Sol Y Sombra, sun and shadows - sí, that would be their name - but wait, we're ahead of our story. In 1962 Nancy Slayton (Q.E.P.D.) saw an ad in an old TOROS magazine regarding the desire to start a bullfight club in the San Francisco area. She contacted the lady, Catherine Sutherland, who had run the ad and helped her organize the peña.
Thirty interested people became the founding members and three of those 30 are still active in Sol y Sombra today - plus an ever-changing roster of enthusiastic aficionados. The first meetings were held in Mexican restaurants in the bay area, then an almost-permanent room was secured in the Marines Memorial Club -- moving from that to members' homes and then back full circle to restaurants again today.
Many of the meetings were educational with guest speakers on various aspects of the corrida; history, music, capework, current matadors' standings, etc. And members were encouraged to participate in meetings with other clubs, especially the NATC, the National Association of Taurine Clubs, which held an annual Congreso in Mexico in the early years and later in Spain and France. Sol y Sombra was represented at two of the International Congresos de Tauromáquia, in Sevilla, 1966, and Lisbóa, 1972.
The San Francisco Club hosted several of the NATC affairs, the most recent being the one held in Zacatecas, Mexico, in 1987.
There was other local acticity when on Sundays one could often find members practicing capework in Golden State Park under the direction of the peña's resident matador (retired) Guillermo Navarro. Today we carpool down to Escalon in the San Joaquin valley, to Campo Bravo, a 1500-seat arena on the ranch of Frank Borba, whose son, Dennis, is a full-blown matador de toros. Here Sol y Sombra aficionados can see the branding of calves, a tienta or best of all, a real live Portuguese corrida - right in their own back yard.
by Doris Jacobs
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