Gordon Ball first saw San Francisco as a small child, coming by train with his Ohio River Valley family to join his father in Japan after his narrow escape from Shanghai before Mao took it. In My San Francisco he recounts Bay Area experiences from family furlough visits every few years, followed by hitchhiking there in the war-torn 1960s and embarking on a six-month stay a few years later, the culmination of a cross-country journey with poet Allen Ginsberg—a stay marked by failed love and lifelong friendship. My San Francisco, a large format chapbook with several photographs including two by the photographer author, is both a highly personal memoir of and tribute to the city, vitalized by imagistic gists and brief encounters melded with longer narratives; it is, as some readers have celebrated it, “honest,” “brave,” and beautiful.”