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 #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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Great San Franciscan Characters #8: Rev. Cecil Williams

One of the most controversial and radical religious and social leaders of his time, the Rev. Cecil Williams has been an influential figure in San Francisco public life for the past half century.  Combining spirituality, left-wing politics and unstinting social activism he has been a inspirational spokesperson for the poor and margininalized in the city and across the country.  

He was born on 22nd September 1929 in San Angelo, Texas, one of six children.  After graduating from Huston-Tillotson University in 1952, he was one of the first five African American graduates of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University three years later.

He bacame the pastor of the GLIDE Memorial United Methodist Church at Ellis and Taylor in San Francisco in 1963.  Its mission has been to “create a radically inclusive, just and loving community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization”. 

Diversity and compassion have been at the heart of Williams’s work.  People of all races, ethnic backgrounds, social classes, cultures, ages, faiths and sexual orientations are welcome to join in the Celebrations held every Sunday at 9am and 11am to “experience the energy of spiritual liberation coupled with the fusion of jazz, blues and gospel performed by the renowned GLIDE Ensemble choir and the Change Band”.  An example of this is contained in the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg7jmgnwAds

It is the practical demonstration of his belief in diversity that has earned him both veneration and notoriety.  In 1965 he became the first minister to perform  same sex marriages long before the battles of the past decade and he was also instrumental in forming the Council on Religion and Homosexuality in 1964.  The church provided healing and comfort for the LGBTQ community in 1978 in the aftermath of Harvey Milk’s assassination, and it was the first  in the US to offer HIV testing after Sunday services during the AIDS epidemic of the eighties.

In 1967 Williams courted further controversy by ordering the cross removed from the church’s sanctuary, stating that it was a symbol of death and that his congregation should celebrate life and living instead.

His contribution to the struggle for civil and human rights is unquestioned and prompted him to host political rallies in which Angela Davis and the Black Panthers spoke in the seventies.  He has also arranged lectures by Bill Cosby and Billy Graham.  Other prominent public figures that have frequented and supported the church’s work include Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Robin Williams, Maya Angelou and Warren Buffett.

Under his leadership, GLIDE Memorial became one of the most prominent liberal churches in the US, and now boasts a diverse congregation of over 11,000 members.  It is the largest provider of social services in the city, serving over 3,000 meals a day, providing AIDS / HIV screenings, innovative adult education programs, creative arts and mentoring for youth,  computer and job skills training, drug and alcohol recovery programs and giving assistance to women dealing with domestic violence, homelessness, substance abuse and mental health issues.  GLIDE Health Services was hailed by House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a model for national healthcare in March 2008.

Williams retired as pastor in 2000 in accordance with United Methodist Church rules.  However, the local congregation and affiliated non-profit foundation hired him in the newly created role of Minister of Liberation, thus enabling him to continue officially serving the community and church.

He was married to school teacher Evelyn Robinson from 1956 until their divorce in 1976.  They had two children, Albert and Kim.

He has been married to Janice Mirikitani, who co-founded the GLIDE Memorial Church with him and who has worked with him on many social programs, since 1982. 

 

The church is credited with helping Will Smith and his son get back on their feet in the 2006 film, the Pursuit of Happyness.  His autobiography I’m Alive was published in 1980.

In recent years he has received numerous honors and awards, including Southern Methodist University’s Most Distinguished Alumni, the National Caring Award and an appointment as Chairman for the Northern California Dr Martin Luther King Jnr Birthday Observance Commitee at the personal request of Dr King’s widow.

The challenges for Williams and his church are no less demanding than they were when he became pastor neary fifty years ago, and are best expressed, along with a restatement of his original vision, by the GLIDE website:

“a suffering economy, poverty, drug abuse, violence, and despair continue to persist in San Francisco as they do across the country. By working to combat these problems, GLIDE serves as an oasis in a desert of hopelessness, marching to the edge where victories for social justice are won. GLIDE is a place where old, destructive ways of being are thrown out and new ones created. Where names are named and love is celebrated and a simple call goes out to all races, classes, genders, ages, and sexual orientations: It’s recovery time. It’s time to love unconditionally”.

I trust we can all say “Amen” to that.

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Great San Franciscan Characters #6: Herb Caen…

Few cities can have been as fortunate as San Francisco in having a chronicler (no pun intended) as prolific, urbane and popular as Herb Caen who wrote, in its daily newspapers, about life in the city for almost sixty years.  With more than 16,000 columns of over 1,000 words each lifelong friend, author and restaurateur, Barnaby Conrad, estimated that if “laid end to end, his columns would stretch 5.6 miles, from the Ferry Building to the Golden Gate Bridge“. 

Herbert Eugene Caen was born on 3rd April 1916 in Sacramento, though he claimed to have been conceived on the Marina in San Francisco during the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition as his parents spent the summer there “complaining about the cold”. 

He joined the Sacramento Union as a sports reporter in 1932 on graduating from high school.  Four years later he was hired to write a radio column for the San Francisco Chronicle, beginning an association that was to last for 50 of the next 61 years.  

On the scrapping of the radio column he persuaded the editor, Paul Smith, that he could write a daily column on the city, and  It’s News to Me duly debuted on 5th July 1938, appearing thereafter for six days a week.

When the U.S. entered the Second World War in 1942 he joined the Air Force, assigned to communications, and reached the rank of captain.  Returning to his Chronicle column, he continued to record and comment upon the foibles of local government and personailities.

Caen often referred to San Francisco as Baghdad-by-the-Bay,  a term he coined to reflect the city’s exotic multiculturism.  A collection of his essays bearing the same title was published in 1949, going through seven printings.  In 1953 he published the book Don’t Call it Frisco after an Examiner news item of the same name on 3rd April 1918 when Judge Mogan, presiding in a divorce case, stated that “No one refers to San Francisco by that title except people from Los Angeles”.  Emperor Norton (see #3 in this series) had previously raged against the use of the term and issued one of his imperial proclamations to that effect.  

However, a year later he left the Chronicle for higher paid work at the San Francisco Examiner, for which he worked until 1958 when he was persuaded to return to his former employer on promise of a better salary.  His “homecoming” column was published on 15th January.    

In 1976 he published One Man’s San Francisco, a fine collection of some of the best writing from his columns.  In 1988, the fitieth anniversary of the column was marked by a special edition of the Chronicle’s “Sunday Punch”.  At the age of 75 he decided to slow down by reducing his output from six to five days a week!

Caen was hugely popular and a highly influential figure in San Francisco society.  He was described by the Chronicle as a “major wit and unwavering liberal who could be charming, outspoken and, at times, disagreeable.” 

He called his work “three-dot journalism”, in reference to the ellipses by which he separated his column’s short items, all composed on his “Loyal Royal” typewriter.

His writing was imbued with a gentle, dry wit and an intimate knowledge of the politics, society and culture his adopted city and the wider Bay Area. Hardly a show, party or any other significant event in San Francisco was complete without Caen’s gregarious presence, and his clever, sometimes acerbic, comments on it the next morning in his column.  Conrad said that “he seemed to know everyone in the world; he somehow made them honorary San Franciscans and let us, his readers, have the privilege of knowing them, too”.

His witticisms and plays on words would fill another ten features, but here are a few:

• “the trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around”;
• “I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there”;
• “cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything”; and
• “the only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever”.

The Bay Bridge was ”the car-strangled spanner”, City Hall “Silly Hall” and Berkeley was “Berserkeley”.

Whilst many of his invented words have passed into history others have become not only synonymous with San Francisco but have entered the everyday language.  On 2nd April 1958, in a Pocketful of Notes, he reported on a party hosted by 50 Beatniks which spread to “over 250 bearded cats and kits”.  This is the first known use of the word.  And during the Summer of Love in 1967 he contributed more than anybody to popularising the term “hippie”. 

In 1996 he was the recipient of a special award from the Pulitzer Prize Board which acclaimed his “extraordinary and continuing contribution as a voice and conscience of the city”.  On 14th June of the same year 75,000 people, including Walter Cronkite, Robin Williams, Willie Mays, Don  Johnson and Mayor Willie Brown who presided over the event, celebrated Herb Caen Day.

He espoused many liberal causes over his career, including a life long opposition to the death penalty.  He was also one of the first mainstream newspaper men to question the Vietnam War.  But it is to his beloved San Francisco that we return for one of his most passionate campaigns, namely to have the hideous and excessively busy Embarcadero Freeway, or “Dambarcadero” as he called it, demolished.  Success came, but from an unexpected source.  The Loma Priete earthquake in 1989 damaged it so severely that the decision was taken to pull it all down.  A three mile sweep  of the Embarcadero is now named “Herb Caen Way…” in his honour.  The wide promenade is the most eastern street in San Francisco, curving round its northeast corner, proceeding along the waterfront, and ending near AT & T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, the team Caen loved.   

Despite a terminal lung-cancer diagnosis, Caen continued to write almost until his death on 1st February 1997, though his output understanadably shrunk over time. His funeral six days later was held in the Grace Cathedral, attended by 250 people with hundreds more outside listening to the hymns and eulogies over loudspeaker.

Caen had willed to the city a fireworks display which was given in Aquatic Park in front of Ghiradelli Square, concluding with a pyrotechnic image of a typewriter on the bay.  This tribute was attended by many of his friends and fans, who gathered on Herb Caen Way… on the Embarcadero, lit candles protected from the wind by dixie cups, and walked north along the waterfront to Aquatic Park.   

And all this for a local journalist!

John Steinbeck wrote that he “made a many-faceted character of the city of San Francisco….It is very probable that Herb’s city will be the one that is remembered”.

But the last fitting words should be left to Caen himself:

“One day if I go to heaven…I’ll look around and say ‘It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco’”.

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Coming soon on “Great San Franciscan Characters”

As may already be apparent to anyone who has kindly read any of the first four entries in this series, my writing ship has been steering clear of political waters.  And, certainly for the foreseeable future, that will continue to be the case. 

At the outset I envisioned alternating between the serious and the populist, but as I consider future subjects I find myself drawn towards those individuals that most closely embody the word “character” in the sense of being “an unusual or amusing person” (OED), rather than those whose deeds have  been commendable but whose persona has been dull.

That is not to say that the occasional politician or other staid public figure will not gatecrash (formally, of course) the party at intervals, but the focus will continue to be on people whose lives and achievements reflected a colourful personality.    

So in coming features you can expect to read about such characters as Mrs Friedel Klussmann, “the woman who saved the cable cars”, Herb Caen, the legendary San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Lillian Hitchcock Coit, the fire engine follower whose bequest to the city funded the construction of the tower that bears her name and Diego Rivera, the Mexican painter whose dramatic murals adorn parts of the city.

In order that the features retain an interest for anyone stumbling upon this blog I would also very much welcome any requests for future subjects.

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Great San Franciscan Characters #4: Willie Mays

“There have been only two geniuses in the world”, actress Tallulah Bankhead said, “Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare”. A trifle exaggerated perhaps (is Shakespeare THAT good?), but the former Giant was arguably the greatest baseball player of all time.

William Howard “Willie” Mays Jnr. was born on 6th May 1931 in Westfield, Alabama of talented sports playing parents. He came to prominence through playing for Birmingham Black Barons in the Negro American League and, having been declined by the Brooklyn Dodgers, was signed by the New York Giants on the day he graduated from high school in 1950.

After an impressive early season spell with the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association at the beginning of the following season he was called up for his Major League debut on 25th May 1951. Despite career lows in batting average, RBIs and HRs that year he was still voted Rookie of the Year.  His speed and agility in centre field were gaining notice, and in one game against Pittsburgh, he stopped a 475 foot drive with his bare hand.

Missing most of the 1952, and all of the 1953, seasons through Army service, he returned to the Giants in 1954, helping them to win their last World Series before 2010 and being voted National League MVP.  His phenomenal over the shoulder running catch in deep center field off Vic Wertz at the Polo Grounds, which is still regarded as one of the most spectacular pieces of fielding in baseball history, was instrumental in securing a first game win against the Cleveland Indians, leading to a four game sweep of the series.

In 1957, the last season of the Giants’ tenure in New York, he won the first of his 12 consecutive Golden Glove awards. There were few more exhilarating sights than Mays in full sail, chasing a long fly ball, oversize cap flying off his head as the ball sunk into his enormous, wide-palmen hands.  He perfected the “basket” catch in which the glove was held waist-high and face up like a basket.   Along with Joe diMaggio he is also reputed to have had the greatest throwing arm in the game.

His reception in San Francisco, following the Giants’ relocation in 1958, was not a particularly welcoming one – he was booed whilst the locals took rookies like Orlando Cepeda and Willie McCovey to their hearts and he and his wife experienced racial prejudice in their attempts to find a home in the city.   His wholehearted, stylish performances won over the fans and in 1961 he hit 4 home runs against the Milwaukee Braves in County Stadium and was on deck when the Giants’ final innings closed.  He is the only Major League player to have a 4 home runs and a 3 triple game.

His final World Series for the Giants was in 1962 when, having beaten the Dodgers in a three game play-off, they lost in seven to the Yankees.  He won his second league MVP with a career high 52 home runs.  He played in 150 games for 13 consecutive years between 1954 and 1966, another Major League record.  Despite hitting his 600th home run in 1969 he had an injury hit season, but returned to his best form and helped the Giants win the  National League West in the following year.  He was named “Player of the Decade” for the sixties by The Sporting News in 1970. 

In May 1972, unable to guarantee him a retirement income, the Giants  traded the 41 year old Mays to the New York Mets for pitcher Charlie Williams and $50 ,000.  He made his debut on the 14th against the Giants, hitting a home run.  His final home run, number 660, was made against the Reds on 17th August the following year.  He also made 3,283 hits and ran in 1,903 batters in his career.

For his two seasons in New York he was the oldest regular position player in baseball and the oldest to figure in a World Series Game during the series that the Mets lost to the A’s.  He stayed with the club until the end of the 1979 season as hitting instructor.

 

On 23rd January 1979 he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, colecting 95% of the ballots.  But the period after his retirement was a difficult one, culminating in his being banned from baseball for working, along with Yankees legend Mickey Mantle, as a meeter and greeter for Bally’s Casinos in Atlantic City.  Although the ban was eventually rescinded, the decision affected Mays badly, inducing him to shun many public appearances, including All-Star games.  

In 1999 he was included in the Major League All-Century team in a popular vote by fans.

There is no doubting the affection in which he is held, not only by Giants’ fans but the citizens of San Francisco.  Since 1986 he has served as Special Assistant to the President of the San Francisco Giants, a lifetime appointment.  The address of AT & T Park is 24 Willie Mays Plaza and a larger than life statue of Mays in full slugging mode stands proudly in front of the main entrance. 

Although his #24 shirt had been formally retired, and even when Mays offered it to his godson Barry Bonds, who had visited him in his locker room in search of bubble gum when just five years old.  Such was the esteem in which he is held, however, that Bonds refused and opted to wear the #25 jersey instead.  

At former mayor Willie Brown’s instigation, and with the subsequent endorsement of mayor Gavin Newsom, he is now commemorated every 24th May in San Francisco which has been designated Willie Mays Day.  On his 79th birthday in 2010 the California Senate proclaimed Willie Mays Day in the state, and three years before, he had been inducted into the California Hall of Fame by Governor Arnold. Schwarzenegger.

For all the adulation and honours accorded him in California, it should not be forgotten that he is no less idolised on the East Coast for his services  to New York at the beginning and end of his career.  This was evident when he  joined the Giants organisation on 21st January 2011 in parading the newly won World Series trophy, visiting the grade school built on the site of the old Polo Grounds in Harlem, answering the students’ questions and distributing memorabilia.  

I can’t finish this piece without reference to more of Mays’s remarkable playing achievements:

• selected for the All-Star Game a (tied) record 24 times, including 20 consecutive years between 1954 and 1973;
• MVP in the All-Star Game twice (1963, 1968);
• the only player to have hit a home run in every innings from 1 to 16;
• a record 22 extra innings home runs;
• only one of five National League players to have hit at least 100 RBIs in eight successive seasons;
• stole 338 bases; and
• 7,095 outfield fielding putouts – Major League record

But the statistics and records do scant justice to his genius – constantly on the move, athletically and mentally, whether at the plate, on base or in the outfield, he was a menace to the opposition from start to finish.

I started with a quotation and I shall end with one.  Mays, who, in all modesty, believed himself to be the best baseball player ever, summed it up in these simple words: “If you can do that – if you run, hit, run the bases, hit with power, field, throw and do all other things that are part of the game – then you’re a good ballplayer”.  Well, he could do all of those things with a level of skill, style and, above all joy, unparalleled in the game’s history.

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Great San Franciscan Characters #3: Emperor Norton

San Francisco can proudly boast more than its fair share of eccentrics, but few can rival Joshua Abraham Norton, the self-proclaimed “Emperor of these United States” and “Protector of Mexico”, for their presumption, bravado and, at times, visionary genius.  

Born (somewhere) in London, England sometime between 1814 and 1819, he spent his early manhood in South Africa, serving as a colonial rifleman.  He emigrated to San Francisco in 1849 with $40,000 to his name and quickly acquired a fortune of $250,000 from real estate. However, he lost it all when his attempts to corner the market for imported Peruvian rice (China had banned the export of their own) backfired spectacularly.  Lengthy litigation resulted in the Supreme Court of California ruling against him, forcing him to declare bankruptcy in 1853.

He fled San Francisco, only to return several years later, a changed man.  Embittered, and many might argue, severely mentally disturbed, by his earlier experiences he spent the next twenty years perpetuating a one man campaign to denounce and dissolve the nation’s political and financial infrastructure.

On 17th September 1859 he issued letters to the city’s newspapers declaring  himself “Emperor of these United States”, adding that:

“At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton……….declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U.S.; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of Feb. next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity”.

 

On 12th October he formally dissolved Congress.  Amongst his numerous subsequent decrees were an invocation to the Army to depose the elected officials of Congress, the ordering of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches to publicly ordain him as “Emperor” and a proposal to Abraham Lincoln that he should marry Queen Victoria to cement relations between the U.S. and Great Britain. 

And on 12th August 1869 he abolished the Democratic and Republican parties (now there’s a thought)!

One portentious pronouncement would have struck a chord later, not only with legendary San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Herb Caen, but many other San Francisco residents:

“Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abonimable word “Frisco”, which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of High Misdemeanour, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars”.

Irrespective of his mental state, Norton was, at times, a real visionary and some of his “Imperial Decrees” demonstrated great prescience.  He urged the formation of a League of Nations and forbade conflict between religions.  Most dramatically, he called persistently for a suspension bridge or tunnel to be built connecting San Francisco with Oakland, both of which eventually saw the light of day with the constructions of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s Transbay Tube in 1936 and 1974 respectively. 

Each day, the “Emperor” would leave his “Imperial Palace”, a minute room in a boarding house at 642, Commercial Street, to walk the streets in a grand blue uniform with gold-plated epaulets, a beaver hat embellished by a peacock feather (his “dusty plume”) and a rosette. He was rarely seen without his cane or umbrella as he inspected the condition of the cable cars and sidewalks, the state of public property and even the appearance of police officers.

 

Many cities would have persecuted, ridiculed or, at best, humoured him. But this was San Francisco in the full flush of post-Gold Rush glory, and the citizens loved and revered him.  He was welcomed at the best restaurants, enabling the owner thereafter to erect blass plaques proclaiming “(b)y Appointment to his Imperial Majesty, Emperor Norton I of the United States”.  Balcony seats were also reserved for him at local theaters where he was cheered on arrival. 

He was alleged to have been accompanied often by two stray dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, local celebrities in their own right, which he supplied with food scraps from the free lunch counters that he frequented.  When Bummer died Mark Twain wrote: “He died full of years, and honor, and disease, and fleas”.

After an over-zealous young police officer had been soundly reprimanded for arresting him, and subsequently been granted an “Imperial Pardon” by Norton himself, all police officers made a point of saluting him when they met in the street.

Now, he could not be a true Emperor without coining his own currency, and his “Imperial Government of Norton” notes, which ranged from 50 cents to 10 dollars, were accepted in many establishments in the city.  And when his uniform started to deteriorate, the Board of Supervisors bought him a “suitably regal replacement”.

On the evening of 8th January 1880, Norton collapsed on the corner of California Street and Dupont Street (now Grant Avenue) in front of Old St. Mary’s Church as he was on his way to a lecture at the California Academy of Sciences.  He died before medical attention could arrive.

 

The following day the San Francisco Chronicle published his obituary on its front page under the headline “Le Roi est Mort” (“The King is Dead”).  He had died in abject poverty.  His funeral, two days later, was a sad, dignified event, honoured by the attendance of the Mayor and the playing of a military band. Upwards of 30,000 people, a seventh of the entire population of the city at the time, lined the streets to pay their respects to the two mile long funeral cortege.  The City of San Francisco paid for his burial. 

Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson, amongst others, paid homage to Norton by modelling characters on him in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  and The Wrecker respectively.

But perhaps his, and his adopted city’s, finest epitaph is that provided by Stevenson’s stepdaughter, Isobel Field, who wrote that he “was a gentle and kindly man, and fortunately found himself in the friendliest and most sentimental city in the world, the idea being “let him be emperor if he wants to”.  San Francisco played the game with him”.

There can be few lives that better personify that much-quoted phrase “Only in San Francisco”.

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Great San Francisco Characters: #2 – The World Famous Bushman

“If you go down to the Wharf today……..be sure of a big surprise” because that innocent looking bush of eucalyptus leaves parked near that trash can on Jefferson Street may just harbour someone loitering, waiting to scare the wits out of you. 

As you saunter by admiring the bay and contemplating at which restaurant or sidewalk stand you might get your fix of crab from, the World Famous Bushman may spring from behind that bush or wave it in your direction, accompanying the action with sounds that have variously been described as “ugga bugga” and “arrgh….ooooo. rrrrr.uff”.  Once you have recovered from the shock and finally suppressed your giggling, the done thing is to reward his performance by placing a coin or, better still a dollar bill, in his can.

The following video shows the man in action:

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsJoIY2Obiw

David Johnson – yes, he has a boring, ordinary name too - was born in Indiana where he worked as a crane operator, steel mill worker and truck driver before moving to San Francisco and setting up one of the first shoe shine stands in Market Street.  As competition for the lucrative Financial District pitches grew and he developed arthritis, he moved to Fisherman’s Wharf.  After an unsuccessful spell as a robot and discovering some fallen branches under a tree he conceived the idea for his act.

Despite the fact that he has his own permit – class 7 business license number 309280 – controversy has dogged his thirty year career.  He has had several altercations with boat and restaurant owners who have claimed he has been blocking the sidewalk and deflecting trade from their businesses.  This has necessitated him moving his pitch from time to time.

Amongst the complaints made to the police by people who have sustained injuries after being ”bushed” have been the man who suffered a heart condition being “half scared to death” by him, a retired woman who fell back and twisted her ankle and another woman who jumped back and smashed her mother in the jaw.

In 2004 he was acquitted of four misdemeanours by jury in the Hall of Justice and the District Attorney dropped a number of other public nuisance complaints as a result. There have even been stories – probably apocryphal – that the then Mayor Willie Brown had visited him to advise him to tone his act down, but Johnson proclaims that “they’ll have to go to the Supreme Court to make a whole new law to stop me”.

He insists that he chooses his targets carefully, aiming to avoid anyone whom he believes might be overly upset or offended by his act.  “I look at their age, their eyes, how they walk, how they breathe….it’s all in the timing”.  Whilst not excluding the elderly and disabled from his list of victims, after all they “need to laugh too”, he invariably shies away from alarming them.

Which is where the “other” Bushman comes in.

Johnson was “recruited” originally for the role by Gregory Jacobs, a part-time short order cook, who acted as his promoter and bodyguard, cracking jokes whilst he lurked behind his bush, and then collecting the tips from startled but hysterically laughing tourists after the event. 

His patter would include “Hey, the Bushman got you fair and square! Pay the man! Hey, if you’re going to take a picture, there’s a $1 photo tax.  There’s a $2 video tax”.  He would also alert Johnson to approaching seniors, cautioning against inflicting his antics on them. Jacobs claimed that he “looked after” Johnson and “watched his back”.  However, after he accused Johnson of running off with the proceeds they became sworn enemies.  The Bushman has stated that Jacobs still stalks the Wharf with his aggressive panhandling.  

Claiming to earn upwards of $60,000 in a “good year” Johnson is as proud of the contribution he makes to the economy as he is of his skill to scare people, to “snatch them right out of their bodies”.  “I’m an entertainer.  I pay my taxes. I contribute.  I give people enjoyment. What’s wrong with that”. And he has no plans to retire, vowing to carry on “until they pack dirt in my eyes”.

Nanette Thrasher, a visitor from Tulsa, summed up the view of the majority of the Bushman’s victims when she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999: “Sure it was worth a buck….I mean the man worked for it.  He did something.  He made an effort.  He’s not just sitting around on his butt”. 

And finally – yes, dear reader, this writer was himself taken unawares by the Bushman on his first trip in 1995. 

My gratitude to the San Francisco Chronicle for many of the quotes contained in this feature.

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Coming soon – San Francisco On This Day Parts 1 & 2

Tomorrow (Friday) I will post my first entry on the above subject.  I had intended to post one for the following day too but my research to date has revealed that 14th January is an eminently more eventful day in history in the city than the 15th!

Given that there is another event that I particularly want to share with you that occurred on the 14th you will, therefore, get two for the price of one!  That said, I may not be in a position to post it until Saturday.

It could be argued, of course, that on some parts  of the planet it WAS the 15th when the event took place in San Francisco on the 14th!  No, that’s a pretty feeble excuse isn’t it?  Anyway, hope you find them interesting.

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