Del Seymour in conversation with author Alison Owings, on his life and the new book Mayor of the Tenderloin.  

In the book, Owings slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco’s Tenderloin to reveal a harrowing and life-affirming account of Del Seymour—whose addiction led him into eighteen years of homelessness, pimping, and drug dealing. Once sober, he started Tenderloin Walking Tours and later Code Tenderloin, the remarkable organization teaching homeless, recovering addicts, sex workers, dealers, ex-felons and other marginalized people how to get and keep a job.

Alison Owings is the author of 3 previous oral history-based books: Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice), Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans and Hey, Waitress!: The USA from the Other Side of the Tray. A former television news writer at CBS News, she lives in San Francisco with her husband.

Del Seymour’s transformation from drug user to community leader and informal adviser to Dolby, Zendesk, Twitter and other tech companies began at the park in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. A Vietnam War veteran who was chronically homeless and incarcerated for 18 years. In 2015, Mr. Seymour founded (from his car) Code Tenderloin, a nonprofit that offers free-of-charge job-readiness training and coding boot camps for the hard-to-employ, be they formerly incarcerated, recovering addicts, homeless or people simply needing a fresh start. He is also the founder of Tenderloin/Mid-Market Walking Tours.