Miss Jo's San Francisco

THIS WEEK THE SUMMER FOG HAS STUCK AROUND instead of burning off by midday.

The gray gloom reminds Miss Jo of the 1941 movie “The Maltese Falcon,” in which director John Huston wonderfully captured San Francisco’s chilly summer nights. Huston also wrote the screenplay, based on Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 murder mystery.

“San Francisco’s night fog, thin, clammy, and penetrant, blurred the street,” Hammett wrote in “The Maltese Falcon” about the night detective Sam Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, turned up murdered.

Hammett penned the 217-page novel in the Flood Building (above) on Market at Powell Street where he worked as a detective for the Pinkerton Agency.

Clammy. Yes. That’s how Miss Jo has been feeling lately—– and so have her tomatoes.

Her three Early Girls were flourishing in five hours of direct sun— the norm since late May when the fog began its seasonal routine of blowing off the Pacific Ocean for a night’s stay.

For awhile, it looked like she might finally have gotten the knack of gardening in the Golden Gate City. Leaf mulching, gray watering and fertilizing with worm tea seemed to have conquered the dusty and hard coastal California soil. Bees moved among tomato blossoms ready to fruit.

Then Fog City started living up to its name. Not even San Francisco’s sunniest neighborhoods like Glen Park where Miss Jo lives have skirted this week’s damp marine layer that won’t loosen its grip.

Now Miss Jo’s tomatoes look like they’ve hit the pause button. What to do ? This could be one more for Sam Spade. Enter Humphrey Bogart, garden right.

Photo by Miss Jo


TRIVIA: Dashiell Hammett’s San Francisco apartment building from 1926-1929 at 891 Post St. was the model for Sam Spade’s apartment in “The Maltese Falcon” movie. The Flood building lobby also has Maltese Falcon memorabilia in display cases.