Spirits of San Francisco
Voyages through the Unknown City
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The bestselling book from two prizewinning, critically acclaimed contemporary chroniclers of San Francisco-a rich, illustrated, idiosyncratic portrait of this great city.
In Spirits of San Francisco, #1 bestselling Cool Gray City of Love author Gary Kamiya joins forces with celebrated, bestselling artist Paul Madonna to take a fresh look at this one-of-a-kind city. Marrying image and text in a way no book about this city has done before, Kamiya's illuminating narratives accompany Madonna's masterful pen-and-ink drawings, breathing life into San Francisco sites both iconic and obscure.
Paul Madonna's atmospheric images will awe: his wide-angle drawings offer a new perspective on the "crookedest street in the world" and vistas across the city. And Kamiya's engaging prose, accompanying each image, offers striking vignettes of this incredible city: witness his story of "Dumpville," the bizarre community that sprang up in the 19th century on top of a massive garbage dump.
Handsome and irresistible-much like the city it chronicles-Spirits of San Francisco is both a visual feast and a detailed, personal, loving, informed portrait of a beloved city.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Kamiya (Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco) and illustrator Madonna (All Over Coffee) dispatch an eloquent love letter to the fabled city by the bay. "Cities are three-dimensional entities," writes Kamiya. "But they also exist in a fourth dimension: time." The chapters are comprised of site-based vignettes, which put exemplars of the city's natural and man-made beauty in historical context. These include landmarks such as Lombard Street and the Palace of Fine Arts, which Kamiya describes as "a wild architectural acid trip, an ur-Disneyland" and a precursor of sorts to the Burning Man festival. But they also showcase lesser-known locales, such as the Tian Hou Temple ("simultaneously touristy, run-down, and real") and Ina Coolbrith Park ("An Olympian platform from which Russian Hill denizens could observe the raucous city below"). Despite Kamiya's pandemic-influenced prologue, the balance of the travelogue is a timeless deep dive into San Francisco's past. Madonna's inset pen and ink portraits both bring the reader into the vibe of each site and feel delightfully otherworldly. This artsy tour will appeal to those who may have left their hearts in San Fran, as well as armchair (and aspiring) travelers eager to learn more of its storied past.
