Quotable San Francisco: Historic Moments in Memorable Words

by Arcadia Publishing

Overview

"San Francisco is forty-nine square miles surrounded by reality." -Paul Kantner, founder of San Francisco rock band Jefferson Airplane.

Surging from hamlet to boomtown overnight, San Francisco is the most meteoric "instant city" in history. Over the decades, residents have offered unique perspectives through journals, letters, and newspapers, their words bringing another time to life. Discover San Francisco through the eyes of miners and "ladies of the night." Relive the experiences of robber barons and beatniks who flourished in this tiny corner of the world with fewer than one million souls. From the Gold Rush to the Tech Rush, the city by the bay been the site of daring innovations, counterculture upheavals, and social rebellions that shaped generations.

With commentary, background and extraordinary images, historians Terry Hamburg and Richard Hansen guide you through these colorful quotes, showing San Francisco as it once was, and what it aspired to be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467147200
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	03/29/2021
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	568,980
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Terry Hamburg was trained as a historian, completing graduate studies at the University of Michigan and Cambridge University. After a brief foray as a hippie and political activist, he became an antiques dealer in San Francisco. Terry finally found his calling as the director of the Heritage Foundation at Cypress Lawn Cemetery, a place rich in California history and art. He oversees and conducts tours and lectures, plans special events and writes a newsletter and blog articles. For more than fifty years, Richard Hansen has been researching and documenting San Francisco and California history. In collaboration with his mother, onetime city archivist Gladys Hansen, they became world-renowned experts on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, fire and epidemic—especially on those who died during the disasters. Today, he remains active in many San Francisco historical organizations and is the founder and driving force behind the virtual museum (www.sfmuseum.org).

Table of Contents

Foreword Carl Nolte 7

Preface 9

1 Humble Origins 11

2 Instant City 16

Mud and Madness 19

Noah's Ark 22

Laws of Supply and Demand 27

Dante's Inferno 32

Law and Disorder 35

Gangs of San Francisco: The Ducks and the Hounds 35

Armed to the Teeth 37

Black Bart: The Fact 43

Paladin: The Fiction 45

Sin City 45

Games People Play 50

Then There Is Liquor-And More Liquor 51

Gender Matters 54

Til Inconvenience Do Us Part 58

3 Paris of the Pacific 59

Growing Pains 60

Conquering the Desert 67

Manna from Heaven (Again)…More Precisely, the Eastern Slope of Mount Davidson, a Peak in the Virginia Range of Nevada 71

"Nothing Seemed Impossible" 74

"The Terrible '70s" 78

Culture High and Low 80

A Mad City with Perfectly Insane People 84

4 The Great Earthquake and the Great Recovery 91

Rush to Judgment: The Fatality Tally and the Cover-Up 99

Boosterism and the Second Instant City 106

Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: PPIE in the Sky 109

Seven Wonders of the (World) Exposition 118

The Aeroscope 118

Airplanes 118

Dayton Flood 118

Ford Assembly Line 118

Panama Canal Model 119

Telephone Goes Transcontinental 119

Tower of Jewels 119

Honorable Mention: Stella 120

5 Between the Wars 121

Bottom's Up in San Francisco 121

A Big City Grows Bigger and Better 124

Barbary Coast Bites the Dust, and All That Jazz 127

World's Oldest Profession: More Professional Than Ever 129

A Mad City with Perfectly Insane People…Redux 130

"Go West, Young Man" 133

Fun at the End of the World 135

Fun in the Old City: Fisherman's Wharf 137

Tale of Two Bridges 140

Did You Know? Golden Gate Bridge Facts 141

Tale of Three Islands 144

Angel Island 144

Alcatraz Island 145

Treasure Island 147

The Great Depression 150

The Internment 151

6 A Place Like No Other 155

Rebel with a Cause: 1950s 162

A Mad City with Perfectly Insane People…Redux…Redux 164

The Beat Goes On 166

Counterculture 169

The Sexual Revolution 171

The Beat Goes On: The "Left" Coast 175

Slow Growth Movement 177

Modern Times 185

Addendum: Unique San Francisco Food and Spirits 195

Chop Suey 195

Fortune Cookie 195

Irish Coffee 196

IT'S-IT 196

Mai Tai 196

Martini 197

Pisco Punch 197

Rice-A-Roni: The San Francisco Treat 198

Sourdough Bread 198

Bibliography 201

About the Authors 207