Travels West

Checkmate, SF?

2013-10-28T12:45:00.002-07:00

(This article first appeared in the November issue of Tim Holt's North State Review newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter, send $10 to The North State Review, P.O. Box, 214, Dunsmuir, CA 96025)

I suppose it was inevitable.

In early September, 2013, 57-year-old Marvin Boykins was evicted. Not from his apartment, because he doesn’t have one. He’s homeless, struggling to get along on the not-always-friendly streets of San Francisco’s troubled Tenderloin district. No, he was evicted from the one daily pleasure he had: playing chess.

Officers from the San Francisco Police Department had moved onto the wide, brick-paved sidewalk near the corner of Fifth and Market Streets, near the famous Cable Car roundtable, and quietly shut down a San Francisco tradition that stretched back more than 30 years. They removed the folding tables and chairs, placemat chess boards, chess pieces and timers. The game, evidently, had gone on long enough.

“I’ve been playing since I was seven or eight years old,” said Boykins told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Chess is a true San Francisco tradition.”

“It’s turned into a big public nuisance,” Captain Michael Redmond told the paper. He cited complaints from nearby businesses, and an increase in arrests for sale and possession of drugs. “I think maybe [the chess games are a] disguise for some other things that are going on.”

Other chess players thought differently. Hector Torres, who noted that the street chess games had cured him of his gambling addiction, said, “I think it’s a scapegoat.”

Market Street, along with the city that surrounds it, is changing more rapidly and dramatically than in any other time in its relatively short history, save for the years after the Gold Rush itself. Between 1848 and the end of 1850, for example, the town went from about 1,000 residents to more than 20,000 Argonauts, their enablers and the just plain desperate flooded in. At one point, the city’s population was doubling every few months.

San Francisco is a cyclical city of boom and bust

San Francisco is a cyclical city of boom and bust. Of that there can be no doubt. The current boom is different in some ways from the Gold Rush, similar in others. The booms of the gold and silver rushes centered on pulling wealth—minerals, water, land rights, capital—from other places within its sphere of influence, by any means necessary, no matter how ethically questionable or destructive to the health of the ecosystem. This wealth was often increased by land speculation in the city and its immediate surroundings.

Today’s tech boom differs in that the miners are converging on the city not to mine metals, but to mine minds. It’s what the tech-boosters like to call the “knowledge economy.” Pack enough smart, tech-savvy people in one seven-by-seven mile square, the reasoning goes, and they’ll be able to pick one another’s brains to create new products and services that will “transform” the world and its economy—and make themselves extremely rich. The result? Twitter, Saleforce.com, Instagram, LinkedIn, Zynga and a host of other online products, services and advertising-fueled entertainments that make people go gaga while lining entre-preneurial pockets. No one can say that it isn’t working.

But, like the gold and silver rushes, this boom despoils as well. But this time, it’s despoiling—or, if you prefer, dramatically transforming—the city. Another favorite buzz-phrase for this, one that was a favorite of failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney, is “creative destruction.”

This new model—bringing big tech to the inner big city—turns the Silicon Valley paradigm on its head. In that paradigm, companies cloister their employees on “campuses” and provide them with subsidized meals, on-site gyms, volleyball and basketball courts, and a host of other resort-like amenities. Some Silicon Valley companies like Apple and Facebook are sticking with it, building enormous new campuses and even their own housing complexes. Seems nice—at first—but the young hanker for the excitement of the city, its culture and its nightlife.

San Francisco’s government, spurred on by expansionist Mayor Ed Lee, is actively pursuing—even subsidizing—big tech in the big city. The largest recipient of city largesse so far is Twitter, which moved into its new digs in the old, splendidly Art Deco-style Furniture Mart on the corner of Market and 10th streets—to the tune of $22 million in tax breaks.

Market Street construction and speculation fever is running on a high that hasn’t been seen since the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed the city’s core. Last year, at a session of the Golden Gate Breakfast Club, I listened to a presentation by a prominent San Francisco developer. At the height (or, rather, low) of the Great Recession in 2009, he noted, there was but one moribund construction crane left aloft because it was more expensive to take down than it was to leave standing. Three years later, there were some 14 cranes operating feverishly throughout the city, many of them on Market Street.

Today there are even more of those cranes, throwing up massive glass-and-steel condos, apartments, and office buildings like giant erector sets to meet the need for high-tech elbow room. There are so many that San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik quipped that the crane should replace the phoenix as San Francisco’s official bird. (I’m no architecture critic, but most of these new buildings look like Legos to me.)

In addition, the mayor plans to re-imagine the beleaguered mid-Market area, roughly between 5th and 7th streets, into a new arts district, one that complements the Yerba Buena Gardens and Center for the Arts a few blocks away. This is not an entirely bad thing, as that area has been blighted for years. Unless, of course, you like to play street chess.

Despite the housing boom, rents have skyrocketed beyond all reason. A 700-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment, was listed at $3,995 a month, reported the local-interest website Haighter Nation. The apartment in question is located in the Lower Haight, long considered a relatively affordable neighbor-hood, at least by San Francisco standards.

Note I said, “listed at.” There’s the rub. Often, East Coast and square-states transplants just coming out of college, and offered high tech jobs starting at six-figure salaries, will offer several hundred dollars more for these apartments, sight unseen, instantly under-cutting other qualified buyers. Out-of-state condo buyers routinely offer tens of thousands of dollars more than the asking price, without ever having set foot through the door.

Ellis Act evictions, too, are on the rise. Between March 1, 2012 and Feb. 28, 2013, reported Mission Local, “the number of eviction notices filed with the San Francisco Rent Board jumped 26 percent compared to the previous year.” Long-time residents of rent-controlled apartments are being forced to move out as owners, realizing the enhanced price potential of their properties in the new boom, are cashing in on condo conversions.

Long-time residents of rent-controlled apartments are being forced to move as owners cash in on the new boom

One North Beach couple, who had paid their rent on time for 30 years, is being given the boot so that the new owners could sell the building’s small flats for a brisk $439,000 a pop, reported the San Francisco Examiner.

All this creative destruction is taking a cultural toll as well. The sudden influx of the new rich—many of whom do not know even the most basic facts about San Francisco’s eccentric history or culture—bring with them new attitudes and, to locals, an unpalatable sense of entitlement. A friend of mine related the following story on his blog that nicely illustrates the new divide:

“You’re on the bus and watch a 20-something guy reluctantly give up his seat to an elderly woman, and then say loudly to his friends, ‘I don’t know why old people ride Muni. If I were old I’d just take Über.’”

Muni is our subway and streetcar system, which costs $2. Über is a car service that you order from an app on your $500 iPhone or similar device that brings a Lincoln Town Car to wherever you are. It costs about twice as much as a taxi and requires a credit card.

You get the picture.

Long-time residents of a certain age call this sort of loathsome behavior “douchbaggery.”

Long-time residents of a certain age call this sort of loathsome behavior “douchbaggery.” And it, too, is on the rise. It’s becoming increasingly difficult, for example, to walk into a locally owned coffee house, sit down to a cup and read the newspaper (on, you know, paper) without a couple of d-bags at the table next to you loudly banging on about their latest business model in opaque Web jargon, or some budding exec yammering into his cell phone about why the project’s late.

It’s not just San Francisco’s endangered middle class and Bohemia who are put out. Old money, capital “S” Society, has its complaints as well. “They bore the hell out of me,” sniffed society aristo Denise Hale, in a recent Vanity Fair piece. “They’re one-dimensional and can only talk about one thing. I’m used to brilliant men in my life who leave their work, and they have many other interests. These new people eventually will learn how to live. When they learn how to live, I would love to meet them.”

In other words, grow some manners, punks.

And it’s gone, as the techies say, “viral.” The U.K. newspaper, The Independent, recently ran a story with the following headline: “The dawn of the ‘start-up douchebag:’ San Francisco locals disturbed as Google, Facebook, Apple and eBay professionals move in.”

The article features a Google engineer who lives in the Mission and rides to and from the company headquarters in Mountain View, 40 miles south of the city, aboard a private, air-conditioned luxury coach, complete with WiFi.

The same article quotes Tim Redmond, former editor of the weekly newspaper, The San Francisco Bay Guardian. “For more than a century San Francisco has been a mecca for young people who were different in some way, who wanted to start again. Most young people arrived here poor, with enough to rent a place then get a job. We moved here and built a life from what we had and could find,” Redmond told The Independent. That story mirrors my own.

“The people who move in now are the same age,” Redmond continued, “but they’re already stinking rich.”

It’s a conundrum. How does a city retain its distinctive personality and flair and still allow, indeed encourage, change and economic growth? How do you keep those hell-bent on pursuing the almighty dollar from driving out those folks who contribute to the city’s artistic and cultural life, or those who come here to develop their creative aspirations to their fullest? In a constant battle between art for art’s sake and money for money’s sake, money—for God’s sake—always seems to have the upper hand.

I don’t claim to know the answers. What I do know is that the San Francisco of Emperor Norton, of Gellett Burgess and the Lark, Frank Norris, the beats, the hippies, the punk rockers, Enrico Banducci, Armistead Maupin, Herb Caen and even Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is all but gone.

As in the Gold Rush, the money men, mountebanks and charlatans who play real-estate chess with other people’s money and property, remain. As do the homeless.

I don’t mean to paint too grim a picture. With new wealth comes new benefits. Over the last several years, the influx of fresh capital has brought many civic improvements that will last a long, long time: the most beautiful ballpark in America, a revived waterfront accessible to all, new parks and open space where only parking lots and slums stood before, and revitalized neighborhoods, to name a few.

But I wonder how many of the young and culture-hungry will come to San Francisco and say, as Oscar Wilde said as he stood under the skylight in the studio of painter Jules Tavernier in 1882, “This is where I belong! This is my atmosphere! I didn’t know such a place existed in the whole U.S.”

The Ghost Diaries: Volume I

2012-04-27T12:24:00.001-07:00

Editor's Note: For many years my grandmother, Mrs. Kathryn Montenyohl-Mattis, lived in what she always claimed was the "oldest house in Santa Rosa," California. I don't know if that is true. Situated on an oddly-shaped triangular piece of property across the street from the cemetery, the ramshackle little clapboard house -- which still stands -- has no foundation but sports four rather two-big-for-its-britches Doric columns out front (though family always entered from porch at the rear). It's a strange house. The second story, where she often boarded foreign students, is accessed by a little doorway next to the fireplace, which forces you to bend down to get through. Even in summer, it was always cool, if not cold. It's on a slope; you can place a marble at one end and it will roll down to the other. The tree next to the house, she once told me, was once a hanging tree, where crooks were executed. I don’t know if that is true, either. But I always loved it. She always hinted that something mysterious was going on in the house, but never explained. “You’ll find out one day,” she said. After she passed, in her effects was found a set of handwritten notes on yellow legal paper, dating from the 1970s through the early 1990s. I have finally decided to publish them here. Below you will find the first few entries, with her spelling and grammar intact. At first they describe merely odd noises but grow increasingly strange as she entered the final stages of her long life. I make no claim to the paranormal but merely provide them as a chronicle of one woman’s experience. I will continue to transcribe and post these diaries as time permits.

16 April, 1974

The time has come for me to make a record of what I choose to call “The Unexplained Noises in the Nite.”

I have lived here at [address] since July 5, 1969, in this very old house, which has had considerable remodeling in its existence. There is nothing unusual about it though – just a charming setting of trees and plants surrounding a small, old home.

But for the past three years, more or less, there have been occurring strange noises (to me), rappings for which I find no logical reasons. Certainly in a house as old as this there will be creakings and settling, possibly mice or other nite-time visitations; the wind blowing in the branches, stray dogs, even a prowler or two. None of these can account for what I hear.

[In the margin here is written “1971”]

To describe these sounds will tax my ability to find the right words and even this will not be entirely accurate because they are different from any sounds I’ve ever heard. But I’ll make the good old try anyway.

About three years ago was the first time. I was sleeping soundly and dreamlessly when I was startled awake by what I thought was someone knocking at the front door – three loud knocks. I lay there, waiting for further knocking, thinking, “If someone wants me, they will knock again.” There being no further sound, I got up and, turning on the lites, I went out, opened the door, looked over the porch and yard. Seeing no-one – nor any animal either – went back to bed. It had startled me so – such a loud noise – that I was uneasy for a while but went back to sleep. The next morning I had forgotten about it until later in the day – then searched the porch and yard again. Maybe a branch? No. Nothing.

I said nothing to anyone – it wasn’t even notable and I quickly forgot the whole thing.

About a month later – again I was in a deep, quiet sleep – when I was suddenly awakened by the three loud knocks on the front of the house. The sounds were the same as before but the placement was different. This time the noise was “inside” the house – more into the room. The raps were strong, sharp, masculine, but not exactly the sound of knuckles on wood. (See it is hard for me to get it correct!) Again, I listened for further activity. Nothing happened. I thought about it for a while but didn’t get up. I was not particularly frightened (as for instance of an unwanted prowler), but I had just a sense of wondering, “What the hell is going on?” Again, I said nothing to anyone.

What was there to say, really?

A couple months or so passed – all was quiet. In retrospect, it is interesting to me that I forgot these disturbances (all of them) quickly. It was not my nature to do so – being such a fearful, nervous person – it impresses me that I’m not ready to move out of here [unreadable]. Anyway, there was a longer interval of time before the next visit – I don’t know, maybe three months. But this time was different in that the sound was in my bedroom – a few feet from where I was sleeping. The three knocks were so loud I expected to find holes in the wall. But there was nothing disturbed. Needless to say this time I was more shaken by being so suddenly and rudely awakened. My heart was pounding so that even if someone had [unreadable] away I would not have heard it. I did not get up – only left the lite on and eventually went back to sleep.

The next day I thought about these happenings – trying to account for them. No way. This time I mentioned it to my daughter [Note: Which daughter?] – telling her the house has a Spirit (singular). We chatted about it for a while but came to no conclusion.

Now six months pass by without anything unusual – life was routine. Then within a couple of months the sounds were repeated, twice more there were three raps. However, each series was farther away from me, thus fainter, but I also felt that they were weaker, too. The first of these two times the knocks came from the area of the kitchen and the second time from the vicinity of the back porch. I remember thinking, “Oh, he is moving away toward the West – he is leaving.” [Note: The cardinal point, West, is an often repeated theme in these chronicles.] Again, inspection revealed nothing out of place or broken. In fact, I sort of was just accepting the noises as ephemeral and insubstantial – no need to look for physical evidence of the presence.

Again, I told my daughter and one other friend. The friend, I think, thought I was sort of nuts but was too polite to question me about it. (In retrospect, I now place the series of three raps in a group with the intensity increasing to the time I heard it in my bedroom and then decreasing as the sounds moved away from me to the West and to the other side of the house.)

There was a long interval between the last of the “3” series and the next – I don’t know how long – and, I repeat, I forgot them quickly – they are not disturbing or upsetting to me – nor am I frightened. There seems to be not threat involved here. [Note: in the margin here is written “1972.”] Anyway, it must have been some months later when I was awakened by what I thought was someone as the back door – but it was only four gentle raps – not repeated. (It is remarkable to me that the counting seems to accurate even though I’m sleeping – that’s why I was skeptical at first – perhaps I was only dreaming these noises.) The four sounds were more “feminine,” gentler, less forceful but the same quality – as if not being on or against anything.

I see I haven’t emphasized this aspect strongly enough. They always are just in the air – I cannot duplicate them, no matter what I hit against. They are simply out there in the openness of the room.

These four raps were repeated one more time later. This time they were inside the house around the back porch. I remember thinking the first time – “Oh, that is different, there are four now.” I had not been counting before – only hearing the noise and noting its changing positions. Now I became conscious of the number and quality as well as position. I was now no longer startled when awakened – just as in the past when I listened for members of my family to return late at night – I slept with one ear open; and when they were all finally in I would really go to sleep. I was not disturbed by they’re coming in but I registered who it was & peacefully checked that one off. So it seems with these noises – I am now only registering their appearance.

The four series has only those two times, both sounding alike in an undemanding way.

The rhythm changed in the next series. This time it was two raps and two separated by a 1/64 resh fairly loud in the region of the back porch [Note: The meaning of “1/64 resh” is unclear to me (musical notation?); “1973” is written here in the margin.] – again at nite. (I do not have clock time on any of the foregoing – not being a very clock oriented person – just in the quiet time of the nite between midnight and 5 in the morning.) These sounds were midway in strength the first and second series – firm, no-nonsense, somewhat preemptory but not unusually strong.

The scene changes. It is daytime now – late afternoon. I am asleep on the living-room divan when I am suddenly frightened awake by the loud 2, 2 raps in the kitchen only a few feet from me. These were unusually loud, demanding bangs, seemingly in the open area of the room. This time I found I was shaking with fright – the implication was so strong, so close, so loud, so imperious. I felt like saying, “What do you want?”

That was the end of that series – just those two times, but the last one I could have done without. Again I reported to my daughter of the sounds but did not go into details.

We are now into April of 1974 and last nite I was awakened by a gentle rapping in the area of the pillars on the front of the house. [Note: Though this is a small, old house, the front porch, which faces the Santa Rosa cemetery, it supported by four Greek-style columns.] There were ten fairly weak sounds as of knuckles against one of the wooden pillars. Again it seems strange to me I could count them after the sounds have gone – but I’m confident that my count is an accurate one. I’ve never had any hesitation in saying “how many.”

This morning I went out and tried to duplicate the sounds – I was so sure they came from the pillars. However, I couldn’t – the sounds I made with my knuckles, while close, were just not right.

So it is as of this day. Over the past three years I have been experiencing these phenomena – all following a pattern but all different, too. At this time, I have no more of an explanation than I did after the first happening.

But I finally decided to put it in writing – my impressions were piling up and details were becoming blurred. Let’s see what happens next, if anything.

25 April, 1974

During the small hour of this date there were two different sets of sounds. It was after 1:00 o’clock when I fell asleep that I was disturbed by one set of three raps coming from the vicinity of the back porch. They were rather brusque but muffled and were not repeated.

Later, I was again awakened by four sounds from apparently outside the rear of the house (North Street side). There were four sounds, not so sharp as the earlier ones but also somewhat muffled.

Both of these incidences were merely noted – not alarming or particularly disturbing to my rest. I returned to sleep.

26 April, 1974

During the nite I was aware of a single set of knocking sounds on the West (North Street) side of the house – 4 reverberations, each decreasing in volume as though they were going away or moving westward. [Note: Again the “West” theme.] The sounds were of the same quality as the second set of the previous nite just as though they were a continuation of them. My thought was, “Oh, he was going away.” There was no especial emotion connected with this thought; I was simply observing the fact of “leaving.” Again, I say – hard to explain.

Virginia City, Bodie and the Sonora Pass

2011-07-17T08:11:00.000-07:00

In which we drive East to get out West

The story of how Virginia City, Nevada, got its name is one eccentrically typical of the American West and the mining camps and towns that sprung up after the Gold Rush of 1849. Legend has it the original discoverer of the Comstock Lode, a one James Finney (a.k.a. James Fenimore; a.k.a. James “Old Virginy” Finney) was walking along drunk one night with some friends when he slipped and fell, breaking the bottle of rot-gut whiskey he held on a rock. Without missing a beat, Old Virginy exclaimed, “I hereby christen this ground Virginia!”

Once home to 15,000 souls, 42 saloons, and a gold haul reputed to be worth $400 million at the time (about $6.9 trillion in 2011 currency), Virginia City today is a kind of living ghost town, a tourist destination with all that that implies. In its heyday as an up-jumped mining camp, Virginia City was a place of legend and character. Samuel Longhorne Clemens first took the pen name Mark Twain as a “reporter” for the Territorial Enterprise here---though what he reported was mostly fiction. Twain got the idea for his pen name from his experience on riverboats on the Mississippi, where the bar pilots would call the sounding of the depth, “mark twain,” meaning that the water was two fathoms deep. Later, at the infamous Bucket of Blood Saloon on C-Street (Virginia City’s main drag), Clemens, who like most regular customers at the time ran a tab, would say “mark twain” to the barkeep, meaning “mark me down for two drinks.” He must have liked the sound of it.

An abandoned mine near the Gold Hill Hotel

We lit out for Virginia City and other points East Saturday morning for the long Independence Day weekend. It was to be our first stop on a lengthy road trip through the Old West that would take us more than 700 miles all tolled. (And, frankly, it turned out to be a bit much.)

After struggling up Highway 50 in heavy holiday traffic, we finally arrived at the Gold Hill Hotel in Gold Hill, a mile outside of Virginia City, at about 4 p.m. Adjacent to the Yellow Jacket Mine, where 37 miners perished in 1873, the Gold Hill Hotel is the oldest hotel in Nevada and boasts at least two known ghosts, William and Rosie.

Our view from the balcony at the Gold Hill Hotel

Sadly, we did not experience any ghostly visitations during our one night stay. I did wake up in the middle of the night to see an eerie light shining in the mirrored closet door that seemed to resolve itself into a grinning face, but this turned out to be a trick of the light. Probably. It is a delightful little hotel, and we highly recommend it.

The land around Gold Hill and Virginia City is pocked and scared from all the mining. Still, it has a kind of beauty that is at once natural and industrial. There is romance in these ruins. You can feel history living here, even without the actors who stage mock shoot-outs for the delectation of us tourists.

Old No. 6 at the Gold Hill Depot

C Street, Virginia City

Virginia City mansion

Amy with Mark Twain

Lucius Beebe's house, Virginia City

From Virginia City, we ambled down I-395 toward Bodie and Mono Lake. Of all the highways that I have travelled in the U.S., I think I-395 is my favorite. You can see the land and how it formed and the landscape itself is ever changing: pine forest, lake, river-bottom, mountains, gulch, high desert, alluvial plain. The Sierras, which rise gradually from the Western side, on the Eastern side jut skyward like the edge of a gigantic saw blade. Geology laid bare.

After lunching at---naturally---the oldest inn in Bridgeport, we took a left on the road to the ghost town of Bodie. After 19 miles of bad road, the last five miles gravel and dirt, we arrived at the Bodie State Historic Park gates, paid our fee and got out to amble around.

"Downtown" Bodie

Gold was discovered here in 1859 by a man named Waterman S. Bodie (a.k.a. William S. Bodey), for whom the place was named. (The difference in spelling apparently had to do with a less-than-literate sign painter.) By 1879, Bodie, at an elevation of nearly 8,500 feet, was home to 10,000 people (and 65 saloons, a China Town, a baseball league and a red light district) who routinely suffered summer temperatures above 100 and winter temps well below freezing. (The day we were there a sign announced that the day’s high was 80F and the night-time low, 20F.) The State of California has held Bodie in what it calls a “state arrested decay” since 1962. The 170-odd structures that still stand are a sight to behold and well worth the bumpy trip up the mountain. You can peer into the windows of the buildings and see how the people lived. Many dwellings appear to have been simply abandoned smack in the middle of a meal, or while the occupants were getting dressed in the morning. It’s eerie. And very, very cool. In one building, a former saloon---the Sam Leon Bar & Barbershop---a roulette table sits as if waiting for the miners to return and take a chance.

The leaning shack of Bodie

I want that flag

A sherpherd on the road from Bodie

Back down the dirt track and Southward along 395 again, we passed through Lee Vining, which is unremarkable other than the fact that I like the name, and took a short hiatus at Mono Lake. Mono is the caldera of an ancient volcano that exploded, if geologists are to be believed, with many times the force of the Mt. St. Helens eruption in Washington in 1980.

Mono Lake

We spent Saturday night in Bishop, which was a good deal farther South than I remembered. On the way we were pulled over for doing 85 in a 65 zone, but the Highway Patrol officer gave us a break because, the Gopher thought, he liked the red, white and blue ribbon I had pinned to my shirt for the holiday. I find a pinch of patriotism now and then to be quite efficacious.

Leavitt Falls

Next day we decided to change our plans. Originally we had reckoned on returning over the Sierras through Yosemite. But, this being the 4th of July, we realized that John Muir’s magnificent valley would more likely resemble a parking lot with pine trees than a National Park. So we opted for the Sonora Pass. We motored back up the 395 to the 108 and hung a left. We were not disappointed.

Our first stop was the Leavitt Falls Vista Point. We took our time picking our way over the sometimes white-knuckle pass, stopping here and there when the mood struck us to take in the view or stroll around among the trees and peaks.

Once on the Western slope it was decidedly time for lunch. We stopped in at Twain Harte, a small town I had never heard of, this being my first time over the Sonora pass. The hamlet’s Independence Day festivities were in full swing, however, and there was nowhere to stop. Curious about the town’s name, I later looked up Twain Harte in the spider tubes. Of course, it’s well known that these were the stomping grounds of the afore-mentioned Mark Twain, and Bret Harte wrote about the Gold Country often. (The Mark Twain – Bret Harte trail meanders the Sierra foothills in a roughly North-South attitude near here.) I thought maybe the person who had named the town was making a pun on the two great writers’ names, “twain heart,” perhaps having once suffered a broken heart. Maybe the name owed its genesis to a story as colorful as that of Virginia City. But I wax too poetic for my own good. Turns out that real estate developer Keturah C. Wood bought the tract that would later become the town in 1924 and named it Twain Harte because he knew the famous names would draw attention---and help promote sales. A fine example of early marketing and “SEO.”

Sonora and Angels camp both seemed deserted with most of the shops and restaurants closed for the holiday (which surprised us). So we doubled back to Murphy’s, enjoying a delightful lunch, doing a little shopping and some wine tasting.

In all, far too much driving and too little relaxing. But we saw and learned.

If You Can’t Save It, Plaque It

2011-03-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

In which we wax nostalgic

Fire, flood, famine, pestilence and urban renewal.

These are just some of the forces that preservationists fight as they fight to preserve historical places from the forces of nature and “progress.”

In downtown San Francisco, this has been no easy slog, for the area itself is landfill, built on sunken ships and the hopes of those sailors who hoped to find gold in them thar hills. And much of what was built after that was burnt. And much to what survived that (or was rebuilt) was bulldozed to make way for the Manhattanization of San Francisco, aimed at turning dockside warehouses and maritime "slums" into the premier financial powerhouse of the Pacific Rim. Guess it worked. For the most part.

But that’s San Francisco, a city that’s never finished. C’est la Frisco.

In my walks around the Financial District and its surroundings, I’ve noticed many plaques and small monuments adorning edifices new and old which speak of times gone by. Here’s just a handful that I photographed recently. Sorry if these are not my usual photographic masterpieces. They’re just plaques, after all.

The Old Ship Saloon

The Old Ship's bona fides are questionable. In theory, the bar and the building above it rest on the bones of the Arkansas, a three-master shipwrecked here in 1849. If there's anything left of the old ship itself I haven't seen it. The building and the bar itself have gone through many iterations. But then we Clampers never let the truth get in the way of the good story.

What Cheer House
At the corner of Sacramento and an alley called Leidesdorff (formerly called Pauper Alley), is a dreary modern granite-faced building. But the corner boasts a cheery plaque for the "What Cheer House." Founded by R.B. Woodward of Woodward's Gardens fame, the What Cheer House was a hotel for respectable fellows from the sea -- no ladies and no liquor allowed but one of the first free lending libraries in San Francisco. (That's one part cheer, two parts drear in my book, but I quibble.)

William Leidesdorff
Right across from the What Cheer House plaque is another plaque commemorating William Leidesdorff, after whom the alley is named. Leidesdorff was one of the first black citizens of early California and one of its most successful early businessmen -- founding the town's first hotel, launching its first steamboat, and establishing its first shipping warehouse, among many other notable successes.

The Waterfront
Front Street is famously where San Francisco's first landfill began into Yerba Buena Cove. But the shoreline was never a straight line. As it ran north and south, it meandered east and west, the way shorelines do. This monument rests at the corner of Clay and Battery, next to the fairly new Club Quarters Hotel. The red line is meant to indicate the original shoreline; the brass curves ripples in the water. The post is meant represent an early, rope-bound piling.

Bummer and Lazarus
In the little garden at the foot of the Transamerica Pyramid is an ECV plaque to Bummer and Lazarus, San Francisco's First Dogs. Bummer and Lazarus were two strays who adopted Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico a local madman-come-savant, following His Imperial Majesty in his wanderings throughout the nascent city.

Hotaling's Whiskey
Across from the Transamerica Pyramid is Hotaling Place, a tiny, one-block alley now home to Villa Taverna, a private Italian American dining club. But it's also famed for being the home of the warehouse of A.P Hotaling which before the Great Earthquake and Fire was the largest liquor repository on the West Coast. During the fire, the U.S. Navy laid a mile-long fire hose to save the warehouse area in which Hotaling's building was located. The whiskey was saved. The fact that the whiskey was saved, rather than more wholesome goods, prompted clergymen to take umbrage (as is their wont). This, in turn, prompted one wag by the name of Field to pen the verse:

If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down
And save Hotaling’s whiskey?

The saved liquor was later sold under the name, Old Kirk. (Kirk is Scots for "Church." Get it?)

The Family Club
At the corner of Montgomery and Sacramento is another nondescript building which bears the plaque below. It says that "The Family" is "one of San Francisco's oldest and most distinctive social clubs." True enough, but it doesn't give you the back story. The Family is an offshoot of the Bohemian Club. Its members split from the Bohemian because the Bohemians had lost their, well, bohemian roots---the Bohemians originally being made up of journalists and writers, not money-men, bankers and grasping politicos. The current Family clubhouse is on Bush at Powell. Today it's not exactly what you would call bohemian in the strictest sense.

"Keep young."

More to come...

Jack London's Ranch & Post Costa

2011-01-01T15:44:00.000-08:00

In which we ramble through California history

The House that Jack Built

The author, activist, socialist and Bohemian Club honorary member, Jack London (1876-1916) has held a fascination for me ever since I read Call of the Wild when I was a kid. So Monday last, we motored up to Glen Ellen and Jack London State Historic Park, which stands on London’s experimental farm, the Beauty Ranch, in Sonoma County.

London was, to put it mildly, a barrel of contradictions. He came up from nothing – San Francisco Bay oyster pirate, Cannery Row worker, Pacific seal-hunter, Yukon gold seeker, etc. – to become one of the most famed novelists and essayists of his day. An avowed socialist, he became a rich man, albeit one who always struggled with money. A champion of the poor, he could be what we would now call racist and subscribed to bizarre beliefs in the primacy of the Anglo-Saxon “race” and social Darwinism, though he was nevertheless beloved of the Hawaiian royal family and often wrote kindly of the native peoples he encountered in his Pacific and Asian travels. He was a bohemian who became a haute bohemian, and the San Francisco journalistic and artistic club to which he was made an honorary member, the Bohemian Club, today boasts nearly every power-broker and “weaving spider” in the United States among its membership. A champion of temperance, even prohibition, he was an alcoholic who often started off his day with more than a wee dram. He lived a life of high adventure, yet suffered greatly from depression and anxiety. An evangelist of truth, he was not above telling a whopper when it suited his narrative. (For example, in John Barleycorn, he tells of falling off his boat, drunk, in San Francisco Bay in the middle of the night and being content to float along with the tide for hours. But, as any Coastie will tell you, the Bay averages about 53 degrees F year round. He would have succumbed to hypothermia and drowned within an hour had this actually happened.) He loved the strenuous life, as Theodore Roosevelt called it, yet died at the age of 40.

Window at the Jack London Lodge Saloon in Glenn Ellen

Well, never mind. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” as Emerson said. And London has left us not only with a redoubtable literary legacy but, in Jack London State Historic Park, a physical one as well.

Approach to the house that Jack built. Sadly, it was closed that day, so we ventured along the park's trails.

Here you can visit the cottage where he wrote his 1,000 words per day, planned out his experimental farming operation with no less an expert than Luther Burbank, lived and loved with his devoted wife, Charmian, and established his reputation for future generations.

You can bend a knee at Jack and Charmian’s graves, and visit the remains of the stone manse they were building and which burned down before it was complete. You can roam the house that Charmian built after Jack’s death, the House of the Happy Walls, dedicated to his memory. (It is now a museum chock full of memorabilia from the Londons’ travels aboard Jack's yacht, the Snark, in the South Pacific.)

And you can roam around the trails of the property, up to the little lake that Jack built, which is what we did. Here are a few snaps.

One of Jack's barns

View across a vineyard to Jack's silos

View from the hill behind Jack's house

Biggest damn mushroom I ever saw

More fungi

Thick moss -- it grows on trees you know

A white heron and a green one share a puddle in a meadow near Glen Ellen

Port Costa

Port Costa is a tiny hamlet on the shore of the Carquinez Strait buried at the end of a deep canyon not far from Crockett. In the late 1800’s it was a bustling place, a way station for goods and people traveling down the delta from Sacramento to San Francisco. Oscar Wilde even stopped there on his journey to “the occidental uttermost of American civilization.”

Today Port Costa is one of the last truly bohemian enclaves the in the San Francisco Bay Area, the haunt of recluses, artists, eccentrics, ne’er-do-wells and bikers. Its main attraction is the Warehouse Café and Bar, made out of an actual warehouse built in 1880 -- the first “fireproof structure in Northern California” and home to a breathtakingly large stuffed polar bear and lots of other bric-a-brac. On the weekends for the price of a drink you can enjoy complimentary soup or chili.

Not cutesy – no antique stores, jewelry shops or gift boutiques – but worth a visit to the truly curious road-tripper.

Part of the main drag -- the only drag -- in Port Costa

The Warehouse Café and Bar cat looks down on everyone from the oval window on the top floor

Mendocino

2011-01-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

In which we go hippy (and a little dippy)

In addition to motoring trough Fort Ross, Thanksgiving weekend we stayed in the old coastal town of Mendocino. Situated on a rugged, windblown bluff above the Pacific just North of Big River, Mendocino was established as a logging and fishing community in the 1850s. Many New England loggers and Portuguese fishermen settled there. Today it is a vibrant artist colony where local artists and craftspeople ply their wares to the weekend tourists who pass through and stay there on their getaways from the City.

Rainbow view from the deck of the Navarro Winery on Highway 129, not far inland from Mendocino

Mendocino is also famed for its many water towers. Though only three of these are still active, dozens have been converted into housing and B&B lodgings. In the 1970s and ’80s, rapacious developers had planned major hotels and other infill within the town’s borders, but this was thankfully blocked by the local citizenry. At just five blocks wide and 10 blocks long, Mendocino today is one of the most picturesque villages on the California coast.

View from our room at the Stanford Inn by the Sea

One of the Stanford Inn's two pet llamas

The old farmhouse on the grounds of the Stanford Inn

One of Mendocino's famed water towers, or "pump houses," converted into housing

A naked yet picturesque water tower

The interior of Crown Hall, where Mendocino's Portuguese community used to gather (and sometimes still do), often used for a craft fair on the weekends

A view of Main Street from the cliffs

Amy getting wind-blown just before we got soaked in a downpour

Amy explores an alley in Mendocino decorated in driftwood

Christmas angels (and a seagull) adorn the steeple on an old church, now, I believe, a bank

Lovely old red house with a Gothic window

Another charming house in the village

A couple whimsical weather vanes

Outrigger canoeing on the Big River

We made a little pal at the Stanford Inn

Fort Ross

2010-12-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

In which we go Ruski

Many Californians may not know it, but the Russian Empire of the Czars had a foothold in early California. In the time of Spanish, and later Mexican, rule the Russians – then in control of much of what is now the State of Alaska – had settlement in what is today Sonoma County, on the north coast about 60 miles North of San Francisco Bay.

We recently visited Fort Ross and other points north.

Krepost Ross was most active between 1812 and 1841. It was originally built to exploit the trade in otter pelts, but over-trapping brought the sea mammal to near extinction in just 20 years. The colony then set up shop growing food to export to Alaska. This enterprise did not last either and the colony was finally abandoned by the Russian-American Company and sold to California pioneer, John Sutter in 1849.

Although a Russian outpost, Fort Ross was quite cosomopilitan. The people who lived, worked and traded there came from all over – Russians (of course), Siberians, Chinese, American Indians, Spaniards and Mexicans.

Today, the partially restored Fort Ross is a California State Historic Park and an oddity among early 19th century imperial landmarks.

Part of the stockade and blockhouse

A corner blockhouse, a defensive position that dominates the surrounding countryside with canon

Inside the stockade, some canons of the type in use in the early 1800's

The armory

The Orthodox church

A detail of some of the woodwork in one of the fort's buildings

The St. Orrea Russian Hotel and Restaurant (up Highway 1 from the fort)

Road Trip

2010-07-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

In which we cruise California’s Central Coast

Motored south last weekend for a little R & R.

The first stop was Salinas, a town I have passed through many times – as many others have – but never stopped in. Salinas has a struggling, quaint little “historic” downtown that takes about 20 minutes to walk around, but which has recently gotten a boost from the National Steinbeck Center, which opened a few years ago. I didn’t venture into the museum itself – let’s face it, writers’ lives are spent at typewriters and are not all that interesting. But I did wander down to the Steinbeck House, a few blocks away.

Steinbeck House, Salinas, California

John Steinbeck and the Red Hat Ladies
This is the house where John Steinbeck came up. It’s a lovely old two-storey Queen Anne Victorian, built in 1897. It is now a restaurant with a funny little gift shop in the basement. It is, of course, an E Clampus Vitus literary landmark. Satisfactory!

Among the other bric-a-brac and books in the gift shop, I noticed a table full of ladies' hats, all red. I asked the chatty shop-keeper if Mrs. Steinbeck – that is, the author’s mother – used to wear a red hat...

Then I got an education. The red hats, she said, are for the “Red Hat Ladies…”

“The what?” I asked.

The Red Hat Society, she explained, is a club for women over the age of 50. Most of them are empty-nesters, widows, divorcees, etc. – basically women who have lived respectable lives who now just want to get out and have a little fun with the other gals. Their signature is that they all wear red hats.

Evidently, the Steinbeck House is a common stop for Red Hat Society tour busses, probably because Oprah Winfrey brought her show there back on 2003. In a sense, they’re kind of like the Clampers for women. I heartily approve. Go Red Hat Ladies! Still, it makes you wonder what ol’ Steinbeck would have thought…

On a mission from God
After buying some fresh cherries from a roadside stand, I proceeded southward to San Luis Obispo. I’ve been there before. My Pops took his journalism degree at Cal Poly and I have all kinds of pals from there. It is a lovely town with a delightful little river walk along San Luis Creek. Of course, I had to visit the historic Mission San Luis Obispo, built in 1772.

The mission is named for Saint Louis the Bishop, or Saint Louis of Toulouse, a French nobleman of the 13th century. I am hard pressed to understand exactly why he was canonized, but there it is. “Bishop’s Peak,” a lovely hill that was once an ancient volcano, is one of the town’s anchoring landmarks.

Detail from inside the Mission at San Luis Obispo

San Luis Creek River Walk, San Luis Obispo, California

The flower garden at the Madonna Inn

The Gold Rush Steak House at the Madonna Inn

One of the local crazy ladies and her parakeet in downtown SLO

Hearst What?

Hearst Castle isn’t.

That is, it is not a castle at all. It has no ramparts, no defenses except for its commanding position on a hilltop overlooking the Pacific.

It is, rather, architect Julia Morgan’s greatest aesthetic failure. The place is a nightmare of wretched excess and abject consumerist vulgarity – a hodge-podge treasures looted from the world over.

And I loved it.

Do yourself a favor, though. If you go on a tour, take one late in the day, or the twilight tour. Otherwise you will be surrounded by screaming brats who don’t know how to shut the hell up while the adults are talking.

Hearst Castle front porch

Wm. Randolph Hearst's view

Hearst Castle north belltower. Get your damned head out of my shot.

Guest house at Hearst Castle, with a copy of Donatello's David on top of the fountain

Fountain made from statuary plundered from ancient Egypt

Diving platform in the indoor pool

How do you get out of a Roman bath? With a marble ladder, of course!

The ceiling of the "refectory" at Hearst Castle. The panels came from a 14th century church wall, which is why their heads are all leaning to the right.

Bunny caught on camera at the Botanical Gardens in SLO

My first ever pic of a California quail. They're usually too quick to capture on pixels. Also at the Botanical Gardens in SLO.

This little fellow is very fond of fresh bing cherries

Morro Bay marshes from Black Hill

Morro Rock from Black Hill

One Up

Though a forth or fifth generation Californian, I’ve never travelled Highway 1 between SLO and Monterey, so I decided to do it on this trip. I was not disappointed. Big Sur – the sometime home of Henry Miller and Ken Kesey – did not disappoint.

Island of the Lighthouse at Big Sur

The lighthouse at Big Sur

Don't Forget What Country You Live in This Weekend

2010-07-02T10:43:00.001-07:00

In which we go all patriotic

Happy 233. That is all for now. Stay tuned for my weekend report from San Simeon, better known as Hearst Castle.

Random Snaps

2010-06-20T16:39:00.000-07:00

In which we share a few shots taken around The City

Took this on the roof of my building last week. It's a red tailed hawk. It's quite common that these birds -- between 18" and 2' tall -- nest on the taller buildings downtown, but it is rare to see one up close. I got very lucky with this shot.

The U.S.S. Bunker Hill, a 9,600 ton, Ticonderoga class cruiser, slips under the Golden Gate Bridge. She joins the Russian guided missile cruiser, Varyag, along with a Japanese training squadron, on a goodwill, port-of-call tour. I hope to take a tour of the Varyag tomorrow.

I curious gull eyes me on the shore of the bay. He is probably eying my sandwich, thinking "Mine, mine, mine!"

Some artistes have put up several Andy Goldsworthy-style rock sculptures (or rock piles if you prefer) on the bay shore.

People practicing Kung Fu sword near the band shell in Golden Gate Park.

Turtles getting a little sun in Stowe Lake, Golden Gate Park.

Kaiwo Maru!

2010-05-10T09:12:00.000-07:00

In which we go all nautical (again)

The Japanese training vessel, Kaiwo Maru II glided into port last week. This full-rigged four-masted ship, used for training by the Japanese Navy, was built in 1889. She came into San Francisco Bay to commemorate the 150 anniversary of the 1860 voyage of the Kanrin Maru, the first Japanese vessel to call officially at a U.S. port.

The ship's wheel used when she's under sail.

I spent several hours Saturday and Sunday aboard and around her, taking snaps and chatting with the Japanese sailors. It gave me a chance to use the few words in Japanese I remembered from watching the “Shogun” miniseries back in the 1970s---Konnichiwa (howdy!), hai (yes) and domo arigato (thank you), the limit of my Japanese. They were so nice they even had me bowing at the end.

She’s truly one of the largest and most lavishly appointed square-riggers I’ve ever had the privilege to come aboard.

Kaiwo Maru II

Displacement: 2,556 tons
Length: 361 ft.
Beam: 45 ft.
Height at mainmast: 142 feet
Complement: 199 souls

A crewman makes an announcement over the ship's PA. While the officers wear traditional navy blazers and white combination caps (and very smart they look) the men wear these kimono-style outfits. I rather liked them. At least they don't have to wear the little white beanies American sailors are forced to wear.

Just before she's pushed out into the channel by tugboats, the Japanese sailors climb the rigging and offer up their version of "three cheers" to the city and people of San Francisco. It was actually quite moving and brought several Japanese-American onlookers nearly to tears.

The San Francisco Fire Department fireboat, Guardian, offers its salute to the Kaiwo Maru II

Escorted by tugs and civilian yachts, the Kaiwo Maru II moves out toward the Gate.

Another shot of the Kaiwo Maru II, this one as she motors past Alcatraz. The spray in the background is from the SFFD Guardian. I'm sorry I wasn't able to see her under full sail. That would have been a sight to remember.

Truly, peace is better than war.

Also, read Carl Nolte’s excellent piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Bring the Boys Home

2010-03-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

It's time.

According to CNN:

There have been 4,707 coalition deaths [In Iraq since the invasion] -- 4,390 Americans, two Australians, one Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, one Czech, seven Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, five Georgians, one Hungarian, 33 Italians, one Kazakh, three Latvians, 22 Poles, three Romanians, five Salvadoran, four Slovaks, one South Korean, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians.

It's not just 4,707 dead. It's 4,707 families shattered.

The Iraqis have had their bloody election. It's time to bring our boys and girls home and cover them in the love and glory that they rightly deserve.

Bring them home, Mr. President. Soon.

Oh, I've just come
From the land of the sun
From a war that must be won
In the name of truth

With our soldiers so brave
Your freedom we will save
With our rifles and grenades
And some help from God

I want to see my family
My wife and child waiting for me
I've got to go home
I've been so alone, you see

You just can't believe
The joy I did recieve
When I finally got my leave
And I was going home

Oh, I flew through the sky
My convictions could not lie
For my country I would die
And I will see it soon

I want to see my family
My wife and child waiting for me
I've got to go home
I've been so alone, you see

When I walked through the door
My wife she lay upon the floor
And with tears her eyes were sore
I did not know why

Then I looked into her hand
And I saw the telegram
That said that I was a brave, brave man
But that I was dead...

The Pacific, The Colonel and The Bomb

2010-03-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

In which we relate a little family history about the Second World War

Tonight I am looking forward, albeit with some trepidation, to watching the first episode of new HBO series, “The Pacific.”

I say “trepidation” because when I contemplate the War in the Pacific, I must confess to feeling a kind of deep-seated, seething anger. I don’t know if Mr. Hanks’ film will provide some catharsis for this, or if it will only invoke further unhappy feelings. For the same reason I have thus far avoided seeing the film “Flight 93” -- the rage is still too recent. I am, however, going to take the plunge into “The Pacific.”

The War in the Pacific makes me especially angry because my family — admittedly long before I was born — was deeply enmeshed in the conflict. My grandfather, my father’s father, served in the Pacific all through the war, and later served in Korea. The war cast a long, deep shadow over the family, one that continues to shade us, even now. Because of the war, my grandfather spent many years away from his wife, his sons, and his daughters. What an awful price to pay for the folly of others.

Many younger Americans today seem to be under the misapprehension that the war began with the attack on Pearl Harbor. It began much earlier, with out-and-out wars of conquest by Japan against the countries of Asia— China, Korea, Manchuria (Manchukuo), French Indochina, Burma, Malaya, et al. Eventually, the Western powers recognized Japanese militarism for what it was and agreed to stop selling Japan the materials it needed to continue its Asian conquests — things like oil, iron ore and steel. Realizing that they had not the material to pursue their imperial dreams, the Japanese government set about making their plans for a wider war into a reality. (After all, why buy your materials when you can just take them?) The attack on Pearl Harbor was their first, bold move against the United States — an arrogant, stupid mistake.

Some revisionist historians — some quite respectable — have tried to re-imagine the war as merely another clash of empires. That’s partly true — but not “merely.” Certainly the British, the Dutch, the French and, yes, even the Americans all wanted a piece of the Asia pie.

But the actions of the forces of Empire of Japan stand for themselves. Japanese atrocities during its colonial expansion and WWII include the Rape of Nanking, Laha, Banka Island, Parit Sulong, Palawa, Chongde, Manila and the Bataan Death March, to name merely the most prominent. There were the hideous medical experiments carried out against American and other prisoners of war. And then there were the “comfort women.” Fed by a wildly racist ideology and a twisted sense of Samurai honor, the Japanese soldier evinced a daily cruelty against enemy soldiers and civilians alike so casual in its nature that it is utterly staggering to contemplate.

The Japanese war machine caused the deaths of an estimated nine million civilians in China alone – one of the highest tallies in a greater global war that killed more than 52 million people, soldier and civilian. But these aren’t the only reasons for feeling angry. During the war, American bombers killed an estimated 350,000 Japanese civilians. This is a tragedy for our country as well as theirs, for just as sure as the victims were blown limb from limb, incinerated, suffocated, buried alive, or faced long, slow, agonizing deaths from radiation poisoning, their executioners were brutalized, made callous, by the terrible outcome of the action. (For more, read John Hersey’s “Hiroshima.”)

Was the firebombing and the subsequent atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified? I don’t know. But I know that the timely end of the war may have saved the lives of 20,000 American servicemen geared up and ready to invade the Japanese homeland – and perhaps even the life of my grandfather. Without the bomb, it seems highly unlikely that I would ever have been born and be alive today to write this.

What I also know is that the actions of political leaders deeply and often tragically affect the lives of the people they sometimes so vainly and arrogantly claim to represent. Recent history is a case in point.

Recently, my father has been going through a cache of my grandfather’s letters to my grandmother during the war. My grandfather, always affectionately known in the family as “The Colonel,” was involved in logistics in the B-29 program. Late in the war, he was stationed on the Island of Tinian, from where the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, took off. For his service and valor, The Colonel was awarded the Bronze Star, the Army Soldier’s Medal for Heroism and many other medals and citations.

Below is a selection of excerpts from some of The Colonel’s more interesting letters. I hope they may be of interest to scholars and other families connected to the War in the Pacific.

Jan. 3, 1945 – (Marianas Islands): I am still the dial twitter [radio operator?] and keep up pretty well what is going on. And if Europe is not too careful we will beat them finishing the war. As it does not look too good over there." [This probably reference to Battle of Bulge underway at that time.]

Jan. 23, 1945 – (M.I.): They were about to send me to Oahu for a while, but something changed their minds . . . it would be great to see a building and sidewalks, with store windows, even a few females wouldn’t hurt.The news from the European front is looking much better, for a change, altho that could end there in a hurry or take two years, as is the case here." [This would probably be news of the Bulge break-out.]

Jan. 25, 1945 – (M.I.): The war in Europe is certainly going fine and if it keeps up in that fashion we may both be home before you know it, but it is.The war in Europe is certainly going fine and if it keeps up in that fashion we may both be home before you know it, but it is hard to tell what may happen.

Feb. 5, 1945 – (M.I.): I sure have been sticking close to the radio the last few weeks, as the news is so good. And a great victory in the Philippines will hasten this end. And I believe it (will) come sooner than was expected.

April 25, 1945 – (M.I.): Was too bad about F.D.R. He was a great man and we have lost a fine leader. And its most unfortunate he could not have seen the end, which we all hope is very near. Berlin today is half taken, tho thats not quite the end, as it will take months to round them all up and large armies to keep them under control.

May ??, 1945 – (Oahu): I too have been sitting on pins and needles the last few weeks. The E.T.O. [European Theater of Operations] has been about to finish them then seems to hit a snag, but the Japs are getting real trouble from us — in large doses and many are of the opinion they may fall.

We are very much enthused over the war situation which finally is beginning to close in very close. (cq)

The ribbons came yesterday to Cal [???] which was his birthday, and we had a party for him, so they came at the right time. While we were there we heard the war was over in Germany. I celebrated, two drinks, made me dizzy and I could not sleep. Disgusting! The rumble on the war being over turned out phony. Tho we had a very good time and good eats." [I am not sure what is going on here — the war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945.]

May 27, 1945 – (Oahu): V.E. Day was wonderful, tho’ very quiet here as it’s not anywhere near finished but we are sure doing some excellent work with the 29s.

Aug. 8, 1945 – (Tinian): We are still putting out the labor in very grand style, and doing something real wonderful to win the war. Which may come to end almost any day…

[Two paragraphas later:]

The announcement has just come thru over the radio of the new atomic bomb. Whatta deal. Its our hope for a quick end to the war. You have no doubt heard all the details.

Aug. 9, 1945 – (Tinian): The news is something beyond all manner of control; Russia today again joined us so its to be over, I hope. Before even this reaches you. Tho we will still have a great amount of work to do.The new bomb must have really given the Nips a great jolt, as they are not in the least as radio cocky as before. And now with the Ruskies, they are even more "so sorry prease."

Undated – (Tinian): At last the war is over and I can write you how much I love and have missed you, my dear. I guess I have been waiting for this censorship to end so I could really tell you, without some snooping S. O. Brick reading my mails.

You no doubt had an idea I was wrapped up in the atomic work which I have been for the past three months, and still have a little to finish yet.

[Same letter:]

I have been negotiating peace terms with an Island call Agrugon [probably “Aguijan,” a rock about the size of my dad’s house situated between Tinian and Saipan] about five miles from here. Takes about two to three days a week. And we will start putting a few troops on it next week. One Shib Lt. [???] is in command, who looks like one out of the cartoon, Harold Lloyd specs, buck teeth, field glasses, sword, canteen, map case and bow legged. I about took a sock at him when he came aboard our landing boat. We then took him to another ship to talk to the general.

He howled like hell when he found the war was over and we were the masters.

The Russ Building at Sunset

2010-03-11T07:19:00.000-08:00

In which we talk architecture

I live near the Russ Building. Built in 1927 and 32 storeys tall, it was the tallest building in San Francisco until 1964, and for 30 years was the tallest buildings in the American West. Designed by architect George Kelham, the style of the building is usually referred to as "Neo-Gothic," but I think a more approriate apellation would be "Art Deco Gothic." Its details harken back to the late gothic period of the Middle Ages -- pointed arches, shields and finials -- but the maginifcent lobby is pure deco. As a building it soars. Looking at it you feel uplifted into the clouds.

It's owned by the mighty Shorenstein family, who I must say keep her in fine repair. (I know because they're banging away on the facade day and night, and sometimes it keeps me up.)

Recently, I've noticed two pairs of hawks circling its top in the afternoon. I don't know if they live there or nearby, but they seem to like to play in the building's up-drafts.

Travels Around

2010-03-09T07:25:00.000-08:00

In which we catch up just a bit

Haven't posted here in a while -- there's just no time -- but I thought I'd catch up with a few photos from recent trips around the Napa / Winters / Davis area. No long explication, just a few photos and captions.

Proud as a peacock... on the road between Winters and the Napa Valley...

Great nephew Nate stands by the wheel of a steam locomotive at the California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento...

Nate shows us how the steam locomotive works...

A burro at a small ranch off of Olive School Road near Winters...

More burros... If you "chk-chk" at them, they come right up to you for a scratch behind the ears. They love that...

An emu also at a ranch off Olive School Road. Pet emu. Fancy that...

One of several lamas at a farm between Winters and Napa...

Castello di Amorosa, a winery and tourist attraction in the Napa Valley. This is the most authentic reproduction of a medieval castle I have seen in the U.S. -- and I've seen a lot of castles in England and Scotland...

Lone tower at the Castello...

A horse and rider at my friends' horse ranch, Somerset Farm, near Winters...

A small lake on the road between Winters and the Napa Valley... Not sure which one...

E Clampus Vitus plaque outside the Robert Louis Stevenson Silverado Museum in St. Helena, in the Napa Valley... Kind of a crappy photo, but you can't take pictures inside the museum, sadly. It's worth the trip if you're an RLS fan, though.

Where I was

2009-10-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

October 17, 1989, 5:04 P.M.

Twenty years ago yesterday.

I was on the 43 Masonic bus, which wends its way from City College of San Francisco through St. Francis Wood, through Forest Hill, down through the Haight and up Masonic Street to the Presidio. I was living near 3rd Avenue and Balboa at the time. From City College, I would alight from the coach perhaps on Haight Street and walk home. That was the plan.

I was coming back from my sabre fencing class at City College, taught by my mentor Joe Manzano. I was then an avid fencer and continued to be so for some years afterward. The bus was winding through St. Francis Wood, home to many lovely old houses, each in some borrowed historical style – mock Tudor, Mission Revival, classical Roman, Cinderella Castle and so forth. I have always admired them. A friend from my fencing class was with me, a U.S. Army veteran and a really nice guy. I am ashamed to say that, after so many years, I have forgotten his name.
The bus was crowded with students and lively. Some were listening to the World Series lead-up on portable radios.

As we were making our way through St. Francis Wood, I remember my friend pointing out some of the houses perched on the hillside. He was commenting on how lovely they were, but that he’d hate to own when “the big one hit.” I’m not kidding. He actually said that five minutes or so before 5:04 P.M., October 17, 1989.

At Forest Hill Station, where the Muni (that is, the subway) hits its deepest point underground and has a fine old station, we came to a stop to let more passengers on. They filed in and the bus got even more crowded. I was pointing out to my friend an apartment building that I admired. It was – and is – mock Tudor and stands next to the station, across the street from the North-bound bus stop. I always liked it, though today it is not quite the same. He agreed it was a nice building and, up in Forest Hill, one could feel as if one lived in Sherwood Forest rather than in the middle of the City.

Outside the bus was a large group of raucous high school students, doing what high school students do – shouting at one another and generally making noise. Then the bus began to roll back and forth, gently at first, and then becoming more violent. My friend and I thought it was these high school kids playing a prank on the driver, rocking the bus back and forth. I even shouted through the window, “Hey, you kids, stop rockin’ the bus!”

Then my friend pointed across the street and said, “Man, look at your building!” I followed his gaze to see my admired mock Tudor quiver. It was actually undulating, like a Thanksgiving Jell-O tower. Cracks formed along its sides, shooting down from its roof to its foundation. Masonry began to fall off of it, a piece here and a piece there. It was the damndest thing I ever saw.

People began to scream.

It was at that point that I felt what I can only describe as “the rising panic.” I will never forget it. I don’t know what I was thinking, because I probably wasn’t. I began to rise out of my seat. My friend, evidently sensing my move, gently put his hand on my knee and gave me one, simple, forceful command: “DON’T.” It stands the test of time as the single best piece of advice any person has ever given me. I sat back down.

This all happened in 15 seconds.

When the rocking stopped, and we were all alive, a great cheer went up in the bus. We high-fived one another.

The bus, being diesel rather than one of the electric trolley coaches, simply moved on. We wound our way down the hill, and that was when the gravity of what had happened at last hit us. One fellow bus rider on a transistor radio reported to us that the Bay Bridge had “collapsed.” To us at the time this meant that the whole structure had toppled over, crashing into the Bay, perhaps killing hundreds. We couldn’t know otherwise. Nearing Cole Street, we saw brick facades that had toppled, crushing parked cars. Windows were shattered. Dust was everywhere. The lights were out.

My friend said, “We need to get a drink.” I agreed.

At Haight Street, now nearing dark with no street lights, we got off. We went to Nightbreak, a punk club near Haight and Stanyan that served beer, wine and saki. I can’t say we had a bad time. Every cute, gothie-punkie Haight Street shop girl was in there, their shops closed for lack of power. In a way, it was kind of heaven. The only light was candlelight and, since the power was out, they had no cash registers. If you had a $10 bill, you gave it to them with the promise that you would drink $10 worth of beer. Sorry, no change. I don’t know how they kept track, but they did. (In those days a beer cost a buck-fifty, so you do the math.)

After we’d drunk our fill, it was dark, and my friend and I parted, gazing curiously at the glow of the fires coming over the hill from the Marina. I made my way home, stopping at a corner store to buy a bottle of cheap vodka and some orange juice. I remember one fellow was in a panic, screaming at me and the other liquor buying patrons that we should be buying water, not booze, and that we’d all be starving in a few days. With typical San Francisco aplomb, we ignored him. At one busy intersection – Arguello and Anza, maybe? – I directed traffic with another guy for about a half-hour until a policeman arrived. My room was a disaster: books thrown everywhere, my favorite lamp shattered. Eventually we were “yellow tagged” and had to move out, though to this day I think our landlord hoodwinked us to get us to move so she could up the rent.

That night, I sat on the roof of my flat with my roommates, sipping screwdrivers and watching the dark, silent night, our only light from candles, the helicopters overhead and the eerie glow of the fires away Northward, wondering if we were all going to burn.

Days past and things happened. I made $200 cash – a fortune to me at that time – guarding my workplace, the vintage clothing store, American Rag, then on Bush Street, against looters for two nights, armed with a sword. No joke.

When I look back at this event, my story isn’t much compared with that of others’ who really suffered. But it’s the one I have. And I will never forget.

This post is dedicated to the men and women of the San Francisco Fire Department, who do yeomans’ in this town every single day.

Sky High

2009-10-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

In which we zoom-zoom

The U.S. Navy Blue Angels as they rehearse over North Beach, San Francisco, for the annual Fleet Week air show, taken from the roof of my 7th floor apartment, looking down Kearny Street to the North.

2009-09-11T09:22:00.001-07:00

Sunday Blather

2009-07-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

In which we talk newspaper

It is considered a faux pas in the blogging world to link to articles in "the newspaper." However, two stories in today's Chronicle caught me eye and are worth a mention.

The first is by the inimitable Carl Nolte, who writes the "Native Son" column each Sunday. In it, he talks about how native San Franciscans identify one another by place and social status by the high school they went to.

"Two old San Francisco types meet by chance at a party, maybe in Marin, or the mysterious East Bay. They don't know many people at the party, but somebody across the room looks vaguely familiar. So they start a conversation and it goes like this:

"Hi, howareya? Don't I know you from someplace? Whereya from?" The other person is a little wary; everybody seems to be from somewhere else these days. "From?" the other person says, "I'm from here. From the City."

"Oh yeah?" the first person says. "Where didja go to school?" Though the other person sounds like a San Franciscan - talks fast, runs words together, refers to San Francisco as the City - the question about school is the key. It doesn't make any difference if the person has a Ph.D. from Harvard, or used to be the president of Stanford. What we want to know is where you went to high school.

This is the way San Franciscans of a certain age recognize other San Franciscans; the password, the secret handshake. It tells everything: class, status, maybe religion, who your family is and who your friends are."

Read the rest...

The second talks about the Chronicle's presses' last day. The last Chronicle rolled off the old, 50-year-old presses that were owned by the newspaper early this morning. Henceforth, an outside firm will handle the printing. The good news is that the new presses will allow for a more colorful and "crease-free" read, and may allow the company, which lost $50 million last year, to save enough cash to continue operations for a few more years. I hope it does, because I don't look forward to the day when I have to do without my local daily. The bad news is that a lot of long-time Chronicle press men are now out of work.

Brave new world? Feh!

Have You Heard About the Bird?

2009-05-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

In which we get all Audubon

My friends' kitchen window in the O-Town Hills looks out under a driveway deck up against the hill. Not much of a view except that several pairs of birds appear to have nests there. This little chap (above) and his wife seem to planning a family under the rafters nearest the house. What kind of bird is that, I wonder? He's got a very bright and colorful chest.

Remember the Fallen

2009-05-25T12:58:00.001-07:00

That is all

Comin' Up! Comin' Up, Aye!

2009-05-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

In which we relate a Coast Guard adventure

Speeding across the Bay

Our Coast Guard Auxiliary crew met at 0800 and tripped over the Golden Gate Bridge to the Presidio Yacht Club, where the Auxiliary vessel Sunrise awaited us. We were under orders to assist the regular Coast Guard in a Helo Ops (helicopter operations) training mission. Helicopter teams must perform a certain number of training exercises each year in order maintain their flying status.

Today we were to assist in cage drop rescue operations, in which a cage is lowered onto a boat from a helicopter, simulating an emergency evacuation of a sick or injured person.

This was my second on-the-water training, and my first Helo Ops exercise. Any initial nervousness I felt was quickly allayed by the professionalism of our Auxiliarist crew – Flotilla Commander Dave, our Coxswain, Rae, and my fellow crewmen, Leonard and Bill. Honestly, I can't say enough about how much these mentors are patiently teaching me about seamanship. They are truly amazing .

After readying the Sunrise, a beautiful, tricked-out 38-foot cabin cruiser complete with sirens, emergency “cop lights,” radar, depth finder, GPS, etc., and after we had hoisted the Coast Guard ensign, we set off for our rendezvous in the Eastern half of San Francisco Bay.

Whenever a Coast Guard power boat accelerates, the Coxswain calls out “Comin’ up!” and the crew answers back, “Comin’ up, aye!” so that he knows everyone’s prepared for the sudden acceleration. It’s a smart protocol that helps ensure no one falls overboard, but it’s also one that gives the operation a sense of community, like a church ritual.

While awaiting the rendezvous, we underwent a drop anchor / raise anchor drill. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

The Dolphin comes in for a low pass

We were to assist four different helo crews – each consisting of a pilot, co-pilot and an engineer (in charge of lowering and raising the cage) in two different types of cage drops, plus observe a few man-in-the-water drills, helping ensure the safety of the diver.

The day was warm and calm – the Bay almost like glass in the morning – and we quickly grew hot in our “Mustangs” – flotation/survival suits Coast Guard crews are required to wear during on-the-water missions.

We didn’t have to wait long before our helo, an H-65 Dolphin short range recovery aircraft, radioed us, signaling that they were ready to come in. The Dolphin is a beautiful, powerful 9,500 lb. beast, with two Turbomeca 2C2-CG Turboshaft engines boasting 934 horsepower. It has a top speed of 160 knots per hour (184 mph) and a rescue hoist capacity of 900 lbs. It’s a freakin’ high performance demon.

The Dolphin's engineer moves the boom into place and makes ready to lower the cage

The Dolphin came in for a low pass, circumnavigating our boat as per protocol to check out our overall situation and make sure we were safe for a cage drop. The helo crew then radioed the Sunrise that they were coming in for their first drop. This was to be a straight drop into the cockpit of our boat. I observed while Bill showed me how it was done. There isn’t a lot of finesse to a straight drop: The cage comes down and you catch it and haul 'er in. On humid days, the protocol is to let the cage touch the hull of the boat first in order to discharge any static electricity, which can cause serious injury.

Unlike other helicopters, the Dolphin doesn’t make that “whop-whop-whop” sound but, because of its turbojet engines and because the tail rotor is encased in a cowling, it makes this cloyingly loud buzz, like a giant, angry hornet out of The Land That Time Forgot. It’s so loud, in fact, that when it was right overhead at perhaps 20 feet it seemed to give me an auditory hallucination, as if I could hear voices whispering underneath the din. Damned strange, that.

Getting ready to bring in the cage

Then the real work started. Bill and I teamed up to handle the line-drop exercises. This entails the helo engineer dropping a weighted line while the pilot edges the Dolphin toward the boat. One man catches the line and tosses the weight to the other man. As the first man gently brings the line in, the other coils it so that it doesn’t get caught up in anything. At the last second, the hauler pulls fast and hard as the cage is dropped, bringing the cage into the cockpit of the boat – usually banging the hell out of the transom or fantail in the process. (Sorry, Rae!)

It’s rough and potentially dangerous work – everything is in motion: the aircraft, the boat, the waves, and the cage, which is just heavy enough to knock you out or overboard if you are not careful. At one point, as the cage was being raised out of the cockpit, my leg got caught in the line. I had a moment there when I was sure I was going to get pulled up and out, leg first. Luckily, I untangled myself in the nick ‘o time. Whew!

In all, we did 20 cage drops with four different air crews, two in the morning, two after lunch. We also did man-overboard drills and I was taught radio protocol and manned the helm to boot.

Dropping the cage

Our second-to-last helo team of the day was so pleased with our performance the pilot buzzed us by way of salute, coming in so low I thought he was going to scratch our paint.

Then we observed the man-in-the-water drills, in which a diver leaps from the helicopter at a height of perhaps 20 feet and is then plucked out of the water on a rescue line. Talk about drama.

Hauling in. I recommend gloves next time.

I’ve done a lot of things you could call adventurous in the last 20 years – surfing, snowboarding, skydiving, etc. – but this takes it. That’s because this is real. There is no script, no groomed runs, no lift chairs, no beer in the lodge at noon, no sexy girls on the beach. You’re doing an important job at service to your community and your country. It was one whole hell of a lot of work, but I loved every second of it. It's about the most fun you can have with your pants on.

Lifting the diver out of the water

And, in the unlikely event that I happen to be aboard a vessel in need of a helicopter evacuation, I’ll likely be the only guy on board who knows how to do it. That's a pretty exhilarating feeling.

Quake Day Cameo

2009-04-20T09:20:00.000-07:00

In which we're in the news

Attended the 103rd memorial of the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906 Saturday morning at Lotta's Fountain on Market Street at 5:15. Quite the festive occasion, with re-enactors, Clampers, politicians, siren-blaring fire trucks and various and sundry San Franciscans with a historical bent. The local TV news media was there, of course, and it appears that both yours truly and my friend, Gregory, made it into a little cameo on the b-roll.

Joke's on Buckley in Latitude 30

2009-04-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

In which we chortle

Not sure what prompted this letter to Latitude 38, the sailing magazine, but the magazine's editors sure had fun with it. William F. Buckley Jr. liked to fancy himself a great sailor. Latitude 38's editors didn't think we was all that.

A Helpful Prescription

In his series of books on sailing and chartering, the late William F. Buckley, Jr. concluded that a vessel could only have one captain, and that it was best when he, Buckley, was it. Well, we've seen a lot of bossy male crew over the years, and have been leaving more and more of them back at the dock when we make our sailing trips. We've found that Swedish nurses, on the other hand, make excellent crew. We advise that anyone leaving on a voyage take at least one Swedish nurse with them.

Erik Westgard
Minnesota

Erik — We're a little fuzzy on the logical connection between William Buckley saying a vessel should only have one captain, preferably him, and you and the rest of your crew recommending that one or more Swedish nurses be brought along on all sailing trips. But whatever.

Ironically, Buckley, who often chartered Ocean 71s, sisterships to Latitude's Big O, apparently wasn't the most careful of skippers. According to the captain of one of the Ocean 71s Buckley chartered, the author of God and Man at Yale not only drove the boat onto a well-charted reef but, along with his friends, spilled red wine all over the salon cushions. The ever imperious Buckley told the captain to just send him a bill, missing the point that there was no time to get the cushions cleaned or replaced prior to the arrival of the next charter party.

We editorially stuck it to Buckley from time to time because we thought his sailing books were pedestrian and because we thought he comported himself like an arrogant ass. As a result, we were pleased when Buckley, who suffered from delusions of erudition, and having missed our point entirely, referred to us as "dyspeptic" in one of his sailing books.

San Francisco No. 3 City for Guys

2009-03-31T11:16:00.000-07:00

In which we claim braggin' rights

I wrote a San Francisco profile piece that appeared today in AskMen.com's "29 Best Cities for Guys to Live In" series, which was also written up in today's Insider in the San Francisco Chronicle by Heather Knight and is getting good pick-up elsewhere, including the HuffPo.

Not everyone agrees with some of our recommendations, however. I'll continue to update reactions to this post throughout the day.