back, try again — don’t let technology stand in your way). Even if you are one of those people who ask for a tour on Wednesday with only two days advance notice, don’t worry, you’ll get an answer — usually “No.” Think of those as like the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld — “No tour for you!”
LATER IN THE YEAR
After the noir panel, Peter Maravelis told Don that the release date for San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics currently is set for September, so anyone who wants that one has awhile to wait. Brief selections from that book were read during the panel, with a range of authors and periods ranging from Mark Twain through Hammett up to William T. Vollmann, and lots in between.
