​At 5:04 p.m. on October 17th, 1989, I was at work, standing in the center of a bookstore called A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books. The name was a quote from Hemingway, but that didn’t stop customers from correcting the grammar almost daily. “It should be a clean well litplace for books,” they would say with a disapproving smirk as I rang up their purchases at the cash register. Six years before Amazon began its selling books online, and well before internet omnipresence, being a bookstore clerk made me a kind of semi-deity. Someone who could open the gi-normous tomb ofBooks in Printand leaf through its onion skin pages to obtain information on a precious, hard to find volume. I loved that job. My coworkers were smart and funny, but with a veneer of cynicism that was only a pose, overlain atop a sweet vulnerability. Or perhaps I only saw it that way. I was a newlywed. Late that August I’d said my vows. I was also a budding opera singer working a stone’s throw from the greatest opera house in the world. I’d say I was rather aglow with love in all directions. 

​When the quake came our customers did something astounding. They ran out of the store, straight into the traffic of Van Ness Avenue. Cars came skidding to a stop and people jumped back onto the sidewalk in relief and embarrassment. Perhaps they didn’t know that we stood on bedrock, a pretty good place to be at a time of seismic catastrophe. And they probably did not know that the owners of the store, in their infinite wisdom, had built all the shelves at a slight declining angle into the wall. When the shaking stopped, not a single book had fallen.
            
I don’t remember if we closed or if I finished out my shift, but about an hour after the quake I headed home, walking along Van Ness in the growing dusk. This was the days before cell phones, and the chatter among people was constant, and rife with rumors and hubbub. The bridge collapsedwas something I heard and discounted. It was not possible, or so I thought. A few blocks west, a man with a shopping cart full of his possessions had a transistor radio, and a couple of people were huddled around it, listening to the news. A man in an expensive suit. A woman with a small child. I joined them. We listened together for some time. KGO, as always, was the voice of reason, calm, and solid information. Yes, in fact, part of the bridge had fallen. It was a strange, but quite beautiful moment of community, the cluster of us.
            
I stepped away and continued up Van Ness. It was now almost dark, but many of the lights were out so it was darker than San Francisco usually is at that hour. The adrenalin began to be reabsorbed into my body as I walked faster. My brow furrowed against the strangely warm air as I began to realize this was much more than a hiccup. My ignorance swept over me. My husband was at a baseball game. The World Series. He, my brother, and my brother-in-law were all there. They’d been thrilled to go, even though the seats were fairly high up in the stands. I pictured the rough old concrete of Candlestick Park which seemed to wobble even in a stiff wind. Would it survive? 
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The rest of my walk was a worried blur. I arrived home at our apartment on Clay Street between Larkin and Hyde. I went straight in and found our cat, Boomer, scared out of his wits, but just fine. A bookshelf had emptied but the apartment looked fine otherwise. I called my sister in the east bay. She was seven months pregnant, and fine. Mom was fine. Dad was fine. Everybody was fine. She and I speculated about what our husbands would do. She said news was coming in of traffic ground to a halt because of a collapse of the Nimitz freeway. The casualties would turn out to be in the dozens. I thought, I hoped, my husband, brother, and brother-in-law would make their way to me, but how would they get here? Were the busses running? I grabbed a pack of cigarettes – yes, opera singers smoke sometimes, especially when there are earthquakes – and headed down to the street, where I smoked and chatted with my neighbors.
            
After several hours my husband arrived home. I will never forget the look on my brother-in-law’s face before I had the chance to tell him that my sister, his wife, was fine. It is the only time I have ever seen him scared. 
            
I tried to convince my brother and brother-in-law to stay with us. The world seemed a scary place and I was glad to have them back in my circle. But they decided to make their way across the Bay.

The power was out in our little apartment, and would stay out for days due to damaged substations. That part of San Francisco is just at the bottom of the ritzy Nob Hill, but truly it is closer to the Tenderloin, which is why it is jokingly called “the Tender Nob.” Feathers were ruffled over the coming days as power went back on in the wealthier neighborhoods first, but we waited, and waited. The Tenderloin’s power came on last. 
Eventually I went back to work. Those days I had the duty of ordering the books for opera and music section, an honor I abused terribly, ordering every book I was interested in until finally they took the assignment from me. That era was a pinnacle of glory for the opera. The season before I had heard La Bohème with none other than Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Freni, a performance so convincing and impeccable it caused me never again to lament casting grand sized opera singers in the role of young lovers. A month before the quake I had seen the great Jessye Norman in recital, and the season had opened with a sexy, smashing Luluand Sam Ramey at the peak of his voice as Mefistofeles. In general the San Francisco Opera in late eighties offered a series of performances I feel proud and lucky to have beheld, very often grabbing a sandwich after work at the bookstore, and spending the evening leaning on the rail behind the orchestra section flanked by my fellow standees. 

The performance scheduled for the night of the Quake was cancelled. Subsequent performances took place at the Masonic Auditorium and later the Civic Center as a substantial repairs and seismic retrofit were performed on the War Memorial Opera House, a place many in the city and music-loving community of the Bay Area consider almost a person, at least a friend. But opera fans put up with the inconvenice, and the cavernous acoustics elsewhere. Even later, back at the opera house, most of us took a moment before the curtain rose to look up at the tight meshed net that seemed to defy the gravity of the crumbled ceiling. But like the city in 1906, San Francisco Opera showed itself to be the comeback King. 
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The actual tragedies touched me only peripherally. When I went to my Italian lesson the day after the Quake, my teacher was in tears. His friend had been one of those who died in the Marina, a neighborhood built on landfill that had fared quite poorly. A good friend from high school had exited the Nimitz freeway less than a minute before it collapsed. But the worst had been spared to those closest to me and I felt that mixture of relief and guilt common to all survivors. 
            
Two years later, when a firestorm engulfed the Oakland Hills, I was living on the East Coast. At first I paid small attention to the news of “a fire in California.” It’s a big state, it could’ve been anywhere. Then I realized it was directly above my parents’ home and I watched the news in horror. In the end, my parents’ home was just below the evacuation line, and though my brother had hosed down the roof and they had stood and watched the hillside burn, they were safe, as was the grand lady of the Claremont Hotel, a landmark most of us East Bay natives consider iconic.
            
Since then, disaster has become more common, and more personal. Two years ago, in the weeks following fires here, we suffered a noxious and oppressive air quality for days, and shortly following that my cousin, young, healthy, and in his early forties, died suddenly of a heart problem. He was not technically a victim of the fire, but in my mind the events are forever linked. And I have two friends who lost everything to fire, or rather almost everything. They left with the clothes on their back, and their dogs. Their strength in the aftermath has amazed me. I don’t pity them, because I have seen them triumph.
            
The months following the Quake, the book Fifteen Seconds positively flew off the shelf in the bookstore. A hastily published paperback coffee table book, it encapsulated the worst events of the Quake, and it was one of those times in the bookstore trade that one book absolutely took over a section of the industry. When that book came out, I’d say all of San Francisco wanted a copy. And I can understand why. The mind needs help after an event like that. It seems almost unreal. Looking at those pictures, of fallen buildings, of people gathered, it lets you know, yes, this happened. But unlike the scrolling infinity of misery we all see every day on our phones, that book was finite. A frightening, tragic encapsulation that you could pick up when you needed to consider what had happened, but was also comforting because you could finish it, and put it down.
            
CNN was founded in 1980, so it was up and running for the evens of ’89, and ’91. But the world’s population had not yet jumped aboard the 24/7 news cycle, nor did we all have cell phones, creating our own, more intimate version of 24/7. So there was a way in which these catastrophes trickled in, just as I waited in the darkened apartment for news of my husband, families waited, communities waited, cities waited. And it was in that window of not knowing that barriers came down. The number of homeless individuals in San Francisco has reached huge proportions lately, but it is far from a new problem. And people interact with each other in different ways about that. Some stop, to offer solace, or money. And sometimes a person asks for money. But when was the last time you stopped a homeless person to ask for a favor? In that moment on Van Ness, the man with the shopping cart was our lifeline for a few moments, and in those few moments our “status”, if you will, was reversed. That, I think, is the great gift of these catastrophes. Things that are artificial, or unimportant, disappear. 

​My family is different now, since we lost our cousin. And even these larger catastrophic events, (among which many of my friends and family include a frightening and tyrannical presidency,) these things have the ability to shake us out of our routines, to make us feel an existential human fear, not only for ourselves, but for our loved ones. I will never forget that look on my brother-in-law’s face. At least I hope I never will. Because it reminds me of the truth: we are all of us hanging by the thinnest of threads. Once we know that, or remember it, the only option is to be as kind and as helpful as we possibly can.

                                                                                       
​                                                                             For Carol

Travel with me back in time. It’s 1976. A Saturday morning, early. I’m in the back seat of a Ford Country Squire Station Wagon that has a wood-paneled exterior and more steel than a fleet of Priuses. Mom is at the wheel. Riding shotgun is my older sister. At sixteen, she is the most glamorous person I know. I’m in the backseat, leaning forward so I can arrive just a split second sooner.

We’re going to the City. Better than that, we’re going to Magnin’s.
 
To say that I. Magnin and Company represents old California would be an understatement. In 1876 Dutch-born Maryann Magnin, the daughter of a rabbi, immigrated to Oakland and began selling high-end baby clothes. The “I” was for Isaac, her husband. As the business expanded, the locations improved. The building we’re headed to is on Union Square. Ten stories of white marble built in 1948, a time when the department store stood as a gleaming palace on the hill of the American psyche, a repository for postwar plenty and a conduit for the magic of modernity. It was a time when families all over the country loaded themselves into big cars like ours and sailed downtown to buy a belt, a sofa, or a set of tools. For people in the Bay Area, it was Sears. The Emporium. Capwell’s. Bullock’s.
 
For the women of my family, the biannual sales at I. Magnin’s were a pilgrimage of the highest order, for the lowest prices. A time to claim our rightful inheritances as Queens of Frugality. Unlike today, when this season’s clothes disappear magically from store shelves, making their way to secondary retail houses like Ross, or TJ Maxx, in those days many stores cleared their own inventory, creating deep-cut annual sales like the one at Magnin’s, or places like Capwell’s Basement, with its large tables piled high in pants, bras, dresses. Tables you could stand at for hours, moving your arms through the clothing like a gold miner, elbow-deep in the river, searching for treasure. 
 
Arriving in the City for the Magnin’s sale, we thread the long body of the Country Squire around the tight spiral ramps of the newly expanded parking garage at Sutter and Stockton, and then walk through Union Square, heads held high as we march right past Macy’s (and it’s full retail prices.) 
 
Arriving at Magnin’s, we grasp the ornate brass door handles, still cold to the touch from the San Francisco fog, and step inside, immediately enveloped by a sense of richness. The large, two-story room glows from Lalique light fixtures hanging in a golden ceiling. Powdery floral breezes waft over towards us from the cosmetics in the Mural Room with its stained glass by French artist Max Ingrand,whose work can be seen in other obscure places, like Notre Dame. Not to be distracted, we head straight to the elevators, Mom setting a fast pace as if leading us into battle, and up we go, our stomachs doing a little flip as we ascend, anticipating the glorious things we will find.
 
I am about to sound like an old lady, but I don’t think I own one piece of clothing today that is as well-made as the things we used to buy at Magnin’s. Wool skirts with real linings, pants and shirts that lasted for years, and years. And the prices were astonishing, so we bought plenty. Walking back to the car, our arms grow longer from carrying heavy bags, and again we walk quickly, like bank robbers, hurrying from the scene of the crime.
 
Loehmann’s was another Mecca for us. In 1921, Frieda Loehmann put her knowledge as a department store buyer to use, acquiring the season’s designer overstock for a pittance and selling it at a bargain. The idea took off and Loehmann’s became a chain. (And a concept, later copied by many.) Mom had grown up going to Loehmann’s in New York, so when my sister and I went with her and Grandma, it was a tradition continued, a touch of old New York right there in the East Bay. One time I snapped a picture as Mom and Grandma walked in. I wanted to capture that moment, their backs slightly hunched as they lurched forward, purses clasped tightly under their arms. I felt I was witnessing a vestige of ghetto life, a time when Jews had to be savvy, to scrounge and forage to survive. There’s nothing to match the focus and intensity of mothers and daughters on a trip to Loehmann’s. When I was sixteen I read Lauren Bacall’s autobiography, and she described just such a scene with her mother at the original Loehmann’s, in a former auto showroom in Brooklyn. And that’s how I felt. When I went to Loehmann’s, I was connected to a great lineage of women in pursuit of fashion. I was a New Yorker. I was Lauren Bacall.
 
Loehmann’s had much to recommend it, with its tantalizing, slightly illicit-sounding “Back Room” for designer fashion. But my favorite thing about Loehmann’s was the communal dressing room. Mirrors all around, no limit to the number of items you could bring in, beyond what you could manage to carry in your arms. Everybody half-naked, and free to comment on anything they liked. “You’re not getting that? I’ll try it!” someone would say, grabbing my reject from the rack in the middle of the large space. “What a figure!” the old lady next to mom might say, pointing to me, and I would blush as the other women nodded, feeling like I had a dozen kind grandmas. I’m not alone. Loehmann’s dressing room is immortalized in an etching with hand coloring by artist Helen Frank. And Erma Bombeck, a humorist I used to think was corny, but now seems increasingly wise, once titled one of her books, “All I Learned About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room.”
 
Of course, shopping wasn’t just about clothes. On most every Saturday morning my siblings and I woke to the blaring horn of the station wagon, signaling us to get out of bed and come unload the haul of goods (and not-so-goods) mom had acquired in her garage sale-ing. But sometimes Mom paid full price. When Mom and Dad had a party, we always made a trip to the Genoa delicatessen in Oakland, back when it was a postage stamp-sized shop where we would crowd in shoulder-to-shoulder and pick a number. Mom would buy sliced salami, and ravioli. 
 
For Dad, a love of shopping was all about books. Once, during the turbulent sixties, Dad was browsing at a bookstore on Telegraph Avenue while the rest of us were waiting in the car. Mom, me, my brother, and my sister. Waiting. And waiting. It was one of those times as a kid when life gets very vivid all of a sudden. Mom was fuming. I could almost see the steam coming out of her ears. Suddenly there was a huge crash above us. Someone had thrown a gigantic pumpkin from an apartment above, and it landed square on the roof of our car. Perhaps our station wagon was a symbol of the bourgeoiserie, and they were making a statement. Perhaps they were on LSD, and thought the pumpkin was a bomb that needed to be gotten rid of. Either way it was the last straw for Mom. With three frightened children, the wet flesh of the pumpkin-goo pouring down the windows around us, she ordered my big sister to go in and get Dad, which she did, dragging him away from the books like an alcoholic from the bar.
 
Telegraph Avenue is different these days. The flagship of revolutionary cafés, Café Mediterranean, also known as “the Med”, is recently closed. Meanwhile, the Genoa has one location left, not the original. Loehmann’s went bankrupt. I didn’t know it at the time, but even before they moved into the “White Marble Palace”, as Christian Dior called it, I. Magnin’s had been sold to the Bullock’s chain, and by the time I was shopping there the two had merged to become “Federated Department Stores.” Later the Magnin’s and Bullock’s brands were bought out by Macy’s, before disappearing entirely after a “realignment.” Until recently, though, one could still use the sixth floor restroom. Made of green marble, fit for royalty, it had become part of Macy’s. But the building recently changed hands again, so that, too, is ended.
 
And so it goes.
 
These days my shopping patterns are varied. I have my favorite local shops, many of which seem to close too soon, but I’ll admit to ordering frequently online, and shopping at large discount stores. I’d like to say that every time I do, I wonder what beloved local business I am helping to kill, but I don’t. That would be too exhausting. Mostly, I appreciate the time and money saved. 
 
Still, I think about it. Where that bookstore on Telegraph stood, just a few doors down from the old Café Med, is a gleaming new café. It has tall windows and stark black tables that no one will ever carve their names into, and around which no revolutions will be planned. I drive by one evening and see the students, each illuminated in the solitary glow of their laptops. I feel the urge to stop. To go in and tell them that this once was a bookstore, and that someone smashed a pumpkin on the roof of our car. I want to tell them about Loehmann’s, and Magnin’s, and the Genoa, too. I want to ask them, and myself, and all of us, what are we doing?
 
Fortunately, Magnin’s lives on in other ways. The company grew deep roots in California, and San Francisco in particular. Joseph, one of Maryann and Isaac’s eight children, founded his own clothing company, which was run by his son, Cyril Magnin, and Cyril’s philanthropy is legendary in the City. He helped to establish the Asian Art Museum, American Conservatory Theater, and was a staunch supporter of the opera and other artistic institutions, earning him the moniker “Mr. San Francisco” from none other than Herb Caen, the beloved columnist who would’ve been well within his rights to claim the title for himself.
 
You can never go home again, so they say. But I miss Herb Caen. And I miss those sales at Magnin’s. The rest of the year Magnin’s belonged to socialites and wealth-mongers, the crème de la crème. But twice a year, it was ours. 
 
It’s hard to put your finger on what’s missing from shopping these days. But I guess for me it’s the ride home. Mom is at the wheel. My sister still gets the front seat, and I’m in the back. But now I’m not leaning forward. I’m resting deeply into that giant Country Squire seat, lightheaded, and exhausted, surrounded by bags. Classy bags made of thick, stiff paper, with silk rope handles and embossed lettering that reads, “I. Magnin and Co.”

P.S. In researching this article, I found my way to various I. Magnin images and memorabilia, one of which was the dress below, which I bought on Ebay. What a steal!
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*Helen Frank print used by permission of Lafayette College,  Helen Frank Master Print Collection, 1949-2014. Special Collections & College Archives, David Bishop Skillman Library, Lafayette College. Special thanks to Elaine Stober, college archivist, and also to Melanie Meyers, Director of Collections at the American Jewish Historical Society for allowing the use of the picture of Mrs. Magnin.