152 years ago, Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor.
The Thrilling Conclusion
involves archival pigeons.
And the one underneath Civic Center they turned into a garage.
Kidding. It’s still there, 243,000 gallons of Hetch Hetchy’s finest.
Click here, learn something
Unless you’re one of those people who can’t be taught anything.
In which case, what are you doing here?
Sunday was Thanksgiving for booze, as I mentioned the other day.
My great-grandmother on my father’s side was a bootlegger, a necessity given the combination of many children and a deadbeat husband. She was found out, and few people can agree whether it was then that she lost the house or the farm.
She lived to be 104.
San Francisco baseball, a byzantine history
“In 1956, the Seals won their last Pacific Coastal League title. During the 1957 season, the New York Giants announced their move to San Francisco for the 1958 season, and the Seals were forced to relocate as a result. The Seals team and the Giants AAA team in Minneapolis swapped franchises, with the Seals team moving to Phoenix and becoming a minor league affiliate of the new San Francisco Giants, and were renamed the Phoenix Giants. This franchise then moved to Tacoma, Washington from 1960 to 1965; but returned to Phoenix for the 1966 season. The team remained in Phoenix until the MLB expanded in 1998 with the Diamondbacks. This forced a move of the former Seals franchise. In a complicated deal the franchise became today’s Tucson Sidewinders, displaced the existing Tucson Toros, and affiliated with the Diamondbacks. The Giants’ affiliation was transferred to the displaced Tucson AAA franchise, which became today’s Fresno Grizzlies.”
[source]
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios, the 19th Century Hugo Chávez.
Every August 6th, the date of Bolivar’s liberation of Caracas, a wreath is placed upon this statue, this invisible bronze mass adjacent to James Lick’s wretched Pioneer Monument (bringer of religion and greed), spitting distance from Ashurbanipal (bringer of libraries and poker-out of eyes).
Nearer City Hall, you will find the statue of Abraham Lincoln (bringer of stovepipes and theatre jokes); for sake of longevity we must omit the Zhang Huan currently occupying Civic Center (bringer of Harryhausen allusions).
The Hall McAllister, the George Rickey: you’re on your own.
Initially conceived as alternatives to bars and gambling houses for working men, the various libraries created by philanthropists were initially engineered toward industrial and mechanical arts. In San Francisco, out of work miners might discover an aptitude for extracting riches of another sort from the land.
The chess club is the oldest continuously running one in the country.
They’ve a very nice staircase.
El Cinco de Mayo gets all the fratboy glory, but the crazy thing is that even Spanish restaurants in the Mission celebrate it. I’d like to remind them that El Dos de Mayo is when Madrileños stood up to Napoleon’s bitches, so theoretically they could be capitalizing on the entire first week of May (predictably, Spain’s May Day celebrations put ours to shame).
Goya’s El Tres de Mayo, above, shows that France really wasn’t into their feelings. El Dos de Mayo, below, shows how romantic hand-to-hand combat (and Moors!) could be.
I wonder how things will turn out when we fight LA?