Portals of the Past

Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Every Saturday, Gary Kamiya's "Portals of the Past" will tell one of those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Francisco's extraordinary history - from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach, to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond.

Portals of the Past
S.F. Tenderloin’s spectacular demise into crime, poverty after years of prosperity
The closing of the shipyards and other wartime industries after 1945, as well as a slump in the national economy and the decline of inexpensive housing stock, devastated the area south and west of Union Square. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
How the Tenderloin became San Francisco’s hotel, entertainment and vice district
In the early 1870s, this upscale, Republican-voting residential neighborhood began to evolve into a more intensely urban environment, a hotel, entertainment and vice district that came to be known as the Tenderloin. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Once-swanky Tenderloin is S.F.’s ultimate riches-to-rags story
The downtrodden neighborhood, known for its crime and drug use, was once home to San Francisco’s top politicians and millionaire merchants. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
The strange saga of James Lick, piano-building magnate to cranky philanthropist
Lick arrived in San Francisco in January 1848, just before Mexico ceded California to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo — and 17 days before James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
The dark past of San Francisco’s Sharp Park
During World War II, this 100-acre parcel in Pacifica — belonging to San Francisco — held an “alien enemy” internment camp that has been almost entirely forgotten today. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
How veterans and avant-garde art saved the California School of Fine Arts
The artists and movements associated with the institution include Diego Rivera, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Manuel Neri, the Bay Area Figurative School, the funk movement and too many others to list. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
How Mexico tried to prevent Russia from taking over Northern California
In 1834, Mexico sent colonists to create a settlement on California’s northern frontier that would prevent the Russians from expanding from their outpost at Fort Ross. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
That time Mexico launched an expedition into its most remote land: California
The wagons carried women, children and provisions, along with 10 merino sheep, and five Tibetan goats. The expedition was Mexico’s most ambitious attempt to colonize its distant province of California. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Painterland: the forgotten apartments of San Francisco’s avant-garde
This was the start of an artistic and social circle that would have a major impact on the San Francisco and national art scene — and have a hell of a lot of fun along the way. By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Two men, a bulldog and the first Great American Road Trip — from S.F. to N.Y.
In 1903, an intrepid young doctor, his trusty mechanic and a bulldog named Bud made the first transcontinental road trip from San Francisco to New York. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
From riches to rags: How the earliest San Franciscan lost his property
The American era, and the Gold Rush, proved to be disastrous for William Richardson. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Englishman who sought Mexican citizenship helped establish early San Francisco
William Richardson spoke some Spanish, so his captain sent the London-born first mate ashore to purchase provisions from the Mexican citizens who lived at the Presidio. The visitor never left. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
The Blackhawk: San Francisco’s greatest jazz club
Most of the great jazz musicians of that era, the golden age of modern jazz, appeared there: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Cannonball Adderley, the Modern... By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Like Ukrainian cities shattered by war today, S.F. was reduced to rubble in 1906 earthquake
The blow that landed on the city 116 years ago was inflicted by nature, not man, but the results were equally destructive. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Golden Gate Bridge was built with tons, and nerves, of steel
The truly Herculean feat was the construction of the bridge’s south tower. No structure of its size had ever been built in such a daunting environment: 1,125 feet offshore, in black water 110 feet deep, scoured by powerful currents. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
The genesis of the Golden Gate Bridge was a carnival ride
The Aeroscope was essentially a counterweighted, swinging bridge with a passenger car attached to its movable arm. It was designed by an engineer named Joseph Strauss, whose company specialized in such raisable bridges, known as bascule bridges. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Before the Golden Gate Bridge: years of yearning and dreams for a span
The story of how the bridge was conceived, planned and built is a tale worthy of the great span itself. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
The day Jedediah Smith came to San Francisco
This episode is almost completely forgotten. There are no plaques or historical markers commemorating it. Yet it was a momentous visit. Jedediah Smith was the most legendary of the mountain men and the first non-native person to cross the Sierra... By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Clipper ships, built for speed, the ‘greyhounds of the seas’ during S.F.’s Gold Rush
The fine-lined, graceful wooden ships represented the pinnacle of the sail-driven vessel in history. By Gary Kamiya
Crime
He had plotted the ‘perfect murder’ for years. It didn’t go as planned
What the newspapers in 1925 called the “too-perfect murder” failed and eventually police closed in on Charles Schwartz, a Berkeley chemist who thought he had everyone fooled. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
They called it ‘the too-perfect murder.’ This 1925 mystery gripped the Bay Area
The truth, when it came out, revealed one of the weirdest murder plots in California history, one so carefully planned and fiendishly audacious that it seems to have been patterned on a (time-machine-assisted) combination of “Columbo” and “Mad Men.” By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Unchecked crime, destructive disasters robbed early San Franciscans of Christmas spirit
For the city’s mostly male population, thousands of miles from home and without wives or families, it could be a melancholy occasion. And the young city’s rough edges made things worse. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
How landline telephones became a must-have in old San Francisco
At first, the city’s few telephones were simply connected by wires strung from boards nailed to roofs. But as the city grew denser, this chaotic system became impractical, and in 1880 the first telephone poles were erected. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Rude boys, bobbing corks and kitchen lines: The birth of San Francisco’s telephone system
The telephone is such an integral part of modern life that it’s easy to forget that for years after Alexander Graham Bell patented it in 1876, it was regarded as little more than a toy. By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How the Gold Rush almost drove sea turtles and Galapagos tortoises to extinction
The hordes who flooded into California seeking gold also almost eradicated some of the most majestic and longest-living creatures on Earth: sea turtles and Galapagos tortoises. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
One weekend in S.F. kicked off the Haight-Ashbury hippie era. This is what it was like
The event that kicked off the hippie era, and whose cultural reverberations are still echoing today, took place in San Francisco’s Longshoremen’s Hall on the evenings of Jan. 21-23, 1966. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
The long, strange trip of Longshoremen’s Hall
Fifty-six years ago, a most unexpected building kicked off what we now call the ’60s. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
The weird restaurants of old San Francisco
A striking number of San Francisco’s old-time restaurants were offbeat, unusual or just plain bizarre. Here are some of the city’s oddest eateries. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
How William Randolph Hearst remade struggling S.F. Examiner into prestige paper
The unimpressive youth grew up to be a born newspaperman, tripling the Examiner’s circulation through “stunt” journalism, state-of-the-art presses and high salaries. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Ring of artillery protected Golden Gate from invaders until end of WWII
From the days of the Spanish-American War until the end of World War II, the Golden Gate was protected from potential invaders by a mighty ring of artillery, remnants of which can be found around the entrance to the bay. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
Big guns that never fired in anger: the Bay Area’s coast artillery
A formidable ring of coastal artillery emplacements once ringed the Golden Gate, starting with the Spanish era. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
That exotic-looking building in Cow Hollow was the first Hindu temple in the West
One of the most exotic-looking buildings in San Francisco stands on the southwest corner of Filbert and Webster streets, in the decidedly un-exotic neighborhood of Cow Hollow. By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Gold Rush impresario set stage for S.F. to become great theater town
Tom Maguire, the city’s dominant theatrical producer for more than 20 years, had an uncanny ability to bounce back from disaster. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How S.F. neighborhood sprouted where horses once raced
The Ingleside Terraces neighborhood is worth a visit just to behold one of the strangest streets in San Francisco: Urbano Drive. This unique street, in the shape of a giant oval, traces the contours of a long-vanished horse-racing track that was... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How an intercultural couple in early S.F. gained acceptance
It was unheard of in the 19th century for a Californio man of Spanish descent to marry an Anglo woman. But because they lived in the mostly Hispanic Californio colony near Mission Dolores, Eustaquio Valencia and Ann Moses were certainly accepted. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Unusual romance in early S.F. defied cultural taboos
Intercultural unions were common in early California, but they were almost exclusively between Anglo men and Latin women. The most obvious reason for this was that there were few Anglo women in California, but racial and ethnic bias also played a... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Tucked away in an S.F. cemetery, an intriguing tale of the early city
The tombstone of Ann F. Moses in the Mission Dolores cemetery hinted at a mystery. It turned out to be the key to a rich, strange and hitherto unknown piece of San Francisco history. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
She was the biggest fan of San Francisco’s firefighters and California’s ‘most original woman’
‘Lillie Hitchcock Coit is the most original woman California has produced,’ The Chronicle wrote in 1895. Even though the field at the time contained plenty of competitors, there’s a case to be made for the choice. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
They strutted, brawled and threw the best parties in Gold Rush S.F. They also put out fires
The volunteer fire companies quickly became the darlings of San Francisco, and much of the city’s social life revolved around the balls, parades and other festivities they organized. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
When San Francisco burned down — six times in a year and a half
Gold Rush San Francisco’s structures were made of canvas, oilcloth or wood, heated and lit by wood stoves and oil-burning lamps, vented by primitive chimneys or flues. The infant city was a tinderbox. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Murder at the newspaper: When a Chronicle editor was shot dead
Western journalism in the 19th century was a blood sport — often literally. Editors made a habit of launching vicious personal attacks against their enemies, who sometimes responded violently, as one of The Chronicle’s co-founders discovered. By Gary Kamiya
Portals of the Past
One of San Francisco’s strangest buildings was a mash-up masterpiece
The Hallidie Building on Sutter Street features one of the more unusual design juxtapositions on any building in San Francisco. Its contradictions reflected those of the architect, Willis Polk. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
S.F.’s strangest bar had monkeys, parrots and cobwebs. Lots of cobwebs
For 37 years, no broom was ever used inside Abe Warner’s saloon on Francisco Street in North Beach. It showed. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
S.F. had its own demagogue who capitalized on racist grievances
Almost 150 years before Donald Trump harangued a mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol, a provocateur rose to prominence in the city by capitalizing on the rage of disaffected working-class voters, demonizing minorities and promising to drain the... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
These S.F. streets are named for people who were morally suspect, or worse, by school board...
Few of the figures who have streets named after them in San Francisco could meet the standards that the city school board set in stripping names from 44 schools. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
S.F.’s rebirth from disaster was an occasion to party 24/7
The Portola Festival was the most exuberant, and weirdest, of the city’s great fairs. It simultaneously celebrated San Francisco’s recovery from the destruction of the 1906 earthquake and fire and paid tribute to the city’s Spanish heritage. It... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
S.F.’s forgotten Mardi Gras: Rebirth from 1906 disaster was time for a party
The Portola Festival was inspired by San Francisco’s greatest feat, rebuilding after the 1906 earthquake and fire. For three years, San Franciscans had worked day and night and were ready to show the world their city had risen from the ashes and... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
S.F. love affair with soprano: 250,000 jammed downtown to hear her on Christmas Eve
Never before or since has any San Francisco performer connected with an audience as profoundly as when Luisa Tetrazzini sang at Lotta’s Fountain in 1910. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Who is the Lotta of Lotta’s Fountain? She was once one of America’s biggest stars
Since 1875, an ornate water fountain known as Lotta’s Fountain has stood near where Geary, Kearny and Market streets come together. The anniversary of the 1906 earthquake and fire is marked every year at this spot, but few people know the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
A private toll road to Mission Dolores in 1851 opened S.F. to development
In 1850, the infant city of San Francisco was hemmed into a small area of what is now downtown. But when an entrepreneur built a private plank road to Mission Dolores over the deep sand and boggy ground along what became Mission Street, it opened... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Strange S.F. mansion’s owner was city’s ‘prize litigant’
Alfred “Nobby” Clarke drove judges to distraction, landed repeatedly in jail and became the laughingstock of the city. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
It’s one of S.F.’s strangest houses. Its history is stranger still
A vast, 45-room Queen Anne-Baroque pile with a profusion of gables, turrets and other over-the-top adornments, Nobby Clarke’s Mansion rises above the smaller houses around it in Eureka Valley like a gingerbread behemoth. And the history of this... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
S.F.’s unofficial poet laureate thrived in ‘cool, grey city of love’ — for a time
George Sterling was a strange bundle of contradictions: extremely sociable but deeply solitary, a compulsive womanizer who found his deepest fulfillment in friendships with men, a Dionysian reveler who was profoundly modest, a gifted poet who did... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Getting to S.F. the hard way: Gold Rush trip through Panama could be fatal
Many of those heading for California during the Gold Rush chose the route across Panama to connect from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was an uncomfortable, dangerous and not infrequently fatal ordeal. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How sand dunes became S.F.’s Golden Gate Park, thanks to a clumsy horse
The site of Golden Gate Park was a vast landscape of sand dunes, inhabited only by a few sketchy characters, when engineers set to work in the 1870s. The first problem was how to control the shifting sands. The secret was unlocked one day when a... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How Golden Gate Park ended up in the Outside Lands
An influential editor derisively called the site selected for San Francisco’s showpiece open space “The Great Sand Park.” The nation’s leading authority on park design, Central Park co-creator Frederick Law Olmsted, did not believe a park worthy... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Much more than a ‘sob sister’ — San Francisco reporter was one of the best of her time
Winifred Sweet, a longtime San Francisco journalist who wrote under the pen name “Annie Laurie,” went to extraordinary lengths to get extraordinary stories. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How shipwreck of an opium clipper changed California
Through a peculiar series of events, the wreck of a former opium clipper off the Mendocino coast in 1850 turned out to play a key role in the development of California’s economy. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
SF murderer escaped lynching, only to be executed and have testicles transplanted
Clarence Kelly, ringleader of the “Terror Bandits,” was shot by San Francisco police as he tried to escape arrest for a 1926 crime spree. The aftermath was eventful. By Gary Kamiya
Crime
‘Terror Bandits’ rock 1926 SF with one of the city’s most horrifying crime sprees
In fall 1926, San Francisco was rocked by one of the most terrifying crime sprees in its history. On two October nights, a 22-year-old former boxer and taxi driver named Clarence Kelly and two different accomplices, drove around town, killing four... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
When the world made peace in San Francisco
The creation of the United Nations was the triumphant culmination of a long, arduous process that had begun in the darkest days of World War II. It brought the president and dignitaries from around the world to San Francisco, 75 years ago. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
The year San Francisco’s mud was so bad, it swallowed horses
San Francisco in 1849 had only dirt streets, which wasn’t a big problem as long as the weather was dry. But as ill luck would have it, the winter of 1849-50 was one of the rainiest ever recorded in the city. The young city became a quagmire. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
When disease racked Gold Rush San Francisco
In 1849, several thousand argonauts created a tent city in a South of Market area called Happy Valley. It was soon to become one of the grimmest neighborhoods in the city’s history. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Tall tales of a California epidemic: How one man did not vaccinate thousands of people
Nineteenth century trapper James Pattie was a supreme storyteller who mingled true stories with exaggerations, distortions and outright lies. His account of his adventures in the West, and in particular his tale of vaccinating more than 22,000... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
He would have been a pandemic hero in early California, if only his tale were true
An early 19th century frontiersman claimed to have personally inoculated more than 20,000 Californians against smallpox on his travels through the state. If he had actually done this, James Pattie would qualify as one of the state’s greatest... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
San Francisco’s ‘Phantom of Playland’ sheltered in place for five-plus years
From 1949 to 1955, Kit Hing Hui lived alone in two caves at Lands End. He is known to have spoken only once during that time, and he lived on food he stole in the middle of the night from nearby restaurants. There have been many hermits in the... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Marin shipyard welcomed blacks and women in WWII, but diversity ended at the gates
Men and women, blacks and whites, Asian Americans and Latinos from across the country worked at Marinship in Sausalito. But African Americans in particular found that housing in Marin County was largely off-limits to them. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Marin County shipyard was built in a hurry after Pearl Harbor. It helped win World War II
For more than three years in World War II, Sausalito’s Marinship was a key part of what President Franklin Roosevelt called “the great arsenal of democracy.” It was created with astonishing speed — from when the idea was first proposed, it took... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
In World War I, SF became a hotbed for a German-inspired conspiracy
San Francisco in World War I was a focal point of a German conspiracy with Indian nationalists, most of them students in the Bay Area, to instigate a revolt against British colonial rule in India. It all came to a head in a bloody courtroom shooting. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
San Francisco’s Greektown was a big part of South of Market. Now it’s long gone
Large-scale Greek immigration to San Francisco began after the 1906 earthquake and fire, drawn by reports that there were jobs to be had rebuilding the city. Like other ethnic immigrants, Greeks settled in the city’s working-class South of Market,... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
The day the Mexican-American War came to Santa Clara
The Battle of Santa Clara was a swan song for Californios, whose tranquil way of life was about to be swept away by the Americans they faced off against on a muddy plain in the South Bay. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How horse stealing brought the Mexican-American War to the Bay Area
Most Californios in the Bay Area — native Californians, most of them Spanish-speaking — accepted the U.S. occupation in the 1840s and offered no resistance. But a series of outrages eventually led a group of prominent rancheros to rise up in a... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
War in the Bay Area: Why native Californians fought U.S. takeover from Mexico
Many native Californians admired the efficiency and modernity of Americans and hoped that the U.S. would take control of California from Mexico in the 1840s. Had the Americans dealt with them in a more enlightened way, many of the conflicts that... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How Pisco Punch, the Holy Grail of San Francisco drinks, was lost and found
Early San Francisco’s most famous cocktail was Pisco Punch. From the Gold Rush until Prohibition, this secret concoction was the preferred beverage of discerning tipplers. But when the legendary bar where it was invented closed, and the bar’s... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
When SF police broke the law to combat Chinatown’s violent gangs
The police Chinatown Squad, as it was called, used harsh and often illegal methods, and some of its officers were corrupt. But despite its heavy-handed tactics — and, in some cases, because of them — the squad played a central role in combatting... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How the Native American occupation of Alcatraz turned sour
At first, the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in November 1969 received laudatory press coverage, and the young occupiers were viewed sympathetically by many San Franciscans. Donations of food, clothing and money poured in. But soon, the... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
‘The Indians have landed!’ How the long occupation of Alcatraz began
The Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island reflected the passionate social activism of the late 1960s and had deep historical roots in the dispossession of California Indian lands and destruction of Indian culture by the Spanish, Mexicans... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Mission Dolores’ dark legacy for Indians: From salvation to subjugation and death
The white adobe church on San Francisco’s Dolores Street was once celebrated as a testament to the faith and courage of the Spanish colonizers who built it. Today, however, Mission Dolores’ legacy is seen as far more problematic. By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Sex and cycling: How bike craze aroused passions in 1890s San Francisco
Bicycling swept the nation in the 1890s, and San Francisco was not immune. But some men weren’t happy when women enthusiastically joined in. The backlash was prompted in part by men’s concern that riding would sexually stimulate women. By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Powerful forces wanted freeways all over SF. Here’s how they were stopped
A coalition of politicians, business people, newspapers and — most crucially — ordinary people created what is now known as the Freeway Revolt. Residents of two neighborhoods that stood to be torn apart by the freeways, Glen Park and the Sunset,... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
A freeway through the Sunset District? Roots of a San Francisco revolt
Most of the vast freeway system that was planned for San Francisco in the 1950s was stopped by a strange-bedfellows coalition of neighborhood activists, media figures, politicians and business people. What came to be known as the Freeway Revolt... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Not just Washington High murals: WPA’s work lives on, all over San Francisco
Virtually every neighborhood in San Francisco bears the imprint of the Works Progress Administration and other Depression-era federal work agencies. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
San Francisco love story: A hooker, her gambling man and a hanging
In Mission Dolores cemetery a tombstone bears the names of Charles and Arabella Cora, who were married for exactly two hours. It is a monument to a tragic only-in-San Francisco love story, involving a beautiful young prostitute, her rakish gambler... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
SF ‘hobohemia’ transformed into Skid Row as jobs and city changed
San Francisco’s hobo population changed with the Depression, the evolving job market and the city’s long-running plans to transform the South of Market area By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Don’t call them bums: Hobos once filled the South of Market
For decades, thousands of hobos called San Francisco their part-time home. Living in cheap hotels and rooming houses, these itinerant workers came and went with the seasons. The center of “hobohemia” was Fourth and Howard streets, now an upscale... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
It was just like the movies — only this SF sniper was for real
Spurned by a woman, a disturbed man takes to a rooftop in San Francisco and opens fire. It happened in a 1952 movie, and seven years later it happened in real life. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
San Francisco scenic treasure that locals overlook
The 49 Mile Scenic Drive has distinctive signs featuring a chummy-looking seagull and travels through neighborhoods predictable and less so. But for most locals, its route — not to mention its entire concept — is a mystery. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
When a red-hunting Congress took on SF murals — and lost
The Rincon Annex murals by artist Anton Refregier, a sweeping, warts-and-all depiction of the history of San Francisco commissioned by a New Deal federal arts program, was attacked for years by right-wing groups that considered them subversive,... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
When conservatives went to war over SF post office murals
Throughout San Francisco’s history, conservatives almost invariably have been the ones leading the charge to remove “objectionable” art. One case in point: The Anton Refregier murals in the Rincon Annex post office, which inspired the... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
When the waterfront was San Francisco’s heart, soul and muscle
The City Front, as the waterfront was called, was the engine that drove San Francisco’s economy. It swarmed with longshoremen, sailors and other workers of all sorts. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
San Francisco’s vanished island resort: Dancing, shooting and zinc tubs
Strawberry Island was hard to get to, and it wasn’t even a full-time island. But precisely for those reasons, it was among the most enchanting of San Francisco’s lost landscapes. For a few years, it was a resort destination extending into the bay. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How 1906 quake helped thousands of San Franciscans own their first homes
Most eartthquake refugees who ended up in city-provided cottages were working San Franciscans. About a third of them were Irish and Italian immigrants and their children, whose tenements in the poor, heavily ethnic South of Market and North Beach... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Think SF’s housing crisis is bad? You should have seen it in 1906
Nearly half of San Francisco’s population was homeless after the earthquake and fire of 1906. The relief effort to shelter thousands of people marked a shift in disaster recovery in the United States. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
A heavy fog, a fateful mistake: How 128 people died in SF’s deadliest shipwreck
The passenger ship City of Rio de Janeiro was already three days behind schedule when it was forced to wait in a heavy fog to enter the Golden Gate. Then the fog lifted — but only a bit. It was enough to persuade the captain and pilot to steam ahead. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
SF Zoo Monkey Island: Depression jobs and fun for humans, mixed bag for animals
The monkey island at Fleishhacker Zoo was one of many the WPA built around the country to put people to work and lift families’ spirits during hard times. For the monkeys, the islands were an improvement on cages but still not ideal. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
San Francisco’s Chinatown was a seedy ghetto. Then a stage set replaced it
The pre-1906 district had a reputation for squalid conditions and sin. Neighborhood leaders rebuilt it with faux Chinese architecture to attract tourists and ease pressure from a white city government. By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
‘Vertigo’ mansion’s fate was a San Francisco horror story
The most recent Portals told the tumultuous early history of the Fortmann mansion, a Victorian at Gough and Eddy streets in San Francisco that plays a cryptic role in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 masterpiece, “Vertigo.” To review: In “Vertigo,” the... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
That weird San Francisco mansion in Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ had a history
Every year, throngs of people take “Vertigo” tours in San Francisco, visiting the sites where Alfred Hitchcock shot his 1958 masterpiece. Many buildings, such as the swanky Brocklebank apartments atop Nob Hill and the building at 900 Lombard St.... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Gold Rush satirist, impresario and Farallones egg-gatherer did it all
One of the most rollicking characters in San Francisco during the Gold Rush years was David G. “Doc” Robinson, a man whose wild career could only have taken place in the instant city. Robinson made his initial stake in an only-in-San-Francisco... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Pillars of Jewish community held one of SF’s most amazing Christmas parties
For decades, one of the most splendid Christmas celebrations in San Francisco took place at a grand Queen Anne Victorian on Franklin Street. Preparations for the holiday extravaganza started months before Dec. 25. Every year, the mansion’s... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
SF Chronicle’s early days: Showbiz, pluck and cure-alls for self-abuse
The newspaper you are reading came into existence because San Francisco was crazy about the theater. From its beginnings, San Francisco was stagestruck. The city’s young, mostly male, rough-and-tumble denizens were addicted to excitement and... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
When WWII brought blacks to the East Bay, whites fought for segregation
Just north of Berkeley off San Pablo Avenue in Albany stands a housing complex called University Village, reserved for married students at UC Berkeley. Few realize that in the years after World War II, this complex, then called Codornices Village,... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
A party to end all parties: SF went wild when WWI ended
At 1 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 11, 1918, San Francisco held one of the greatest celebrations in its history. Shouting and singing, an army of men and women flowed up and down Market Street, waving flags and banging on drums. Tens of thousands massed... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
Iconic SF building was home to Bohemians for decades. Then it was destroyed
The previous Portals told the story of how the Montgomery Block was erected in 1853 in response to devastating fires that ravaged Gold Rush San Francisco. It was the grandest building of its time, a fireproof structure at Montgomery and Washington... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
SF’s swankiest building was made to survive if city burned
Many beloved San Francisco buildings have disappeared over the years, from the original Mission Dolores to the City of Paris department store to the old Produce Market. But none was as rich in history as the Montgomery Block. When the four-story... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Ghost blimp’s enduring mystery: How did crew vanish before Bay Area crash?
Shortly before noon on an August Sunday in 1942, a solitary bather on a beach near Fort Funston looked up to see a strange sight. A Navy blimp was approaching the beach at extremely low elevation. As the observer looked on in consternation, the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Prohibition meant party time in San Francisco
Much of America greeted Prohibition with great enthusiasm. San Francisco didn’t join the party. Temperance movements led by crusading Protestants, women’s groups and progressive reformers had been popular since the 19th century. So when the 18th... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When the Army recruited incompetent troops in SF and armed them with lances
On March 3, 1863, an advertisement appeared in El Voz de Mejico, a Spanish-language newspaper in San Francisco. The notice invited Californios — native Californians — to enlist in a new cavalry unit. Interested parties were told to go to the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
SF whaling crews lived to regret it, if they lived
The previous Portals described how a young man named Walter Noble Burns, while eating breakfast in a San Francisco restaurant in the late 19th century, saw an advertisement in a newspaper for whaling crews and impulsively signed up.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When ships hunted whales, SF Bay was their home
San Francisco has been called the Paris of the West, but for decades it could have been called the New Bedford of the Pacific. Between 1885 and 1905, San Francisco was the leading whaling port in the world, home to a fleet of... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When derelicts from Down Under overran San Francisco
In the early years of San Francisco, one neighborhood was synonymous with vice, crime, degradation and all-around sleaze: Sydney-Town. Sydney-Town was located in the waterfront area around Pacific and Montgomery streets, at the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The original Grizzly Adams kept his bears on a chain in SF
In 1856, San Franciscans who paid a quarter to venture into a large basement room found themselves a few feet away from half a dozen grizzly bears. Two of these ferocious beasts were in the middle of the room, secured with 5-foot... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When Miles Davis and Charlie Parker were in SF, this was the go-to club
From 1950 to 1965, one of the greatest jazz clubs in America, Jimbo’s Bop City, could be found in the heart of San Francisco’s jumping African American nightclub scene. Every jazz heavyweight who came through town — Miles Davis,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How SF’s namesake ship survived a World War II ‘suicide’ mission
In November 1942, the heavy cruiser San Francisco, flagship of an outgunned and outnumbered American task force, was ordered to stop a much stronger Japanese armada that was steaming toward the U.S.-held island of Guadalcanal. The Japanese planned... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
In World War II, San Francisco’s namesake ship was a Navy hero
The most haunting war memorial in San Francisco stands near Point Lobos, above the Lands End trail overlooking the Pacific. On either side of a flagpole are set two large sheets of gray-painted metal, twisted and punctured. Those... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
In the depths of the Depression, SF had the best ballpark in the country
At the corner of 16th and Bryant stands a venerable bar and grill called the Double Play. This joint, which opened in 1909, is the only reminder of the most beloved of San Francisco’s neighborhood ballparks — Seals Stadium, home to the minor... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The 19th century nude scene that took San Francisco by storm
On Aug. 24, 1863, a thunderbolt hit San Francisco. The sensation appearing at Maguire’s Opera House was all anyone could talk about. In 16 nights, 30,000 people came to see her — more than half the population of the city. The... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How San Francisco evicted thousands of dead people
The last Portals described how, starting in 1854, four cemeteries were installed in the then-desolate Lone Mountain area of the Inner Richmond District. Neighborhood boosters began a campaign at the turn of the century to clear this 320-acre city... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Lively, lengthy battle over where to bury SF’s dead
From the 1868 squatters who used a cannon-armed gunboat to enforce their claim to Mission Creek to the egg-hurling commuter shuttle protesters of 2013, San Francisco has always been noted for the variety and vehemence of its battles over land use.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Corrupt, inhumane reform school was SF’s first form of...
Today, George M. Rush Stadium on the San Francisco City College campus is the scene of nothing more violent than football games. But during the 19th century, one of the grimmest institutions in the city’s history stood near here — the Industrial... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
SF bad guys get away in a car. In 1915, that was big news
On the evening of Nov. 20, 1915, four masked gunmen barged into the Sloat Cafe, a dance hall in San Francisco’s sparsely settled hinterlands at Sloat Avenue and the Great Highway. After robbing the bartender, they marched him onto the dance floor,... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How ships on dry land helped Gold Rush San Francisco grow
In the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid, under a high-rise a few feet to the east of verdant little Redwood Park, are buried the remains of a wooden ship whose story captures the entire history of Gold Rush San Francisco. The... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The woman who fought Chinatown sex slavery for decades
Neither Chinese American leaders nor white officials in San Francisco made any real efforts to close the houses of prostitution that flourished in Chinatown in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Only one group of people stood up for the sex slaves... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How early SF police delivered sex slaves to the brothels of...
The previous Portals described how sex slavery was widely practiced in 19th century Chinatown. Starting in 1852, secretive associations called tongs began kidnapping or buying young girls and women from China and forcing them to work in Chinatown... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Shame of the city: When Chinese sex slaves were trafficked in SF
For more than five decades in the 19th and early 20th centuries, sex slavery was openly practiced in San Francisco. Young women who had been kidnapped or purchased in their native China were shipped across the ocean and forced to... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
SF’s tense Yuletide in 1941: wartime footing, evacuees and...
The holiday season hardly felt like a time for rejoicing in 1941. Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor just 18 days before Christmas, thrusting the United States into World War II. Newspapers normally fill their Dec. 25 editions with seasonal... By Gary Kamiya
Opinion
The historical legacy of Mayor Ed Lee
If one sign that a city has transcended racism is its willingness to criticize its citizens regardless of their race or ethnicity, San Francisco’s treatment of its late mayor, Ed Lee, ought to place it in the colorblind hall of fame.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When SF lost its mind over a stolen painting
In 1875, San Francisco went wild over a painting of a dead Arthurian maiden. Thousands flocked to see the artwork during its brief exhibition. When it was stolen, city residents reacted as if a beloved friend had been abducted.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How Argentine-led invaders chased defenders from a Monterey fort
One day in 1818, a Spanish lookout in Monterey saw a pair of mysterious vessels approaching. The Spanish had been warned that enemy ships were planning to attack California, and the commander of the Presidio immediately ordered his troops to... By Gary Kamiya
news
When Argentina attacked Monterey: Part I
At 2 a.m. on Nov. 23, 1818, a soldier named Dolores Cantua galloped into the crumbling Presidio of San Francisco. He had ridden 90 miles through the night from Monterey, the capital of Spanish Alta California, to deliver an urgent message: Two... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
SF’s lost opportunity to be reborn as ‘Paris, with hills’
In the last decade of the 19th century, San Franciscans were fed up with the physical condition of their city. Parks were neglected, and schools were falling apart. The shopping district had become so decrepit that merchants were hiring workers to... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When an outlaw’s severed head went on tour in SF
Many strange objects have appeared in San Francisco, but none odder than the head of Joaquin Murieta. For more than 50 years, the notorious outlaw’s head was displayed in various places in the city, until it disappeared after the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
SF’s forgotten jazz pioneer
San Francisco’s Barbary Coast is remembered as one of the world’s most depraved vice districts. But in the years after the 1906 earthquake, it was also a hotbed of the swinging, improvised new music that soon came to be known as jazz.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The streets of San Francisco: Here’s the oldest one
From A Street to Zoo Road, there are 2,659 official streets in San Francisco. This cornucopia of streets, avenues, boulevards, lanes, places, alleys, walks, courts, terraces, stairways, plazas, paths, halls and circles contains a host of... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Early SF’s German Jews quickly became an aristocracy
The last Portals described how a small group of German Jews escaped the restrictions and prejudices of their homeland to prosper in Gold Rush-era San Francisco. By 1870, a group of several dozen families, almost all from Bavaria, had come to... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Fleeing repression, Jewish immigrants found success in Gold...
Of all the groups that arrived in Gold Rush San Francisco, the Jews who fled a legacy of oppression in Europe may have experienced the most remarkable success. In their Central European homelands, these German speakers had been... By Gary Kamiya
news
When the Pony Express came to SF, it was party time
[...] the Pony Express, a wildly ambitious enterprise that promised to cut that delivery time in half, fired the imagination of the residents of America’s most far-flung city. The final legs of the run had been triumphant, like the entrance into... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How the Pony Express linked an isolated SF to the country
The Pony Express, the short-lived mail service whose daring young riders and tireless horses raced back and forth across 2,000 miles of a mostly unexplored continent, fired the imagination of the entire country. For San Franciscans, the Pony... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
How Coit Tower’s murals became a target for anticommunist forces
The murals were funded by a federal program called the Public Works of Art Project. In December 1933, the head of the de Young Museum, Walter Heil, and other officials chose 25 artists who would be paid $25 to $45 a week to create murals at the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Death of SF’s boozy beach shantytown
At its height, Mooneysville consisted of about five dozen tents, shacks and frame buildings, and it purveyed whiskey, coffee, doughnuts and clam chowder, as well as various games and hustles, to the thousands of people who thronged the beach.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Whiskey by the waves: When squatters took over SF’s Ocean Beach
In keeping with their populist political stance, the squatters said they were justified in seizing beachfront land because the Park and Ocean Railroad, which was owned by the all-powerful Southern Pacific Railroad, had been equally unscrupulous in... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
A railroad to Ocean Beach: How ‘the Octopus’ got its way in SF
A reported 18,000 people filled the northern end of Ocean Beach, packed the Cliff House and spilled south toward Golden Gate Park. An 1863 toll road, Point Lobos Avenue, ran from Bush and Presidio to the Cliff House, but using it required owning... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Sex and guitar lessons: SF’s sensational reefer madness trial
Sex and guitar lessons: SF’s sensational reefer madness trial [...] that recreational marijuana is legal in California, it’s easy to forget that cannabis was once regarded as a dangerous, even demonic, substance that led users to chop up their... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How Chinese Americans won right to attend SF schools
The previous Portals described how Chinese Americans in 19th century San Francisco were subjected to racist city and state school laws. From 1871 to 1885, they were denied access to any public schools at all. In September 1884, a Chinese woman... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How early SF kept Chinese children out of the schoolhouse
The Chinese Presbyterian Mission Church became the first U.S. church with an Asian congregation when it opened its doors in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1853. [...] it was a feeble exception to a long, ugly government policy of racist segregation... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How Emperor Norton rose to power
From “Dirty Tom” McAlear, a 19th century Barbary Coast habitue who for a small coin would eat literally anything given to him, to the “12 Galaxies” man of our own day, the list of our fair city’s cracked denizens is virtually endless. [...]... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The life and times of North Beach’s renowned Beat dive the Place
For seven years it was a favorite Beat hangout, famous for its anything-goes Blabbermouth Night, its poetry readings, jazz jam sessions, and its clientele of neighborhood ne’er-do-wells, lunatics and drunks. After studying painting at Black... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When bulls fought bears in brutal Mission District matches
Visitors file out of buses to tour the adobe church, while a couple of blocks away the queue for the Bi-Rite Creamery stretches around the corner. Few if any of the people in either line know that from the Spanish colonial days to the Gold Rush,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
He decided who thrived and who faded in SF’s high society
Not only did he have an unrivaled passion for the bubbly — he supposedly once consumed 25 bottles in a single day — but his position as the city’s master of entertainment allowed him to sell his product to his society guests. [...] it was... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How red-baiting crusade collapsed in SF courtroom in 1960
The previous two Portals described how students protesting the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in San Francisco in May 1960 were blasted with fire hoses, beaten and dragged down the stairs of City Hall by police. All 68 protesters... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The day SFPD turned fire hoses on protesters at City Hall
The previous Portals described how scores of demonstrators, mostly students from UC Berkeley, came to San Francisco City Hall on May 13, 1960, to protest hearings being held by the House Un-American Activities Committee. When the panel’s chairman... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When Washington’s Red-baiting congressional committee came to SF
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, recently advocated creating a new version of the House Un-American Activities Committee to combat “Islamic supremacists.” On May 13, 1960, 300 protesters, most of... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When the Chutes on Haight was SF’s go-to place for speedy kicks
The most beloved of San Francisco’s vanished pleasure grounds was Playland-at-the-Beach, which stood along the Great Highway beside Ocean Beach from 1921 to 1972. [...] Playland’s original name was Chutes-at-the-Beach. Boyton was not only one of... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
San Francisco’s off-kilter 1st suburb
The Lagoon Survey’s story begins in September 1847, when San Francisco was a growing village of 459 people whose built-up area encompassed about 50 square blocks surrounding Yerba Buena Cove. By 1847, enough people were building houses in the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How an early SF lake went from jewel to cesspool
The Forty-Niners reported that Spanish and Indian women used the Laguna Pequeña to wash clothes, an activity that would be most associated with the lake and lead to a new moniker, Washerwoman’s Lagoon. During the Gold Rush, laundry was extremely... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
San Francisco’s Donald Trump
For San Franciscans reeling from the election of a man who represents the opposite of everything they stand for, it may be a source of either consolation or shame to know that we once had our very own Donald Trump—a populist rabble-rouser,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
SF’s first hipster cafe and its descent into ruin
The first and most legendary of all of San Francisco’s bohemian cafes was a restaurant called Coppa’s. Coppa’s crowning glory was its wildly creative murals, done on the fly by the artists and writers who made the place their second home. Soon,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
SF’s 1st street preacher brought God to a godless crowd
At 3 p.m. on Dec. 3, 1849, a tall, powerfully built man made his way through the throng in Portsmouth Square. Taylor climbed up on a carpenter’s bench in front of one of the gambling houses that lined the square and, in a voice so powerful it... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
SF’s Cliff House has seen thrills, chills ... and maybe a curse
The Cliff House, perched majestically above the ocean near San Francisco’s northwestern tip, has been one of the city’s most famous landmarks since it opened in 1863. An earlier Portals described how it began as a refined roadhouse that attracted... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The SF riots that brought out the National Guard
The previous Portals described how, on a sweltering Tuesday afternoon 50 years ago in Hunters Point, a white police officer shot and killed Matthew Johnson, an unarmed 16-year-old African American suspected of car theft who was running away and... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Officer’s ’66 killing of black teen sparked Hunters Point riots
Officer’s ’66 killing of black teen sparked Hunters Point riots Alvin Johnson, a white patrol officer with 23 years’ experience on the force, gave chase in his cruiser and tried to cut off Bacon and Matthew Johnson at Navy Road. According to an... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When SF journalism was a blood sport
Even before the Gold Rush, San Francisco’s two rival newspapers provided their readers with enough invective to make the late Warren Hinckle nod approvingly from his celestial barstool. The California Star, published by an ambitious young Mormon... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Just before the world rushed in: SF’s small-town early days
The event that had changed Yerba Buena from a speck on a Mexican map to a growing American town had taken place on July 9, 1846, when a band of sailors and Marines disembarked from the Portsmouth, marched up to the old Mexican Plaza, now... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The losing fight for integration in SF’s first housing projects
The whites-only policies in San Francisco’s first public housing projects in the early 1940s, described in the last Portals, were mainly aimed at keeping Chinese Americans in Chinatown and out of America’s great experiment in federally funded... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How SF’s Housing Authority kept its early projects all white
The ubiquity of public housing makes it easy to forget that government didn’t supply any until late in the Depression, when the plight of working people who had been pushed into destitution led Congress to pass the 1937 Housing Act. Public... By Gary Kamiya
Crime
Chinatown gang feud ignited one of SF’s worst mass homicides
Few Chinatown restaurants besides the cheap noodle joint Sam Wo across Washington Street were still open, and about 100 tourists and locals were seated at the restaurant’s two dining levels. Louie and two friends were seated in a booth in the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
SF’s 19th century Burning Man: Party all night, and then some
The party was thrown by Yerba Buena’s second Anglo resident, an Ohio-born adventurer and businessman named Jacob Leese. The Mexican governor, eager to stimulate commerce in the sleepy hinterlands of Alta California, had just declared Yerba Buena... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Hundreds of Germans spent early days of WWII on Angel Island
The strange saga started Aug. 19, 1939, when a German luxury liner called the Columbus sailed from New York with 750 passengers, mostly Americans, and 579 German crew members on a 12-day cruise to the West Indies. With German troops massing on the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When SF’s rich and famous lived atop Rincon Hill
San Francisco’s first fashionable neighborhood was not Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights or Nob Hill. Unlike most of the city’s sandy terrain, it was a wooded promontory covered with shrubbery and small oak trees, and it had a beautiful view of... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When the Mission District was home to horse racing
When the Mission District was home to horse racing The first news account of a horse race in San Francisco appeared on Page 2 of the Californian newspaper on March 15, 1848. The editors deemed this contest more significant than the following minor... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Troubles, tensions for Japanese American internees in WWII
The previous Portals described how in April 1942, 7,800 Bay Area Nikkei — people of Japanese ancestry — were imprisoned in horse stalls and other makeshift shelters at the Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno. Topaz was one of 10 wartime concentration... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
7,800 imprisoned in San Bruno for just 1 crime: being Japanese
If it weren’t for a small commemorative rock garden and plaque near the main entrance, there would be no sign of the fact that during the spring and summer of 1942, 7,800 Japanese Americans from San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area were... By Gary Kamiya
Chronicle Vault
When the CIA ran a LSD sex-house in San Francisco
On an elegant dead-end block on the north side of Telegraph Hill is 225 Chestnut St., a swanky modernist building with panoramic bay views. It's about the last place you would have expected to find a clandestine CIA program during the Cold War.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The passionate 1879 battle over ‘The Passion’
After a bizarre globe-trotting career that included managing an Australian hotel, traveling to Crimea during the Crimean War, running a ranch in Mendocino, and trying to pull off a land-speculation scheme in the Dominican Republic, he returned to... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Deadly serious: Early SF’s shortage of decent graveyards
[...] World War II, tens of thousands of bodies were interred in numerous cemeteries and informal burial sites all across town, before they were removed in extremely haphazard fashion. The graveyard at Mission Dolores and the area around it hold... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Gold Rush S.F.’s water supply switched from barrels to creeks
Early San Franciscans bought their water from street vendors, who made the rounds with large wooden barrels mounted on mule-drawn carts. [...] most came from springs on the Sausalito ranch of William Richardson and was ferried by tank steamer... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How the Bay Area’s first residents lived
San Francisco’s first permanent inhabitants, a linguistically distinct group of Ohlone Indians known as the Yelamu, settled here around 4,500 years ago, drawn by the food-rich environment on the bay. Typically seen as having acquired supernatural... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F.’s first residents: Marshlands drew Indians to a barren spit
What led the Yelamu to make this barren peninsula their permanent home was the creation of San Francisco Bay. Around 11,000 years ago, the glaciers of the last ice age began melting and sea levels began to rise. The Pacific Ocean moved eastward,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
For decades, sex trade thrived on S.F.’s Maiden Lane
Last week’s Portals described how Union Square evolved in the 19th century from a wasteland of sand dunes to a landscaped public square surrounded by churches and a thriving, diverse residential neighborhood. From the 1870s until 1896, this little... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When Union Square was a desolate sand dune
Surrounded by brilliantly lit department stores, swanky hotels and high-end retailers, Union Square is the most intensely urban space in town — San Francisco’s Times Square or Piccadilly Circus. By contrast, during the Gold Rush years, what would... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Carnage collides with cheer at Christmas 100 years ago
On Christmas Eve 100 years ago, San Francisco was a happy and prosperous city, its streets thronged with shoppers and carolers and its big downtown retail stores doing record business at the end of the Exposition year. World War I lurked in the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
City’s top ‘pleasure garden’ created by hotelier who banned women
During the city’s early years, before it had public parks, San Franciscans flocked to privately owned “pleasure gardens” for fresh air, greenery and entertainment. An irresistible combination of park, museum, zoo, amusement park and circus,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F.’s old-time pleasure gardens: Parks for a city that had none
During San Francisco’s early years, its most popular destinations for recreational outings were “pleasure gardens.” The pleasure gardens provided oases of greenery, fresh air and entertainment in a city that desperately needed them. City surveyor... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When lethal beasts roamed free in the Bay Area
For millennia, the Bay Area teemed with enormous beasts, including Columbian mammoths, giant bison, ground sloths, American horses and camels. Last week’s Portals described how these gargantuan animals moved through a great grassy valley now... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When Columbian mammoths roamed San Francisco
[...] for more than 100,000 years, San Francisco was truly a wild kingdom, one traversed by the most awe-inspiring mammals ever to walk the Earth. The heyday of giant mammals in North America was the middle and late Pleistocene, an epoch that... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How the WPA saved S.F.’s Aquatic Park
Last week’s Portals described how San Francisco started building it during the Depression, but ran out of money. In 1935, with the project on life support, assistant city engineer Clyde Healy went to Washington, D.C., to ask a new federal agency... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F. once treated Aquatic Park as a dumping ground
After the Gold Rush, some Argonauts willing to trade a long walk into town for a beachfront residence erected two dozen buildings near the shoreline, which at the time was several blocks farther south, around North Point Street. [...] the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Spanish discovered S.F. Bay through misfortune and blunders
Last week’s Portals told the story of San Francisco Day at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, which commemorated two monumental events in the city’s history: its rebirth after the 1906 earthquake and fire, and Gaspar de Portola’s... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
San Francisco’s biggest party ever
Season ticket holders were urged to purchase a separate ticket for the day to support it, and everyone who bought a ticket received a lapel stub reading, “I Paid.” Gov. Hiram Johnson declared the day a holiday, schools were closed, and the two... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Life among the trash: the rise and fall of S.F.’s Dumpville
The 150 men who lived in Dumpville — they were all men — slept on mattresses made of sacks filled with straw and covered with old coats and torn blankets. Scrap metal brought in a cent a pound, while oil cans were worth 10 cents each. By the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Big homeless camp today near S.F.’s old Dumpville
In the 19th century, a shantytown called Dumpville existed just a few blocks to the east, where the stream that used to flow along what is now Division Street trickled through mudflats into Mission Bay. The Emergence of a Skid Row, an article in... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How Mark Twain got fired in San Francisco
The experience was critical in his development as a writer and a man, but it was also a time when he hit rock bottom. When the former Samuel Clemens rode the stagecoach into San Francisco from Virginia City, Nev., in May 1864, the 28-year-old was... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Ellis’ saloon in Yerba Buena, the place to get a real stiff drink
Ellis’ saloon in Yerba Buena, the place to get a real stiff drink Last week’s Portals related how a saloon and billiard parlor run by a Swiss named Jean-Jacques Vioget was the center of social life in 1840s Yerba Buena, the hamlet that was to... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Early S.F. saloon served as raucous epicenter
Much of what did happen in Yerba Buena took place in one of its first buildings, a ramshackle saloon and billiards parlor built in 1840 by a Swiss named Jean-Jacques Vioget. Vioget’s saloon, on Clay Street just east of Kearny, was to become the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
San Francisco’s eccentricity dates back to Yerba Buena years
Anyone who wanders the streets of San Francisco has come upon a disproportionate number of people who do not conform to societal norms. Recent years have featured such oddballs as the “12 Galaxies” man; the late, lamented Brown twins; the intense... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
A city of masks: When the flu tore through San Francisco
Everyone who lived in or visited town was required to cover his or her mouth and nose in public. The streets of the city looked like they were full of bank robbers, surgeons, attendees at a Venetian ball or Tokyo dwellers with colds. The mask... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Lottery enabled France to get rid of thousands

Last week’s Portals described how the French government, in a time of political and economic crisis, saw the discovery of gold in California as an opportunity to get rid of undesirables. In 1850, it dreamed up an audacious scheme to achieve this... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
A golden opportunity for France’s undesirables
On Feb. 28, 1852, a ship from Le Havre sailed through the Golden Gate, rounded Clark’s Point at what is now Broadway and Battery and unloaded 200 specimens of the finest flotsam and jetsam of France, including criminals, political prisoners,... By Gary Kamiya
news
Junípero Serra’s missions destroyed entire native cultures--now he's going to be a saint
It's a warm fall day outside Mission Dolores, where an Ohlone man whose baptismal name is Francisco is tied to a whipping post. A week ago he ran away to the village where he grew up, but the soldiers hunted him down and brought him back in... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F. whitewash covered up ‘peace riots’ at end of WWII
A huge mob mostly composed of drunken sailors embarked on a three-night celebration that degenerated into an orgy of vandalism and worse. When it was over, 13 people were dead, more than 1,000 were injured, at least six women had been raped — the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
‘Peace Riots’ left trail of death at end of WWII in S.F.
The news at 4 p.m. Pacific time that Tuesday opened the floodgates to probably the greatest explosion of mass euphoria in American history. From Seattle to New Orleans, Minnesota to Maine, Americans let loose as never before or since — dancing,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How a Mime Troupe arrest sparked Bill Graham’s promoting career
Fifty years ago this weekend, police prevented the San Francisco Mime Troupe from performing a play in Lafayette Park, arresting the company’s founder as 1,000 people jeered. The dramatic encounter expanded the frontiers of artistic freedom in San... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Gray-eyed Man of Destiny met fate in Central American invasions
Editors today are generally normal, respectable citizens, who become violent only when repeatedly forced to clean up dangling participles or run-on sentences. But in San Francisco’s Wild West days, editors were made of more... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Eating out was hot even in the Gold Rush
[...] there are more than a few parallels between the prospectors who drove the restaurant craze back then and the new fortune-seekers who are largely responsible for our current feeding frenzy. In 1849, the instant city was filled with thousands... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Boss Abe Ruef and S.F. political machine brought down
Schmitz was a two-term mayor, handsome and popular, who had been handpicked for the job by “Boss” Ruef. Together they controlled the Board of Supervisors and every other arm of government, giving them and their allies total control over everything... By Gary Kamiya
Politics
S.F. corruption machine humming along before, after 1906 quake
The election was a triumph for the handsome, bearded violinist and his Union Labor Party, but the real winner was the city’s political boss and power behind the throne, Abe Ruef. Alarmed, Ruef called the worst offenders into his office and... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F. ‘Boss’ Abe Ruef took unusual route to power
To understand the rise and fall of “Boss” Ruef, “Handsome Gene” Schmitz and their cronies, one first has to understand the peculiar way that many American cities functioned from the post-Civil War years into the first decade of the 20th century.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Psychedelic rock era opens with gig at Wild West saloon
Psychedelic rock era opens with gig at Wild West saloon Fifty years ago this month, an unknown San Francisco rock group called the Charlatans played at the opening of a saloon in Virginia City, Nev., called the Red Dog. The idea for the Red Dog... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The man who hated San Francisco
Gold Rush San Francisco had its detractors. Visitors’ letters routinely featured complaints about its immorality, roughness, weather and expense. But no one bashed the city more enthusiastically than a young North Carolinian named Hinton Rowan... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Revolt of the hookers: How prostitutes stared down a priest
The Chronicle’s front page of Jan. 26, 1917, screamed: “ ‘What of Us?’ Ask Magdalenes Who Crowd Church.” Beneath the headline, readers were treated to exhaustive coverage of one of the most dramatic confrontations in San Francisco history.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Preacher’s call for day of reckoning for ladies of the evening
On January 25, 1917, 300 San Francisco prostitutes marched to the Central Methodist Church at O’Farrell and Leavenworth, where they got into a heated exchange with the church’s minister, who was trying to drive them out of the city. [...] with... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Steep S.F. hills overcome with Hallidie’s cable car
Nob Hill and Russian Hill were so steep and sandy that it was difficult to climb them on foot and impossible with horses. Even after the dunes on Market Street were removed and the small downtown area planked and paved, the steep eastern slopes... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Yosemite Indians, white ally fell victim to white vigilantes
In December 1850, hostilities broke out between the Indians who inhabited the foothills near Yosemite and the white miners and settlers who had encroached on their lands. To pacify the Indians and force them onto reservations, a military unit... By Gary Kamiya
news
A mountain man’s flawed attempt at peace with California Indians

A mountain man’s flawed attempt at peace with California Indians San Franciscans in the crazy Gold Rush year of 1850 were used to unusual sights, but even they gaped at the party that marched down Montgomery Street in the middle of October. At the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F. welcomed 1st Northwest Passage sailor but mistreated sloop
S.F. welcomed 1st Northwest Passage sailor but mistreated sloop Just north of San Francisco’s Beach Chalet, across the Great Highway from Ocean Beach, stands a 10-foot-tall granite pillar with a bronze plate depicting the great Norwegian explorer... By Gary Kamiya
Crime
African American witness stands his ground in 1873 murder trial
Around 9 p.m. on Nov. 1, 1873, Ned Allen, the flamboyant proprietor of a notorious Barbary Coast dive called the Bull Run, was stabbed to death after getting into an altercation with a man he was trying to throw out of his bar. The killing took... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Allure of the old Barbary Coast: bloodshed, sordid sex for hire
“Women, the very lowest and most abandoned of their class, haunted the place by night, and hideous noises and drunken revelry made the place a synonym of all that is low and vile,” The Chronicle wrote. The Bull Run was located on the north side... By Gary Kamiya
US & World
How S.F.-built warship’s journey sparked Panama Canal fervor
The Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, a civic triumph whose centennial is being marked this year, celebrated two signature achievements of the 20th century — San Francisco’s recovery from the great earthquake and fire, and... By Gary Kamiya
news
What might have been when Europeans first met California Indians
In 1565, a Spanish treasure ship called the Manila galleon began making an annual voyage between Mexico and the Philippines. Many of the ships’ crew members died of scurvy, and British privateers like Sir Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish were a... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Anger arising from S.F.’s 1st murder case helped topple governor
Singularly horrific, shrouded in mystery, it involved some of the most famous Californios — native Californians of Hispanic descent — and helped ignite political passions that toppled the Mexican governor of Alta California. When they returned to... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Mighty Bay Bridge endures as engineering marvel
For months, workers have been dismantling the eastern span of the Bay Bridge, the almost 2-mile-long stretch that runs from Yerba Buena Island to Oakland. In February, Caltrans announced that it was planning to use hundreds of small explosive... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Beatniks’ battle with S.F. police goes national with poems
In 1959, the long-simmering fight between the North Beach beats and a particularly zealous San Francisco police officer went national. Officer William Bigarani, who made up half of the Police Department’s two-man beatnik patrol, considered it his... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Police Officer William Bigarani came down hard on beatniks
Just before 2 a.m. on Oct. 21, 1958, a San Francisco police officer named William Bigarani accosted a 20-year-old Berkeley resident and former college student named Wendy Murphy as she tried to enter the Co-Existence Bagel Shop on the corner of... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Bare majority: victory for nude art in unusual election

There have been many odd votes in San Francisco history, but none stranger than the Great Nude Vote of 1880 — when thousands of aroused citizens pored over a painting of a naked woman, then voted on whether it should be displayed. In addition to... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Odd arch is last remnant of bustling produce market built in 1874
[...] this mysterious arch is the sole survivor of one of the most bustling, beloved and smelly institutions in San Francisco’s history: the Colombo Market. The Genoese, sharp dealers who came from a cosmopolitan seaport city, quickly came to... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Cheating, violence in the cards at Gold Rush’s gambling dens
The gambling dens of Gold Rush San Francisco brought together heavily armed men, lots of alcohol, high-stakes games of chance and the occasional cheater. “And from each gambling hall the losers would sally forth and try to recoup their losses by... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
What was Gold Rush-era S.F.’s favorite pastime? Place bets

Gambling was the amusement, the grand occupation of many classes … the life and soul of the place,” wrote Frank Soule, John H. Gihon and James Nisbet in the 1855 book “The Annals of San Francisco. In 1847, the city’s first newspaper, the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The centuries of treasure ships that failed to notice S.F. Bay
Every week, ships loaded with Chinese appliances, electronics, furniture, clothing and other goods steam past the Farallon Islands on their way to San Francisco Bay. [...] amazingly, ships laden with goods from China began sailing past the Golden... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Odd apartments mark pool site where famed female swimmer trained
Odd apartments mark pool site where famed female swimmer trained The 700 block of Lombard, between Mason and Taylor and just across Columbus from the new North Beach library, is a pleasantly unassuming street a few blocks below the crooked stretch... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
San Francisco’s weirdest murder case
[...] the morning after Mrs. Bowers’ death, the coroner received an unsigned letter hinting that her untimely demise might not have been of natural causes. The inquest was held at the Arcade House on upper Market, where Bowers lived and had his... By Gary Kamiya
Arts & Entertainment
When a wild night on the town meant Chinatown
Last week’s Portals described how an ambitious entrepreneur named Charlie Low opened a nightclub just outside Chinatown with the irresistible name Forbidden City. Newspapers and magazines, including Collier’s, Coast, Pic, Peek and Look, rushed to... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Forbidden City ushered in golden age of Chinatown nightclubs
In the days before the Empress of China closed forever on New Year’s Eve, its retro sixth-floor bar was packed with people soaking in its revelatory views of Chinatown, the weary tuxedoed waiters and mysterious outside aquariums for the last... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Mare Island’s key place amid the tides of history
Alcatraz was a U.S. military base before it was a prison, Nike missiles once bristled on Angel Island, and Treasure Island was a naval base for decades before it was sold to San Francisco in 2009. [...] the island that has played the most... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Bay Area’s only ghost town, Drawbridge, is on an island
Located at the sluggish southern end of the bay within the city limits of Fremont, Station Island was uninhabited until 1876, when the Southern Pacific Coast Railroad built a narrow-gauge line through it. When a single cabin was built for the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Seeking gold, the 49ers found a sad, sodden S.F.

San Franciscans may be running out of dry socks during this December of welcome if relentless rain. The afternoon westerlies, unchecked by buildings or trees, whipped through the sand that covered much of the city, invading buildings, tents and... By Gary Kamiya
news
S.F. founder’s rudeness led to disgrace, bloody end
In last week’s Portals, we told the story of a brewing feud between Capt. Fernando Rivera y Moncada, the first non-Indian to explore San Francisco and the military governor of California, and Lt. Col. Juan Bautista de Anza, the newly arrived... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
1st non-Indian visitor to S.F. largely lost in the fog of history
In the rigid racial and class hierarchy that prevailed in the New World colonies, Criollos ranked beneath the Spanish-born Peninsulares in status. After helping to establish Spanish outposts at San Diego and Monterey, Rivera returned to New Spain... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When the flow of traffic was all aboard the ferries
Each was more than 400 feet long and capable of carrying an entire passenger train, including the locomotive, in four parallel lines on its decks. Most were much shorter, including a line called the Six Minute Ferry that carried autos across the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
When bombings menaced a North Beach church
Hundreds of neighbors in their nightclothes rushed to the scene, along with every available police officer. A police officer was stationed at the church, but was taken by surprise and was unable to catch the bombers as they drove away. The... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
After long legal fight, life of Black Cat Cafe comes to an end

Last week’s Portals told the story of how the second incarnation of the Black Cat Cafe became famous after World War II for its daring, edgy atmosphere. From the days of the old Barbary Coast — which occupied a riotous two-block stretch of... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Drag act turned Black Cat Cafe into gay bar in 2nd life
Twelve years later, it reopened across town — and this incarnation would become a legendary watering hole and the stage for one of the city’s most unforgettable characters, Jose Sarria. The joint was on the edge of North Beach, at 710 Montgomery... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Boisterous dive’s saga is the story of S.F.’s seamy side
In 1913, an advertisement in The Chronicle touted the joint’s “spirited corps of feminine beauty” and said it was “fast becoming the most popular entertainment and eating resort in bohemia.” According to Tenderloin historian Peter Field, the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Tiny railroad pulled its weight on S.F.’s waterfront
Because the all-powerful Southern Pacific controlled the area south of the Ferry Building, it was only in 1910, when reforming politicians challenged the “octopus,” that the State Belt began running past Market Street. The State Belt carried... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Explorer Cabrillo made his name with bold, bloody exploits
Long stretches of Highway 1, one of the most scenic roads in the nation, are named after the Spanish explorer, as are schools, ships and streets, including one in San Francisco. The Spaniards stopped at a village called Caonao, where 2,000... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Imagination took flight with airship experimentation in S.F.
Getting to the gold fields was difficult, dangerous and time-consuming, so in 1849, inventor Rufus Porter, the founder and first editor of Scientific American, proposed an alternative: a huge “aerial locomotive” that would carry up to 100... By Gary Kamiya
news
Presidio’s colorful history preserved at Officers’ Club
Today, thanks to archaeological excavations taking place near the rehabilitated Presidio Officers’ Club, you can see a piece of San Francisco history that dates back to the year Napoleon was exiled for good on St. Helena, the Congress of Vienna... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
'Hoodlums’ a 'distinctive San Francisco product’ of the 1870s
Almost a century before the phenomenon of the “juvenile delinquent” alarmed 1950s America, San Francisco was plagued by its own homegrown crop of youthful miscreants, one as authentically San Franciscan as sourdough bread or the Golden Gate.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F. leaders denied, concealed major plague epidemics
Bubonic plague is one of the most terrifying and lethal diseases in human history. Its most infamous outbreak took place in the 14th century, when the Black Death ravaged the entire world. In Europe, it's believed to have killed up to 200 million... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Ishi, 'last wild Indian,' embraced adventure of life in S.F.
Ishi spent decades hiding out from white settlers' genocidal campaign against California Indians. Then he spent five years as an object of civilization's fascination with his vanished way of life. Last week's Portals told the story of how Ishi's... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Ishi, last 'wild' Indian, found refuge in S.F.
For 4 1/2 years, a unique saga played out on San Francisco's Parnassus Avenue. On that lofty street at the base of Mount Sutro, overlooking Golden Gate Park, Marin and the Farallon Islands, the last "wild" Indian in North America, Ishi, spent his... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Frederick Freeman a beacon during S.F.'s darkest hour in 1906
There have been many heroes in the annals of San Francisco, from the faculty wives who spearheaded the Save the Bay movement to the nurses and doctors on Ward 5B at San Francisco General Hospital who treated AIDS patients in the early days when... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Chinatown school was at center of anti-Japanese crusade in S.F.
Few people know that in its earliest incarnation, it was the focus of a racist school segregation law that led to a diplomatic crisis so serious that President Theodore Roosevelt was forced to intervene. Trade unionists and blue-collar workers... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Cursed ship San Carlos' luck turns: 1st to sail into S.F. Bay
The San Carlos had seemed cursed from its first voyage in 1768, when it left San Blas, north of present-day Puerto Vallarta, bound for La Paz at the tip of Baja California. The voyage across the Sea of Cortez normally took two or three weeks, but... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
By the Candlestick concert, the Beatles detested touring
On Aug. 29, 1966, the Beatles appeared at Candlestick Park - the final stop not just on the group's three-continent tour, but in their life as a touring band. [...] the four Beatles were among the most famous people on the planet, and their... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
1856 vigilantes changed corrupt political system
The vigilantes who seized control of San Francisco in 1856 had more on their minds than exacting street justice - they wanted to change the city's entire corrupt political system. The Second Committee of Vigilance was formed in response to the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Demagogue editor fired up readers, revolutionaries
Enraged at the big financiers whom he blamed for his ruin, he started a newspaper, the Evening Bulletin, that became the most ferociously outspoken daily in the city. King was humorless and self-righteous, used a bludgeon instead of a stiletto,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Amid old S.F. newspaper wars, real blood was shed
[...] the 19-year-old "boy editor" of the Star, Edward Kemble, soon returned to San Francisco with blistered feet, a sore back and a renewed certainty that his career lay in newspapers, not standing in a freezing foothill stream under the blazing... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Gold Rush stopped the S.F. press as editors fled to get rich
First they nearly missed the story altogether. Semple was a 6-foot-4, buckskin-clad dentist, doctor, printer and adventurer who had played a major role in the Bear Flag revolt two months earlier. Colton described him as "true with the rifle, ready... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Wonders of world, 1 death part of 1894 exposition
The nabobs in their ludicrously ornate mansions atop Nob Hill were symbols of Gilded Age excess, while at the bottom of the hill murderous tongs ran riot in Chinatown and the Barbary Coast was a synonym for depravity. At its heart was "Sunset... By Gary Kamiya
Crime
The case of Laura Fair, San Francisco 1870
On a chilly evening in 1870, an attractive 33-year-old blond woman, her face and body obscured by a veil and a cloak, hurried through the decks of a San Francisco-bound ferry, looking for her prey. The trial riveted the nation's attention in a... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Spanish street names upset Sunset, Richmond residents
In 1909, outraged residents of the Richmond and Sunset districts staged a public protest. What set off the good people of western San Francisco was not a tax increase, a zoning change or a political scandal. [...] in spring 1909, at the request... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Footprints of history on the streets of S.F.
San Francisco has 2,657 named streets, from A Street to Zoo Road, from the celestial Polaris Way to the poetic Recycling Center Access Road. Hidden behind these names is a cornucopia of fascinating stories - streets named after rogues, cons and... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
D-Day invasion's final active ship houses history in S.F.
Seventy years ago, the largest armada in history delivered U.S.., British and Canadian troops onto the beaches of Normandy to push the Nazis out of France. Just one ship among the 5,000 that took part in the invasion on June 6, 1944, is still... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Notorious Lola Montez kept the men in S.F. panting
[...] her erotic exploits, political intrigues, violent temper and extraordinary beauty had made headlines throughout the world. Who became the lover of the famous virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt? Who moved on to Paris, taking the City of Light by... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F.'s early stages: how theater tradition got its start
Starved for entertainment of any kind, yearning in equal parts for high culture and female flesh, early San Francisco's mostly male audiences devoured a rich and motley diet of Shakespeare, minstrel shows, burlesque, sentimental dramas, pageants,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Miscarriage of justice sends 2 innocent men to prison
On a sultry July afternoon in 1916, as thousands of flag-waving San Franciscans clogged Market Street for a "Preparedness Day" parade to support war readiness, an explosion killed 10 people and set in motion the greatest miscarriage of justice in... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Prostitutes from France charmed S.F. during Gold Rush

Most of the women who arrived early on in the chaotic instant city were practitioners of the world's oldest profession, a fact commemorated in a famous bit of doggerel: The miners came in '49, the whores in '51. According to the authors of the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Promoter hit it rich in boxing, awed world with speed travel
Coffroth was a promoter who built his open-air arenas just across the city line - one of them made Colma famous for something besides dead people - and helped put boxing on the silver screen. [...] Sunny Jim" was more than just a boxing bigwig -... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Great Diamond Hoax of 1871 has lingering mystery
Before they left, they made Roberts promise not to say anything about their discovery until they could investigate further. [...] began the Great Diamond Hoax. The Comstock Lode in Nevada was pumping out seemingly inexhaustible supplies of... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F.'s 19th century Russian battle over bigamy, child abuse
For four years in the late 19th century, a lurid controversy racked the small Russian community of San Francisco - one that featured a pair of strong-willed antagonists hurling accusations of bigamy, arson, murder conspiracy and child abuse.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Audacious 1946 escape attempt left Alcatraz bloodstained
[...] from the locations of the guard towers to the design of the cell blocks, the guard-inmate ratio, and the practice of counting inmates every half hour, everything about the prison made breaking out all but unthinkable. Coy was working as the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F.'s spectacular Cliff House has a turbulent past
Today's Portals relates the rollicking tale of the first Cliff House - a clapboard structure built by real estate tycoon Charles Butler in 1863. Rough tripThat was the difficulty of the 6-mile ride from the developed part of town to the sea - a... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Black Bart: Man of culture led secret life of crime
In the 1870s and 1880s, a certain well-spoken, finely groomed man was a regular fixture in respectable San Francisco society. Unfailingly polite and with a droll sense of humor, the prosperous mine owner was always impeccably dressed in a tweed... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How ambitious Key transit network reached the end of the line
By offering a mass-transit connection to San Francisco - highlighted by a 16,000-foot-long pier that ran from the Oakland waterfront almost to Yerba Buena Island - the Key System played a major role in the growth of what it promoted as "the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How Asbury Harpending wound up accused of high treason
Precocious and large for his age, he dropped out of college at 15 and ran away to join a "filibustering" expedition to Nicaragua led by a former San Francisco newspaper editor named William Walker. A filibuster was a private individual, acting... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
19th century sport, big in old S.F., was hurting for fans
The sport was mounted broadsword combat, and it did not comply with SPCA guidelines for the treatment of animals, NFL concussion protocols or any other safety regulations. Ross - a superb specimen who had taught swordsmanship in the Royal Scots... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
In page of S.F. history, literary carnival created a frenzy
Of all the mass entertainment ever put on in San Francisco, the most memorable may have been the Authors' Carnival of October 1879 - a kind of combination literary Academy Awards, tableau vivant, male and female beauty pageant, charity ball,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Quarrymen hit few obstacles to blowing up hills around S.F.

Perched on the sheer eastern face of Telegraph Hill, with a majestic view of the Bay Bridge, the Ferry Building and downtown, Calhoun Terrace is one of the most dramatic streets in San Francisco. [...] few who walk down the dead-end way realize... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Celebrated true tale of love and tragedy in early S.F.
The most star-crossed and mythical of all San Francisco love affairs took place during the Spanish years, when the only structures were a handful of adobe huts in the Presidio and a cluster of buildings around Mission Dolores. The two lovers knew... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How S.F.'s cable cars were saved after an uphill battle
An East Coast shipping tycoon who had been elected on a platform of modern efficiency and "progress," Lapham had "all the sentiment of a Pismo clam," as Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg wrote in the 1951 book "Cable Car Carnival." In his January... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
How S.F.'s cable cars rose to become emblem of the city
A San Franciscan of the late 19th century could, with a few line changes, ride from the Ferry Building to the bottom of Diamond Heights, from the edge of the Presidio to 24th Street and Potrero, from Russian Hill to Golden Gate Park. When the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F. real estate deals were truly underwater in the 1800s

San Francisco's real estate wars may be vicious now, but they're nothing compared to what went on along the waterfront during the Gold Rush. Forget the Ellis Act and owner move-ins - in those days, evictions were carried out by the firm of Smith... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Wharf debt turns lumber baron into embezzler

Meiggs' Wharf soon became popular, both as a place for ships to berth and as a promenade and place of amusement for San Franciscans. The overextended Meiggs, who had built streets to reach his wharf and had to pay taxes and assessments, found... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
1850s San Francisco rallied to free a slave

Many of the city's 1,000 or so African Americans - merchants, cooks, barbers, deckhands and laborers - headed down to the Market Street and Vallejo Street piers, where two steamers were ready to weigh anchor. What happened next was one of the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
No summer of love in S.F.'s vigilante days
In one of the odder tours of duty in U.S. military history, the First Regiment of New York Volunteers, commanded by Col. J.D. Stevenson, was sent in 1846 via Cape Horn to fight in the Mexican War, with the agreement that after the war the troops... By Gary Kamiya
Giants
Remembering Candlestick fondly is a breeze
On Monday the 49ers will play their last regular season game at Candlestick Park, and sometime in 2014 the old stadium will be blown up. For the fans who watched Willie Mays patrol center field, the Beatles play their final concert, Joe Montana... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Trail raised the bar for tipplers in old S.F.
The Route's all-male ranks of regulars included respectable businessmen and politicians, as well as a miscellaneous crew of drink cadgers, skirt chasers and opportunistic gourmands known as "free-lunch fiends." Ten blocks and as many as 20... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Pearl Harbor injured arrive in S.F. on Christmas Day
On board the largest luxury liner built in the U.S., the President Coolidge - now painted dark blue - and a smaller Army transport were 180 men who had been badly wounded at Pearl Harbor, as well as women and children being evacuated from Hawaii.... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Pre-Batkid, Starr King rallied S.F. for a cause
Two weeks ago, people around the world were touched when San Franciscans came together to make a dream come true for a little boy being treated for leukemia. But 150 years before Batkid-mania, the city by the bay had shown that it was a city with... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Yerba Buena Island: goats, bull, squatters and king
Native remnants, including worked bone and stone objects and human remains, have been discovered on Yerba Buena's northeast corner. According to California historian John Hittell, Mexican Gov. Juan Alvarado granted Yerba Buena to Don Juan Castro... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Limits of free speech tested at Jazz Workshop
Bruce, 35, was a rising star in what Time magazine dubbed "sick comedy" - "social criticism liberally laced with cyanide," further distinguished by "a personal and highly disturbing hostility toward all the world." Playing the gay-friendly... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Waterfront spot where the drinks had a brutal chaser
Today the Embarcadero is a lively promenade, filled with locals and tourists enjoying the bay vistas. For the next year or two, he would labor under harsh conditions, eating bad food, protected by no laws or regulations, his life subject to the... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Half-buried buildings a weird relic of 1906 quake
More than 3,000 people were killed, 28,188 buildings destroyed and 522 blocks leveled in the 4.7-square-mile burned area - one twice as large as that consumed by the great Chicago fire of 1871. South of Market was mostly "made land," created when... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Barbary Coast joint hosted jazz pioneer
For a few months in 1919, visitors to San Francisco's Barbary Coast who wandered into a cellar nightclub called the Jupiter might have seen a slender, elegantly dressed piano player leading a 10-piece band. The New Orleans-born pianist and... By Gary Kamiya
Crime
1895 murders - was Mission District church cursed?
The case entered the public eye via a short item in The Chronicle on April 10, 1895. The clean-cut young man acknowledged riding with Dumont, but said he had gotten off after a short ride and hadn't seen her since. On the floor was the bloody... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
The S.F. press of old - newsrooms gone wild
Many of the innumerable pieces in each eight-page issue of the Call - a typical front page might contain 80 stories - were dedicated to holding up to public contempt men who misbehaved toward women. The piece read: "Gus Freeman, alias Betzger,... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
S.F. has had a run of eccentric ballparks
Soon after the last 49ers game, demolition crews will place charges throughout the stadium, someone will push a button and the great concrete bowl off Jamestown Avenue will implode, an arena that produced 53 years of memories collapsing in just 30... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Mountain Lake brims with historical import
The underground water that feeds Mountain Lake is also the source of the city's lone remaining free-flowing stream, Lobos Creek, which meanders through a beautifully restored meadow and then past Sea Cliff backyards before emptying into the ocean... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Artist's strange work gets viewing in Venice
There's nothing on the outside that helps passersby know how the old owner of 1668 Alabama, A.G. Rizzoli, created one of the most remarkable alternate universes of the 20th century. Rizzoli made exquisite, consummately strange pen-and-ink... By Gary Kamiya
Bay Area
Historic tails of S.F. denizens Bummer and Lazarus
Dogs roam happily all over the city, from the elegant George Sterling Park on Russian Hill, to the rugged cliffs of Fort Funston, to the lagoon at Crissy Field, to the endearingly irregular rectangle of Precita Park in Bernal Heights. The large... By Gary Kamiya