A Child’s Christmas in San Francisco: a conversation with author John Briscoe and Ralph Lewin
Channel: Mechanics' Institute
Date: 2020-12-18

This event was held in partnership with the San Francisco Historical Society. 


Join author John Briscoe and former MI Executive Director Ralph Lewin for a lively conversation about Briscoe’s new compilation of comic verse, A Child’s Christmas in San Francisco.

About the book:
“Handsome, fiendishly ingenious. And unfailing.
      I can almost hear the cable cars clanging at Market and Powell
            because of the bargains they’re getting at Owl.
                    — Robert Hass, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and 
                                 Poet Laureate of the United States, 1995–1997

At the core of A Child’s Christmas in San Francisco are seven poems, composed, author John Briscoe tells us, by generations of San Francisco schoolchildren. Over the week before Christmas, these children paired iconic San Francisco food and drink with the days of the week. Each day got a poem featuring a particular food or beverage. Those included Red’s Tamale (Tuesday), sourdough (Wednesday), Bull Pupp (Thursday), It’s-It (Friday), pisco (Saturday), cioppino (Sunday), and the martini (Monday). In this way, Briscoe observes, the young poets showed “a precocious affection for the culinary tradition and abiding spirits of Christmas in their City of St. Francis.”

Briscoe was one of those children. “For the occasion of those seven days, we composed ditties of juvenilia, in verse from bad to worse, to celebrate the days of the week and their paired food or beverage soulmates. From Sutro Heights to South Beach, from Bernal Heights to the Bayview, we composed, and competed, and conceded to the best of us.”

These then are the best productions of San Francisco’s youthful versifiers. As presented by Briscoe, they are sly and surprisingly sophisticated comic verses that bring to life a forgotten San Francisco, one spiced with wicked innocence and fueled by the city’s unique culinary offerings.

Like the season it recalls, this book is a celebration, a feast that is guaranteed to delight.

Books are available directly from the publisher or can be ordered by your local book seller.