Friedel Klussmann: The Woman who Saved the Cable Cars

Those “little cable cars” climbing “halfway to the stars” are one of the best loved and most iconic experiences for any visitor to San Francisco.  But few tourists hanging onto that lead rail as the Powell-Hyde car plunges down to the bay, or commuters perched atop Nob Hill on a California Street car about to sweep past the swanky hotels en route to the Financial District, will be aware that there was a time, shortly after the Second World War, when they became an endangered species.  Or even less so of the fact that they were saved for future generations through the foresight and resilience of a genteel, middle-aged lady from the eastern slopes of Telegraph Hill.

The devastating earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed much of the cable car system and triggered the rapid expansion in construction of electric streetcars with overhead wires, the first of which had been built in 1892.  And once it had been shown that the latest municipal buses, unlike the streetcars, could negotiate the steep hills, the continued viability of Andrew Hallidie’s invention was called into sharp focus.

By 1944 there were only five lines left in operation - the three independently owned by the California  Street Cable Railroad (Cal Cable) and the Powell-Mason and Washington-Jackson lines owned by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni).

On 27th January 1947, in his annual message to the Board of Supervisors, Mayor Roger Lapham, a New York businessman who had been elected with a mandate to streamline the city’s finances, announced that the “city should get rid of its cable cars as soon as possible”, claiming that they were losing $200,000 a year.

Lapham’s vision of “super buses” replacing the cable cars met with little public favour, and the San Francisco Chronicle encapsulated the opposition’s argument in its editorial of 3rd February when it wrote that: “bus lines would be a good deal less expensive. But against this saving should be weighted………the market value of an institution which helps make the city stand out among cities of the world”.

But the strongest advocate for their retention came in the unlikely form of prominent socialite, Mrs Friedel Klussmann, who, outraged by this pronouncement, immediately began to mobilise opposition through the equally improbable auspices of the California Spring Blossom and Wildflowers Association and the San Francisco Federation of the Arts.

On 4th March, within sight of the Mayor’s office, she held a joint meeting attended by leaders of 27 women’s civic groups and formed a Citizen’s Committee to Save the Cable Cars, collecting more than 1,000 signatures in the first four hours of its campaign for an initiative charter amendment, a figure that was to rise to 50,000 by the end of the battle with City Hall. Despite the increasingly desperate arguments emanating from the Mayor’s office, the Board of Supervisors voted 7 to 4 to place Measure 10 on the November ballot.

Neither Mrs Klussmann nor her Committee were mere soft-hearted sentimentalists, and they put forth a robust rebuttal of the economic argument for closure in a detailed press release that spoke about the “$34,630,522 of new money” generated by tourism in the previous year, adding that San Francisco “is constantly striving to interest the rest of the world in its historical and colorful background, of which the cable cars are the No.1 attraction”.  The loss of the Powell and Market turnaround would be a blow to the city’s identity that “cannot be measured”.

As Life Magazine put in in its 24th February edition: “It was as though Venice had proposed ridding itself of its gondolas”.  Visiting celebrities, including Elenor Roosevelt, publicly endorsed Mrs Klussmann’s campaign.  Newspapers were inundated with letters of support for the cable cars and accounts from passengers of their grim experiences waiting for and riding buses.

Measure 10 compelling the City to maintain and operate the existing cable car system was passed overwhelmingly by 166,989 votes to 51,457.  In her victory statement Mrs Klussmann said: “It is wonderful to know that San Franciscans appreciate their famous, efficient and safe cable cars”.  The Committee was galvanised again in 1950, 1951, 1954 and 1971 to fight further cost-cutting measures, with modest success.

In the same year Mrs Klussmann also founded San Francisco Beautiful (www.sfbeautiful.org), the “only organisation in San Francisco whose sole purpose is to protect and enhance the city’s urban environment”, working to “improve the quality of daily life, strengthen communities and empower citizens to maintain the character of the city’s parks, neighbourhoods and streets”.  It continues to do excellent work today, not least through its Friedel Klussmann grants made to organisations that “seek to maintain or enhance San Francisco’s unique beauty and livability”.

When she died at the age of 90 in 1986 the cable cars were decorated in black in her memory.  On 4th March 1997, the fiftieth anniversary of the Committee’s initial meeting outside City Hall, the Friends of the Cable Car Museum dedicated a mural to Mrs Klussmann at the cable car barn.  The turntable at the outer terminal of the Powell-Hyde line was also dedicated to her.

So next time, dear visitor, when you skirt the ridge of Russian Hill on a clanking, rumbling Powell-Hyde cable car and catch your breath at the bay vista spread out before you, spare a thought for the prosperous, middle-aged lady, whose vision and courage sixty years ago ensured that you can have those unforgettable experiences today.

I am particularly indebted to Walter Rice and Val Lupiz’s excellent article The Cable Car and the Mayor (www.cable-car-guy.com/html/cclm.html#top) for much of the detail provided above.

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Carol Doda,Twin Peaks and Lace Lingerie

San Francisco can claim more than its share of personalities who have changed the course of society and popular culture, and Carol Ann Doda ranks high on that list.

She was born on 29 August 1937 in Solano County, California, and grew up in Napa.  Her parents divorced when she was three. She dropped out of school and became a cocktail waitress and lounge entertainer at aged 14.

Described as a “lovely, busty and curvaceous blonde bombshell” she achieved fame, or notoriety depending upon your point of view, on 19 June 1964 at the Condor Club at the corner of Broadway and Columbus in North Beach, by dancing in a topless swimsuit, the first recognised entertainer of the era to do so, and spawning similar exhibitionism across the country. In fact, within 48 hours, the neighbouring bars had also gone topless, and at one point, 28 clubs along the Broadway strip were advertising bare-breasted dancers.

Her act, which she performed twelve times nightly, “began with a grand piano lowered from the ceiling by hydraulic motors;  Doda would be atop the piano dancing.  She descended from a hole in the ceiling.  She go-go danced the Swim to a rock and roll combo headed by Bobby Freeman as her piano settled on the stage.  From the waist up Doda emulated aquatic movements like the Australian crawl.  She also performed the Twist, the Frug and the Watusi“, all dances familiar to those of us growing up in the sixties.

She later spent $20,000 on enhancing her bust size from 34B to 44DD through a total of 44 (“just a coincidence” she said) direct silicone injections (now illegal because the plastic tends to migrate), earning her breasts the nickname of “the new Twin Peaks of San Francisco”.  She had them insured for $1.5 million with Lloyd’s of London, but never had recourse to claim on it. In his 1968 book, The Pump House Gang, Tom Wolfe referred to them as “two incredible mammiform protrusions, no mere pliable mass of feminine tissues and fats there but living arterial sculpture – viscera spigot – great blown-up aureate morning glories”.

Such was her popularity that delegates from the 1964 Republican National Convention flocked to see her and, four years later, she was given a film role as Sally Silicone in Head, created by Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson, and featuring The Monkees.  She appeared in another six films. The U.S.S. Kittyhawk aircraft carrier named her Pinup Girl of the Year and she even received a Business Person of the Year award from Harvard.

Doda created a further seismic impact in the entertainment industry on 3 September 1969 by dancing completely naked at the Condor, though she was obliged to reinstate the bottom part of her costume in 1972 after the California alcoholic beverages commission prohibited nude dancing in establishments that served alcohol.

She explained that “even in liberal San Francisco, what I did was technically a crime. The cops raided. The owner and I ended up in the slammer. I was back slamming on stage in two shakes of a stripper’s tail”.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in October 2011 Doda stated that she only caused a scandal “about a year and a half after I started, because the cops came in and said no more bottomless unless  you move the tables back 5 feet. I had to explain to the people we can’t do bottomless and topless because the health department folks are afraid our pubic hairs will jump into your drinks”.

As a witness during the trial of two completely naked dancers at the pink pussy Kat in Orangevale, California, arrested for “indecent exposure and lewd and dissolute conduct”, she performed to live song and dance numbers and a 17 minute movie entitled Guru You, at the Chuck Landis Largo Club in Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, which was set up as a temporary courtroom. Cross-examined by a deputy district attorney, Carol, dressed in a red miniskirt with blue piping and beige boots, explained that her act, rather than being pornographic in itself, represented a a satire on it, “to show people the humourous side of sex”.

She also became a spokesperson for Channel 36, now known as KGSC-TV, in San Jose when, filmed from the waist up and wearing clothes, she’d intone “you’re watching the perfect 36″ (there was no channel 44 at the time).

Doda returned to dancing at the Condor three times a night in 1982, at the age of 45, performing to blues, ragtime and rock ‘n’ roll, dressed “in a gold gown, traditional elbow-length gloves, and a diaphanous-wraparound.  Her clothing was removed until she wore only a G-string and the wraparound.  In the final portion she was attired in only the wraparound.  Her small body looked slimmer without clothes which was emphasised by the dwarfing effect of her breasts”.

Despite the notoriety she earned by being the first dancer to break the topless / bottomless taboos in the U.S., her act was rarely regarded as sleazy.  As she herself said: “I always just wanted to give people a good time, have fun.  Nothing really dirty – just fun”.

Larry Inla, who spent most of 1966 playing in a band called Stark Naked and the Car Thieves at the Galaxy, a couple of blocks from the Condor, reiterates this point, recalling that, thanks in no small part (sic) to Carol, “it was a fantastic place at an incredible time” and that the “ambience was more naughty-but-nice, in a sophisticated European city kind of way, not a sleazy, dirty kind of way”.

Retiring from stripping later in her mid forties (“you can’t go on stripping forever”), she formed her own rock band, the Lucky Stiffs, with whom she played for several years.

Doda now runs the highly respectable “Carol Doda’s Champagne and Lace Lingerie Boutique” in a pretty courtyard at 1850 Union Street in Cow Hollow, which she opened after San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Herb Caen, who was a clear fan, announced in the paper that she was going to do so. She specialises in “plus” sizes and waits on customers personally. She takes particular pride in being recommended by Macy’s, Nordstrom, Sacs, Neiman-Marcus and bridal stores who can’t cater for larger sizes.

Well into the new millennium, she has continued to put ten years of voice training to good effect by singing, whilst fully clothed, club standards like All of Me  at a variety of North Beach clubs, including Amante’s and Enrico’s Supper Club. In late 2011, at the age of 74, she was still performing at Gino and Carlo’s Bar on Green Street in North Beach, where she had been for around twelve years.

And finally, in a city with high foodie credentials, she has been truly immortalised in having a gourmet hamburger named after her at Bill’s Place at 2315 Clement at 24th in the Outer Richmond! Unsurprisingly, it consists of “two third of a pound plus hamburger patties served side by side on a sesame seed bun, each patty topped with an olive and full garnish on the side”.

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Lillian Coit: San Francisco’s Knickerbocker Glory

One of the most distinctive landmarks on the San Franciscan horizon, visible from most of the eastern half of the city, is 210 foot high Coit Tower on top of Telegraph Hill.

This is the story of the eccentric woman whose lifelong dedication to the city’s firefighters culminated in bequeathing a third of her fortune for its construction.

Lillian Hitchcock was born on 23 August 1843 at West Point, New York, the only child of Martha and Dr Charles M Hitchcock, a distinguished army surgeon, who had operated on the leg of Colonel Jefferson Davis. She moved with her parents to San Francisco in 1851.

Two days before Christmas that year she was rescued from the upper floor of the hotel in which she and her father were staying. Thanks to the firefighters from Knickerbocker Engine Company No.5. she was unharmed, fuelling a lifetime’s devotion to the same crew in their red shirts and war-like helmets.

This was in an era when fire carriages were designed to be pulled by hand. Firefighters lined up along a rope and pulled, like tug-of-war teams, in order to haul their engine to the fire. They would often be in competition with other companies to get to the blaze first. Such was the case when “Lillie” first saw her opportunity to repay “her men” for saving her when she was only eight years old.

Seven years after that event, the pretty, tomboyish 15 year old was walking home from school when she spied an underhanded Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5 falling behind the Manhattan No. 2 and Howard No. 3 companies in responding to a fire call on Telegraph Hill.

Intelligent and quick-witted, Lillie hurled her school books to the ground nd rushed to help, finding a vacant position on the rope and calling out to other bystanders to help get the engine up the hill.  Largely through her intervention, No.5 was the first to the fire.

Frederick J. Bowlen, Battalion Chief of the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD), wrote that it “was the story of Jeanne d’Arc at Orleans, The Maid of Saragossa and the Molly Pitcher of Revolutionary fame all over again” as she “exerted her feeble strength and began to pull, at the same time turning her flushed face to the bystanders and calling “Come on you men! Everybody pull and we’ll beat ‘em!”

From then Lillie became the Knickerbocker Engine Company No.5 mascot and honorary firefighter, swinging into action at the sound of every bell. She was elected an honorary member of the company on 3 October 1863, making her the only woman in the US to belong to a volunteer fire station. Her energy and speed were the envy of even the fittest of firemen. She rode frequently with No. 5, especially in street parades and other celebrations, bedecked in flowers and flags.

She wore a diamond-studded fireman’s badge reading “No.5” for the remainder of her life, started signing her name with a 5 after it, and even had its emblem embroidered on her bedsheets (some have suggested her undergarments too!). If a fireman fell ill she would sit with him in his sickroom, and provide floral tributes for the families of those who died.

By the age of 18 she was the “undisputed belle” of San Francisco according to Chief Bowlen.

Stories abound about her eccentric lifestyle. She was believed to have been engaged at one point to two men, wearing their engagement rings on alternate days. But she had resolved to marry wealthy easterner Howard Coit, a caller at the San Francisco Stock and Bond Exchange. Even after they had tied the knot in 1868, she continued to attend firemen’s balls and played poker with the men who nicknamed her “Firebell Lil”? She smoked cigars and wore trousers long before it was socially acceptable for women to do so, gaining her access to men-only establishments in North Beach. She is reputed even to have shaved her head to make the wigs fit better.

Her position in polite society did not prevent her from following her heart and dashing from parties and weddings in her barouche at the call of the doleful clang of a fire engine. Embarassing though this was for her respectable husband, she was generally regarded as an amiable eccentric and ladies either ignored or humoured her.

She was an “accomplished singer, dancer and guitarist” and enjoyed fine food, dining often at the famous French restaurant The Poodle Dog. She also kept her own recipe book.

Like her North Carolina mother, she was a southern sympathiser during the Civil War, spending the early war years there before moving to Paris where she became a notable figure at the court of Napoleon III, on one occasion marching into a prestigious masked ball dressed head to toe as a firefighter. She also travelled extensively in the east, particularly India, where she befriended the Maharaj.

But the lure of her adopted city, and in particularly its firefighters, was too much and she always returned to it, often bringing with her gifts from her regal contacts, notably rare gems, objets d’art and souvenirs.

Her long-suffering husband died in 1885, leaving a $250,000 estate. This was the trigger for Lillie to return to her wilder days, accompanying five men on an overnight camping trip and disguising herself as a man in order to lurk around the grubbiest dives at the waterfront.

Anxious to witness a prize fight she arranged for a pair of boxers to perform for her in her suite in the grand and elegant Palace Hotel in which she spent much of her later years. After she had the room cleared of furniture and breakables, the two men stripped and begun to pummel each other. Lillie watched this perched on a plush chair atop a table. After several rounds, and as the men had hit each other to a virtual standstill, the referee pleaded that the match be declared a draw, to which Lille retorted they should continue until a ”bloody knockout”. The Boston Globe hailed the event as “pioneering a new way of life for women” but the New York Globe was appalled, labelling it a “staggering shock”.

In 1904 a distant cousin, angered by her refusal to let him manage her financial affairs, broke into her room whilst she was entertaining a Major McClurry with the intention of killing her. McClurry stepped in and saved Lillie but was injured and died of his wounds. With the scandal still fresh, she left San Francisco and spent the last two decades of her life abroad.

She inherited a further $60,000 and property from her grandfather.

She died on 22 July 1929 at the Dante Sanatorium in San Francisco, bequeathing the city $118,000 (estimates vary from $100,000 to $125,000) to “be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city I have always loved”.

After lengthy deliberation, during which two of its members resigned on the grounds that Lillie had actually hated towers, the Coit Advisory Committee used the funds to build Coit Tower on the site of the first west coast telegraph 5 years later.  In addition, it also erected the statue of three firefighters, one carrying a woman in his arms, that Lillie had commissioned herself, in Washington Square Park.  It is this statue that she had intended should be the one to adorn Telegraph Hill.     

Because of the association with Lillie, the shape of the tower is generally, and not unreasonably, felt to resemble a fire nozzle.  However, Arthur Brown Jnr, who also designed City Hall, refuted this suggestion. Other theories, including one not unrelated to her affection for the men she rode with, have been postulated, but none of these are any more plausible.

She remains the unofficial patron saint of all firefighters in San Francisco to this day.

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The “Great San Franciscan Characters” Series

Having now posted the 16th article in the series, I think it is time to review the role of the “Great San Franciscan Characters” in my overall writing strategy. 

In my penultimate post of the last year (www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/99-not-out) I stated that not only would I be reinforcing the San Francisco theme of the blog, but also “working on more substantial, long term projects”.  One of those projects relates to this series. It had always been my intention that the material it contains might ultimately, with a fair wind, develop into a firm book proposal.  

Now if I am to make that a reality, and preserve the integrity of the subject matter, I will have to curtail publication of any more ”chapters”, or else the book will already be in the public domain and available for free! Moreover, having read through a number of the preceding articles, I feel there is a clear need for significant revision, both to improve the quality of the individual articles and to ensure a coherent style and approach to the whole.  

So apologies for anyone who was actually enjoying the series.  I hope I can replace it on the blog with (equally) interesting and entertaining pieces.

Now Lillie Hitchcock Coit and Joe Montana are calling.

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Great San Franciscan Characters #16: Big Bertha

“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun”.

Even those with the most basic knowledge of, or interest in, Shakespeare, will be familiar with these words from Romeo and Juliet. Of course, they are uttered by Romeo in the famous balcony scene in Act 2.

However, the scene before us is no Royal Shakespeare Company production in Stratford-upon-Avon but a gambling palace turned melodeon or music hall called the Bella Union, located at Washington and Kearney Streets in late nineteenth century San Francisco. 

And our “star-cross’d” lovers are not Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, or even Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, but a baseball bat wielding wild man and a 20 stone woman of whom it could not have been said for at least 30 years that she was “not yet fourteen”.  The incongruity does not end there – because of her bulk she cannot be trusted not to demolish the balcony the moment that she steps on to it, so she is placed centre stage whilst Romeo growls his immortal words from the balcony instead.

Romeo is played by Oofty Goofty, whom we have met already in this series (www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/great-san-franciscan-characters-12-oofty-goofty)   And his “all-seeing sun” was portrayed by Big Bertha, a wealthy woman with a dubious past.  Their performances are the talk of the town, although Oofty’s violent displays leave Bertha “covered with bruises from head to toe” every night, leading to her vowing never to play the part again.

Big Bertha, who is described by Herbert Asbury in his splendid The Barbary Coast as a “sprightly lass of 280 pounds”, had first appeared in the city in the mid 1880s claiming to be a wealthy Jewish widow in search of a man to help protect her fortune.  In order to test any suitor’s value and good faith, she required him to hand over to her a sum of money that she would then double and risk on an unnamed investment. 

This worked so successfully that she “collected several thousand dollars from a score of lovelorn males, not a penny of which was ever seen again by its rightful owner”. Although she was eventually arrested for a succession of such scams, none of her victims had the courage to charge her for fear of public humiliation. She was released on nominal bail and the case against her dropped.

She now decided to turn her attentions to a stage career, approaching Ned Foster and Jach Hallinan, managers of the Bella Union and Cremorne melodeons respectively. Recognising her potential they hired her immediately under joint management and put her on display in an empty storefront on Market Street. Dubbed the “Queen of the Confidence Women”, for ten cents she would, at regular intervals, rise from her reinforced chair and recount the list of dreadful crimes that she had committed in San Francisco and other cities, “embellishing her account with many vivid details”. 

She would then regale the assembled throng with horribly off key renditions of the only two songs she ever knew: A Flower from my Angel Mother’s Grave” and The Cabin Where the Old Folks Died. This proved so popular that, after a brief engagement at Bottle Koenig’s, where her erstwhile Romeo had also performed briefly, her act transferred to the Bella Union stage and converted into what became an equally celebrated song and dance revue in which she sang “sentimental ballads in a squeaky voice”.    

Aside from the Romeo and Juliet farce, Bertha was involved in one other crazy theatrical moment. She was cast in Byron’s Malzeppa as the eponymous hero strapped to a horse or, in her case, donkey as punishment for having an affair with a young countess. Her entrance always drew ecstatic applause, but one evening it all went horribly wrong.

Wilting under the nightly strain of carrying Bertha, the donkey lost its footing and crashed into the orchestra pit, taking the massively proportioned Bertha with it.  The musicians’ reaction has not been preserved for posterity but it is not unreasonable to speculate that their language was not equally as colourful as that bellowing from the lips of the hero / heroine’s. Neither can I report whether the hapless donkey sustained any lasting injury.

But it did herald the end of Bertha’s bizarre acting career, who confined herself to singing and, on occasions, dancing. This proved more successful, culminating in her wrestling ownership and management of the Bella Union in 1895. However, restrictions placed on the sale of liquor three years previously eventually forced her to sell up and leave.  And that is the last we hear of her.

“So please you, let me now be left alone”.  

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Great San Franciscan Characters #15: James “Shanghai” Kelly

“King of the Crimps”, James “Shanghai” Kelly was not, as you might have thought, a world renowned hairdresser or Vegas high roller but a notorious criminal in 19th century San Francisco. Crimping, or shanghaiing, was the practice of kidnapping men and forcing them to work on ships, and Kelly was the undisputed master of the art.

He was, as described by Herbert Asbury in his excellent “The Barbary Coast – An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld”, a “short, thick-set Irishman, with flaming red hair, a bristling red beard, and an irascible disposition”.  Seduced, like many of his contemporaries, by the prospect of great wealth as a result of the 1848 Gold Rush in California, he fled to San Francisco where he immediately established a three-storey sailors’ boardinghouse at 33 Pacific Street, between Drum and Davis Streets, in the heart of the area known as the Barbary Coast.  However, this was essentially a ”front” for his unscrupulous but lucrative business of supplying sea captains with men to fill boats rendered increasingly empty by the desertion inland of prospective crew members to seek their fortune.

Kelly satisfied the ship captains’ need by arranging for runners to row out to arriving ships and offer free drink and other inducements to frequent his  boardinghouse and saloons. Once there, the unsuspecting sailors would be drugged with the “Miss Piggott Special”, his own cocktail of schnapps and beer spiked with opium, laudanum or chloral hydrate. The “Shanghai smoke”, a cigar heavily laced with opium, would follow, and that lethal combination failed to render them unconscious then they would be hit on the head” As one historian put it: “the tools of his trade were knock-out drops and a blackjack”.

Once divested of their belongings – including their clothes – they were wrapped in a blanket, lowered through one of three trapdoors in the front of the bar and rowed out to a waiting vessel. The captain paid the crimp the agreed fee, hauled anchor, and set sail. When the sailors regained consciousness, they were well out to sea – heading to such faraway destinations as Shanghai.

His pre-eminence in the crimping game was most dramatically illustrated in what has become known as his “birthday party” escapade.  With his boardinghouse uncharacterstically short of guests, he was commissioned by one desperate sea captain to find 100 sailors urgently. The ever-resourceful Kelly quickly came up with a plan. Chartering a decrepit old paddlewheel steamer, the Goliah, he put the word out on the streets that it was his birthday and everyone was invited aboard to celebrate with free food and drink.

 

Ninety men showed up and the Goliah put out to sea “amid great merriment of drinking, eating, and song”. As it left dock, Kelly proposed a toast: “to all my faithful friends, you’ve made me what I am today (heh-heh).  Now down the hatch”. As soon as all the drugged guests had passed out, Kelly ferried them to the infamous New York based sailing ship, the Reefer, and two other vessels anchored off the Heads, just outside the Golden Gate. The still unconscious “sailors” were handed over to their new captains, who sailed away.

Mindful that questions were sure to be asked when he returned with an empty Goliah, Kelly sailed down the California coast to ponder his next move – and struck lucky.  Encountering the Yankee Blade off Point Concepcion, west of Santa Barbara, that had run aground and was taking on water, he saved its whole crew and sailed them up to the Market Street Wharf where, unaware of the true story, the citizens of San Francisco proclaimed him a hero.

Some chroniclers of the Barbary Coast have shed doubt over the accuracy of this story but, nonetheless, it lives on in San Francisco legend. In fact, it was featured in an episode of the long-running TV show, Death Valley Days, narrated by Robert Taylor, in 1967. Kelly’s place in the city’s mythology was reinforced in 1985 by the opening of an old-time saloon named after him at Polk between Pacific and Broadway on Nob Hill.

His crimping days were over when he himself was shanghaied and ended up jumping ship in Peru, although the message that got back to his adopted city was that he had been shot by one of his former runners.    

I am indebted to Gail MacGowan’s article on Kelly on www.sfcityguides.org which, in turn, is based upon works by Charles F. Adams, Herbert Asbury, Samuel Dickson and Bill Pickelhaupt.

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Great San Franciscan Characters #12: Oofty Goofty

Of all the eccentric characters that have graced San Francisco’s history, Oofty Goofty must rank amongst the most bizarre.  His real name (Leonard Borchardt appears to be the most likely contender), background (he may have been a deserter from the US Cavalry), and place and date of  both his birth and death are all bones of contention, yet his strange antics intrigued and entertained residents of the City during the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Herbert Asbury‘s 1933 book The Barbary Coast, An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld, upon which most of the limited knowledge we have of of Oofty is based, explained that he acquired his name during his first sideshow appearance before the San Francisco public as a wild man on Market Street:

“From crown to heel he was covered with road tar, into which were stuck great quantities of horsehair, lending him a savage and ferocious appearance.  He was then installed in a heavy cage, and when a sufficiently large number of people had paid their dimes to gaze upon the wild man recently captured in the jungles of Borneo and brought to San Francisco at enormous expense, large chunks of raw meat were poked between the bars by an attendant.  This provender the wild man gobbled ravenously, occasionally growling, shaking the bars, and yelping these fearsome words: “Oofty goofty! Oofty goofty!”"

This frightening spectacle lasted no more than a week before he became ill, unable to perspire through his thick covering of tar and hair.  Doctors at the Receving Hospital tried in vain for several days to remove his costume, and only when he was “liberally doused with a tar solvent” and “laid out upon the roof of the hospital” did it finally come off.

His wild man career abruptly cut short, Oofty turned to the theatre, initially securing a spot at Bottle Koenig’s, a Barbary Coast beer hall.  After just one song and dance, however, he was flung into the street, a humiliating and painful experience had it not been for the fact that it showed him the direction in which his career, or “work” as he termed it, should now turn. 

Despite being kicked ferociously and landing heavily upon a stone sidewalk, he discovered that he felt no physical pain. For the next 15 years he exploited this new found talent by touring the city and allowing himself, at a price dependent upon the degree of brutality inflicted, to be kicked and battered by others.  Let Asbury again describe his modus operandi:

“Upon payment of ten cents a man might kick Oofty Goofty as hard as he pleased, and for a quarter……..with a walking stick.  For fifty cents Oofty Goofty would become the willing, and even prideful, recipient of a blow with a baseball bat, which he always carried with him…..It was his custom to approach groups of men, in the streets and in bar-rooms, and diffidently inquire:  “Hit me with a bat for four bits, gents.  Only four bits to hit me with this bat, gents”.   

It was only when heavyweight boxer John L. Sullivan struck Oofty with a billiard cue, fracturing three vertebrae, that he finally called it a day. He will no doubt have enjoyed Sullivan’s later World Championship defeat at the hands of San Francisco’s own James J. Corbett.  The blow from Sullivan caused Oofty to walk with a limp for the rest of his life, and he was no longer immune to pain, flinching at the slightest touch. 

There are many other colourful stories surrounding Oofty, for example:

• acting as a human skittle in Woodward’s Garden where customers could win a cigar if they hit him with a baseball;
• performing alongside Big Bertha (another candidate for inclusion in this series) in a Shakespearean parody entitled “Borneo and Juliet”;
• attempting to push a shiny red wheelbarrow to New York for a bet (a challenge that failed after just 40 miles when he was knocked over in the dark and landed head first in a creek); and
• being shipped upside down in a box to Sacramento as a joke gift for a young lady and being left in the unopened package over the weekend.

Despite his physical debility he moved to Texas where he continued to play the fool for his living, drinking beer with a bar spoon and engaging in quail eating contests. 

  

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Great San Franciscan Characters #11: Edsel Ford Fong

How would you feel if you walked into a restaurant this evening and were immediately greeted by the head waiter admonishing you in a broken English Chinese accent to “sit down and shut up”, then ignoring you completely or, if you were lucky, hurling the menu at you?  Oh, and don’t make the mistake of requesting an English translation of that menu if you want to avoid a further volley of vitriol. And if you are a woman, or have women in your party, keep a close eye on that waiter because he is prone to grope female customers (the only time he is likely to crack into a smile).

So how would you react?  Walk out?  Ask to speak to the manager?  Post an adverse review on Trip Advisor?  Sue the restaurant?  Punch the waiter’s lights out?   

Well, that is likely to have been your experience had you visited the Sam Wo restaurant on Washington Street, between Grant Avenue and Waverly Place, in Chinatown during the decades following the second world war.  And it is equally likely that you may have chosen to dine there in the express hope that you would be on the receiving end of such appalling service.  Indeed, being insulted at Sam Wo became as much a “must do” San Francisco experience as drinking Irish coffee at the Buena Vista Café or driving across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Your tormentor would have been Edsel Ford Fong, the “world’s rudest waiter”, who, in the words of Stephen Jay Hansen in his excellent “The Other Guide to San Francisco – or 105 Things to Do After You’ve Taken a Cable Car to Fisherman’s Wharf”, ”baits and berates male customers and shamelessly hustles every woman who enters his domain.  He’ll throw you a load of chopsticks with a brusque “Dry!” or spirit away your date to help him wait on tables.  He’s a refreshingly irreverent wit and an absolutely crazed madman”.

It’s No. 58 by the way (of the things to do that is, not a dish on the menu). 

Fong, who was born in Chinatown on 6^th May 1927, was an imposing figure measuring six foot and weighing 200 pounds, sporting a severe crew cut hairstyle and wearing both a long apron and permanent scowl.  He exploited his reputation brazenly, criticising customers’ menu choices, getting orders wrong (deliberately?), slamming food on the table and spilling it over the customers, refusing to provide knives and forks as alternatives to chopsticks, taking plates before the customer had finished eating, and reacting angrily to tips that didn’t exceed 15% (surely such an entertainer has a right to expect more?!). Unsuspecting white tourists were particularly fair game for his most patronising and scurrilous comments.

Herb Caen, the celebrated San Francisco Chronicle columnist, was a regular patron of Sam Wo and an amused advocate of Fong, repeating Edsel’s finest insults from the night before in the next morning’s edition of the newspaper.  Fong would respond by proudly waving it at anyone in the restaurant who was interested.

He died in April 1984 but his legacy lives on in many ways, not least in the occasionally churlish service still prevalent at Sam Wo today, though it lacks the panache brought to it by Fong.  A series of club-level Asian food stands at AT& T Park are named after him, and his status in the community has been visually commemorated in his inclusion in the 200 foot long, 7 foot tall “Gold Mountain” mural depicting Chinese contributions to US history, painted on the side of an apartment building in Romolo Place near the intersection of Broadway and Columbus in North Beach.

Fong also appears in several episodes of the Tales of the City books by Armistead Maupin and was played by Arsenio “Sonny Trinidad”in the ensuing miniseries.

Only in San Francisco huh?

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Great San Franciscan Characters #10: Val Diamond

No less a San Franciscan institution than the Golden Gate Bridge or the cable cars is Val Diamond, the heartbeat for thirty years of the world’s longest running musical revue, Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon.  

Valeria Adriana Maria Francesca Diamond was born, the daughter of a Jewish father and Italian immigrant mother, in Oakland in 1951 and raised in Castro Valley. Attracted to the theatre from a young age, she started her acting career in high school, playing the lead role in Medea and Anna in The King and I.   For the next eight years she was lead singer in a rock band called the Sounds of Joy that toured the country.

Becoming tired of life on the road she accepted an invitation to join the cast of Beach Blanket Babylon.  Despite initial reservations that a zany topical revue in which she had to wear increasingly gargantuan hats whilst attempting to hold a musical number, did not fit with her ambitions to be a serious actress and musician, she became one of  its most enduring and beloved icons.  Her first of around 11,500 performances came on 17th January 1979 when her roles included that of a singing waitress with a giant Coca-Cola bottle on her head and a singing envelope exhibiting just legs and face.

She made many other parts her own during her thirty year residence, including her favourite, a French whore, Jewish mother, cowgirl, Japanese maid, Marie Antoinette, the Singing Nun, the Queen and a tap dancing Yankee Doodle Ghandi. 

But it should not be forgotten that the outlandish costumes and often surreal scenes were not able to mask a great voice too. Janet Lynn Roseman, in her book Beach Blanket Babylon - A Hats-Off Tribute to San Francisco’s Most Extraordinary Musical Revue, referred to  her as the “queen of the belters” and John F. Kennedy Jnr exclaimed ”the one with husky voice, boy, can she sing”.  Amongst her show stealers were “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, “Lili Marlene”, “City Lights” and “Coroner Man”.

The image, however, that audiences will most readily conjure up of  Diamond, is of, as Miss San Francisco, her gliding serenely onto the stage at the end of the show in her magnificent, three hundred pound San Francisco landmarks hat to lead them in joyous renditions of Happy Trails to You and San Francisco (pictured above and contained in video at end of this article).

Perhaps her most treasured night was a seventeen minute Beach Blanket Babylon performance for Queen Elizabeth II at the Davies Symphony Hall in 1983.  At the end she appeared wearing an enormous London hat, containing replicas of Buckingham Palace (complete with marching guards), the Tower of London and Big Ben which opened to reveal photographs of the Royal Family.  The Duke of Edinburgh is reputed to have been particularly entranced by this moment, and the Queen claimed that visiting San Francisco was the highlight of her trip to the United States.

She also played before the Prince of Wales, Rock Hudson, Rudolph Nuryev and Mikhail Baryshnikov as well as countless American public figures and celebrities, and was invariably in the show’s welcome party for visiting dignitaries.  When the 1989 World Series resumed at Candlestick Park following the Loma Prieta earthquake, she led a singalong of San Francisco, wearing a giant (no pun intended) baseball themed hat.  More recently, she sang the national anthem at the Giant’s new home of Pacific Bell Park (now AT & T Park) (below).

Mindful that the huge hats she wore might have diverted the audience’s attention from the skill in her performance, she derived immense satisfaction as she explained in Roseman’s book: “when you really feel fine is when you’ve sung some touching ballad wearing something crazy on her head, and you’ve gotten the audience to stop laughing and listen to you sing, and then they give you an ovation.  That’s when it feels great!”.

Even when surgery in 2001 to treat nodes on her vocal chord nerves threatened her career, she was back onstage within five months. 

Diamond’s departure from Beach Blanket Babylon has never been adequately explained and provoked much anger and bewilderment amongst fans.  Her final performance was on 23rd September 2009 when she knew was leaving, although it was not announced to the public for more than a week afterwards.

Nonetheless, producer Jo Schuman Silver, widow of the show’s creator Steve Silver, paid tribute to her by saying that she was “one of the most versatile and professional performers to ever grace the stage at Club Fugazi“, and that Beach Blanket’s long running success was “in part, due to Val’s immeasurable contributions”.  

She married the company’s trumpet player, Steve Salgo, in 1987 and still lives in Sonoma.

The following short video gives a flavour of the show and features some iconic Diamond moments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZHxmcXMjfY

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Great San Franciscan Characters #9: “Sunny Jim” Rolph

Charming, charismatic, successful businessman and whorehouse owner, ”Sunny Jim” Rolph was the longest serving mayor in San Francisco history. 

He was born to British parents in the city on 23rd August 1869 and educated in the Mission District where he  also lived in adult life in a large mansion at the corner of San Jose and 25th Streets.  After jobs as a newsboy, clerk and messenger he entered the shipping business in 1900, forming a partnership with George Hind.  For the next ten years he served as President of two banks, one of which he established, as well as founding the Rolph Shipping Company and James Rolph Company.  He also directed the Ship Owners and Merchants Tugboat Company and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

Prior to his country’s entry into the First World War he supplied coal and ships to the Allied Countries.  With an estimated wealth of $5 million he bought a ranch west of Stanford University.  It is reported that the Department of Public Works made all the improvements to the ranch at the taxpayers’ expense, not the last time his appropriation of public funds for his own personal gain was mooted.   

In 1911 Rolph was encouraged to run for Mayor against the incumbent P.H. McCarthy who had failed to curb the corruption that was rife in the city.  Following a six week campaign categorised by egg throwing, fist fights and police riots, he won comfortably.

His first major project was the construction of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, designed not only to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal but, equally importantly, to showcase the remarkable renaissance of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.  It was  during the latter that he he had earned the gratitude of the city by, as head of a relief committee, delivering water and supplies with his horse and wagon.

He opened the Exposition by, pied piper style, leading 150,000  followers down Van Ness Avenue and Lombard Street to the Fairgrounds, now the Marina District.  The profits from the highly successful event were used to build the Civic Auditorium.

As Mayor, he personally oversaw the construction of City Hall, and on the day it was dedicated in 1915, climbed the golden dome, “beamed at the astonished faces below”, and ran up the American flag. 

His nickname derived from his relentlessly cheerful, gregarious disposition.  With a theme song entitled ”There Are Smiles That Make You Happy” he paraded about town in, alternately a stovepipe silk or derby hat, dapper black suit with a flower, usually a carnation, in the buttonhole, smiling and “pressing the flesh” of the city’s residents as if he were on a continuous election campaign trail. He would often pick up pedestrians on his way to City Hall and drive them to their destination.  He was known as the “Mayor of All the People”, relating to people of all races, religions and political parties.  He even invited Communist protestors into his office for a chat. 

He had time for everyone as he ”popped up” at just about every public event, seeing it as a photo opportunity to promote himself.  His role was primarily as the charming figurehead for city government, leaving the day to day running of his administration (which bored him), including several major public works projects such as the Bay Bridge, Hetch Hetchy water system, which supplies most of the city’s water,  and San Francisco Airport, to trusted colleagues.

Rolph’s affable manner and the spectacular but costly festivities he arranged to celebrate major political events may have endeared him to the man in the street, but he presided over a “lawless, debauched city”in which “gambling and prostituion thrived”.  Moreover, he contributed personally towards this by owning the Pleasure Palace, an “entertainment hideout”at 21st Street and Sanchez on Liberty Hill.  It is hardly surprising, therefore, that he made only half-hearted attempts to clean up the city.  This, along with his lax stance on enforcing Prohibition, may have partly accounted for his four re-elections and nineteen years in office.

His flamboyant image extended to appearances in several films, notably the 1915 documentary Mabel and Fatty Viewing the World’s Fair at San Francisco, directed by Fatty Arbuckle and the short, Hello Frisco.

Rolph’s drinking and alleged affair with movie star, Anita Page, however, scarred his final term in office.  He missed meetings at City Hall and drivers would be despatched to find him. When he did turn up he appeared drunk and patently unwell.   

He was elected the 27th Governor of California from 6th January 1931 when he resigned as San Francisco Mayor.  However, the advent of the Great Depression and the budgetary constraints that that inevitably imposed upon the State, had serious personal and political consequences.  Moreover, laregly as a result of his shenanigans over a previous gubernatorial campaign, his contract to build three new ships for the Federal Government was cancelled and he was banned from selling ships to foreign governments, accelerating his financial ruin.

His political inadequacies were also regularly exposed, provoking a recall movement against him within two years of taking office.  His tenure was dogged by controversy, not least when he publicly praised the citizens of San Jose, whilst promising to pardon anyone involved, following the November 1933 lynching of the confessed murderers of Brooke Hart, the son of a wealthy local merchant.  He was thereafter known as ”Governor Lynch”. 

As he fell into serious debt his health failed, although he continued to make personal appearances against medical advice.  Following a number of heart attacks he died on 2nd June 1934 at Riverside Farm, Santa Clara County.  He was brought home to lie in state in the City Hall rotunda.

Notwithstanding his many flaws, Rolph’s popularity in his home town was unquestioned. and illustrated in the decision to name the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, that had begun to be built under his stewardship, the “James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Bridge”.

Finally, I am particularly indebted for much of the detail in this article to the historical essay on Rolph written by Daniel Steven Crofts.

 

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