Sparkletack - the San Francisco History Podcast

File this — again — under “there’s ALWAYS a San Francisco connection”.

A reader recently alerted me to the fact that Charlie Chaplin, America’s favourite clown (and perhaps the most influential performer in motion picture history), shot one of his bazillion-odd silent movies on location in and around Golden Gate Park.

“A Jitney Elopement” is classic slapstick, featuring a case of mistaken identity, a jitney (think “flivver“), a mustachioed scoundrel and — inevitably — madcap hilarity. This milestone 1915 production has been described as the first “Chaplinesque” Chaplin film, but is that what we’re here for?

Nope … we want to look past the action with San Francisco-tinted glasses and see our city in all its vivid … okay, in all its grainy black and white early-century glory. The first half of the film takes place indoors, but take a look at clip from the second reel, featuring the crucial final ten minutes:

0:0 minutes: We begin somewhere on location in Golden Gate Park; Charlie is about to rescue the Girl from the amorous clutches of the mustachioed Count.

4:53 minutes: The action slowly picks up — over a half century before Steve McQueen will set the standard — with a car chase: high speed Tin-Lizzy!

5:02 minutes: This may be the high point of the film, a rare sight indeed: Golden Gate Park’s fabulous Murphy Windmill, complete with turning vanes! This windmill, the second of the Park’s famous pair, was built in 1905, but the vanes fell off sometime in the ’40s. The magnificent tower is still there, though, slowly rotting away — still unrestored.

6:00 minutes: tearing north past Ocean Beach along the Great Highway, not yet paved (!).

7:46 minutes: In a cinematic maneuver San Franciscans will see countless times over the years to come (hello “Bullitt‘), time and geography are defied with a leap across town into the Mission District. Note the fence advertising “Joe Holle Bicycles” — this handy clue allows us to place the scene precisely at 2336 Folsom Street, right across the street from today’s John O’Connell High School of Technology.

8:30 minutes: A pair of paved roads lead up a hillside … anyone want to take a crack at identifying this spot? Sutro Heights? The Presidio?

9:16 minutes: A major intersection that could be in the Mission, the Richmond or the Sunset districts … anyone recognize the buildings in the background?

9:46 minutes: The car chase finally ends with a splash as Chaplin bumps the villains’ car off a pier and into the bay. Our copy of the film is a little blurry, but our best guess is that this is somewhere around Fort Mason.

But wait, there’s more!

When last we encountered this goddess-behemoth, she was being blown up by the Navy at the end of the ‘39 Pan-Pacific Exposition. The mythical goddess Pacifica — symbol of the Fair — had loomed over Treasure Island for the duration, a sternly imposing concrete figure of some 80 feet tall.

Though sculptor Ralph Stackpole had proposed that she be allowed to stay on as a sort of Statue of Liberty of the Pacific, the powers that be were unsympathetic — Pacifica was destroyed and hauled away with the rest of the rubble.

Now, almost 70 years later, the goddess is returning to San Francisco — albeit a bit reduced in scale. An 8-foot replica, reproduced in fiberglass from Stackpole’s original 3-foot working model, will be installed next week at the Community College of San Francisco (CCSF):

WHEN: Thursday, April 17th, 12:30-1:30 p.m.

WHERE: City College of San Francisco
Ocean Campus, 50 Phelan Avenue
in the garden next to the Diego Rivera Theater.

The Rivera connection

Connoisseurs of San Francisco art secrets will already know that the CCSF campus is the repository for one of the great surviving treasures of that fair, the mural “Pan American Unity” — a piece actually painted by Diego Rivera on Treasure Island as Fair patrons gawked.

Rivera’s original connection with San Francisco came from Stackpole, who traveled to Mexico to meet him in the ’20s and helped the lefty Mexican genius get his first mural commissions in the City. The Pacifica statue will be located in the “Olmec Head Plaza” — appropriately facing Rivera’s Treasure Island masterpiece.

The swimmer and the statue

But here’s an odd angle; one of the figures immortalized by Rivera in that mural is responsible for bring Pacifica back — one Mr. Salvatore DeGuarda. Salvatore was working as a swimmer in Billy Rose’s Aquacade, happened to catch Diego’s eye, and now here he is — the one in the white swimming trunks.

After a long and colorful career, Mr. DeGuarda is now retired — but not very: after getting involved with Treasure Island’s fifty-year anniversary celebrations a couple of decades ago, he became obsessed with the re-creation of “Pacifica”:

“If it wasn’t for this statue, I would probably be dead by now. I have great memories, and I love sharing them with people. I want my legacy to be the re-creation of Pacifa on Treasure Island and the sharing of my stories.”

His donation of this relatively tiny version to CCSF is just a stop along the road — he’s already given a copy to the town of Pacifica (the statue’s namesake) — Salvatore won’t be satisfied until the full-scale 80-foot statue rises again above the Pacific.

For more about Salvatore DeGuarda’s non-profit group “Pacifica II Project”, visit www.pacificastatue.org.

Web 2.0 here we come … there’s a brand new Sparkletack group on Facebook.

You can post photos and video, add links, start a discussion, or just join the group and show your enthusiasm for Sparkletack and San Francisco history. And if you’re not already part of Facebook, it’s painfully easy to join.

C’mon, drop by and help us peel off the wrapping paper!

I love San Francisco, I love history, and I love walking. Luckily for me, there are a billion walking tours out there. Every so often I participate in one of these, try to pick up a thing or two, and take some notes for you. Ratings systems provide a useful shorthand, but your mileage may vary.

subject: San Francisco Ghost Walk
time: 3 hours
cost: $20 adults, $10 kids, discount for groups (cash only)
contact: www.sfghosthunt.com
tack rating:

NOTE: A couple of weeks ago an email from a regular reader dropped into my inbox. She was curious about this Ghost Walk, and had unsuccessfully scoured the Sparkletack website for a review. Well, I’d heard of the tour, but — though curious — just never got around to putting on my calendar. In a flash of inspiration (call it laziness if you must), I wrote back: “How about you go on the tour and write it up?”

So. Allow me to introduce the very first “Guest Sparkler” to this blog: EB of SpiceDish — San Franciscan, Sparkletack fan, and highly entertaining writer about eating and living in the Bay Area. Take it away, Erin …

It was a dark and rainy night …

… no really. It was. It was raining last Friday night when a troupe of my friends and I decided to partake in a ghost hunt!

Since 1998 Jim Fassbinder has offered the San Francisco Ghost Hunt tour. A walking tour that introduces you to the city’s illustrious departed who refuse to leave.

Our host, at first, had a goofy touch of ‘Disney’s Haunted Mansion’ about him (costume and all), but soon we were taken in by his infectious enthusiasm. Fassbinder takes his job very seriously, it’s obvious he loves not only deceased of San Francisco, but also the city and it’s history as well.

After an introduction to what he does and how, the tour starts with Fassbinder encouraging everyone to investigate the 2nd & 4th floors of the Queen Anne. These are reportedly the most haunted floors. Mary Lake, the spirit who walks these halls, has apparently taken to tucking in guests with a fresh blanket while they sleep — all out of love of course. He encourages picture taking and tells you what to look for (a glowing orb or figure) to see if you’ve captured a ghost. My photo from the 4th floor does seem to have few ghostly orbs floating around there. Sparkletack note — This is the same mansion that I visited as part of the Victorian Home Walk in January … have the owners got their PR ducks in row or what?

The rain, adding to the atmosphere of the evening, accompanied us as we left the hotel and walked about 1 mile around the gorgeous neighborhood of Pacific Heights learning about the some ghosts with illustrious and infamous pasts:

Claudia Chambers, a murdered heiress (a gruesome family secret), Flora, who haunts the corner of California and Pine in a white Victorian dress (she once scared an entire cable car full of tourists by walking straight through them!), Gertrude Atherton (yes that Atherton) a moneyed widow known for partying, who’s still at it in her gorgeous mansion and Fassbinder’s personal patron saint…. Mary Ellen Pleasant “The Voodoo Queen of San Francisco.”

Fassbinder gleefully shares the ghosts’ history, why and where they haunt, and how they make themselves known. He imparts all the information he knows about the dead (except their ghostly appearance—how else could he verify that you really saw one or just imagined you did?) He even attempts to attract the spirits to make your experience all the more intriguing.

Fun Facts that were uncovered:

• Dead husbands can be delivered in booze barrels.
  
• You really can have too many cats.
  
• Young girls don’t want to marry old men.
  
• Blackmail and insider trading may just be good career options, and
  
• If you are good to your Voodoo priestess she will be good to you.

Do I recommend going on a ghost hunt?

Yes. Even if you’re more into San Francisco history, than ghosts in particular, Fassbinder really is open to any and all questions, he allows you to take pictures freely and he engages tour-goers at every turn. There are a few parlor tricks to be had (or supernatural experiences depending on your point of view) and while he doesn’t guarantee that you will see ghosts, he guarantees that you will have one of the more unique evenings you can have in San Francisco. For 20$ per adult and 10$ per child you get 3 full hours of entertainment.

The tour even enticed me to take advantage of the 25% off coupon you are given for a stay at the Queen Anne. I booked an in-town weekend ‘away’ and while I won’t be staying in room 410 (the most haunted room)… I do hope to see myself a spirit.

More San Francisco Ghostie links:
» San Francisco Ghost Society
» Top 10 Haunted San Francisco Locations!
» “Is There a Spirit Here Tonight” — SF Chronicle
» “Haunted San Francisco Ghost Stories”

I ran across an old and beautiful (not to mention HUGE) coffee urn in front of a Portland antique store today. Just like a magpie, shiny objects catch my eye — so I stopped to check it out.

It’s become a running joke that there’s always a San Francisco angle, and sure enough there was … and a sort of mystery as well: the metal label affixed to the side reads as follows:

WESTINGHOUSE
SAN FRANCISCO
STEAM COFFEE URN

My first thought: “Westinghouse had a factory in San Francisco?” But then I saw that the thing had been manufactured in Ohio.

So, it’s a “San Francisco Steam Coffee Urn” … that “Steam” instantly put me in mind of the local beer style; could there have been an analogous coffee style — “San Francisco steam coffee” — unique and well-known enough to warrant a national brand?

Hmm.

I can just picture it: Dashiell Hammett slouching at the counter in a cheap Eddy Street diner, scowling down at his reflection in a chipped mug full of black, acidic San Francisco steam? I can feel the chill of the fog, the warmth of that steaming mug of “San Francisco steam” … Oh yeah. That’s got to be it.

So how come I’ve never heard of it?

The owner of the shop wasn’t around, so its provenance is a mystery. It does occur to me that “SAN FRANCISCO” might just be a model name, and that “steam” simply refers to some generic brewing method, but how disappointing would that be? I’m sticking to my much more romatic interpretation, thank you very much. (And if anyone cares to burst my bubble, this blog sports a nifty “comments” function.)

If you’d like to nip up to the Pacific Northwest and take this relic home, it’s right here — and the price tag is $600.

Sparkletack is featured in this month’s “Guidelines”, the newsletter of the non-profit San Francisco City Guides. You know about them already, right? Free tours all over town run by smart, dedicated volunteers? I’ve experienced several (and reviewed a couple (1, 2) of their offerings, so it seems only fair that they’d take a look at Sparkletack.

It turned out to be a nice little piece:

“I love my iPod, but it is kind of a piece of junk with lots of programming bugs. At my last visit to the Genius Bar to get the thing fixed, the Genius complimented me on my podcast collection. And then he told me Sparkletack was one of his favorites.”
– read the rest of the article here

It isn’t all about Sparkletack of course — the newsletter features several short articles about San Francisco history every month, and is well worth a read. Adolph Sutro, the movie-makeover of the Castro Theatre, the 1894 Midwinter Fair and a local angle on the Lincoln Brigade are featured in the current issue, and the stories are as interesting and well-researched as the walking tours.

Thanks for the plug, Guides!

The latest from my little column over at the SFist:

“Not Even Jackassable”

We perused the recent SFist post about the pitiable state of San Francisco’s streets with a certain sense of nostalgia for the good ol’ days. You know, the days before this newfangled “asphalt paving” even entered the scene.

In the Year of the Gold Rush (1849-50ish), the city’s population exploded from a cozy 500 citizens to almost 100 thousand — and not a single one of those gold-crazed invaders wasted a second thinking the state of the village’s streets.

See, the streets in the good ol’ days were good ol’ dirt. And when the rainy season arrived, the torrent of horse, foot and cart traffic tearing through town trampled that sandy earth into a boggy quagmire.

How bad was it? Bad. Not to mention deep. Horses, mules, and countless drunken souls staggering out of saloons were sucked down into the street muck and drowned. This situation entered into legend, as historian Herbert Asbury writes, when “the mud at Clay and Kearny streets, in the heart of town, at length became so deep and thick that a wag posted this sign:

“THIS STREET IS IMPASSABLE; NOT EVEN JACKASSABLE”

In a vain attempt to ameliorate the situation, the city fathers (such as they were) dumped in piles of brush and tree branches, but any object that entered the muck slowly sank from sight and vanished forever.

Though the construction boom had caused the price of wood to skyrocket, streets constructed from planks eventually began to appear. This was an improvement over mud, but wooden streets — though reducing the risk of drowning (!) — were slippery when wet, prone to break under horses’ hooves, and (on the rare occasions when they were dry) quite flammable. San Francisco’s six major Gold Rush-era fires (1849 to 1853) sent miles of costly plank streets up in smoke.

That sixth fire must have been the charm for the city fathers. In 1854 that the miracle of the paved street arrived, first appearing on the block of Kearny Street between Clay and Washington, where City Hall (originally the Jenny Lind Theatre) once stood. Whew!

Bicycle over and pay your respects … but watch the potholes.

It’s my favourite thing, finding physical evidence of times past in the landscape of contemporary San Francisco. That’s why I was delighted when Aaron, a Sparkletack reader, sent me to a page of photographs snapped by a railfan in 1907.

The website displaying the photos is the passion of Amtrak engineer (and native San Franciscan) Frank Caron, and its name — Rails Around the Bay — is pretty much self-explanatory. The site is loaded with photos and history, and Frank describes this particular page of century-old rail photographs like this:

“The following photos are from the camera of Robert H. McFarland who grew up in San Francisco. Robert lived right on 22nd Street near Harrison where the original Southern Pacific mainline once ran and as a young man photographed all this action for us to see today. These photos were provided to me by Arnold Menke and are part of his collection. I thank him for allowing me to share with you today a sampling of the many photos that Robert McFarland took.”

The photos of these iron monsters steaming through the Mission are fantastic, but what really caught my eye was the fact that each photo came with a handy location description. What could I do? I had to create an interactive map! Those of you who enjoyed the Mission Street Railroad graphic are going to love this, too … it’s another look at the one-time “San Francisco and San Jose Railroad“, California’s first inter-city rail link. From 1864-1906 a $2.50 fare would bring you from San Jose to the terminal at 3rd and Townsend Streets. Crocker, Stanford and our other favourite robber barons absorbed the line into the Southern Pacific Coast Route in 1870, and it ran until sometime in the 1940s.

If you look closely at this map (choose “satellite” view), you can see the evidence of this long abandoned line all over the place, a still-vivid antique scar: the Juri Commons park between Guerrero and San Jose Avenue is a great place to start; the diagonal slice extends farther north- and east-wards across Shotwell between 24th and 23rd, then cuts through three rectilinear blocks before emerging at 21st and Harrison. It becomes Treat Street, then slices through several blocks between 16th and Bryant, and continues northwards, rolling out of range of ol’ Robert McFarland’s camera.

Google map after the break

The latest from my little column over at the SFist:

Whiskerless Waiters
at the Palace Hotel

In the middle part of the 19th century, a thick set of whiskers were an essential facial feature of every man of Victorian respectability.

These were not simply expressions of pride or masculine peacock vanity, but due to a whole rainbow of reasons, ranging from the fact that Man had been created in God’s image, to the “fact” that beards protected the wearer against tuberculosis, and even that shaving led to immorality, murder, and suicide!

In the late 1880s, however, a movement began to sweep towards San Francisco from the far-off shores of Europe.

No, it wasn’t Bolshevism — anyway, not yet. In the words of historian Oscar Lewis, “It was no less than a world-wide agitation in favor of whiskerless waiters” (”Whiskerless Waiters” — I respectfully offer that up as a name for an indie-rock band. No charge!)

But back to Gilded Age San Francisco.

Just about every high-falutin’ eating establishment in town followed the new, hygienic fashion; the Poodle Dog, Maison Riche, all began featuring clean-shaven waiters. All of them, that is, except for William Sharon’s Palace Hotel. The Palace remained proudly pro-moustache, in way that vividly recalls the social instability brought on by the Gold Rush:

“In the leading European hotels a waiter cannot wear a moustache, and the swell establishements in New York are imitating this fashion, but it will not do here. There is this difference: in Europe a man once a servant is always a servant, but in America the servant of today may be a millionaire tomorrow. We wouldn’t try to enforce such a rule at the Palace. We have trouble enough without trying to bring (that) on!”

I wish I could tell you that the Palace held out against the Anti-Moustache Menace, but that turned out not to be the case. The movement gradually gained momentum, and the Palace eventually caved in, issuing the following brand new dress code:

white jackets with black pants

turn-down collars

black ties for breakfast

white ties for lunch and dinner, and …

NO BEARDS OR MOUSTACHES AT ANY TIME!

The waiters complained bitterly, but that was it — the end of a hirsute era.

 

I read a lot of books on San Francisco and California history. And though these posts are labeled “book reviews”, the only books you’ll ever see here are those that I’ve really enjoyed. In short, if you see it here, it’s a great book — I’ve no urge to write about the stinkers! And if you feel moved to seek out a copy for yourself, a click on the image of the book below will lead you to an independent book seller. Read on…

This odd little tale was brought to my attention by a listener who could not believe that I hadn’t mentioned it in my podcast about Robert Louis Stevenson.

Of course I hadn’t mentioned it because I’d never heard of it. In fact, I’d never read a single line of Stevenson’s short fiction, but with my listener’s promise that it was “spectacularly weird and wonderful”, I trundled off to the library to dig it up.

Boy did that trip ever pay off. The story actually was spectacularly weird — and impossible to put down. I read the entire (very short) book on my feet, unwilling to interrupt the flow by searching for a chair.

My reader — okay, he does have a name — “Scott” had been surprised at the absence of this tale from my podcast. Though most of the action takes place in the Kingdom of Hawaii, the bizarre little fable actually begins among the mansions of San Francisco’s Nob Hill. I hesitate to delve too deeply into the plot — I’d hate to spoil it for you — but a brief synopsis is probably in order:

The Story

Keawe, a young kanaka (as native Hawaiians were known in those days), shows up in San Francisco and buys a strange little bottle from a wealthy, sad-eyed gentleman. A hideous imp trapped inside the bottle has the power to grant every wish and desire of whoever owns it. True to the tale’s fairytale form, though, there’s a devilishly clever catch — why else would the gentleman wish to sell the article responsible for his vast fortune? The bottle must always be sold for less than the price it was purchased for. It may not be thrown or given away - a proposition which Keawe carefully tests — and if the owner dies without having sold it, “he must burn in hell for ever.”

The bottle was said to have been brought to Earth by the Devil and first purchased by Prester John for millions of dollars; as it passed from hand to hand, the price always decreasing, the imp brought fame, fortune and power to men like Napoleon and Captain James Cook. At the beginning of Stevenson’s tale the price has diminished to a mere eighty dollars, and by the end, well — this provides the crux of the Keawe’s dilemma.

It’s a great story, but San Francisco makes only a brief appearance. As Keawe wanders up from the port in the first pages, he looks around him and observes,

“This is a fine town, with a fine harbour, and rich people uncountable; and in particular, there is one hill which is covered with palaces. What fine houses these are! And how happy must those people be who dwell in them, and take no care for the morrow!”

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson is best known for adventure novels like Treasure Island and Kidnapped, but he was a master of horror and the supernatural as well … in his own words, “engaged darkly with an ink bottle.” As an example The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde springs quickly to mind, but short stories such as Markheim and The Body Snatcher also illustrate his ongoing fascination with the subject.

The Nob Hill setting of the first chapter comes from Stevenson’s own San Francisco experience. He lived at a boardinghouse on Bush Street from 1879-80, but — as detailed in “Chinatown Treasure” — he had a propensity for avoiding the Nabobs on the hill. Instead, he spent his time with outsiders — the immigrants of Chinatown. The choosing of a working class non-white for the role of protagonist in the “The Bottle Imp” was no coincidence.

This is spectacular.

Twenty-four hours of San Francisco are compressed into less than three minutes of time-lapse video, gorgeously captured from the hills above Sausalito. The city and bay spend most of the day almost buried by a dramatically roiling mass of fog, which finally whisks itself out to sea to reveal the sparkling lights of the nighttime skyline.

Beautiful!

It’s a little odd to see the fog pouring out of the bay — as every shivering tourist on the Golden Gate Bridge can attest, it normally flows in from the Pacific, running west to east. For more on where our fog comes from, along with a few romantic musings on the subject, check out my “Fog City” podcast from a couple of years back.

A live feed from the cameras of Hi Def-San Francisco is also available. Here are some of the geeky-cool details of this ongoing project:

Hi-Def San Francisco is project of CloudView Photography. The camera is a 3 megapixel StartDot Technologies Netcam XL mounted in a weather proof enclosure high in the hills of Sausalito. Images are captured every 60 seconds cropped from the full resolution to 1920×1080 and uploaded in 480, 720 and 1080 resolution to the web server. Periodically the software (running on a FreeBSD server) creates a time lapse that collapses the prior 24 hours into 144 seconds of video.

thanks for the tip: Laughing Squid

 

 Alma de Bretteville Spreckels [1:08:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

It’s one of San Francisco’s best-loved monuments — the figure of a heartbreakingly beautiful girl balancing lightly atop a granite column high above Union Square. She soars above both pedestrians and pigeons, gracefully clutching trident and victory laurels, lifting her shapely arms in triumph over the city of San Francisco.

It was intended to memorialize Admiral Dewey, a hero of the 1898 Spanish-American war. But in the century since then, it’s honoured this now-obscure naval officer in name only; the statue has become inextricably identified with its model, one of its wealthiest and most notoriously colorful characters in San Francisco history; Alma de Bretteville Spreckels.

How did a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks end up atop of a column in the middle of Union Square? Better yet, how did this lead to first a scandal, and then the construction of the grandest home in San Francisco — 2080 Washington Street? And how does any of that relate to the history of our beloved Legion of Honor Museum?

Listen in to today’s podcast as I relate the rise of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels from Victorian pinup to eccentric “Great Grandmother of San Francisco”, the wealthiest woman on the West Coast.

For further edification:
» Legion of Honor Museum - official website
» Admiral George Dewey - Wikipedia
» Dewey Monument - inscription
» “Sugar Daddy and the de Brettevilles - Bay Time Reporter
» “‘Mike’ de Young Shot” - New York Times, 11.20.1884
» “Erection of Dewey Monument - San Francisco Call, 7.3.1899
» Union Square Dewey Monument dedication - film, American Mutoscope, 5.14.1903
» Spreckels Sugar - corporate website
» Loie Fuller - bohemian dancer
» Alma and Adolph’s first (and much smaller) home
» Danielle Steele interview - Entertainment Weekly

random episode from the archives:
#59: starr king and the california civil war (pt. 1)

musical support:
Thanks to Eric Frampton for the theme track for today’s podcast, “Waltz for James”, and to the Piney Creek Weasels for “The Dog Song”, both courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network. Classical pieces came from Musopen.com, and those fabulously scratchy 78s and wax cylinders were excavated at InternetArchive.org. Image of the Dewey Monument at top of post by Peter Kaminski, protected by a Creative Commons license.

printed bibliography:

linking policy: books in print available through your local independent bookstore; out of print books through abebooks.com

Researching San Francisco history means spending way too much time sitting in the dark. In the library, I mean, staring at microfilm of old newspapers. Hours of scanning those scratched and blurry archives makes me a little punchy, so I blinked and rubbed my eyes at this gruesome headline from the February 13, 1902 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.

I wondered momentarily if it was a prescient comment on the state of contemporary San Francisco baseball, then lapsed into a reverie about the fate of urchin ‘Bricky’ Sylva.

It was just so weirdly entertaining that I had to share it — first at SFist.com, and now at here at Sparkletack:

LEG BONES FOR BASEBALL BATS
Boys of Russian Hill Put Their Discovery to Queer Use

When John Doe and Richard Roe laid themselves down to dreamless sleep they little suspected that the urchins of Russian Hill would be using their leg bones as ball bats and their hollow skulls as balls, but that is precisely what occurred last night. Residents of the vicinity of Leavenworth and Broadway going home to dinner were treated to a choice assortment of cold shivers at the sight of the national game being played with the grisly loot from a tomb. Half a dozen boys were making long drives of the ball to center filed with resounding thwacks from the long bones, the femur and fibula radius and ulna humerus. Between times two yellow skulls would be tossed to the batters, and the fun characteristic of the reverence of the North American youth, waxed warm until a policeman swooped down upon the players.

(more…)

 

I love San Francisco, I love history, and I love walking. Luckily for me, there are a billion walking tours out there. Every so often I participate in one of these, try to pick up a thing or two, and take some notes for you. Ratings systems provide a useful shorthand, but your mileage may vary.

subject: Victorian Home Walk
time: 2+ hours
cost: $20 (cash only)
contact: www.victorianwalk.com
tack rating:

I know, I know, the last tour I reviewed was a Victorian architecture walk, but what can I say? I enjoyed that one, still have a lot to learn, and was just curious how some of the others might stack up.

Here’s how it works

You assemble in Union Square and are “transported” (more about that later) to the corner of Sutter and Octavia. After a short history of the building, you get several minutes to scramble around the venerable (and haunted!) interior of the Queen Anne Hotel. The remainder of the tour consists of a gently-paced walk through Pacific Heights, organized around learning the characteristics of the three major styles of Victorian-era homes. The walk is not a loop, as many others are, but ends up at the corner of Steiner and Broadway, across the street from the famous “Mrs. Doubtfire” house at 2640 Steiner Street.

The tour company

“Victorian Home Walks” was launched by Victorian-owner Jay Gifford after being “downsized” from a job in the computer industry in 1993. Our guide (Shonna Sinclair) has been leading the tours for almost a decade, and it showed; she was patient, knowledgeable and extremely generous with stories and information. And once she outed herself as the kind of person who likes to spent her free time digging through old census records, I was on board!

The 74th anniversary of “Repeal Day”, the end of Prohibition in the United States provided the inspiration for this entry.

Tippling with Kipling, San Francisco 1889

Ah, today should be a citywide holiday, it really really should.

December 5th marks the 74th anniversary of the end of Prohibition, just a tick of the geological clock since that final state (Utah, who else) grudgingly ratified the 21st Amendment.

You couldn’t really blame the Prohibitionists for their distaste for John Barleycorn. A flood of cheap corn whiskey in the early years of the nineteenth century changed the way an already soggy American society imbibed — for the soggier. The forerunner of today’s coffee break emerged as the mid-morning whiskey “elevenses”, and by 1820 the average Joe was pouring down half a pint a day — that’s over five gallons a year!

(more…)