This past Mother’s Day, the family was sitting around the kitchen table after a filling lunch at the Basque Cultural Center. Aita with his digestif, the rest of us with teas and coffees. Mom snuck away for a few moments and came back with the 40th anniversary booklet published by the San Francisco Basque Club.
We spent the next hour flipping through it and looking at photos from the club’s history, finding familiar faces in the dance group and klika from 20-30-40 years ago. It was a fun game to see how people had aged, but most interesting was the text.
It detailed how the San Francisco Basque Club got started and showed a lot of scenes from the old Basque hotels in San Francisco where the club was formed.
These Basque hotels are long gone now, but I was captivated by a map on one of the pages that showed just how many there were in the 1960’s and how close they were together.
I’d heard of the Basque hotels from Aita, but I never realized that San Francisco had its own Basque Block at one point in time.
I said to my sister, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a Basque walking tour in San Francisco?”
“Do it,” she said.
After some initial hesitation on my part (“no way, I can’t start a walking tour!”), we spent the next few minutes going back and forth, brainstorming what a Basque walking tour would look like. Two days later, I bribed Aita into driving down to San Francisco so he could show me where his favorite Basque hotels used to be.
I’ve done some further research (thanks to the Basque Educational Organization for letting me borrow some books), and now the Basque walking tour of San Francisco is happening!
We’re having our first official Basque walking tour of San Francisco this Saturday, June 8th at 4PM, meeting at the Helen Wills Playground on Broadway and Larkin. I hope to do many more in the future, but this is the inaugural test run. And it’s free!
We have a few spots left on the tour if you’d like to join. Send me an email at annemarie@hellabasque.org and let me know how many are in your group.
EDIT: THIS 1st BASQUE WALKING TOUR IS FULL. Follow Hella Basque on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to get updates on the next one.
The route will cover about 1 mile with some hills (it is San Francisco, after all), ending up at the Basque Hotel in Romolo Place. The tour will take 1-2 hours.
And if you have any stories from your time at the Basque hotels of San Francisco, I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment below.
CONTINUE READING:
- Basque Immigration in the United States
- Kern County Basque Club Picnic in Bakersfield (2019 PHOTOS)
- Interview with a Basque Immigrant: Our Favorite Aita
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