Grab Bag #010
Appreciating Skid Row, Juanita's Midwinter Fair act, and the idea of a San Francisco Historian Laureate.
New Year, New Beginnings
The postcard image at top was about the Spirit of San Francisco recovering from the 1906 earthquake and fire (seen darkly at left), but I think it makes for a good new year’s image, the crowned and diaphanously clad fairy magically making the Salesforce Tower disappear.
Skid Row, early 1960s
I’ve been browsing photographs from the San Francisco Public Library’s collection of records from the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. These were obviously taken less for documentation and more as supporting evidence for change, pushing for “slums” to be scraped clean for big new developments. So, above, the photographer wants to highlight the pile of trash on 3rd Street between Market and Mission Streets (ho-hum). But what are your eyes really drawn to?
Capitol Clothing with its jewel-box window displays of union-made men’s clothing, back when people actually cared about unions. Forty-nine-cent t-shirts. The Owen Hotel, an SRO giving the world its name twice on one side of the entry overhang, and Barrel House cocktails at the right edge. Men in hats, one ambling and one purposeful.
I don’t mean to glamorize a tough time and a rough place, although the big characterless hotel that now fills this block adds nothing of visual interest for me. I’m just doing a bit of time-travel tourism. I like the details of “real life” when I find them.
Fashion Forward, 1896
Mutton-chop sleeves were a thing in mid-1890s women’s fashion. Lesser known is the fad of shrinking ladies’ heads and necks, as illustrated on the left by a San Francisco Chronicle artist on November 24, 1896.
San Francisco Historian Laureate: Has the Time Come?
In a recent story, I proposed the City of San Francisco establish a term-limited City Historian post, something akin to the city’s Poet Laureate. I wrote “historian,” but I think of the role as less an academic one and more doing some historical fact-checking to inform city projects and primarily illuminating San Francisco’s many diverse histories and culture heritage.
We don’t necessarily need someone with a Ph.D. (says the guy who was expelled from college after a year). For instance, Doug Chan, mentioned in the last Grab Bag, would be a great choice. (Doug likely has an advanced degree anyway?) LisaRuth Elliot of Shaping San Francisco would kill at this job. Maybe we could convince Gregg Castro, who has long shone a light on California indigenous heritage? (I think Gregg lives on the peninsula, though.) Lots of City Guides to pick from. Champions of specific neighborhoods, like Visitacion Valley or North Beach, could be given the honor/responsibility for a term.
The timing may be right. The mayor has gotten creative with the Poet Laureate model to include a Drag Queen Laureate position in the city budget! Two-year term, $55,000 stipend, very cool. So is it time to start the campaign for City Historian or Historian Laureate or “Chamberlain of Looking-Back” or whatever?
The Electric Tower Waltz
Speaking of drag queens, I came across this cover of sheet music capitalizing on the 1894 Midwinter Fair in Golden Gate Park and I’m curious about “Juanita’s” act. I may be doing some mis-gendering. More research needed.
I recommend browsing the California Sheet Music online repository hosted by UC Berkeley, but be warned. The longtime dominance of minstrel shows means being shocked over and over at the in-your-face racism which once sat upon our great-grandparents’ pianos. Along with beautiful lithography of Gibson girls and parasols and dancing grizzly bears, you’re going to get lots of N-words and worse.
Stories: the 5th Element
"I believe that our life is not only the sum of events, but also the complex interweaving of meanings that we ascribe to those events. Those meanings create a marvelous fabric of stories, concepts, ideas, and can be considered one of the elements—like air, earth, fire, and water—that physically determine our existence and shape us as organisms. The story is thus the fifth element that makes us see the world in this, rather than in any other, way, makes us understand its infinite diversity and complexity, as well as organize our experience and pass it on from generation to generation, from one life to the next."
—Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel laureate, in this essay.
Something to take into 2023. Use the 5th element, our stories, to pass on some understanding.
Woody on Creativity
Remember when I wrote in the last Grab Bag that TV people are sometimes desperate for guests? In 2008, I somehow ended up talking about creativity with the gracious Eileen Moore of the PEN Women Presents show. Clowning, history, and how to scratch out a living in San Francisco were all part of it. No need to watch the whole 30 minutes!
No need to watch the whole thing!
Off to Egypt
Nancy and I are going to see some pyramids and cruise the Nile and likely solve a few murder mysteries from January 3rd to January 18th, so if you reach out I may take some time to respond. Fear not, however, about the San Francisco Story. My staff has the next few cued up and ready to go while I’m gone.
Woody Christmas Ale and Hot Chocolate Fund
