Hit the road, shack!

Years and years ago, I was at a housewarming party out in Glen Park, one of San Francisco's outlying neighborhoods. It's my old neighborhood, actually, from when I was a little kid, but in those days I don't think anybody called it Glen Park. It was just called the Outer Mission.

We were cool with that name in those days. It's kind of like if you lived in the Outer Bronx. You know, at least it's not the Inner Bronx, right?

You know what I mean? Living in the Outer Mission was something to be proud of when I was a kid. Your family had made it out of the Mission. You were in the Outer Mission now!

But the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce has a way of rewriting history and real estate maps, so by the time I was back in my old neighborhood at this housewarming party, the place was called Glen Park, and there was no such thing as the Outer Mission.

In fact, there was barely an Inner Mission. I had friends on Delores Street who claimed to be living in the "Outer Castro," whatever in the mimosa-stirrin' hell that is!

So years ago I'm at this housewarming party in this neighborhood that was known as Glen Park at the time, but might be called Ravinia Heights now for all I know, and we're all gathered in the front room of this house that my friends have just moved into, and one of them says "This is the funniest house. There's this little room in front that looks like it was a free-standing cabin at one time, and the rest of the house looks like it was built later, in stages."

I looked around at the front room, and I said "Oh yeah. I bet this is an old earthquake shack. My great-grandmother lived in one of these in Golden Gate Park after the earthquake. She said that after the refugee camps broke up, people put their little earthquake shacks on horse carts and moved them to outlying areas where they could buy cheap land."

Nobody ever kept records of where the earthquake shacks went. There's only about two dozen or so that are known to exist in the city out of about five-thousand that were built in 1906 and 1907, but every once in a while, one turns up.

Last year, I read Kathleen Sullivan's story in the Chronicle about a shack that a city building inspector had discovered in the Sunset District, and I said, "Oh boy, I hope they put that thing on display somewhere."

And I got my wish! The shack has been restored and you can go see it right now on Market Street! It's there until April 29th under a big tent next to the Jukebox Marriot (which is not nearly as hideous up close, so don't worry about that). It's part of an "Earthquake Engineering" exhibit.

John King, the Chronicle's architecture writer wrote a story about the exhibit. That's how I found out about it. I went yesterday. It was fantastic! (Also very disabled-friendly.)

Suggested donation is a quarter or something crazy like that. Of course, everybody gives a dollar. You wouldn't dream of giving a quarter. Heavens no!

You don't want people to think you're from Lower Nob Hill!

Kurt "big daddy" True
23 april 2006