Grab Bag #031

I remember my childhood friend Gabriel Gonzalez saying to me that if we had grown up in a different place, say the American South, we would probably have different personalities.

This was horror-story-at-the-campfire talk, since even as boys we were smug San Franciscans. Any alternate universe had to be inhabited by lesser, inferior versions of LaBounty and Gonzalez.

But Gabriel’s thought experiment put kid-me to thinking deeply about my city in the 1970s. Even then, I knew it offered more than any suburbia or country town, more than a boy’s imagination could hold.

There was not only what I understood and loved (the Giants, Mountain Lake Park, Dr. Donald D. Rose on KFRC), but mysteries that I had yet to decipher—like what was the deal with psychedelic art? I only knew it from advertising but sensed it signified some intriguing aspect of adulthood that had nothing to do with my parents.

 There were so many places I glimpsed through backseat windows that I still needed to visit—the blue tower in the Excelsior, Alcatraz, wherever those faded green streetcars on Market Street went— and things I still needed to do, like go to a Bay Bombers roller derby at Kezar Stadium.

Included on my eight-year-old boy’s bucket list were the secret “forts” around the Golden Gate Bridge, concrete bunkers behind chain-link fences and overgrown poison oak, visible when my Dad took the scenic route home through the Presidio.

I learned my history from Hogan’s Heroes, so I assumed that the Presidio’s hillside gun emplacements dated from World War II. Turns out almost all of them predate World War I. 

Harbor defense of San Francisco bay began when the Spanish completed a ramshackle adobe fort on the south side of the Golden Gate channel in 1794.

Fort Point was built on the site of Castillo de San Joaquin between 1854 and 1861 when the US government got serious about guarding California and its gold. In the 1870s, places like Fort Mason, Alcatraz, and Fort Scott began beefing up with artillery and stacks of round cannonballs.

You should walk around the Battery East earthwork bunkers made in the 1870s just to check out the brickwork. The National Park Service uncovered a tunnel southeast of the Golden Gate Bridge just a few years ago:

The cool doorways are entrances not to Narnia or secret spy tunnels, but small spaces called magazines, where ammunition was stored for the cannons that lined the berms:

More visible and visited are the stepped concrete platforms on the west side of the bridge. Batteries Miller, Godfrey, and Boutelle all date from between 1891 and 1900 and were originally equipped with guns ranging from five to 12 inches in diameter. These quasi-Mayan altars now serve as unauthorized and rotating galleries of graffiti art:

In the early 20th century, big gun emplacements were created on the Marin side of the Golden Gate at Fort Barry:

Guns got even bigger in the 1930s as the idea of a second world war, this time with Japan as an adversary, scared the beejeebers out of everyone on the West Coast.

The enemy never arrived in San Francisco, the battery guns were never fired in anger, and by the time World War II ended, they were obsolete anyway. Warships could wipe out coastal emplacements from miles away, never mind guided missiles and atomic weapons...

Men assigned to “Operation Blowtorch” (as a newspaper dubbed it) sliced decommissioned gun barrels into five-foot, 23-ton sections of mezzi rigatoni in 1948.

As a teenager, I was finally able to get closer looks at my bunkers by hiking all over the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. My favorites were the batteries west of the bridge. Of course they have great views, since they were built to see what was coming.

Not that I could see what was coming as a teenager. While the Japanese warships never arrived, this was still a site of conflict. In 1984, I had my break-up argument with Bernadette F. here. I was to blame, jealous of ambitions that would take her out of town and away from me.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Bernadette rode the 28 bus home alone from the toll plaza. In her room, blasting Billy Idol’s White Wedding, she wrote me an “it’s over” letter.

But 40 years later, we’re still friends.

Inside Battery Godfrey

I really don't know anything about all this coastal defense stuff, but John Martini does. He got me (and a select number of friends, including Friend of Woody Karen P.) inside Battery Godfrey in 2012.

Faux Cliffside 

My father used to tell me that the hill face behind the Cliff House had a secret military bunker. He pointed out that the “rocks” on the cliff face were man-made to fool invading enemies during World War II. 

My father’s story had a smidgen of truth. Adolph Sutro established his estate atop the hill in the 1880s. He had niches and rustic stairs built up around the top of the cliff where he inserted some of his very tasteful plaster statue collection.

Farther down the hill in the 1920s, city employees created more fake rock formations not to fool invading armies, but to stabilize and “beautify” the cliff face while widening the roadway for automobile traffic.

The military did build a little nest at the top during World War II, not for shooting but for spotting. Soldiers with telescopes and ship charts inside the observation station could triangulate the positions of incoming warships to relay to big guns in other locations.

You can still walk around this “fire control station” in Sutro Heights Park today.

While my kid-brain imagined a vast network of tunnels behind the door, it’s just a simple room where for 70 years partying teens have dumped their beer cans.

No Long Hairs

Seeing a familiar name in my story about the 540 Club reminded Peter F. (F.O.W.) of another story about the real estate wheeler-and-dealer who was in charge of the old Pacific States Savings and Loan:

“Robert Odell, owner of Pacific States, [w]as the man who bought the Clift Hotel from the Clifts in the 1930s for the bargain basement price of $500,000. Odell famously banned men with long hair without jackets and women in pants from the Redwood Room in the 1960s, including Hastings law school graduate and state assemblyman John Burton.

“In 1972 the hotel was sued by five Boalt Hall students, all editors of the prestigious California Law Review, after their well-dressed party was turned away because of hairlines extending below their collars.”

In 1973, a food reviewer noted that the frequent long-hair conflicts made for good publicity for both the Clift (which drew an older, conservative clientele) and longer-haired celebrities who were turned away. Being banned from the Redwood Room got your name in the papers and gave you some counter-culture cred, which wasn’t a bad thing for some folks. Even Leonard Bernstein had to get a trim to meet the Redwood Room’s standards.

The restaurant reviewer was a bit piqued that his dinner cost $9.20.

John Burton, whose hair barely touched his collar, got a state bill through the Assembly to end long-hair discrimination in 1973 and the following year the hotel put up a sign “Young or old, long hair, short hair. Enjoy the Clift’s Redwood Room.”

As a public service, here is the current list of what’s banned at the Redwood Room:

Shorts; sandals or flip flops; work boots; overly loose fitting, baggy or saggy jeans; jeans with excessive stitching, logos or writing; jeans with excessive tears, rips or holes; sports jerseys or athletic apparel; excessive jewelry, chains or mouth grills; T-shirts or flannel shirts; see-through clothing; sweatpants; and tank tops.

While beanies and “sports hats” are also on the no-go list, there is a curious possible exception for “stylish headwear.” Good for me?

Woody Beer and Coffee Fund

Salutations to Diane M. and David F.—both Friends of Woody in good standing—for their donations to the Woody beverage fund. (David, that first Friday works for me...)

Is it your turn to chip in for conviviality? Let's pick a date!

Sources

Brian B. Chin, Artillery at the Golden Gate (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1994).

Jack Rosenbaum, Our Man on the Town, San Francisco Examiner, July 11, 1971, pg. B1.

Long Hairs Sue the Clift Hotel, San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 1972, pg. 4.

No Barbershop Tune, San Francisco Examiner, December 9, 1972, pg. 3.

Jonathan Eddy, The Redwood Room: A Pleasant Place to Get Expensive Food, San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner, May 6, 1973, Datebook pg. 11

A Victory for the Long-Hairs, San Francisco Examiner, June 22, 1973, pg. 67.

Jack Rosenbaum, My Town, San Francisco Examiner, August 21, 1974, pg. 37.