Vallejo Street Stairs
Cobblestone hillside stairway winding through a community-tended garden named for a pioneering poet.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Vallejo Street Stairs in San Francisco follows Ina Coolbrith, who climbed these steps for decades as one of the city's leading poets while keeping a family secret from her Illinois childhood. It traces an abusive first marriage, her arrival in San Francisco under a new name, and the weekly gatherings in her nearby home that drew poets, editors and a young Oakland library patron named Jack London. Listen for her connection to a Mormon prophet, kept quiet even from her closest visitors.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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