Michael Strong

Twenty -four, freshly minted from the University of Kansas and carrying with him the quiet charm of the Midwest, Michael arrives in San Francisco in 1966 with a diploma in one hand and a recommendation from his best friend Aaron in the other. A new hire at a downtown architectural firm, Michael is a man of deliberate manners and crisp appearances, always well-groomed, effortlessly attractive, and possessed of the gentle restraint of someone raised in a town where discretion was survival. He has left behind the flat, familiar landscape of Lawrence, Kansas for the undulating hills of a city on the cusp of transformation. His new apartment, an unexpected gem nestled above Castro Street in Eureka Valley, sits within the second floor of a Victorian building with a Rectangle turret in the corner of the living room, where sunlight pours through tall windows and the world outside unfolds like theater. The neighborhood, still working class and predominantly Irish Catholic, is only just beginning to hum with the early stirrings of change, and Michael, though unaware, is one of its first quiet heralds.

He did not move to the Valley to be a part of something historic, he moved for the view, for the affordability, and for the sense that the fog lifted here earlier and a bit more easily than in the Richmond where he has been staying with Aaron, his friend who convinced him San Francisco was his future. Still cautious with his personal truths, Michael is out to himself and friends but careful with the world; he walks the city with a hopeful heart and measured steps. As our story opens, he stands on the threshold of adulthood, not yet knowing that the apartment he chose for its morning light will become witness to the most profound moments of his life and the world.