Tom and Jerry Home, the frilly vacation show in S.F., shines on after creator’s dying

The climb up Castro Hill to 3650 21st St., the place most people know as the “Tom and Jerry House,” is a sharp climb that leaves a person breathless and almost turns the city sideways.

“It’s not that easy,” said Barbie Seegmiller. She stood in front of the house and looked up at the great Norfolk Island pine tree, all forty-two – or, according to some reports – sixty feet away. (She also fought against gravity, the trunk of which was held in place with metal bars.) “But when you get to the top, it’s absolutely worth it.”

A hydraulic elevator was running which made it difficult to hear much of anything. Workers used it to maneuver around the tree, light lights, then adjust them and adjust them again. They spent three weeks on a month-long project to cover the tree and the house behind it with an immense number of lights and tchotchkes – an elaborate holiday tableau that reappears every winter.

Seegmiller has been passing the house every year for about a decade, she said. So tens of thousands of others have. The Chronicle first wrote about the display on December 22, 1997, and Tom Taylor, the man who made it up, in a short story hidden deep in the A section. At that point, Taylor and husband Jerome “Jerry” Goldstein had been with it for nine or ten years. Taylor told The Chronicle that 30,000 to 40,000 people would pass by Tom and Jerry House before it all collapsed on Jan. 1. 23 years later, the tradition has not let up.

But this year is different. This year is the first without Taylor; He died of prostate cancer on October 20th.

News of his death spread widely and reached Seegmiller. She was hoping to bring her 3-year-old daughter Sia to the house – she’s the age she’d love the lights – but first Seegmiller wanted to make sure it wouldn’t get dark this year.

Yet the ad was incomplete but came together. Seegmiller smiled. The climb had not been in vain.

“Traditions live on even after they’re over,” she said. Then she continued up the hill.

Alvin Animo and Bona Pak use an elevator to hang lights over the 40-foot Christmas tree while Hunter Padilla works on another display at Tom and Jerry’s home in San Francisco.

Nick Otto / Special on The Chronicle

Last week, during the final stage of the decoration, Benji Fujita wrung the lights on a wreath about his size. Eighteen years ago he was working as a gardener on the street when a friend asked if he wanted to make a Christmas tree. “I thought it was an in-house decoration gig,” he said. “It wasn’t. It was …” he waves his hands, “… a boom lift and like a huge building presence and all that stuff.”

“All that stuff” was a garage full of tangled Christmas lights and boxes with labels like “SMALL TRAINS” and “DANCING DOLLS”. In the driveway, two elven feet protruded from a pile of wreaths, and next to them lay two dusty, sun-bleached stockings about three feet high. One read “Tom” and the other “Jerry”, both in glittering silver letters.

These are not fancy decorations and there is no issue. The house is apologetically messy and sticky, like an ugly sweater you could wear to a Christmas party. That’s part of the charm. “It’s as San Francisco as possible,” said Fujita. “It’s bold, it’s a statement … we’re flashy, but we’re not trying to be flashy” like some upscale displays.

Fujita was the longest of the eight-person crew that year. But Taylor and the house had a habit of drawing people in for the long term. Jon Orc, the project manager, started in 2012. Hunter Padilla started when he was 8 years old. He lives across the street, and one rainy night he went over and asked the man in the Santa suit outside if he wanted help handing out candy canes. He’s been back every year since; he is now 21

They all sensed Taylor’s absence. “He felt like a father or our uncle. If you do it without him, it feels a little empty, ”Orc said. “But at the same time we have each other and he has left us the knowledge and skills to build something like this without him.”

In 1997, Tom Taylor (crouching in white) was busy building the Christmas display at his Castro home, and the Norfolk Island pine tree was much shorter.

Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle 1997

The tradition began with the tree.

In perhaps the most detailed story of the Tom and Jerry House published by the San Francisco Bay Times last year, Donna Sachet writes that Taylor bought the living tree from a Cost Plus sometime around 1970. He was 3 feet tall.

According to a Chronicle article, Taylor and Goldstein had moved into their white Victorian house high up on Castro Hill together in 1973 and the conifer had grown out of its pot so they planted it right outside the door.

The display started out small, a series of lights and later ornaments made from paper plates. But as the tree grew – Taylor and Goldstein liked to say the roots found a sewer – so did the decorations. “It got to a point where I either couldn’t do it or had to get serious with a scaffolding or a hydraulic lift,” Taylor told The Chronicle in 2003. Taylor grew serious.

The story of the Tom and Jerry House is one of the stories best told broadly. In the past 30 years, many of the exact details have been lost. Did the tradition start in 1987 or 1988? Even Taylor couldn’t be sure. There’s no count of the number of lights, no real explanation for the purple teletubby in the middle of a spinning Ferris wheel made from K’Nex toys. For a year the hydraulic lift slid down the hill and either knocked down a neighbor’s chimney or crashed through the roof. How tall is the tree Various reports have placed it north of 60 feet, but if you ask Fujita – again he’s worked on the display for the past 18 years – he keeps it closer to 40 feet. (A year, he says, when they grew it, high winds tore the top off and left it on the roof.)

But the details are less important than the fact of the matter, which at its core was always intended as a gift to the city. Now, after Taylor’s death, friends say, it continues as evidence of his and Goldstein’s generosity and warmth. Both are well known in the San Francisco gay community and were both awarded a Pride Service Award five years ago.

In this 2003 photo from The Chronicle archives, Tom Taylor puts ornaments on his tree next to his home on 21st Street.

JOHN STOREY / The Chronicle, 2003

“You were the consummate hosts,” said Gary Virginia, a friend of the two and former president of the San Francisco Pride board of directors. “Everyone was welcome.”

He remembers in-house parties – for the San Francisco Bay Times and the Lesbian / Gay Freedom Band and the Gay Men’s Chorus – where there was always an open bar and tables full of catering and hardly any of them at home. Limits for the guests. They would open up their warehouse for fundraisers when the organizers had nowhere else to go. Taylor, he said, was “as reliable as a steel condom”. He was the “keeper” of the Rainbow Pride flag on the corner of Market Street and Castro Street, and during Pride he would always show up with bunting and flags, telling stories from his life while teaching volunteers how to get the flags just right treated.

“Your eyes would just shine like saucers,” said Virginia.

Even back two Prides, just weeks after surgery, Virginia said, “Damn it, if Tom didn’t just show up with volunteers.” He brought an original hand-dyed rainbow flag from Gilbert Baker (the originator of the flag) to hang backstage for the virtual event.

Don’t let him climb the ladder, Goldstein had told them. Taylor did it anyway.

“Small or large, they were definitely committed,” said former MP Tom Ammiano, who knew the couple socially. When Baker died, they rented the Castro Theater as a memorial to their friend. When they legally married in 2013, the party took to the streets in front of their house. “They were totally involved and I think they saw a way to be productive. They had the will and the means to do it, and God loves them for it. “

The two, Tom Taylor and Jerry Goldstein, were like “putting gas and fire together,” Virginia said.

There was a moment before Taylor died when the question of whether to decorate was in the air, Orc said. Taylor was battling prostate cancer, “and we just wanted to be there for him.”

Meanwhile, Taylor devised a schedule for putting the tree up and talking about new things to add this year. After it was over, there was no question that the lights would come on.

Take care, folks, Goldstein said to Orc and the crew.

“He told me he wanted to see the most spectacular Christmas tree ever.”

Ryan Kost is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: rkost@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @RyanKost