Jeff Berner Photography: Paris, France & Marin County, California. Visit ABTEERLNIEERR, 01 42 52 25 95, 102-bis rue Lepic 75018 Paris, metro Abbesses

From Gertrude Stein on Picasso, 1970, Liveright, 1946, Random House:

Then again in 1904 he was once again in Paris.

He lived in Montmartre, in the rue Ravignan, its name has been changed now, but the last time I was there it still had its old charm, the little square was just as it was the first time I saw it, a carpenter was working in a corner, the children were there, the houses were all about the same as they had been, the old atelier where all of them had lived was still standing, perhaps since then, for it is two or three years that I was there last, perhaps now they have commenced to tear it down and build another building. It is normal to build new buildings but all the same one does not like anything to change, and the rue Ravignan of that time was really something, it was the rue Ravignan and it was there that many things that were important in the history of twentieth century art happened.

Found in the history room at Canessa...

CANESSA

The Canessa Building, built in the late 1800s and located at 708 Montgomery, is an official San Francisco landmark. Canessa once housed printing presses and gas lights, and nearby, on Sansome Street, a bustling produce market district shook the neighborhood into pre-dawn life.

For 30 years, from 1933 to 1963, the Black Cat Cafe, located at 710 Montgomery, was the Canessa Building's next-door neighbor. The Cat attracted a bohemian clientele of both straight and gay writers, artists and musicians from the neighborhood. Many lived and worked across the street in the historic Montgomery Block building (where the TransAmerica Pyramid now stands). Just north of the Cat, at 716-718-720 Montgomery, were the studios of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Emmy Lou Packard and Ralph and Peter Stackpole.

Regular visitors to the Cat included artists Hassel Smith, Maynard Dixon and Ed Corbett. John Steinbeck and William Saroyan dropped in from time to time -- as did two veteran police reporters, Neil Hitt of the Chronicle and Harry Debolt of the Examiner. According to Jerry Flamm, author of Hometown San Francisco, Hitt and Debolt, “an inseparable pair in the Hall of Justice press room after 5 p.m., would occasionally stroll down one block to the Black Cat for a thirst quencher after advising the police radio dispatcher where they would be in case all hell broke loose somewhere in the city.”

Though many of the buildings in this area did not survive the era of high-and-higher architecture, the diminutive gem known as Canessa has. Today, the old brick building still glows with light and life and is home to an art gallery and several creative professionals with small businesses.