This extremely rare photo of the first west coast Black Mask get-together on January 11, 1936 captures possibly the only meeting of several of these authors.
Pictured in the back row, from left to right, are Raymond J. Moffatt, Raymond Chandler, Herbert Stinson, Dwight Babcock, Eric Taylor and Dashiell Hammett. In the front row, again from left to right, are Arthur Barnes (?), John K. Butler, W. T. Ballard, Horace McCoy and Norbert Davis.

When an American President, or Vice President, are elected, historians take note of the city and town they hail from to get an idea of the cultural contribution and events that took place that gave rise to that person being sworn into the highest offices in the land. My relatives lived below ‘The Higts’ located in the Oakland Hills where a colony of Japanese Bohemian poets and artists lived and gathered to discuss their craft. Juaquin…