Up Your Alley 2016 and SOMA History

I'm always ambivalent about draggin' my lazy ass down to Dore Alley for this annual event, often touted as being more 'San Francisco...local...neighborly' than the much more 'Universal...global...inclusive' Folsom Street Fair.   It's an exhausting fifteen minute walk from my house.  Just kidding.  I'll probably get down there tomorrow, but mostly because I'm one of the FOMO gang.  One good thing about past Dore Alleys is that the porno studios had booths were they unloaded inventory at bargain prices, and some good buys were to  be had.  I tried checking the website but there is no list of participating vendors that I could find, so I guess I'll have to check it out for myself.

One thing I did notice is that one website gives the phonetic pronunciation of Dore as 'dor,' which is news to me.  It had always been Dor-ee Alley, so I don't know where this Door is coming from.  Most of us know that the greater South of Market area consists of Mission, Howard, Folsom, Harrison, Bryant, Brannan and Townsend Streets running east/west and parallel to Market Street; the numbered streets run from north to south, 1st Street to 13th Street aka Division Street, as in dividing SOMA from the Mission which runs on a different grid altogether.  San Francisco has several grids intersecting, so you're a real San Franciscan when you know to get from the Bayview to the Presidio without checking a map.  The SOMA blocks were designed for commerce and filled with warehouses, factories, workshops, stables, and the Irish, including some of my ancestors.  And oh yeah, there were some Filipinos and Mexicans living there, too.  It was a Catholic kind of place.  The blocks are big, so there is a network of narrow streets, or alleys cutting through, making it easier to get around.  The joke is that the city planners named a lot of these streets after the working girls who labored on these streets to make life more pleasant for all the laborers, stevedores, teamsters and clerks...an overwhelmingly male population...who kept SOMA humming after work was closed for the day.  So when you're in SOMA next time, take note of Clementina, Jessie, Annie, Harriet, Kate, Minna, Mary, Clara, Zoe, Jennifer, Julia, and Dore.  There's also a Guy, a Gordon and a Morris, but I'll let you figure that part out for yourself.

Get down to Up Your Alley or Dore Alley and have a great time.