Beneath San Francisco’s streets
lie the skeletons of ships…
detritus of a mid-19th century
“Armada of Golden Dreams”
Hear from writer-contributors to the new Invisible City Audio Tour, with guest Jim Nelson previewing his upcoming “Everywhere Man” tour.
Thursday, June 16, 7 pm
Hundreds of vessels sailed for San Francisco in the mid-1800s, bringing countless dreamers in search of gold, and schemers looking to profit from them. Dozens of these vessels were ultimately scuttled and abandoned, or ingeniously incorporated in the construction boom of a new metropolis, and were ultimately buried under as San Francisco’s land mass was extended to accommodate the burgeoning city. Read a bit of that history at this link.
Now, an enterprising and creative crew of writers, artists, cartographers, musicians and sound designers have devised a fascinating key to this era, in the form of a map and an audio tour constructed from a dozen or more diverse evocations of that thriving and then collapsing bit of local history and lore.
You can buy the map at Bird & Beckett, download the audio, and wander about today’s Embarcadero and Financial District, contemplating what stories lie beneath your feet.
For more insight, come to Bird & Beckett on Thursday, June 16, to hear from Britta Austin and Sarah Fran Wisby, two of the writers whose contributions are at the core of the “Armada of Golden Dreams” tour.
This is the second of the Invisible City Audio Tours; several more are now in development and one (“Heliography,” which takes the audio tourist along an otherwise obscure stretch of Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue) is in the can. Next up is “Everywhere Man”, which will be unveiled in its complete and mysterious form during this year’s LitQuake in October.
Creator Jim Nelson will preview “Everywhere Man” at Bird & Beckett at our June 16 “Armada” event. Also on hand June 16 will be Tavia Stewart-Streit, whose mind and energies spawned the entire ICAT enterprise, and LJ Moore, who conceived and constructed the “Armada” tour itself. Stewart-Streit and Moore will be here to explicate the ICAT concept & actualization, and to vend some wondrous Armada booty!
