It was with sadness that I received the news that the urban historian Mike Davis died on October 25, 2022, at home in San Diego - in the county his parents reached by hitch-hiking during the Great Depression. From meat cutter and truck driver to college student and teacher - editor of The New Left Review, and successful author of twenty books - his life and academic career were extraordinary.
I met and recorded Mike Davis in San Francisco in March 2000 when he visited my neighborhood, the North East Mission Industrial Zone. We had all been affected by the dot.com boom of 1998 through 2000, driven by the nearby Silicon Valley Computer Industry. The boom had already raised rents in SF to the highest of any major American city. Official statistics reported seven evictions per day. Small businesses, repair-shops, mom and pop restaurants, and many Spanish speaking families were forced out.
We were grateful that Mike Davis had agreed to help fundraise for the SF Anti-Eviction Coalition. Tim Redmond interviewed him - he was then the editor of the SF Bay Guardian, now founder of 48hills, San Francisco’s independent daily community news and culture site.
Among the over 20 books Mike Davis has written and co-written are: The Grit beneath the Glitter, Tales from the Real Las Vegas; City of Quartz, Excavating the Future in Los Angeles; No One is Illegal, Fighting Racism and State Violence at the US Mexico Border; Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Working Class, Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster; and Prisoners of the American Dream.
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