Mirrors

Neighborhood mirrors SF's evolution

03.01.10

Nimmo is a retired anthropology professor, so Potomac Street interests him both personally and professionally. The street is both a home base - "It's a little street, so you know everybody," Nimmo says - and an almost textbook example of urban development. "The nature of a city is change," he says.

He used his professional name - H. Arlo Nimmo - to write "Good and Bad Times in a San Francisco Neighborhood," an affectionate portrait of his street, privately printed in 2007, and a bit hard to find, like his small street.

It is one part history of how Duboce Park and the little neighborhood nearby developed and how the tides of change swept over it. It is also a personal journal of life on Potomac Street, filled with neighborhood characters and stories.

Potomac Street was developed around the turn of the 20th century in a much different San Francisco. For many years the street and the area were middle class, but older San Francisco neighborhoods had changed radically by the 1950s.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle