Tenderloin Noir: Walking Tour

Step into the fog-shrouded streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, where mystery, mayhem, and literary legend collide. Join us for “Tenderloin Noir,” a walking tour led by celebrated storyteller and historian Linda Day, that traces the dark footprints of hard-boiled writers like Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, and Mark Coggins—authors who turned the Tenderloin’s alleys, hotels, and shadowy corners into settings for murder, mischief, and moral ambiguity.

• Hammett, author of The Thin Man, among other hardboiled classics, lived in the Tenderloin during the 1920s while penning his early detective stories.
• Macdonald set key scenes of his 1951 novel The Way Some People Die inside the district’s still-standing residential hotels.
• Coggins brings it full circle, paying homage to Hammett in his modern noir series featuring private eye August Riordan.

Many of the buildings featured in their stories still stand today—and some may still be hiding new mysteries (or new writers) behind closed doors.

Don’t miss this atmospheric stroll through San Francisco’s most literary underworld.