The Green Arcade, San Francisco, California, respectfully acknowledges that we are based in Yelamu, the traditional, un-ceded lands of the Ohlone people. We pay our respect to elders both past and present.
While the physical shop isno more, we will continue to publish and sell books online as well host events.
Specializing in books on San Francisco & California history,
the built & the natural environment, politics & social justice, cooking, food & farming, select literature, noir, art, & children's books,
mostly new, some used
UPCOMING EVENTS
Saturday, November 4, 2023
5:30pm (doors open at 5) At the 3rd Floor McRoskey Mattress Loft
1687 Market Street, San Francisco The Green Arcade and Ithuriel’s Spear Present A Launch Party For Muni Is My Ride: Portraits of Muni in Words and Images
Join artist Keith Scott Ferris and writer Lia Smith as well as actual Muni operators in this celebration of our favorite ride: Muni!
Muni is My Ride is the latest publication from San Francisco’s Ithuriel’s Spear, and is available from The Green Arcade’sOnline Shop.
For wholesale orders, please write info@thegreenarcade.com Sunday, December 3, 2023 at SF City College, Valencia St 7th Howard Zinn Book Fair
Join us!
FEATURED PAST EVENTS:
Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s–1990s with author Bettina Aptheker Event recorded June 14, 2023
The Communist Party in the US banned lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people from membership beginning in 1938 when it cast them off as "degenerates." It persisted in this policy until 1991. During this 60-year ban, gays and lesbians who did join the Communist Party were deeply closeted within it, as well as in their public lives as both queer and Communist.
By the late 1930s, the Communist Party had a membership approaching 100,000 and tens of thousands more people moved in its orbit through the Popular Front against fascism, anti-racist organizing, especially in the south, and its widely read cultural magazine, The New Masses.
Based on a decade of archival research, correspondence, and interviews, Bettina Aptheker explores this history in Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s–1990s, also pulling from her own experience as a closeted lesbian in the Communist Party in the 1960s and ‘70s. Ironically, and in spite of this homophobia, individual Communists laid some of the political and theoretical foundations for lesbian and gay liberation and women’s liberation, and contributed significantly to peace, social justice, civil rights, and Black and Latinx liberation movements.
Bettina Aptheker is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz where she taught for more than 40 years. An activist-scholar she co-led the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964, the National Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, and played a leading role in the international movement to Free Angela Davis. Bettina was a member of the Communist Party from 1962-1981 and has been part of the LGBT movement since the late 1970s. She has published several books including, The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis, Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness and the Meaning of Daily Experience, and a memoir, Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech & Became A Feminist Rebel that was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2006. She and her wife, Kate Miller, have been together since 1979. They live in Santa Cruz.
Launch party with author Christina Gerhardt In conversation with Kristina Hill and Ezra David Romero Event recorded May 23, 2023
Book launch party for Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean with author and environmental journalist Christina Gerhardt whose book was named one of the Best Science Books of 2023 by the New Scientist. This immersive portal to islands around the world highlights the impacts of sea level rise and shimmers with hopeful solutions to combat it.
Atlases are being redrawn as islands are disappearing. What does an island see when the sea rises? Sea Change weaves together essays, maps, art, and poetry to show us—and make us see—island nations in a warming world.
“A stunning atlas of the present and future." - Rebecca Solnit, author of numerous books including Infinite Cities: A Trilogy of Atlases - San Francisco, New Orleans, New York
Celebration of the Life of Poet and Writer Jim Nisbet Event recorded April 15, 2023
Join friends, relatives, neighbors, and members of the literary and artistic demimonde as we read selections from his writing and remember the brilliant and beloved Jim Nisbet (Jan 20, 1947 – Sept 28, 2022).
"One of the most unique voices in noir fiction......Nisbet narratives routinely detoured into myriad side-subjects in which he deployed his relentless curiosity and wide-ranging intellect. He was especially adept at revealing the terror lurking within onrushing cultural trends, be it digital technology, organ transplants, homelessness, the so-called "war on terror," or the societal chasms caused by rampant capitalism." - Eddie Muller
Jim Nisbet's Reading List
The Poetry Center at SF State & The Green Arcade Present A Special Reading with poet Ed Roberson Event recorded March 4, 2023
C.D. Wright has described Roberson’s work as “lyric poetry of meticulous design and lasting emotional significance,” comparing its musical qualities to the work of saxophonist Steve Lacy, jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Poet and critic Reginald Gibbons, in his review of The New Wing of the Labyrinth, celebrates Roberson as a “master of a hauntingly meditative rhythm of thought and perception.”
Saket Soni in conversation with Rebecca Solnit
A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America Event recorded March 1, 2023
In this revelatory debut, Soni, founder of the labor rights nonprofit Resilience Force, recounts the civil rights crusade of 500 workers from India who were recruited to work for Signal International, an American oil rig builder, under the false promise of a green card. In 2006, the workers arrived at the Mississippi “man camp facility,” which consisted of “sardine-can” housing trailers, inedible food, and broken-down bathrooms. The next year, Soni helped hundreds of the workers organize an escape from the camp, only for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to try to deport them.
Event co-sponsored by Shareable/The Response which, through podcast interviews, audio documentaries, and an award-winning film, explores how communities are building collective resilience in the wake of disasters (environmental, social, and political). Sabrina Imbler presents their new book How Far the Light Reaches:
a Life in Ten Sea Creatures In conversation with journalist Heather Smith
Introduced by
Rebecca Solnit Event recorded December 22, 2022
A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature. Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age How Far the Light Reaches is a shimmering, otherworldly debut that attunes us to new visions of our world and its miracles.
Imbler is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work has appeared in Atlas Obscura, the New York Times, and The Atlantic. Readings with K.M. Soehnlein and Ron Goldberg From Their New Books: Army of Lovers and Boy with the Bullhorn:
A Memoir and History of ACT Up New York Event recorded December 1, 2022
AIDS has killed at least 35 million people around the globe and World AIDS Day has been held every year since 1988 to raise awareness about the disease and to commemorate those we've lost to it. Two renowned authors and activists join us to mark the day. Poets Tinker Greene and Norman Fischer Tinker Greene returns to the Bay with his book Blue Flame Ring Event recorded Thursday April 14, 2022
“Tinker Greene. Polymath of wilderness and city living. Fan and lover of all the arts, especially poetry. Lots of channeling through things. An empath totally open to receive and collaborate. He builds bridges, the kind Lew Welch would need to get across.”
—Micah Ballard, on Blue Flame Ring
Norman Fischer is a poet, essayist, and Soto Zen Buddhist priest who has written and published steadily since the 1970’s. Recent poetry titles include Nature, There Was A Clattering As… , The Museum ofCapitalism, and Selected Poems 1980-2013. His latest Buddhist title is When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflectionsfrom a Life in Zen. He lives in Muir Beach, CA with his wife Kathie, also a Zen priest. Poet Lew Ellingham's Memorial Birthday Party Event recorded February 27, 2022
A Special Zoom Event - Three in 2022: Poets’ Prose Susan Gevirtz, Jeanne Heuving and Eleni Stecopoulos read from new works, and discuss their turn to prose and its relationship to poetry.
Introduced by Ghazal Mosadeq Event recorded January 2, 2022
L-R: Susan Gevirtz, Jeanne Heuving and Eleni Stecopoulos
Ghazal Mosadeq is a poet, translator, editor and publisher of Pamenar Press, a multicultural experimental press. She has had her poetry and criticism published both in English and Persian in venues such as Poetry Wales, Plumwood Mountain, WD40, Revista de poesía, ensayo y crítica, Blackbox Manifold, Changes Review, Boiler House & Litmus Press.
Susan Gevirtz’s recent books of poetry include Hotel abc (Nightboat) and Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger (Kelsey Street). Her critical books are Narrative’s Journey: The Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy Richardson (Peter Lang) and Coming Events (Collected Writings), (Nightboat). A book (untitled) is forthcoming from Pamenar Press. She is based in San Francisco.
Jeanne Heuving’s recent book, Mood Indigo (selva oscura), is poetry and prose as is her forthcoming Brilliant Corners (Chax). Recent scholarly publications include The Transmutation of Love and Avant-Garde Poetics (Modern and Contemporary Poetics, Alabama), and her edited volume, Nathaniel Mackey, Destination Out: Essays on His Work (Contemporary North American Poetry, Iowa). She is the 2022 Judith E. Wilson Fellow in Poetry at Cambridge University.
Eleni Stecopoulos is the author of Dreaming in the Fault Zone: A Poetics of Healing, a collection of essays & poems forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2022. Her other books are Visceral Poetics (2016), a hybrid work of criticism & memoir, & Armies of Compassion (2010), a poetry collection.
Recent writing appears or is forthcoming in Insomnia (University of Sussex), Second Stutter, Pamenar Online Magazine, DATABLEED, & [φρμκ]. Dmitry Samarov In Person at The Green Arcade Event recorded Dec 2, 2021
Dmitry Samarov was born in Moscow, USSR in 1970. He immigrated to the US with his family in 1978. He got in trouble in 1st grade for doodling on his Lenin Red Star pin and hasn't stopped doodling since. After a false start at Parsons School of Design in New York, he graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993. Upon graduation he promptly began driving a cab—first in Boston, then after a time, in Chicago. Dmitry will talk about and read from his two recent books Samarov's OldStyle and All Hack. He will be interrogated by Ben Terrall, producer of the cult 'zine Namaste Motherfu**er.
ClickHEREfor audio recording. Hilton Obenzinger Reads From His Latest Collection Event recorded November 4, 2021
Witness 2017-2020 chronicles four years of troubles, shootings, wildfires, racial reckoning, planetary murder, plague, monumental lies, crazy delusions, me-too, an uprising for justice, and more. But a failed far-right insurrection had to be the capstone of these terrible times, and the nation is not done yet. What was once unfamiliar and strange ("flatten the curve") has become common, even banal, demanding a poem. Language has to keep up, and Hilton Obenzinger presents a powerful testimony.
Hilton Obenzinger writes poetry, fiction, history, and criticism. His books include This Passoveror the Next I Will Never be in Jerusalem, which received the American Book Award. His autobiographical novel Busy Dying recounts, among other things, his participation in the student revolt at Columbia University in 1968. Recent works include How We Write: The Varieties ofWriting Experience and Treyf Pesach [Unholy Passover]. Born in Brooklyn, he graduated Columbia University in 1969, taught nursery and elementary school, ran an offset press at a community print shop in San Francisco's Mission District, worked as a commercial writer for business and industry, and taught writing, literature and American Studies at Stanford University. He is currently Associate Director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford. Rebecca Solnit in Conversation with Adam Hochschild ORWELL'S ROSES Event recorded October 19, 2021
ABOUT ORWELL'S ROSES, from the publisher:
Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the surviving roses he planted in 1936, Solnit’s account of this understudied aspect of Orwell’s life explores his writing and his actions—from going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left), to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism.
Through Solnit’s celebrated ability to draw unexpected connections, readers encounter the photographer Tina Modotti’s roses and her Stalinism, Stalin’s obsession with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions, Orwell’s slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid’s critique of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market.
The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that completes her portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as a reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Amy Sonnie and James Tracy
Reading and In Conversation emcee, Patrick Marks Event recorded September 10, 2021
Cosponsored by The Poetry Center and The Green Arcade FEATURED:
American Geography
Orwell's Roses Autographed by the author, Rebecca Solnit
Cinderella Liberator Autographed by the author, Rebecca Solnit
NOW at The Green Arcade:
The Green Arcade Pinocchio T-Shirt designed by Gent Sturgeon, worn by Magisaurus
A mere $18 dollars! Pinocchio by Gent Sturgeon
Sandy Florian
Cover art by Gent Sturgeon, creator of The Green Arcade's logo.
The Green Arcade
1680 Market Street @Gough
San Francisco CA 94102
