The Marina District, My Project Has Come and Gone
Since 2017, I’ve had a oral history project idea about the beginnings of the Marina District in San Francisco after the Pan-Pacific Exposition. However, I recently decided to scrap it.
I realized that there’s no interest in it.
Perhaps the prevailing stereotype that the Marina is elitist overshadows any of the fun and colorful historical stories of the families that lived/live there. My grandparents and other family members bought their homes in the neighborhood starting in the mid-1920s. The family that I knew best was my grandmother, on my father’s side. Noni (as we called her) was a fun-loving and down-to-earth lady. My dad was kind-hearted and down-to-earth too. My grandfather died when I was two. They were not elitist. There are a lot of stories to hear from regular families in the Marina’s history. I don’t think of it as elitist at all. Whoever lives there now is maintaining it very well. It’s still a beautiful neighborhood, despite a lot of decline happening in parts of San Francisco overall.
As a native San Franciscan, I lived mainly in the middle-class Sunset District most of my life. Ever since my main working and socializing years, class distinctions in this city have been very evident to me. San Francisco always had an elitist element to it, not just in the “Marina”. When you grow up in a city…
