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"title": "Victorians Sure Liked Blowing Up Islands in the Bay Back in the Day",
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"content": "\u003cp>You know that old stereotype about Victorians being genteel and of restrained dispositions? Lies. All lies. Turns out that nothing got these cats more excited than blowing stuff up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13909983']Let’s not forget that in 1896, Golden Gate Park horticulturalist John McLaren decided that exploding \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909983/victorian-attractions-san-francisco-chutes-gravity-railroad-woodwards-gardens-bonet-tower-auditorium-skating\">Bonet’s Electric Tower\u003c/a> into a gazillion pieces would be way more fun than the city having its very own Eiffel Tower forever. Then there’s the mortifying fact that much of the destruction from the 1906 earthquake was caused by the doofuses who decided that dynamiting the streets was the best way to stop the spread of fire. (Obviously the situation was desperate but come on, people…)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Make no mistake: If ever there was an excuse to make something explode, humans at the turn of the century damn well used it. And once these maniacs set their sights on the Bay waters, a series of islands minding their own business providing perches for seagulls and whatnot just didn’t stand a chance. Considering them obstructions that posed a danger to passing ships, the Victorians quickly concluded that dramatically obliterating them into airborne shrapnel was the best possible solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more, we know — thanks to some extremely diligent and detailed reporting at the time — that the relish everyone in the region took in all that wanton destruction was immense. Please now journey back with us as we examine just how much this unhinged generation of people enjoyed blowing crap up.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Blossom Rock\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931214\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931214\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-800x609.png\" alt=\"A line drawing shows a cheering crowd facing a water column shooting up from a bay. Text above it reads: THE LAST OF BLOSSOM ROCK.\" width=\"800\" height=\"609\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-800x609.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-1020x776.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-160x122.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-768x584.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1.png 1296w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blossom Rock, as depicted in ‘The San Francisco Examiner’ in a nostalgic story from July 1930. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Blossom Rock got blown to pieces by Colonel A. W. von Schmidt in 1870, the city of San Francisco collectively lost its damn mind. \u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> later reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>For days and weeks the public was in a state of expectancy, and when the moment arrived, excitement was keyed up to the highest pitch. The occasion was made a holiday in the city. The entire town seemed to be on the bay or at the water front. Telegraph Hill never before held such a crowd. A big crowd scrambled on to the roof of an observatory and the roof collapsed, resulting in injuries to many. Out on the bay, everything that could get up steam or rig a sail and hold together was pressed into service, and all the craft was crowded with excursionists.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t just the public that approached the end of Blossom Rock with zeal. Colonel von Schmidt went so hard, one can’t help but wonder if he had personal business with the outcrop. The San Francisco local had managed to win the contract to destroy Blossom Rock after coming up with a budget that was a quarter of the projected cost. Then he went about hollowing out the rock and jamming it full of explosives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The column of water and debris that shot up after the island was detonated was 300 feet high and prompted the gathered, over-excited crowds to cheer with delight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Psychopaths, one and all.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Shag Rock\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931217\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931217\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-800x683.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"683\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-800x683.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-1020x871.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-160x137.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-768x656.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900.png 1288w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rough diagrams comparing the destruction methods used on Blossom Rock and Shag Rock, as seen in ‘The San Francisco Examiner’ on April 27, 1900. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Though very much appreciated by everyone who witnessed its destruction, the end of Blossom Rock was positively quaint compared to what happened to Shag Rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2,192-square-foot island met its end just after 3 p.m. on April 30, 1900, and the resulting explosion shot up 981 feet into the air. \u003cem>The San Francisco Call\u003c/em> described it as “one of the most beautiful and impressive sights ever seen on the bay of San Francisco,” and went on:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>In the twinkling of an eye, a huge mass of rock and water and splintered lumber … were flying heavenward. Long before the water had ceased mounting upward, the rock was falling back into the water and the splash, splash, splash of the huge pieces could be heard a mile away … The water over the spot once marked by Shag Rock continued its boil for nearly 15 minutes.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Thousands of spectators on Alcatraz, Angel Island, Telegraph and Russian Hills and at the Presidio marveled at the sight, and around 100 boats sailed out to see what was left of Shag Rock. “They witnessed one of the grandest sights ever seen on the bay of San Francisco,” \u003cem>The Call\u003c/em> reported the following day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within days, people had already started to wonder if Shag Rock was blown up enough. “Nearly all the rock that got blown into the air fell back into the hole again and this has now to be removed,” one \u003cem>Call\u003c/em> reporter wrote on May 4, 1900. “If divers and dredgers cannot do the work, then torpedoes will be used.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These people were bonkers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Shag Rock No. 2\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931218\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 596px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13931218\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Call-06-Sep-1900.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"596\" height=\"1042\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Call-06-Sep-1900.png 596w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Call-06-Sep-1900-160x280.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 596px) 100vw, 596px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A depiction of the water column that shot out of the Bay when Shag Rock No. 2 was destroyed, as seen in ‘The San Francisco Call’ on Sept. 6, 1900. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Call)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first Shag Rock had been considered a major shipping hazard, but No. 2, located half a mile north of Alcatraz, was almost more hated because the 1,863-square-foot rectangle of rock lay entirely underwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the first Shag Rock (150 feet from where No. 2 was) had gone, No. 2 was even easier to hit by boat, making it all the more treacherous. Within six months, the sandstone, quartz and basalt structure had, rather unsurprisingly, been annihilated by whooping Victorians. And this time, the explosion — made by 10 tons of nitro-gelatin spread across 150 charges — made it all the way up to 1,106 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> described the sight thusly: “From an artistic standpoint, the blowing up of Shag rock No. 2 was a perfect success.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Chronicle\u003c/em> called it “one of the grandest spectacles ever witnessed in this part of the world,” and noted:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Impressive as was … the blowing up of Shag Rock … could not be compared in majestic beauty with yesterday’s display. Not only did the amount of explosive materials used yesterday exceed by an entire ton the quantity used in leveling the first rock, but the column of water which shot upward from the depths was unspotted by the earthen crust of the shattered rock and for several seconds after reaching its greatest height shone splendidly in the bright sun like a gigantic marble column.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Newspapers also happily reported on all the fish murdered by the explosion. Waiting fishermen rushed in afterwards to retrieve cod, perch, sardines and one 45-pound sea bass. Waste not want not, I guess?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Arch Rock\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931216\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-800x612.png\" alt=\"A black and white illustration showing a small island surrounded by boats and construction.\" width=\"800\" height=\"612\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-800x612.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-1020x781.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-160x122.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-768x588.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM.png 1390w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An illustration of Arch Rock, as seen in ‘The San Francisco Call’ on Sept. 19, 1900. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Call)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The destruction of the 30-foot-high Arch Rock was at least a little controversial. Sausalito and Tiburon residents were most attached to the picturesque rock formation and begged local authorities to attach a beacon light to the land to make it safer, rather than removing it altogether. Predictably, those in charge opted for a solution involving 35 tons of gelatin packed into 250 charges instead. But not before the man responsible for that handiwork, Robert Axman, had allowed some ladies onto the explosives-laden rock formation to play with the charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 16, 1901, \u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Twenty-five members of the Technical Society of the Pacific Coast, civil mechanical and mining engineers, accompanied by the ladies of their families, visited Arch Rock yesterday morning on a tug as the guests of Robert Axman … The ladies stuck their fingers into this mountain-moving explosive yesterday afternoon. They probed and poked when the man in charge told them that it would not go off unless severely kicked. It comes in a black tar-coated package the size of a stove pipe and quivers to the touch like new cheese.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Nothing to see here!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly afterwards, Axman had his daughter Florence detonate the explosives using “a tiny knob” on a barge that floated 4,000 feet away from the Arch. The public started gathering to watch a full two hours before the island was destroyed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 16, 1901, \u003cem>The San Francisco Call\u003c/em> provided an elaborate description of the bomb:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>With a low rumble and a sharp subsequent explosion this landmark of the northern bay flew helter-skelter into space … The emulsion of sea water towered aloft and hung like a grim, huge specter over the scene of destruction. It remained long enough for the sun to play upon it and produce glimmering, scintillating light effects … Timbers, rock and sea water beat into a foam spread for a half-mile around the one-time jutting rock. A small-sized tidal wave was kicked up.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A month later, the same newspaper made another, rather bleaker, observation. “All the shags and sea fowl that used to congregate on Shag and Arch rocks have disappeared since the work of destruction began. Seafaring men are now wondering what new abode they have found.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Imagine that.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>You know that old stereotype about Victorians being genteel and of restrained dispositions? Lies. All lies. Turns out that nothing got these cats more excited than blowing stuff up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Let’s not forget that in 1896, Golden Gate Park horticulturalist John McLaren decided that exploding \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909983/victorian-attractions-san-francisco-chutes-gravity-railroad-woodwards-gardens-bonet-tower-auditorium-skating\">Bonet’s Electric Tower\u003c/a> into a gazillion pieces would be way more fun than the city having its very own Eiffel Tower forever. Then there’s the mortifying fact that much of the destruction from the 1906 earthquake was caused by the doofuses who decided that dynamiting the streets was the best way to stop the spread of fire. (Obviously the situation was desperate but come on, people…)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Make no mistake: If ever there was an excuse to make something explode, humans at the turn of the century damn well used it. And once these maniacs set their sights on the Bay waters, a series of islands minding their own business providing perches for seagulls and whatnot just didn’t stand a chance. Considering them obstructions that posed a danger to passing ships, the Victorians quickly concluded that dramatically obliterating them into airborne shrapnel was the best possible solution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s more, we know — thanks to some extremely diligent and detailed reporting at the time — that the relish everyone in the region took in all that wanton destruction was immense. Please now journey back with us as we examine just how much this unhinged generation of people enjoyed blowing crap up.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Blossom Rock\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931214\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931214\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-800x609.png\" alt=\"A line drawing shows a cheering crowd facing a water column shooting up from a bay. Text above it reads: THE LAST OF BLOSSOM ROCK.\" width=\"800\" height=\"609\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-800x609.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-1020x776.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-160x122.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1-768x584.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.00.21-PM-1.png 1296w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blossom Rock, as depicted in ‘The San Francisco Examiner’ in a nostalgic story from July 1930. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When Blossom Rock got blown to pieces by Colonel A. W. von Schmidt in 1870, the city of San Francisco collectively lost its damn mind. \u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> later reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>For days and weeks the public was in a state of expectancy, and when the moment arrived, excitement was keyed up to the highest pitch. The occasion was made a holiday in the city. The entire town seemed to be on the bay or at the water front. Telegraph Hill never before held such a crowd. A big crowd scrambled on to the roof of an observatory and the roof collapsed, resulting in injuries to many. Out on the bay, everything that could get up steam or rig a sail and hold together was pressed into service, and all the craft was crowded with excursionists.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t just the public that approached the end of Blossom Rock with zeal. Colonel von Schmidt went so hard, one can’t help but wonder if he had personal business with the outcrop. The San Francisco local had managed to win the contract to destroy Blossom Rock after coming up with a budget that was a quarter of the projected cost. Then he went about hollowing out the rock and jamming it full of explosives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The column of water and debris that shot up after the island was detonated was 300 feet high and prompted the gathered, over-excited crowds to cheer with delight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Psychopaths, one and all.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Shag Rock\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931217\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931217\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-800x683.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"683\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-800x683.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-1020x871.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-160x137.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900-768x656.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Examiner-27-Apr-1900.png 1288w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rough diagrams comparing the destruction methods used on Blossom Rock and Shag Rock, as seen in ‘The San Francisco Examiner’ on April 27, 1900. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Though very much appreciated by everyone who witnessed its destruction, the end of Blossom Rock was positively quaint compared to what happened to Shag Rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2,192-square-foot island met its end just after 3 p.m. on April 30, 1900, and the resulting explosion shot up 981 feet into the air. \u003cem>The San Francisco Call\u003c/em> described it as “one of the most beautiful and impressive sights ever seen on the bay of San Francisco,” and went on:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>In the twinkling of an eye, a huge mass of rock and water and splintered lumber … were flying heavenward. Long before the water had ceased mounting upward, the rock was falling back into the water and the splash, splash, splash of the huge pieces could be heard a mile away … The water over the spot once marked by Shag Rock continued its boil for nearly 15 minutes.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Thousands of spectators on Alcatraz, Angel Island, Telegraph and Russian Hills and at the Presidio marveled at the sight, and around 100 boats sailed out to see what was left of Shag Rock. “They witnessed one of the grandest sights ever seen on the bay of San Francisco,” \u003cem>The Call\u003c/em> reported the following day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within days, people had already started to wonder if Shag Rock was blown up enough. “Nearly all the rock that got blown into the air fell back into the hole again and this has now to be removed,” one \u003cem>Call\u003c/em> reporter wrote on May 4, 1900. “If divers and dredgers cannot do the work, then torpedoes will be used.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These people were bonkers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Shag Rock No. 2\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931218\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 596px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13931218\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Call-06-Sep-1900.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"596\" height=\"1042\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Call-06-Sep-1900.png 596w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/The-San-Francisco-Call-06-Sep-1900-160x280.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 596px) 100vw, 596px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A depiction of the water column that shot out of the Bay when Shag Rock No. 2 was destroyed, as seen in ‘The San Francisco Call’ on Sept. 6, 1900. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Call)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The first Shag Rock had been considered a major shipping hazard, but No. 2, located half a mile north of Alcatraz, was almost more hated because the 1,863-square-foot rectangle of rock lay entirely underwater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the first Shag Rock (150 feet from where No. 2 was) had gone, No. 2 was even easier to hit by boat, making it all the more treacherous. Within six months, the sandstone, quartz and basalt structure had, rather unsurprisingly, been annihilated by whooping Victorians. And this time, the explosion — made by 10 tons of nitro-gelatin spread across 150 charges — made it all the way up to 1,106 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> described the sight thusly: “From an artistic standpoint, the blowing up of Shag rock No. 2 was a perfect success.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Chronicle\u003c/em> called it “one of the grandest spectacles ever witnessed in this part of the world,” and noted:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Impressive as was … the blowing up of Shag Rock … could not be compared in majestic beauty with yesterday’s display. Not only did the amount of explosive materials used yesterday exceed by an entire ton the quantity used in leveling the first rock, but the column of water which shot upward from the depths was unspotted by the earthen crust of the shattered rock and for several seconds after reaching its greatest height shone splendidly in the bright sun like a gigantic marble column.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Newspapers also happily reported on all the fish murdered by the explosion. Waiting fishermen rushed in afterwards to retrieve cod, perch, sardines and one 45-pound sea bass. Waste not want not, I guess?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Arch Rock\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931216\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-800x612.png\" alt=\"A black and white illustration showing a small island surrounded by boats and construction.\" width=\"800\" height=\"612\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-800x612.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-1020x781.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-160x122.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM-768x588.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-05-at-4.39.55-PM.png 1390w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An illustration of Arch Rock, as seen in ‘The San Francisco Call’ on Sept. 19, 1900. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Call)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The destruction of the 30-foot-high Arch Rock was at least a little controversial. Sausalito and Tiburon residents were most attached to the picturesque rock formation and begged local authorities to attach a beacon light to the land to make it safer, rather than removing it altogether. Predictably, those in charge opted for a solution involving 35 tons of gelatin packed into 250 charges instead. But not before the man responsible for that handiwork, Robert Axman, had allowed some ladies onto the explosives-laden rock formation to play with the charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 16, 1901, \u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Twenty-five members of the Technical Society of the Pacific Coast, civil mechanical and mining engineers, accompanied by the ladies of their families, visited Arch Rock yesterday morning on a tug as the guests of Robert Axman … The ladies stuck their fingers into this mountain-moving explosive yesterday afternoon. They probed and poked when the man in charge told them that it would not go off unless severely kicked. It comes in a black tar-coated package the size of a stove pipe and quivers to the touch like new cheese.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Nothing to see here!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shortly afterwards, Axman had his daughter Florence detonate the explosives using “a tiny knob” on a barge that floated 4,000 feet away from the Arch. The public started gathering to watch a full two hours before the island was destroyed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Aug. 16, 1901, \u003cem>The San Francisco Call\u003c/em> provided an elaborate description of the bomb:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>With a low rumble and a sharp subsequent explosion this landmark of the northern bay flew helter-skelter into space … The emulsion of sea water towered aloft and hung like a grim, huge specter over the scene of destruction. It remained long enough for the sun to play upon it and produce glimmering, scintillating light effects … Timbers, rock and sea water beat into a foam spread for a half-mile around the one-time jutting rock. A small-sized tidal wave was kicked up.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A month later, the same newspaper made another, rather bleaker, observation. “All the shags and sea fowl that used to congregate on Shag and Arch rocks have disappeared since the work of destruction began. Seafaring men are now wondering what new abode they have found.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "The Oldest Living Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre Publishes a Memoir",
"headTitle": "The Oldest Living Survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre Publishes a Memoir | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Being a centenarian hasn’t slowed down Viola Ford Fletcher’s pursuit of justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the last couple of years, Fletcher has traveled internationally, testified before Congress and supported a lawsuit for reparations — all part of a campaign for accountability over the massacre that destroyed Tulsa, Oklahoma’s original “Black Wall Street” in 1921, when she was a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, at age 109, Fletcher is releasing a memoir about the life she lived in the shadow of the massacre, after a white mob laid waste to the once-thriving Black enclave known as Greenwood. The book will be published by Mocha Media Inc. on Tuesday and becomes widely available for purchase on Aug. 15.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931198\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931198\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-800x487.jpg\" alt=\"A black and white photo of a city street and church lying in ruins.\" width=\"800\" height=\"487\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-800x487.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-1020x621.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-160x97.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-768x468.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-1536x935.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-2048x1247.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-1920x1169.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Part of the Greenwood district that was burned in the Tulsa massacre of 1921. \u003ccite>(Universal HIstory Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a recent interview with \u003cem>The Associated Press\u003c/em>, she said fear of reprisal for speaking out had influenced years of near-silence about the massacre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now that I’m an old lady, there’s nothing else to talk about,” Fletcher said. “We decided to do a book about it and maybe that would help.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her memoir, \u003cem>Don’t Let Them Bury My Story\u003c/em>, is a call to action for readers to pursue truth, justice and reconciliation no matter how long it takes. Written with graphic details of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that she witnessed at age seven, Fletcher said she hoped to preserve a narrative of events that was nearly lost to a lack of acknowledgement from mainstream historians and political leaders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The questions I had then remain to this day,” Fletcher writes in the book. “How could you just give a mob of violent, crazed, racist people a bunch of deadly weapons and allow them — no, encourage them — to go out and kill innocent Black folks and demolish a whole community?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_108474']“As it turns out, we were victims of a lie,” she writes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tensions between Tulsa’s Black and white residents inflamed when, on May 31, 1921, the white-owned \u003cem>Tulsa Tribune\u003c/em> published a sensationalized news report of an alleged assault by a 19-year-old Black shoeshine on a 17-year-old white girl working as an elevator operator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the shoeshine under arrest, a Black militia gathered at a local jail to prevent a lynch mob from kidnapping and murdering him. Then, a separate violent clash between Black and white residents sparked an all-out war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over 18 hours, between May 31 and June 1, the enlarged mob carried out a scorched-earth campaign against Greenwood. The death toll has been estimated to be as high as 300. More than 35 city blocks were leveled, an estimated 191 businesses were destroyed, and roughly 10,000 Black residents were displaced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931199\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931199\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-800x638.jpg\" alt=\"Three Black women crowd into the back of a 1920s-era truck. More people are crammed into the front, obscured from view.\" width=\"800\" height=\"638\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-800x638.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-1020x813.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-768x612.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-1536x1224.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Black residents escaping Tulsa in a truck during the racist massacre of 1921. \u003ccite>(Universal HIstory Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In her memoir, Fletcher writes of the bumpy ride out of town in a horse-drawn buggy, as her family escaped the chaos. She witnessed a Black man being executed, his head exploded like “a watermelon dropped off the rooftop of a barn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shooter had also fired his shotgun at her family’s buggy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We passed piles of dead bodies heaped in the streets,” she writes in the book. “Some of them had their eyes open, as though they were still alive, but they weren’t.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13881675']Victims’ descendants believed that, once the conspiracy of silence around it was pierced decades later, justice and reparations for Tulsa’s Black community would follow. That hasn’t happened just yet — Fletcher and two other centenarian survivors are currently plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city of Tulsa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ike Howard, Fletcher’s grandson and co-author of the memoir, said systemic racism has prevented Tulsa’s Black community from fully recovering from the massacre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They want to be made whole,” Howard said. “We speak for everybody that went through a similar situation, who are not here to tell their stories.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can learn a lot from \u003cem>Don’t Let Them Bury My Story\u003c/em>. And we know that history can repeat itself if you don’t correct and reconcile issues,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931200\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931200\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-800x489.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"489\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-800x489.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-1020x623.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-160x98.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-768x469.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-1536x938.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Black residents gather around Red Cross temporary accommodation after surviving the Tulsa massacre, November 1921. \u003ccite>(GHI/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fletcher notes in her memoir just how much history she has lived through — from several virus outbreaks preceding the coronavirus pandemic, to the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008 to every war and international conflict of the last seven decades. She has watched the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead the national Civil Rights Movement, seen the historic election of former President Barack Obama and witnessed the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2020, Howard purchased his grandmother a brand new color TV for her birthday. Several months later, on Jan. 6, the images of the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol following the historic election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris retraumatized her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_102326']“With that horrific scene, all of what occurred back in 1921 in Greenwood came flooding back into my mind,” Fletcher writes in the book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the \u003cem>AP\u003c/em> interview, Fletcher attributed her active lifestyle at an advanced age to her reliance on faith and family. While in New York last month to publicize the book with Howard and her younger brother, 102-year-old Hughes Van Ellis, Fletcher saw the cover of her memoir advertised on jumbo screens in Times Square.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Van Ellis, a massacre survivor and World War II veteran whose words from his 2021 testimony to Congress serve as the foreword to his sister’s memoir, said he believes justice is possible in his lifetime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re getting pretty close (to justice), but we aren’t close enough,” he said. “We’ve got a lot more work to do. I have to keep on battling. I’m fighting for myself and my people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2023 Associated Press. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/\" rel=\"noopener\">visit AP\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Being a centenarian hasn’t slowed down Viola Ford Fletcher’s pursuit of justice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the last couple of years, Fletcher has traveled internationally, testified before Congress and supported a lawsuit for reparations — all part of a campaign for accountability over the massacre that destroyed Tulsa, Oklahoma’s original “Black Wall Street” in 1921, when she was a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, at age 109, Fletcher is releasing a memoir about the life she lived in the shadow of the massacre, after a white mob laid waste to the once-thriving Black enclave known as Greenwood. The book will be published by Mocha Media Inc. on Tuesday and becomes widely available for purchase on Aug. 15.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931198\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931198\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-800x487.jpg\" alt=\"A black and white photo of a city street and church lying in ruins.\" width=\"800\" height=\"487\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-800x487.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-1020x621.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-160x97.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-768x468.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-1536x935.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-2048x1247.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625227-1920x1169.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Part of the Greenwood district that was burned in the Tulsa massacre of 1921. \u003ccite>(Universal HIstory Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In a recent interview with \u003cem>The Associated Press\u003c/em>, she said fear of reprisal for speaking out had influenced years of near-silence about the massacre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now that I’m an old lady, there’s nothing else to talk about,” Fletcher said. “We decided to do a book about it and maybe that would help.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her memoir, \u003cem>Don’t Let Them Bury My Story\u003c/em>, is a call to action for readers to pursue truth, justice and reconciliation no matter how long it takes. Written with graphic details of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that she witnessed at age seven, Fletcher said she hoped to preserve a narrative of events that was nearly lost to a lack of acknowledgement from mainstream historians and political leaders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The questions I had then remain to this day,” Fletcher writes in the book. “How could you just give a mob of violent, crazed, racist people a bunch of deadly weapons and allow them — no, encourage them — to go out and kill innocent Black folks and demolish a whole community?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“As it turns out, we were victims of a lie,” she writes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tensions between Tulsa’s Black and white residents inflamed when, on May 31, 1921, the white-owned \u003cem>Tulsa Tribune\u003c/em> published a sensationalized news report of an alleged assault by a 19-year-old Black shoeshine on a 17-year-old white girl working as an elevator operator.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the shoeshine under arrest, a Black militia gathered at a local jail to prevent a lynch mob from kidnapping and murdering him. Then, a separate violent clash between Black and white residents sparked an all-out war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over 18 hours, between May 31 and June 1, the enlarged mob carried out a scorched-earth campaign against Greenwood. The death toll has been estimated to be as high as 300. More than 35 city blocks were leveled, an estimated 191 businesses were destroyed, and roughly 10,000 Black residents were displaced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931199\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931199\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-800x638.jpg\" alt=\"Three Black women crowd into the back of a 1920s-era truck. More people are crammed into the front, obscured from view.\" width=\"800\" height=\"638\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-800x638.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-1020x813.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-768x612.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194-1536x1224.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1250625297-scaled-e1688582581194.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Black residents escaping Tulsa in a truck during the racist massacre of 1921. \u003ccite>(Universal HIstory Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In her memoir, Fletcher writes of the bumpy ride out of town in a horse-drawn buggy, as her family escaped the chaos. She witnessed a Black man being executed, his head exploded like “a watermelon dropped off the rooftop of a barn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shooter had also fired his shotgun at her family’s buggy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We passed piles of dead bodies heaped in the streets,” she writes in the book. “Some of them had their eyes open, as though they were still alive, but they weren’t.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Victims’ descendants believed that, once the conspiracy of silence around it was pierced decades later, justice and reparations for Tulsa’s Black community would follow. That hasn’t happened just yet — Fletcher and two other centenarian survivors are currently plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city of Tulsa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ike Howard, Fletcher’s grandson and co-author of the memoir, said systemic racism has prevented Tulsa’s Black community from fully recovering from the massacre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They want to be made whole,” Howard said. “We speak for everybody that went through a similar situation, who are not here to tell their stories.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can learn a lot from \u003cem>Don’t Let Them Bury My Story\u003c/em>. And we know that history can repeat itself if you don’t correct and reconcile issues,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13931200\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13931200\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-800x489.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"489\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-800x489.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-1020x623.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-160x98.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-768x469.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282-1536x938.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/07/GettyImages-1264513300-scaled-e1688583013282.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Black residents gather around Red Cross temporary accommodation after surviving the Tulsa massacre, November 1921. \u003ccite>(GHI/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Fletcher notes in her memoir just how much history she has lived through — from several virus outbreaks preceding the coronavirus pandemic, to the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008 to every war and international conflict of the last seven decades. She has watched the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. lead the national Civil Rights Movement, seen the historic election of former President Barack Obama and witnessed the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2020, Howard purchased his grandmother a brand new color TV for her birthday. Several months later, on Jan. 6, the images of the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol following the historic election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris retraumatized her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“With that horrific scene, all of what occurred back in 1921 in Greenwood came flooding back into my mind,” Fletcher writes in the book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the \u003cem>AP\u003c/em> interview, Fletcher attributed her active lifestyle at an advanced age to her reliance on faith and family. While in New York last month to publicize the book with Howard and her younger brother, 102-year-old Hughes Van Ellis, Fletcher saw the cover of her memoir advertised on jumbo screens in Times Square.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Van Ellis, a massacre survivor and World War II veteran whose words from his 2021 testimony to Congress serve as the foreword to his sister’s memoir, said he believes justice is possible in his lifetime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re getting pretty close (to justice), but we aren’t close enough,” he said. “We’ve got a lot more work to do. I have to keep on battling. I’m fighting for myself and my people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2023 Associated Press. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/\" rel=\"noopener\">visit AP\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "5 Historic San Francisco Gay Bars We Wish Still Existed",
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"content": "\u003cp>For a lot of us in the Bay Area, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930587/drag-dance-and-liberation-5-parties-for-your-2023-sf-pride-weekend\">where to party for Pride\u003c/a> is an annual debate. As we sit down this year to figure out where to dance the weekend away, let’s take a moment to remember the San Francisco gay bars of yore — the foundations on which our current venues were built, and the places that went to battle with the city so future generations wouldn’t have to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are five of the most crucial.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Sailor Boy Tavern\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930268\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930268\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717-800x601.jpg\" alt=\"The front of a pier building in San Francisco next to a large, anonymous two-story building.\" width=\"800\" height=\"601\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717-800x601.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717-768x577.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Sailor Boy Tavern was housed in the unassuming building on the left, positioned directly next to Pier 16. \u003ccite>(OpenSFHistory / wnp14.2717)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of the first leather bars in San Francisco, this joint at 24 Howard St. stayed open between 1936 and 1953, though its ownership changed hands in 1938. In its earliest days, the tavern garnered a reputation for entertaining naval men who were on leave and looking for a good (and very gay!) time in San Francisco. Later, it was also frequented by residents of the nearby Army Navy YMCA on Steuart St. — a hotbed of gay socializing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13929998']In Justin Spring’s \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Historian-Steward-Professor-Renegade/dp/0374533024\">Secret Historian, The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade\u003c/a>, \u003c/em>Steward’s diary describes the scene at the time. “Saw a fantastic thing down by the piers,” he wrote. “Two sailors standing watch for passersby while a third went down on a fourth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pier 16 was demolished in the early 1970s and today, there’s no sign of the building that once housed Sailor Boy. Its influence and spirit, however, live on in SoMa, with the plethora of leather bars that followed Sailor Boy’s lead.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Silver Rail\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the time the Silver Rail opened on June 18, 1941, the area around 974 Market St. was, on a nightly basis, awash with gay men looking to party. The cruising and hustling that had been happening in the streets for at least a decade started moving inside when the first gay bars — the College Inn and the Pirates’ Cave —arrived in 1933 with the end of prohibition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite being a relative latecomer to the downtown gay scene (which was nicknamed “the Meat Rack,” incidentally), the Silver Rail was a notorious dive from day one. It was a far cry from how one newspaper ad described the bar right before it first opened, claiming that the Silver Rail would “add new lustre to the town’s old traditions of the finest in foods, drinks and merriment … and a sparkling atmosphere to match.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What the Silver Rail actually excelled at was providing a dark, fun place for men to pick each other up. Handily, it was also designed specifically to try and keep them safe from police intervention — the bar had entry doors on both Market and Turk to give customers escape routes in the event of a raid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930605\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930605\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-800x495.jpg\" alt=\"Newspaper clippings advertising a bar named The Silver Rail.\" width=\"800\" height=\"495\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-800x495.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-1020x631.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-160x99.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-768x475.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-1536x951.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-2048x1267.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-1920x1188.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L) A newspaper ad for the Silver Rail’s opening night, promising ‘fine food’ and ‘a sparkling atmosphere.’ (R) A newspaper ad for the Silver Rail from several years later, promising cheap drinks and ‘two entrances.’ \u003ccite>(Newpapers.com)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1949, the Silver Rail was officially classed by local authorities as a “disorderly premises.” At that point, one of the bar’s three owners, Louis E. Wolcher, filed for dissolution of partnership because his partners, Sidney Wolfe and Jack Rushin, were allowing “unlawful practices to be indulged in on the premises to such an extent that the military and naval authorities have denounced the manner in which the business was conducted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every time legal action was taken against the Silver Rail, “venereal disease” was mentioned as the reason for the clampdown — but the bar had all sorts of other problems. In 1950, the Silver Rail burned down, causing $35,000 worth of damage (almost $400,000 in 2023 money). In 1952, a man named Jimmie Tarantino successfully extorted money from the bar manager in exchange for not reporting the rampant homosexual activity taking place in the joint. In 1953, it was raided at 3:30 a.m. and 14 people were arrested. (Bartender Charles Smith was charged with selling liquor to a minor, 10 customers were taken in on charges relating to drunkenness, and three others were taken in for apparent draft card violation.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the same year the Silver Rail finally went out of business. But boy, oh boy, what glorious, hedonistic chaos it brought to the city in its time here.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fe-Be’s Bar\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959430\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1576px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959430\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A white marble statue depicting a shirtless biker, with his hand hooked in one pocket.\" width=\"1576\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-scaled.jpg 1576w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-800x1300.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-1020x1657.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-160x260.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-768x1248.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-945x1536.jpg 945w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-1261x2048.jpg 1261w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-1920x3119.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1576px) 100vw, 1576px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mike Caffee’s Leather David statue was designed specifically to be displayed in Fe-Be’s. It has lived on long after the bar. Today, this one resides in San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Folsom St.’s first-ever leather bar opened on July 26, 1966, courtesy of owners Don Geist and John Kissinger, a couple who had met while serving in the Navy in the 1940s. The city would come to realize that, in many ways, Geist and Kissinger were nightlife visionaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, the duo garnered a faithful crowd by frequenting biker gang meetings and handing out free drink tickets. Second, Geist and Kissinger were consistently involved with the\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfimperialcouncil.org/\"> Imperial Council of San Francisco\u003c/a> — the oldest LGBTQ+ non-profit in the world — thereby making themselves part of the wider community. (The couple is also said to have donated \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em> of money to charity.) Third, the couple incorporated A Taste of Leather into Fe-Be’s — an on-site fetish store, run by a man named Nick O’Demus, that was situated upstairs from the bar. There, patrons could fulfill all their leather- and poppers-related needs on the spot. Fourth, Geist and Kissinger started “Mr. Fe-Be’s” — an annual leather daddy contest that brought in crowds of non-regulars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13859162']Needless to say, it didn’t take long for authorities to start surveilling goings on at Fe-Be’s. Starting in 1967, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) held multiple meetings about the activities of staff and patrons at Fe-Be’s. In 1969, the ABC accused the bar of “behavior contrary to public morals,” including close physical contact amongst men, below the waist. At another hearing, when accused of having sex toys on the premises, Geist (somewhat comedically) claimed that they were merely being used as novelty drink stirrers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1970, when the bar was closed down for a year, the community that Geist and Kissinger had so lovingly built rallied around Fe-Be’s, with fellow venues holding fundraisers and offering vocal support. In December 1971, the bar roared back to life and stayed put until 1986. In the end, it wasn’t legal scrutiny that put an end to Fe-Be’s; it was the toll of the AIDs epidemic on San Francisco’s gay community. Kissinger died in 1988, Geist in 1998.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fe-Be’s lives on today via the \u003ca href=\"https://www.queerarthistory.com/uncategorized/mike-caffee-fe-bes-leather-david-1966/\">Leather David\u003c/a>. When Geist and Kissinger first opened the bar, they hired artist Mike Caffee to make them a version of Michaelangelo’s famous sculpture, transformed into a gay biker. Caffee’s vision went on to adorn a range of merch. When Fe-Be’s closed down and the Paradise Lounge moved in, Leather David stayed behind. Versions of Caffee’s kitsch masterpiece sit in bars today as far away as Melbourne, Australia.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Black Cat Café\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930327\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930327\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A close up image of a black and white illustration featuring two cats wearing suits and walking together in the street light, arm in arm.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A brochure from Black Cat Café, a historic bar at 710 Montgomery that existed between 1933 and 1963. \u003ccite>(Leah Millis/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Once described by Allen Ginsberg as the “greatest gay bar in America,” the Black Cat Café started life in 1933 as a hangout for bohemians, just doors away from where the Transamerica Pyramid currently stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early ’40s, when the venue was taken over by Sol Stouman, the Black Cat began fearlessly embracing all things gay. Stouman was a straight man who understood the importance of safe spaces. That was something the already subversive crowd in the bar wholeheartedly embraced. Ginsberg once commented: “It was totally open … Everybody went there, heterosexual and homosexual … All the gay screaming queens would come, the heterosexual gray flannel suit types, longshoremen. All the poets went there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one was under any illusions about the ethos of the Black Cat and those that frequented it. Legendary LGBTQ+ rights activist \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Sarria\">José Sarria\u003c/a> regularly performed in drag there in his younger years, having started out as a Black Cat waiter. Sarria was fond of belting out a rendition of “God Save the Queen” with revised lyrics — he sang “God save us nellie queens” instead. He also performed a version of the opera \u003cem>Carmen\u003c/em>, in which he outran pursuing cops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like the Silver Rail, the Black Cat was subject to major legal scrutiny starting in the late 1940s, and was labeled “disorderly.” When Stouman had his liquor license indefinitely revoked in 1949 because “\u003ca href=\"https://casetext.com/case/stoumen-v-reilly\">persons of known homosexual tendencies patronized said premises and used said premises as a meeting place\u003c/a>,” Stouman fought back — all the way to California’s Supreme Court. And in 1951, he won.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court concluded:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A number of people were arrested [at the Black Cat], some for vagrancy and some because they ‘demonstrated homosexual actions,’ but there was no showing that any of those arrested were convicted. There was no evidence of any illegal or immoral conduct on the premises … The patronage of a public restaurant and bar by homosexuals … without proof of the commission of illegal or immoral acts on the premises … is not sufficient to show a violation.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The Black Cat Café stayed in operation for another decade, though harassment by local police remained a problem for the venue for the rest of its days.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Gangway\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If ever there was a gay bar that should have lived forever, it’s the Gangway, first founded in 1910. What was, until 2018, San Francisco’s oldest continuously surviving gay bar had made it through Prohibition, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and the AIDs crisis — an astonishing run that ended unceremoniously after \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfweekly.com/dining/the-gangway-s-f-s-oldest-lgbt-bar-has-closed-after-57-years/article_96057518-3360-548c-96f5-b7769c2e07be.html\">a simple liquor license transfer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13859570']The nautical bar at 841 Larkin St. made it through an entire century by being both a magnificent Tenderloin watering hole, a wedding venue before marriage equality was the law and an LGBTQ+ museum. (The bar was equipped with a history wall, historic gay ephemera and an entryway that paid tribute to 1969’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13859570/friday-purple-hand-gay-liberation-1969\">Friday of the Purple Hand\u003c/a> protest.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond that, the Gangway also acted as a sort of community center. Starting in the 1970s, it consistently raised money for LGBTQ+ charities, whether through auctions, a charitable bar crawl known as Bar Wars, or other means. The Gangway kept itself concerned with giving back to both its own community and those that lived around the venue. (During Thanksgiving 1977, the bar gave cash and turkeys to local seniors in need.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No wonder Harvey Milk was a regular.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For a lot of us in the Bay Area, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930587/drag-dance-and-liberation-5-parties-for-your-2023-sf-pride-weekend\">where to party for Pride\u003c/a> is an annual debate. As we sit down this year to figure out where to dance the weekend away, let’s take a moment to remember the San Francisco gay bars of yore — the foundations on which our current venues were built, and the places that went to battle with the city so future generations wouldn’t have to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are five of the most crucial.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Sailor Boy Tavern\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930268\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930268\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717-800x601.jpg\" alt=\"The front of a pier building in San Francisco next to a large, anonymous two-story building.\" width=\"800\" height=\"601\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717-800x601.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717-768x577.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/opensfhistory_wnp14.2717.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Sailor Boy Tavern was housed in the unassuming building on the left, positioned directly next to Pier 16. \u003ccite>(OpenSFHistory / wnp14.2717)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One of the first leather bars in San Francisco, this joint at 24 Howard St. stayed open between 1936 and 1953, though its ownership changed hands in 1938. In its earliest days, the tavern garnered a reputation for entertaining naval men who were on leave and looking for a good (and very gay!) time in San Francisco. Later, it was also frequented by residents of the nearby Army Navy YMCA on Steuart St. — a hotbed of gay socializing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In Justin Spring’s \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Historian-Steward-Professor-Renegade/dp/0374533024\">Secret Historian, The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist and Sexual Renegade\u003c/a>, \u003c/em>Steward’s diary describes the scene at the time. “Saw a fantastic thing down by the piers,” he wrote. “Two sailors standing watch for passersby while a third went down on a fourth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pier 16 was demolished in the early 1970s and today, there’s no sign of the building that once housed Sailor Boy. Its influence and spirit, however, live on in SoMa, with the plethora of leather bars that followed Sailor Boy’s lead.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Silver Rail\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>By the time the Silver Rail opened on June 18, 1941, the area around 974 Market St. was, on a nightly basis, awash with gay men looking to party. The cruising and hustling that had been happening in the streets for at least a decade started moving inside when the first gay bars — the College Inn and the Pirates’ Cave —arrived in 1933 with the end of prohibition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite being a relative latecomer to the downtown gay scene (which was nicknamed “the Meat Rack,” incidentally), the Silver Rail was a notorious dive from day one. It was a far cry from how one newspaper ad described the bar right before it first opened, claiming that the Silver Rail would “add new lustre to the town’s old traditions of the finest in foods, drinks and merriment … and a sparkling atmosphere to match.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What the Silver Rail actually excelled at was providing a dark, fun place for men to pick each other up. Handily, it was also designed specifically to try and keep them safe from police intervention — the bar had entry doors on both Market and Turk to give customers escape routes in the event of a raid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930605\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930605\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-800x495.jpg\" alt=\"Newspaper clippings advertising a bar named The Silver Rail.\" width=\"800\" height=\"495\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-800x495.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-1020x631.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-160x99.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-768x475.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-1536x951.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-2048x1267.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/silver-rail-final-1920x1188.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">(L) A newspaper ad for the Silver Rail’s opening night, promising ‘fine food’ and ‘a sparkling atmosphere.’ (R) A newspaper ad for the Silver Rail from several years later, promising cheap drinks and ‘two entrances.’ \u003ccite>(Newpapers.com)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1949, the Silver Rail was officially classed by local authorities as a “disorderly premises.” At that point, one of the bar’s three owners, Louis E. Wolcher, filed for dissolution of partnership because his partners, Sidney Wolfe and Jack Rushin, were allowing “unlawful practices to be indulged in on the premises to such an extent that the military and naval authorities have denounced the manner in which the business was conducted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every time legal action was taken against the Silver Rail, “venereal disease” was mentioned as the reason for the clampdown — but the bar had all sorts of other problems. In 1950, the Silver Rail burned down, causing $35,000 worth of damage (almost $400,000 in 2023 money). In 1952, a man named Jimmie Tarantino successfully extorted money from the bar manager in exchange for not reporting the rampant homosexual activity taking place in the joint. In 1953, it was raided at 3:30 a.m. and 14 people were arrested. (Bartender Charles Smith was charged with selling liquor to a minor, 10 customers were taken in on charges relating to drunkenness, and three others were taken in for apparent draft card violation.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was the same year the Silver Rail finally went out of business. But boy, oh boy, what glorious, hedonistic chaos it brought to the city in its time here.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Fe-Be’s Bar\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959430\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1576px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959430\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A white marble statue depicting a shirtless biker, with his hand hooked in one pocket.\" width=\"1576\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-scaled.jpg 1576w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-800x1300.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-1020x1657.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-160x260.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-768x1248.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-945x1536.jpg 945w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-1261x2048.jpg 1261w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Mr-Fe-Be22s-1920x3119.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1576px) 100vw, 1576px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mike Caffee’s Leather David statue was designed specifically to be displayed in Fe-Be’s. It has lived on long after the bar. Today, this one resides in San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Folsom St.’s first-ever leather bar opened on July 26, 1966, courtesy of owners Don Geist and John Kissinger, a couple who had met while serving in the Navy in the 1940s. The city would come to realize that, in many ways, Geist and Kissinger were nightlife visionaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, the duo garnered a faithful crowd by frequenting biker gang meetings and handing out free drink tickets. Second, Geist and Kissinger were consistently involved with the\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfimperialcouncil.org/\"> Imperial Council of San Francisco\u003c/a> — the oldest LGBTQ+ non-profit in the world — thereby making themselves part of the wider community. (The couple is also said to have donated \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em> of money to charity.) Third, the couple incorporated A Taste of Leather into Fe-Be’s — an on-site fetish store, run by a man named Nick O’Demus, that was situated upstairs from the bar. There, patrons could fulfill all their leather- and poppers-related needs on the spot. Fourth, Geist and Kissinger started “Mr. Fe-Be’s” — an annual leather daddy contest that brought in crowds of non-regulars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Needless to say, it didn’t take long for authorities to start surveilling goings on at Fe-Be’s. Starting in 1967, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) held multiple meetings about the activities of staff and patrons at Fe-Be’s. In 1969, the ABC accused the bar of “behavior contrary to public morals,” including close physical contact amongst men, below the waist. At another hearing, when accused of having sex toys on the premises, Geist (somewhat comedically) claimed that they were merely being used as novelty drink stirrers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1970, when the bar was closed down for a year, the community that Geist and Kissinger had so lovingly built rallied around Fe-Be’s, with fellow venues holding fundraisers and offering vocal support. In December 1971, the bar roared back to life and stayed put until 1986. In the end, it wasn’t legal scrutiny that put an end to Fe-Be’s; it was the toll of the AIDs epidemic on San Francisco’s gay community. Kissinger died in 1988, Geist in 1998.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fe-Be’s lives on today via the \u003ca href=\"https://www.queerarthistory.com/uncategorized/mike-caffee-fe-bes-leather-david-1966/\">Leather David\u003c/a>. When Geist and Kissinger first opened the bar, they hired artist Mike Caffee to make them a version of Michaelangelo’s famous sculpture, transformed into a gay biker. Caffee’s vision went on to adorn a range of merch. When Fe-Be’s closed down and the Paradise Lounge moved in, Leather David stayed behind. Versions of Caffee’s kitsch masterpiece sit in bars today as far away as Melbourne, Australia.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Black Cat Café\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930327\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930327\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"A close up image of a black and white illustration featuring two cats wearing suits and walking together in the street light, arm in arm.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-1298804949-scaled-e1686869423456.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A brochure from Black Cat Café, a historic bar at 710 Montgomery that existed between 1933 and 1963. \u003ccite>(Leah Millis/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Once described by Allen Ginsberg as the “greatest gay bar in America,” the Black Cat Café started life in 1933 as a hangout for bohemians, just doors away from where the Transamerica Pyramid currently stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early ’40s, when the venue was taken over by Sol Stouman, the Black Cat began fearlessly embracing all things gay. Stouman was a straight man who understood the importance of safe spaces. That was something the already subversive crowd in the bar wholeheartedly embraced. Ginsberg once commented: “It was totally open … Everybody went there, heterosexual and homosexual … All the gay screaming queens would come, the heterosexual gray flannel suit types, longshoremen. All the poets went there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one was under any illusions about the ethos of the Black Cat and those that frequented it. Legendary LGBTQ+ rights activist \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Sarria\">José Sarria\u003c/a> regularly performed in drag there in his younger years, having started out as a Black Cat waiter. Sarria was fond of belting out a rendition of “God Save the Queen” with revised lyrics — he sang “God save us nellie queens” instead. He also performed a version of the opera \u003cem>Carmen\u003c/em>, in which he outran pursuing cops.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like the Silver Rail, the Black Cat was subject to major legal scrutiny starting in the late 1940s, and was labeled “disorderly.” When Stouman had his liquor license indefinitely revoked in 1949 because “\u003ca href=\"https://casetext.com/case/stoumen-v-reilly\">persons of known homosexual tendencies patronized said premises and used said premises as a meeting place\u003c/a>,” Stouman fought back — all the way to California’s Supreme Court. And in 1951, he won.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The court concluded:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A number of people were arrested [at the Black Cat], some for vagrancy and some because they ‘demonstrated homosexual actions,’ but there was no showing that any of those arrested were convicted. There was no evidence of any illegal or immoral conduct on the premises … The patronage of a public restaurant and bar by homosexuals … without proof of the commission of illegal or immoral acts on the premises … is not sufficient to show a violation.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The Black Cat Café stayed in operation for another decade, though harassment by local police remained a problem for the venue for the rest of its days.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Gangway\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If ever there was a gay bar that should have lived forever, it’s the Gangway, first founded in 1910. What was, until 2018, San Francisco’s oldest continuously surviving gay bar had made it through Prohibition, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and the AIDs crisis — an astonishing run that ended unceremoniously after \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfweekly.com/dining/the-gangway-s-f-s-oldest-lgbt-bar-has-closed-after-57-years/article_96057518-3360-548c-96f5-b7769c2e07be.html\">a simple liquor license transfer\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The nautical bar at 841 Larkin St. made it through an entire century by being both a magnificent Tenderloin watering hole, a wedding venue before marriage equality was the law and an LGBTQ+ museum. (The bar was equipped with a history wall, historic gay ephemera and an entryway that paid tribute to 1969’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13859570/friday-purple-hand-gay-liberation-1969\">Friday of the Purple Hand\u003c/a> protest.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond that, the Gangway also acted as a sort of community center. Starting in the 1970s, it consistently raised money for LGBTQ+ charities, whether through auctions, a charitable bar crawl known as Bar Wars, or other means. The Gangway kept itself concerned with giving back to both its own community and those that lived around the venue. (During Thanksgiving 1977, the bar gave cash and turkeys to local seniors in need.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No wonder Harvey Milk was a regular.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "historic-lesbian-bars-san-francisco-mauds-pegs-front-anns-monas-440-tommy-vasu",
"title": "5 Historic San Francisco Lesbian Bars We Wish Still Existed",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930420\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-800x630.jpg\" alt=\"Three women sit on the laps of three other women, each of whom are dressed in masculine suits and hats.\" width=\"800\" height=\"630\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-800x630.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-1020x803.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-160x126.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-768x604.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-1536x1209.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A glorious gathering of lesbians, circa 1910. \u003ccite>(Kirn Vintage Stock/ Corbis via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Back in March, thanks to my ongoing obsession with the city’s dives, I decided to compile a list of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13927137/san-francisco-bars-monas-440-cobweb-palace-chinese-pagoda-elite-varieties\">five supremely entertaining bars from San Francisco history\u003c/a>. I found some gems in the archives — a spider-filled tavern in North Beach and a lawless basement bar on the edge of Chinatown, among them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the course of that research I also discovered Mona’s 440 Club — a bar for lesbians, crossdressers and genderfluid folks that was active in the 1940s. Finding a place “where girls [could] be boys” from that era prompted me to wonder: How many other fantastic little lesbian venues existed in Bay Area history that few of us know anything about today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are five that are particularly noteworthy.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Ann’s 440 Club\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930367\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 618px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930367\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-3.21.42-PM.png\" alt=\"A newspaper ad for 'Miss Wiggles — the Marvel in Motion’ performing at Ann's 440 Club.\" width=\"618\" height=\"784\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-3.21.42-PM.png 618w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-3.21.42-PM-160x203.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 618px) 100vw, 618px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A newspaper ad for Ann’s 440 Club, as seen in ‘The San Francisco Examiner’ on April 30, 1960. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the early 1950s, when Mona’s 440 Club was sold by Mona and Jimmie Sargeant to Ann Dee she, rather naturally, renamed it Ann’s. Dee understood that her core audience should remain genderfluid lesbians and she catered to them with exotic performers like Miss Wiggles, Carol “the Dangerous Curver” Hill and “Cuban bombshell” Delia Martine. In a departure from Mona’s, however, Dee also opened up the in-house entertainment to include more male musicians and comedians — Lenny Bruce and Johnny Mathis among them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ann’s carefully curated choice of entertainers often prompted local critics to attend. In 1953, \u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> praised an “Original Pantomime” show that was quite obviously a drag performance of sorts. “In a nutshell, it’s group pantomiming of Broadway hit musicals … go[ing] through the motions of the play, the songs and the dances, in a clever, sparkling and original way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mona’s had established a safe nightclub space for lesbians in San Francisco throughout the 1940s, but it was Ann’s that helped bring sapphic culture to mainstream city nightlife.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Front\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930419\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930419\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-800x507.jpg\" alt=\"Two women dance together in a nightclub. Other women mill around in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"507\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-800x507.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-1020x646.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-768x487.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-1536x973.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-1920x1217.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front.jpg 1976w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">No photos of The Front exist today. But we imagine it a little something like this… \u003ccite>(GENNA MARTIN/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The legacy that The Front’s owner Charlotte Coleman left on LGBTQ+ nightlife in San Francisco is immense — and it only happened because homophobia pushed her out of her day job at the IRS. Forced to resign after her employer discovered she was a lesbian, Coleman took her retirement savings — and a cue from her father, a Prohibition-era rum-runner — and went into the bar trade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13911589']Coleman bought The Blind Mouse in 1958 — a gay restaurant at 600 Front St. — and renamed it The Front. The bar had a stage and a piano, and was known for its drag shows (featuring both male and female impersonators). Coleman opened the bar in a relatively deserted part of town specifically with the goal of avoiding police harassment. Sadly, the location didn’t help. Coleman got slapped with multiple morals charges, lost her license and was forced to close The Front in 1962.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coleman went on to open nine other gay venues around the city — including still-beloved bars like Twin Peaks and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13911589/sfmoma-soapbox-derby-san-francisco-wacky-races-pops-mint-parkside-tricycle-mclaren-park\">The Mint\u003c/a> — and became known for her charitable fundraising for LGBTQ+ causes, as well as her work with the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavern_Guild\">Tavern Guild\u003c/a>. The Front, however, would be her last lesbian venue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The women got into so many fights, pulling hair and dumping beers over each other!” she once explained. “I always was in the middle trying to break things up. And I really didn’t make any money either, so I decided that was a lot of fun, but I couldn’t make a living.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Tommy’s Joint/ 12 Adler Place\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930430\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930430\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A courtyard containing a bar with a fire escape and apartments above. A sign reads ‘12 Adler Museum.’\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Specs’ in North Beach was once a lesbian bar known as 12 Adler Place. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1948, inside a four-story brick building at 299 Broadway, San Francisco acquired its first queer bar opened by an out lesbian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The owner went by the name Tommy Vasu; Vasu had dressed in masculine attire since the age of 12. Despite once being described by Herb Caen as “a gentleman among ladies,” Vasu was known to be involved in organized crime and often associated with sex workers. (The 299 Club operated on the two bottom floors of the bar’s address. The top two acted as a hotel known to be a venue for prostitution.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13927137']“Anything you wanted, Tommy could get it for you,” historian \u003ca href=\"http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/ch-d-e/Eleanor%20Vasu.html\">Pat Bond once said\u003c/a>. “You wanted a watch, she’d bring out 40 watches. She liked being a gangster.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four years into successful operation, the 299 Club moved to 529 Broadway (today’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/garden-of-eden-san-francisco?osq=garden+of+eden\">Garden of Eden\u003c/a> strip club) and was renamed Tommy’s Joint. Tommy’s was a popular venue with live entertainment. It also backed directly onto a lively lesbian bar known as 12 Adler Place, also owned by Vasu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vasu’s North Beach success was short-lived. Vice squad officers closed the adjoining bars down after just two years, revoking Vasu’s license and landing one of the venue’s bartenders in jail for allegedly serving minors. It was a major local scandal at the time, milked in the media to scaremonger about the corrupting nature of homosexuality on youth. (\u003cem>The Examiner\u003c/em> referred to 12 Adler as a “sex thrill bar.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, \u003ca href=\"https://www.specsbarsf.com/\">Specs’\u003c/a> pays tribute to its former incarnation with a sign in its doorway that reads “12 Adler Museum.” Sadly, zero ephemera from the original Tommy’s Joint or 12 Adler Place remains in Specs’ today. Still not quite as sad as the ending that Vasu got, however — the former bar owner was murdered in 1978, four years after serving time for dealing heroin.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Peg’s Place\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930424\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930424\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-800x565.jpg\" alt=\"An art deco illustration of a kiss between two women. The first, smoking, sensual and in underwear lying on a bed. The second is dressed smartly in red dress and hat.\" width=\"800\" height=\"565\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-800x565.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-1020x720.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-160x113.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-768x542.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-1536x1084.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When Peg’s Place first opened, it was known for its air of refinement. (Illustration by Leon Bonnotte from ‘Le Sourire.’ Paris, France, 1925.) \u003ccite>(Fototeca Gilardi/ Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Peg’s Place forged a reputation in its early years for being a refined bar where patrons weren’t even permitted to wear jeans. (Pants were okay.) \u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> once described the joint at 4737 Geary as a “small bar with Norman-style stone arches, pool table, dance floor and open fire,” and “a cozy haven from the claimed harassments of the straight world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think they wanted you to be — maybe they call it classy,” a regular named Jackie later recalled. “They didn’t want to think they catered to bums or truck-driver types.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13930106']While in its earliest days, dancing at Peg’s wasn’t permitted because of anti-LGBTQ+ laws, the bar rules relaxed as police monitoring did. A regular named Virginia Benavides remembered a lively scene at Peg’s by the 1980s. “There was dancing, with a DJ, and the crowd was mostly white women and Black women,” she said. “I loved the energy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Owner Linda Symaco was a Filipina who first moved to the city in 1965 — and she was fierce. When the bar was attacked by a bachelor party of angry men — two of whom were off-duty cops — late one night in March 1979, Symaco relentlessly pursued justice. She, along with bouncer Arlene Levine and a customer named Kathryn Miller filed a lawsuit against three of the men in question, the city and the SFPD. Even while dealing with harassing phone calls and bomb threats to Peg’s Place, Symaco remained undeterred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, one of the police officers was convicted of battery and he and another man were also convicted of disturbing the peace. It took until 1985 for the San Francisco Police Commission to pay the three women $75,000 in damages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even for those who frequented Peg’s Place, it all feels like ancient history now. Today, what’s left of Peg’s is a Chinese restaurant named Dong Bei Mama.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Maud’s\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930417\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930417\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-800x530.png\" alt=\"A woman with cropped short hair smiles broadly as she embraces a taller woman from behind. Another pair of women embrace in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-800x530.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-1020x676.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-160x106.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-768x509.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-1536x1018.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-2048x1357.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-1920x1272.png 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patrons of Maud’s, living it up in the Haight in the ’80s. \u003ccite>(‘Last Call at Maud’s.’)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nowadays, you might know it as Finnegan’s Wake, but between April 1966 and September 1989, 937 Cole St. was Maud’s, the Haight’s greatest ever lesbian bar. The owner was Rikki Streicher, a self-confessed “bar person” who wanted women who loved women to have a safe space to make connections and community together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve always felt that bars were the most honest, open, free place that women could go,” Streicher said in 1993 documentary \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107366/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1\">\u003cem>Last Call at Maud’s\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. “So when I made this bar, I wanted it to be a composite of probably all the bars that I’ve gone to and all of the good things I’ve found in each of those bars.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The wood-paneled venue was equipped with pinball and a pool table inside, a ping-pong table in the yard and — because women couldn’t legally bartend in California until 1971 (!) — a variety of men pouring the drinks (at least in the early days). Originally named The Study, it morphed into Maud’s Study, then finally just Maud’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13930349']As late as the mid-1970s, patrons and staff were under such scrutiny that Streicher had to install an alarm to warn customers when cops were approaching. If any of the women were caught dancing or touching, there would almost certainly be legal consequences. So a red light would flash on, a short noise would sound and the women knew exactly what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, it really looks strange for anyone to walk into this bar,” one customer later recalled, “and there’s 200 dykes standing in the middle of the floor all looking at each other, not doing anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its earliest years, the bar was overrun with gay hippies thanks to its proximity to Haight-Ashbury. (Even Janis Joplin stopped by once in a while.) Into the ’70s and ’80s, there were variety shows and performances. Annual (raucous) anniversary parties were held, a bar softball team was formed and many relationships and affairs forged. Maud’s most important asset, however, was its customers. The bar fostered and nurtured an incredibly tight community of gay women. Its final closing was indeed a sad one — a fact surely true of every bygone watering hole on this list.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930420\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930420\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-800x630.jpg\" alt=\"Three women sit on the laps of three other women, each of whom are dressed in masculine suits and hats.\" width=\"800\" height=\"630\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-800x630.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-1020x803.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-160x126.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-768x604.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388-1536x1209.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-526105606-scaled-e1686597909388.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A glorious gathering of lesbians, circa 1910. \u003ccite>(Kirn Vintage Stock/ Corbis via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Back in March, thanks to my ongoing obsession with the city’s dives, I decided to compile a list of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13927137/san-francisco-bars-monas-440-cobweb-palace-chinese-pagoda-elite-varieties\">five supremely entertaining bars from San Francisco history\u003c/a>. I found some gems in the archives — a spider-filled tavern in North Beach and a lawless basement bar on the edge of Chinatown, among them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the course of that research I also discovered Mona’s 440 Club — a bar for lesbians, crossdressers and genderfluid folks that was active in the 1940s. Finding a place “where girls [could] be boys” from that era prompted me to wonder: How many other fantastic little lesbian venues existed in Bay Area history that few of us know anything about today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are five that are particularly noteworthy.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Ann’s 440 Club\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930367\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 618px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930367\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-3.21.42-PM.png\" alt=\"A newspaper ad for 'Miss Wiggles — the Marvel in Motion’ performing at Ann's 440 Club.\" width=\"618\" height=\"784\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-3.21.42-PM.png 618w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-3.21.42-PM-160x203.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 618px) 100vw, 618px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A newspaper ad for Ann’s 440 Club, as seen in ‘The San Francisco Examiner’ on April 30, 1960. \u003ccite>(The San Francisco Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the early 1950s, when Mona’s 440 Club was sold by Mona and Jimmie Sargeant to Ann Dee she, rather naturally, renamed it Ann’s. Dee understood that her core audience should remain genderfluid lesbians and she catered to them with exotic performers like Miss Wiggles, Carol “the Dangerous Curver” Hill and “Cuban bombshell” Delia Martine. In a departure from Mona’s, however, Dee also opened up the in-house entertainment to include more male musicians and comedians — Lenny Bruce and Johnny Mathis among them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ann’s carefully curated choice of entertainers often prompted local critics to attend. In 1953, \u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> praised an “Original Pantomime” show that was quite obviously a drag performance of sorts. “In a nutshell, it’s group pantomiming of Broadway hit musicals … go[ing] through the motions of the play, the songs and the dances, in a clever, sparkling and original way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mona’s had established a safe nightclub space for lesbians in San Francisco throughout the 1940s, but it was Ann’s that helped bring sapphic culture to mainstream city nightlife.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Front\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930419\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930419\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-800x507.jpg\" alt=\"Two women dance together in a nightclub. Other women mill around in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"507\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-800x507.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-1020x646.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-768x487.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-1536x973.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front-1920x1217.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/front.jpg 1976w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">No photos of The Front exist today. But we imagine it a little something like this… \u003ccite>(GENNA MARTIN/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The legacy that The Front’s owner Charlotte Coleman left on LGBTQ+ nightlife in San Francisco is immense — and it only happened because homophobia pushed her out of her day job at the IRS. Forced to resign after her employer discovered she was a lesbian, Coleman took her retirement savings — and a cue from her father, a Prohibition-era rum-runner — and went into the bar trade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Coleman bought The Blind Mouse in 1958 — a gay restaurant at 600 Front St. — and renamed it The Front. The bar had a stage and a piano, and was known for its drag shows (featuring both male and female impersonators). Coleman opened the bar in a relatively deserted part of town specifically with the goal of avoiding police harassment. Sadly, the location didn’t help. Coleman got slapped with multiple morals charges, lost her license and was forced to close The Front in 1962.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Coleman went on to open nine other gay venues around the city — including still-beloved bars like Twin Peaks and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13911589/sfmoma-soapbox-derby-san-francisco-wacky-races-pops-mint-parkside-tricycle-mclaren-park\">The Mint\u003c/a> — and became known for her charitable fundraising for LGBTQ+ causes, as well as her work with the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavern_Guild\">Tavern Guild\u003c/a>. The Front, however, would be her last lesbian venue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The women got into so many fights, pulling hair and dumping beers over each other!” she once explained. “I always was in the middle trying to break things up. And I really didn’t make any money either, so I decided that was a lot of fun, but I couldn’t make a living.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Tommy’s Joint/ 12 Adler Place\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930430\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930430\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A courtyard containing a bar with a fire escape and apartments above. A sign reads ‘12 Adler Museum.’\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/12-Adler-scaled-e1686624143457.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Specs’ in North Beach was once a lesbian bar known as 12 Adler Place. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In 1948, inside a four-story brick building at 299 Broadway, San Francisco acquired its first queer bar opened by an out lesbian.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The owner went by the name Tommy Vasu; Vasu had dressed in masculine attire since the age of 12. Despite once being described by Herb Caen as “a gentleman among ladies,” Vasu was known to be involved in organized crime and often associated with sex workers. (The 299 Club operated on the two bottom floors of the bar’s address. The top two acted as a hotel known to be a venue for prostitution.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Anything you wanted, Tommy could get it for you,” historian \u003ca href=\"http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/ch-d-e/Eleanor%20Vasu.html\">Pat Bond once said\u003c/a>. “You wanted a watch, she’d bring out 40 watches. She liked being a gangster.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four years into successful operation, the 299 Club moved to 529 Broadway (today’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/garden-of-eden-san-francisco?osq=garden+of+eden\">Garden of Eden\u003c/a> strip club) and was renamed Tommy’s Joint. Tommy’s was a popular venue with live entertainment. It also backed directly onto a lively lesbian bar known as 12 Adler Place, also owned by Vasu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vasu’s North Beach success was short-lived. Vice squad officers closed the adjoining bars down after just two years, revoking Vasu’s license and landing one of the venue’s bartenders in jail for allegedly serving minors. It was a major local scandal at the time, milked in the media to scaremonger about the corrupting nature of homosexuality on youth. (\u003cem>The Examiner\u003c/em> referred to 12 Adler as a “sex thrill bar.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, \u003ca href=\"https://www.specsbarsf.com/\">Specs’\u003c/a> pays tribute to its former incarnation with a sign in its doorway that reads “12 Adler Museum.” Sadly, zero ephemera from the original Tommy’s Joint or 12 Adler Place remains in Specs’ today. Still not quite as sad as the ending that Vasu got, however — the former bar owner was murdered in 1978, four years after serving time for dealing heroin.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Peg’s Place\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930424\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930424\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-800x565.jpg\" alt=\"An art deco illustration of a kiss between two women. The first, smoking, sensual and in underwear lying on a bed. The second is dressed smartly in red dress and hat.\" width=\"800\" height=\"565\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-800x565.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-1020x720.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-160x113.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-768x542.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966-1536x1084.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/GettyImages-559574021-scaled-e1686626114966.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When Peg’s Place first opened, it was known for its air of refinement. (Illustration by Leon Bonnotte from ‘Le Sourire.’ Paris, France, 1925.) \u003ccite>(Fototeca Gilardi/ Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Peg’s Place forged a reputation in its early years for being a refined bar where patrons weren’t even permitted to wear jeans. (Pants were okay.) \u003cem>The San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> once described the joint at 4737 Geary as a “small bar with Norman-style stone arches, pool table, dance floor and open fire,” and “a cozy haven from the claimed harassments of the straight world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think they wanted you to be — maybe they call it classy,” a regular named Jackie later recalled. “They didn’t want to think they catered to bums or truck-driver types.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>While in its earliest days, dancing at Peg’s wasn’t permitted because of anti-LGBTQ+ laws, the bar rules relaxed as police monitoring did. A regular named Virginia Benavides remembered a lively scene at Peg’s by the 1980s. “There was dancing, with a DJ, and the crowd was mostly white women and Black women,” she said. “I loved the energy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Owner Linda Symaco was a Filipina who first moved to the city in 1965 — and she was fierce. When the bar was attacked by a bachelor party of angry men — two of whom were off-duty cops — late one night in March 1979, Symaco relentlessly pursued justice. She, along with bouncer Arlene Levine and a customer named Kathryn Miller filed a lawsuit against three of the men in question, the city and the SFPD. Even while dealing with harassing phone calls and bomb threats to Peg’s Place, Symaco remained undeterred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, one of the police officers was convicted of battery and he and another man were also convicted of disturbing the peace. It took until 1985 for the San Francisco Police Commission to pay the three women $75,000 in damages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even for those who frequented Peg’s Place, it all feels like ancient history now. Today, what’s left of Peg’s is a Chinese restaurant named Dong Bei Mama.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Maud’s\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930417\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930417\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-800x530.png\" alt=\"A woman with cropped short hair smiles broadly as she embraces a taller woman from behind. Another pair of women embrace in the background.\" width=\"800\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-800x530.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-1020x676.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-160x106.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-768x509.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-1536x1018.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-2048x1357.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/mauds-1920x1272.png 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patrons of Maud’s, living it up in the Haight in the ’80s. \u003ccite>(‘Last Call at Maud’s.’)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nowadays, you might know it as Finnegan’s Wake, but between April 1966 and September 1989, 937 Cole St. was Maud’s, the Haight’s greatest ever lesbian bar. The owner was Rikki Streicher, a self-confessed “bar person” who wanted women who loved women to have a safe space to make connections and community together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve always felt that bars were the most honest, open, free place that women could go,” Streicher said in 1993 documentary \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107366/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1\">\u003cem>Last Call at Maud’s\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. “So when I made this bar, I wanted it to be a composite of probably all the bars that I’ve gone to and all of the good things I’ve found in each of those bars.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The wood-paneled venue was equipped with pinball and a pool table inside, a ping-pong table in the yard and — because women couldn’t legally bartend in California until 1971 (!) — a variety of men pouring the drinks (at least in the early days). Originally named The Study, it morphed into Maud’s Study, then finally just Maud’s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As late as the mid-1970s, patrons and staff were under such scrutiny that Streicher had to install an alarm to warn customers when cops were approaching. If any of the women were caught dancing or touching, there would almost certainly be legal consequences. So a red light would flash on, a short noise would sound and the women knew exactly what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know, it really looks strange for anyone to walk into this bar,” one customer later recalled, “and there’s 200 dykes standing in the middle of the floor all looking at each other, not doing anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its earliest years, the bar was overrun with gay hippies thanks to its proximity to Haight-Ashbury. (Even Janis Joplin stopped by once in a while.) Into the ’70s and ’80s, there were variety shows and performances. Annual (raucous) anniversary parties were held, a bar softball team was formed and many relationships and affairs forged. Maud’s most important asset, however, was its customers. The bar fostered and nurtured an incredibly tight community of gay women. Its final closing was indeed a sad one — a fact surely true of every bygone watering hole on this list.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "In ‘Blue Jean,’ a Nuanced Picture of Life as a Lesbian in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain",
"headTitle": "In ‘Blue Jean,’ a Nuanced Picture of Life as a Lesbian in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>A high school gym teacher grappling with her sexual identity is challenged on both a micro and macro level in 1988 England in \u003cem>Blue Jean\u003c/em>, a quietly complex portrait of compartmentalization and self-actualization.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13929913']In October 1987, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave a speech in which she bemoaned the state of education and said that “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.” This was just part of her critique of the state of education and the agenda of “extremist teachers” pushing “political slogans” and “anti-racist mathematics” who are cheating children out of a “sound start in life.” By May of 1988, a law was passed (Section 28) that would “prohibit the promotion of homosexuality” and would remain in effect in some form until 2003. Don’t worry if the law doesn’t sound familiar either — it was news to both the film’s director and star.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film, which opens in limited release Friday, is the assured directorial debut of Georgia Oakley, who focuses her script not on the women who went out to protest as the House of Lords debated Section 28, but on one who was still coming to terms with her own identity. Jean (Rosy McEwen) is not terribly political, and, like most teachers, keeps her private life to herself. But she’s also one whose livelihood and passion (teaching) would be directly threatened by the law. Her journey in the film is a human one — there are mistakes, deep regrets, and casualties — and it’s her flaws that make her relatable. She is not, in other words, exactly an inspirational hero.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGGRNmIU7fc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the beginning, Jean leads a quiet life. She lives alone in an apartment and commutes to teach gym to high schoolers and coach the girls’ netball team. She loves her work and takes it seriously but keeps a distance from both the students and her fellow teachers, eating alone at lunch and declining persistent requests to go out for a pint after work. Some nights she meets up with her girlfriend, Viv (Kerrie Hayes), and a group of other lesbians at an underground bar. Unlike Jean, who is described as a deer in headlights, these other women are out and proud. When an older woman sneers at Jean and Viv eating together, Jean shrinks while Viv goes on the offensive. In the background, radio news broadcasts speak about the looming Section 28.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The message Jean takes from all of this is to hide. In her mind, this makes sense because teachers need to set boundaries with their students and co-workers. But then a new girl arrives at school, Lois (Lucy Halliday) who is also gay, and Jean’s meticulously segregated life starts to crumble — especially after Lois sees her out with Viv and friends, and Jean retreats further into herself. Is it her responsibility to look, protect or guide Lois through this aspect of her life? Jean will make a shocking decision before the end of the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930351\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930351\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-800x478.png\" alt=\"A woman with a shaved head and a blonde woman sit in a pub at a table, pints of beer in front of them. Two friends sit opposite them.\" width=\"800\" height=\"478\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-800x478.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-1020x610.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-768x459.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM.png 1512w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kerrie Hayes, background left, and Rosy McEwen in a scene from ‘Blue Jean.’ \u003ccite>(Magnolia Pictures via AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jean is both an introvert and a product of her environment — she doesn’t speak to her mother anymore and her more conservative, heterosexual sister’s attempts at supporting Jean mostly make her feel worse. She scolds Jean for exposing her 5-year-old son to Viv, even though she drops the kid off at her apartment without any warning. Jean is also scolded by Viv for telling her nephew that she’s “a friend.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13930047']Oakley has said she wanted to present a protagonist “without glamorization or misrepresentation,” inspired by filmmakers like Kelly Reichardt and Chantal Akerman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Blue Jean\u003c/em> is a perfect film to debut during Pride. It’s a reminder of the very recent past and the generational effects of institutionalized homophobia.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In October 1987, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave a speech in which she bemoaned the state of education and said that “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.” This was just part of her critique of the state of education and the agenda of “extremist teachers” pushing “political slogans” and “anti-racist mathematics” who are cheating children out of a “sound start in life.” By May of 1988, a law was passed (Section 28) that would “prohibit the promotion of homosexuality” and would remain in effect in some form until 2003. Don’t worry if the law doesn’t sound familiar either — it was news to both the film’s director and star.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film, which opens in limited release Friday, is the assured directorial debut of Georgia Oakley, who focuses her script not on the women who went out to protest as the House of Lords debated Section 28, but on one who was still coming to terms with her own identity. Jean (Rosy McEwen) is not terribly political, and, like most teachers, keeps her private life to herself. But she’s also one whose livelihood and passion (teaching) would be directly threatened by the law. Her journey in the film is a human one — there are mistakes, deep regrets, and casualties — and it’s her flaws that make her relatable. She is not, in other words, exactly an inspirational hero.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/mGGRNmIU7fc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/mGGRNmIU7fc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>At the beginning, Jean leads a quiet life. She lives alone in an apartment and commutes to teach gym to high schoolers and coach the girls’ netball team. She loves her work and takes it seriously but keeps a distance from both the students and her fellow teachers, eating alone at lunch and declining persistent requests to go out for a pint after work. Some nights she meets up with her girlfriend, Viv (Kerrie Hayes), and a group of other lesbians at an underground bar. Unlike Jean, who is described as a deer in headlights, these other women are out and proud. When an older woman sneers at Jean and Viv eating together, Jean shrinks while Viv goes on the offensive. In the background, radio news broadcasts speak about the looming Section 28.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The message Jean takes from all of this is to hide. In her mind, this makes sense because teachers need to set boundaries with their students and co-workers. But then a new girl arrives at school, Lois (Lucy Halliday) who is also gay, and Jean’s meticulously segregated life starts to crumble — especially after Lois sees her out with Viv and friends, and Jean retreats further into herself. Is it her responsibility to look, protect or guide Lois through this aspect of her life? Jean will make a shocking decision before the end of the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930351\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930351\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-800x478.png\" alt=\"A woman with a shaved head and a blonde woman sit in a pub at a table, pints of beer in front of them. Two friends sit opposite them.\" width=\"800\" height=\"478\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-800x478.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-1020x610.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM-768x459.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-09-at-11.11.28-AM.png 1512w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kerrie Hayes, background left, and Rosy McEwen in a scene from ‘Blue Jean.’ \u003ccite>(Magnolia Pictures via AP)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jean is both an introvert and a product of her environment — she doesn’t speak to her mother anymore and her more conservative, heterosexual sister’s attempts at supporting Jean mostly make her feel worse. She scolds Jean for exposing her 5-year-old son to Viv, even though she drops the kid off at her apartment without any warning. Jean is also scolded by Viv for telling her nephew that she’s “a friend.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>When publicist and writer Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., she found herself, for the first time, surrounded by queer stories — on historical placards, on her LGBTQ swim team and on her television screen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But these stories were rarely about lesbians — and even more rarely — lesbians \u003cem>in love\u003c/em>. So began Possanza’s journey into the archives to uncover the romances and role models written out of history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13930047']“I like to think of this project as me taking on being the publicist for lesbians,” Possanza tells me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Possanza’s book\u003cem> Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives\u003c/em> focuses on seven couples, each representing a different era in the 20th century. And, for the most part, they are not well-known figures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not, ‘Oh, here’s the story of how Eleanor Roosevelt was secretly a lesbian,’ or ‘Here is the story of Emily Dickinson, who was maybe in love with her brother’s wife,'” Possanza says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For her research, Possanza dove into the archives, searching for people who, she says, “lived daringly and left some record of living a queer life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930108\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930108\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A young woman with messy brown shoulder-length hair faces the camera. She is wearing round spectacles.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0.jpg 1645w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Amelia Possanza. \u003ccite>(Catapult)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There’s also a surprising amount about swimming in the book. Part of that, Possanza says, could be her own bias. She swims for a gay and lesbian aquatic team in New York \u003ca href=\"https://www.tnya.org/\">(it’s actually the largest LGBTQ swim team in the world)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another part is just feeling free in your own body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13930013']“One sort of unexpected thing that came up for me in writing is there’s so much policing of what women, lesbians, queer people wore — and that policing actually became a way of just policing queerness in general,” Possanza says. “Today we have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/25/1177727539/hamburger-marys-orlando-lawsuit-florida-desantis-drag-show\">drag bans in certain states\u003c/a>. And before those existed — before explicit terminology to ban these things — a lot of it was based on what you wore. And I think the beach was somewhere to be free of that, especially if you found a nude beach, if you could be in the water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Possanza did not grow up with many stories about lesbians. But, she says they’re right there, even when the word is not used, even when that part of their story is erased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I come from a really nerdy family of readers. My father is a classicist and my mother is a librarian. And I think they very much raised me to believe that if you’re going to have an experience and you’re nervous about it or you don’t know about it, you can go read a book about it,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s easy to find books about transitions that everyone goes through — getting ready for school or moving away from home. Now Possanza’s memoir fills a space long absent from bookshelves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I realized that there actually weren’t a lot of stories that I had about lesbians to guide me. And so I think doing this project made me start thinking about what gets you remembered, what generates records,” Possanza says. “You know, prisons generate records, governments generate records. Sometimes being in love doesn’t generate records.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13929396']But \u003ca href=\"https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/casal\">Mary Casal\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/mabel-hampton-residence/\">Mabel Hampton\u003c/a> did leave records. Casal met the love of her life in a hotel lobby in 1892 — and then wrote her own memoir. Hampton stayed with her partner for 40 years — and lent her voice to the \u003ca href=\"https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org/\">Lesbian Herstory Archives\u003c/a>, a New York City-based museum dedicated to preserving lesbian history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Too often, queer stories end in tragedy. What binds these stories together is how these lesbians create pockets of safety, security and community, even in the most hostile circumstances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The audio and web versions of this story were edited by Reena Advani.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">visit NPR\u003c/a>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Lesbian+Love+Story%27+unearths+a+century+of+queer+romance&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">.\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For her research, Possanza dove into the archives, searching for people who, she says, “lived daringly and left some record of living a queer life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930108\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13930108\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A young woman with messy brown shoulder-length hair faces the camera. She is wearing round spectacles.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0-1536x1151.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/amelia-possanza-author-photo-c-becca-farsace-for-arcs-and-final-copies-1-ce5cbd23237f9f48a668ae7f329cf30f189455f0.jpg 1645w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Author Amelia Possanza. \u003ccite>(Catapult)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There’s also a surprising amount about swimming in the book. Part of that, Possanza says, could be her own bias. She swims for a gay and lesbian aquatic team in New York \u003ca href=\"https://www.tnya.org/\">(it’s actually the largest LGBTQ swim team in the world)\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another part is just feeling free in your own body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“One sort of unexpected thing that came up for me in writing is there’s so much policing of what women, lesbians, queer people wore — and that policing actually became a way of just policing queerness in general,” Possanza says. “Today we have \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2023/05/25/1177727539/hamburger-marys-orlando-lawsuit-florida-desantis-drag-show\">drag bans in certain states\u003c/a>. And before those existed — before explicit terminology to ban these things — a lot of it was based on what you wore. And I think the beach was somewhere to be free of that, especially if you found a nude beach, if you could be in the water.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Possanza did not grow up with many stories about lesbians. But, she says they’re right there, even when the word is not used, even when that part of their story is erased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I come from a really nerdy family of readers. My father is a classicist and my mother is a librarian. And I think they very much raised me to believe that if you’re going to have an experience and you’re nervous about it or you don’t know about it, you can go read a book about it,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s easy to find books about transitions that everyone goes through — getting ready for school or moving away from home. Now Possanza’s memoir fills a space long absent from bookshelves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I realized that there actually weren’t a lot of stories that I had about lesbians to guide me. And so I think doing this project made me start thinking about what gets you remembered, what generates records,” Possanza says. “You know, prisons generate records, governments generate records. Sometimes being in love doesn’t generate records.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>But \u003ca href=\"https://outhistory.org/exhibits/show/casal\">Mary Casal\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/mabel-hampton-residence/\">Mabel Hampton\u003c/a> did leave records. Casal met the love of her life in a hotel lobby in 1892 — and then wrote her own memoir. Hampton stayed with her partner for 40 years — and lent her voice to the \u003ca href=\"https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org/\">Lesbian Herstory Archives\u003c/a>, a New York City-based museum dedicated to preserving lesbian history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Too often, queer stories end in tragedy. What binds these stories together is how these lesbians create pockets of safety, security and community, even in the most hostile circumstances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The audio and web versions of this story were edited by Reena Advani.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">visit NPR\u003c/a>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Lesbian+Love+Story%27+unearths+a+century+of+queer+romance&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">.\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>On April 28, 1945, footage was taken of 2,000 female concentration camp survivors gathered at the harbor in Malmö, Sweden. Many appear remarkably relaxed, smiling and waving for the camera as it pans past them on the crowded dock. Outside of the excited mass, the camera captures more pensive faces — women whose trauma is etched on their brows, their faces worn from the horrors they’ve experienced. Among them stands a stoic Asian woman, still dressed in her striped concentration camp coat, her face an enigmatic blank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When documentary filmmaker Magnus Gertten saw the footage of that day, he knew he wanted to find out more about as many of the women as he could. Particularly, he was desperate to find out about the mysterious woman in the striped coat. What or who was she thinking about when the camera caught her immovable gaze? Where did she end up? And did she ever find a happy ending?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13929953\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13929953\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-800x524.png\" alt=\"An Asian woman wearing a thick striped coat and whit neck scarf knotted at her neck, stares blankly forward, her hair disheveled. \" width=\"800\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-800x524.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-1020x668.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-160x105.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-768x503.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-1536x1006.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-1920x1257.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine.png 1964w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nadine Hwang, shortly after she was liberated from Ravensbrück, the largest concentration camp for women in Germany. \u003ccite>(‘Nelly & Nadine’)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>New documentary \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> answers all of those questions over the course of its engrossing 90 minutes. The woman in the archival footage was named Nadine Hwang. The daughter of the Chinese ambassador to Spain, Hwang had lived proudly as a lesbian long before the war, moving in prestigious bohemian and literary circles. While incarcerated at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, she met and fell in love with a singer named Claire “Nelly” Mousset-Vos. Their relationship ultimately helped them both endure the atrocities of World War II; their deep love a powerful catalyst for survival. But standing on the dock that day, Hwang had no idea if the love of her life was even still alive, or if she would ever see her again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The couple’s story, both during and after the war, is told in \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> via what they so painstakingly left behind: Super 8 home movies, personal correspondence, Hwang’s extensive photo and letter collection and, most importantly, Mousset-Vos’ vivid and heart-wrenching diaries. For decades, Hwang and Mousset-Vos’ personal effects sat in a steel box in the home of the latter’s granddaughter, Sylvie Bianchi — a woman who found herself so heartbroken by its contents, she long refused to read them in any depth. Bianchi’s decision to finally do so is at the center of \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em>. It is her grandmother’s relationship, however, that becomes the film’s heart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cVi0gwobeg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most impactful parts of \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> can be attributed to excerpts from Mousset-Vos’ extraordinary wartime diaries. Alive with vivid detail, her writings transport the viewer to every sight, smell and anxiety of living in hell on Earth. She is blunt and unflinching when it comes to conveying the true torments of concentration camp incarceration. The directness of her writing is often devastating in its simplicity. “17 women are dead,” she writes at the end of a hellish five-day train journey. “And a baby was born.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, after being transferred from Ravensbrück, Mousset-Vos describes her new location thusly:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>At the top, crowning the mountain, lies the camp. Mauthausen, the antechamber of hell. We climb down a giant 186-step staircase carved into the rock. It’s the quarry. Our tomb. The air smells of typhus and corpses. You have to fight for a morsel of moldy bread, a sip of water, a place to sleep. A woman lets out a long cry of agony that sounds like a cry of pleasure. How to find the courage to survive?\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Mousset-Vos’ writings make plain how the love of Hwang helped her to endure the unimaginable. She wrote of briefly snatched moments of joy when the pair could share measly bread rations and deep conversations. “I find myself looking out for her black hair beneath white scarf,” Mousset-Vos wrote shortly after meeting Hwang, “and her eyes that light up when they see me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the war, having both somehow made it out alive, the two corresponded by postcard and letter for a few years before they could be reunited. Once they were, they built a life together in Venezuela — a location chosen to help them erase their memories of the war. Old friends are interviewed in \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> about the life Hwang and Mousset-Vos shared there, a life well lived and thoroughly enjoyed. It is clear that the couple gave each other — and their friends — permission to live any way they pleased. After what they endured in the war, there was simply no other way to move forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> is a layered story, richly told. Yes, it offers a new telling of the war from the perspective of a supremely talented writer. And, yes, it speaks to family lineage and the legacies we leave behind. It is about the importance of finding cracks of light in relentless darkness. But above all else, it is a story of magnificent, beautiful LGBTQ love; love that was life-saving first and life-affirming later; love that was embraced and nurtured and valued above all else. And while some of the details in it have the power to devastate, the hope in \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> shines brighter than everything else. Something that very much reflects the relationship it’s about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Nellie & Nadine’ begins streaming on June 6, 2023, and is available via Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu and Wolfe On Demand.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On April 28, 1945, footage was taken of 2,000 female concentration camp survivors gathered at the harbor in Malmö, Sweden. Many appear remarkably relaxed, smiling and waving for the camera as it pans past them on the crowded dock. Outside of the excited mass, the camera captures more pensive faces — women whose trauma is etched on their brows, their faces worn from the horrors they’ve experienced. Among them stands a stoic Asian woman, still dressed in her striped concentration camp coat, her face an enigmatic blank.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When documentary filmmaker Magnus Gertten saw the footage of that day, he knew he wanted to find out more about as many of the women as he could. Particularly, he was desperate to find out about the mysterious woman in the striped coat. What or who was she thinking about when the camera caught her immovable gaze? Where did she end up? And did she ever find a happy ending?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13929953\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13929953\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-800x524.png\" alt=\"An Asian woman wearing a thick striped coat and whit neck scarf knotted at her neck, stares blankly forward, her hair disheveled. \" width=\"800\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-800x524.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-1020x668.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-160x105.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-768x503.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-1536x1006.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine-1920x1257.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Nadine.png 1964w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nadine Hwang, shortly after she was liberated from Ravensbrück, the largest concentration camp for women in Germany. \u003ccite>(‘Nelly & Nadine’)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>New documentary \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> answers all of those questions over the course of its engrossing 90 minutes. The woman in the archival footage was named Nadine Hwang. The daughter of the Chinese ambassador to Spain, Hwang had lived proudly as a lesbian long before the war, moving in prestigious bohemian and literary circles. While incarcerated at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, she met and fell in love with a singer named Claire “Nelly” Mousset-Vos. Their relationship ultimately helped them both endure the atrocities of World War II; their deep love a powerful catalyst for survival. But standing on the dock that day, Hwang had no idea if the love of her life was even still alive, or if she would ever see her again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The couple’s story, both during and after the war, is told in \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> via what they so painstakingly left behind: Super 8 home movies, personal correspondence, Hwang’s extensive photo and letter collection and, most importantly, Mousset-Vos’ vivid and heart-wrenching diaries. For decades, Hwang and Mousset-Vos’ personal effects sat in a steel box in the home of the latter’s granddaughter, Sylvie Bianchi — a woman who found herself so heartbroken by its contents, she long refused to read them in any depth. Bianchi’s decision to finally do so is at the center of \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em>. It is her grandmother’s relationship, however, that becomes the film’s heart.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/6cVi0gwobeg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/6cVi0gwobeg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most impactful parts of \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> can be attributed to excerpts from Mousset-Vos’ extraordinary wartime diaries. Alive with vivid detail, her writings transport the viewer to every sight, smell and anxiety of living in hell on Earth. She is blunt and unflinching when it comes to conveying the true torments of concentration camp incarceration. The directness of her writing is often devastating in its simplicity. “17 women are dead,” she writes at the end of a hellish five-day train journey. “And a baby was born.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, after being transferred from Ravensbrück, Mousset-Vos describes her new location thusly:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>At the top, crowning the mountain, lies the camp. Mauthausen, the antechamber of hell. We climb down a giant 186-step staircase carved into the rock. It’s the quarry. Our tomb. The air smells of typhus and corpses. You have to fight for a morsel of moldy bread, a sip of water, a place to sleep. A woman lets out a long cry of agony that sounds like a cry of pleasure. How to find the courage to survive?\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Mousset-Vos’ writings make plain how the love of Hwang helped her to endure the unimaginable. She wrote of briefly snatched moments of joy when the pair could share measly bread rations and deep conversations. “I find myself looking out for her black hair beneath white scarf,” Mousset-Vos wrote shortly after meeting Hwang, “and her eyes that light up when they see me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the war, having both somehow made it out alive, the two corresponded by postcard and letter for a few years before they could be reunited. Once they were, they built a life together in Venezuela — a location chosen to help them erase their memories of the war. Old friends are interviewed in \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> about the life Hwang and Mousset-Vos shared there, a life well lived and thoroughly enjoyed. It is clear that the couple gave each other — and their friends — permission to live any way they pleased. After what they endured in the war, there was simply no other way to move forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> is a layered story, richly told. Yes, it offers a new telling of the war from the perspective of a supremely talented writer. And, yes, it speaks to family lineage and the legacies we leave behind. It is about the importance of finding cracks of light in relentless darkness. But above all else, it is a story of magnificent, beautiful LGBTQ love; love that was life-saving first and life-affirming later; love that was embraced and nurtured and valued above all else. And while some of the details in it have the power to devastate, the hope in \u003cem>Nelly & Nadine\u003c/em> shines brighter than everything else. Something that very much reflects the relationship it’s about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘Nellie & Nadine’ begins streaming on June 6, 2023, and is available via Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu and Wolfe On Demand.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A little over 60 years ago, the editor-in-chief of \u003cem>DownBeat\u003c/em> magazine asked John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy a deceptively simple question: \u003cem>What are you trying to do? \u003c/em>He rephrased slightly: \u003cem>What are you doing? \u003c/em>The two saxophonists sat for a long 30 seconds before Dolphy broke the silence. “That’s a good question,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>DownBeat \u003c/em>editor, Don DeMicheal, printed this exchange in the April 1962 issue, as part of \u003ca href=\"https://downbeat.com/microsites/prestige/dolphy-interview.html\">a fascinating article\u003c/a> headlined “John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy Answer the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/jazz\">Jazz\u003c/a> Critics.” Regular readers of the magazine would have known precisely what provoked this gesture: a scathing review of Coltrane’s quintet with Dolphy, decrying “an anarchistic course in their music that can but be termed anti-jazz.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13929691']1961 had been a prolific and pivotal year for Coltrane. That spring, his sleek, intriguing quartet version of “My Favorite Things,” from \u003cem>The Sound of Music, \u003c/em>became a breakout hit. But later that year, as he signed to a new label, Impulse! Records, he wasn’t putting a premium on commercial success. Instead, he was exploring new sounds and configurations, often testing ideas on the bandstand. One such idea was the addition of Dolphy, a wildly original voice on both reeds and flute, and a close personal friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The intrepid depth of their musical rapport takes center stage on a stunning new archival release, \u003cem>Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy\u003c/em>, which \u003ca href=\"https://JohnColtrane.lnk.to/Shop\">Impulse! will release on July 14\u003c/a>. Tomorrow the label will share a preview track, “Impressions,” featuring Coltrane on soprano saxophone and Dolphy on alto saxophone and bass clarinet — along with drummer Elvin Jones, pianist McCoy Tyner and bassist Reggie Workman, who together make the song feel something like a runaway train. (Until then, you can hear it — exclusively — here.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYja5pH7ciM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Any time that we worked with John,” Workman, who is a few weeks shy of 86, tells NPR, “you could always hear transition in his music.” This was maybe never truer than it is here, in a recording made during a month-long residency in late-summer of 1961. \u003cem>Evenings at the Village Gate \u003c/em>actually opens with a version of “My Favorite Things,” and closes with the droning, polyrhythmic churn of “Africa.” Coltrane was in the process of reinventing his language, and by extension the language of jazz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was growing into a place where he did not want to be inhibited by the steps and the changes that were prescribed by certain structures,” Workman says, adding: “He wanted us to be about a chant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13929976\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13929976\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-800x625.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"625\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-800x625.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-1020x796.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-160x125.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-768x600.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM.png 1158w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of the marquee at the Village Gate in New York, advertising John Coltrane’s performances in the summer of 1961. \u003ccite>(Herb Snitzer/Courtesy of Impulse! Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Village Gate was a large basement room with a growing reputation in 1961, home to folksingers and comedy acts as well as artists like Nina Simone. Coltrane worked there in August as part of a triple bill, alongside groups led by drummer Art Blakey and pianist Horace Silver. (A photograph of the club marquee by Herb Snitzer shows Coltrane billed with a quartet, underscoring how recently Dolphy had joined the fray.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13927947']The Gate had a state-of-the-art sound system, installed by an ambitious young engineer named Richard Alderson. One night during Coltrane’s run, Alderson decided to test the system by capturing the band, using a single RCA ribbon microphone suspended above the stage, with a line running to a reel-to-reel tape recorder. The tapes were never intended for public consumption, and unauthorized in any case, so Alderson set them aside. They found their way to a collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where they were recently rediscovered by a Bob Dylan archivist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13929973\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13929973\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/jc-ed_3000x3000_packshot_revised_custom-330d48681258a72348dda94428b70420669ce944.jpg\" alt=\"An album cover depicts two men performing on stage, in shadow.\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/jc-ed_3000x3000_packshot_revised_custom-330d48681258a72348dda94428b70420669ce944.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/jc-ed_3000x3000_packshot_revised_custom-330d48681258a72348dda94428b70420669ce944-160x160.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Evenings at the Village Gate’ by John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Impulse! Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Coltrane admirers, jazz historians and anyone intrigued by the experimental end of improvisational music, \u003cem>Evenings at the Village Gate \u003c/em>will represent not only a welcome new find but also a link in a chain. The Coltrane-and-Dolphy frontline was short-lived, in part because it faced such strong headwinds from the jazz establishment, but it did leave behind a major testament: \u003cem>Coltrane “Live” at the Village Vanguard, \u003c/em>recorded at a different Greenwich Village club in November 1961, the same month that their unruly output jarred loose the indelible phrase “anti-jazz.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those Village Vanguard tapes, which later yielded a monumental four-disc set, amount to one of the most mysterious and thrilling documents in jazz history. A couple of years ago, Ben Ratliff, author of \u003cem>Coltrane: The Story of a Sound\u003c/em>, placed this music within a cultural context of “ambivalent possibility,” in a vivid essay for the \u003cem>Washington Post \u003c/em>titled “\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/11/03/john-coltrane-village-vanguard-1961/\">John Coltrane and the Essence of 1961\u003c/a>.” He observes: “The music sounds post-heroic and pre-cynical; interestingly free from grandiosity; full of room for the listener to find a place within it and make up their own mind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, after hearing the version of “Impressions” from \u003cem>Evenings at the Gate, \u003c/em>Ratliff elaborated on this idea. “It’s very hard to label or encapsulate, but it’s just so ferociously full of life force,” he said of the performance. “The musicians know how good this is, and they know how exciting it is — but beyond that, they don’t really know much, and it hasn’t been called anything yet. There’s a lot of the unknown here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13929974\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13929974\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/1961_johncoltrane_herbsnitzer_photographicprint_2-copy_custom-f56222536ca8d06c927a5cde2b64884d8f143a42.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"247\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/1961_johncoltrane_herbsnitzer_photographicprint_2-copy_custom-f56222536ca8d06c927a5cde2b64884d8f143a42.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/1961_johncoltrane_herbsnitzer_photographicprint_2-copy_custom-f56222536ca8d06c927a5cde2b64884d8f143a42-160x198.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photograph of Eric Dolphy (left) and John Coltrane taken by Herb Snitzer during a performance at the Village Gate in New York in 1961. \u003ccite>(Herb Snitzer/Courtesy of Impulse! Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What came next for Coltrane was the most stable period of his career, as he solidified the personnel of his quartet — Tyner, Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison, who can be heard on parts of the Village Vanguard corpus — and made venerated albums like \u003cem>Crescent, Ballads \u003c/em>and \u003cem>A Love Supreme.\u003c/em> Parting ways, Dolphy refocused on his own visionary music, making strong statements until his tragically untimely death, of a diabetic coma, in 1964. (Coltrane died only three years later, of liver cancer.) The last several years have brought revelatory archival releases from both saxophonists, but \u003cem>Evenings at the Gate\u003c/em> is a window onto the early bloom of their collaboration, when it must have felt like pure possibility to all involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 80-minute album — which will be released in physical formats with illuminating liner essays by Workman, Alderson, Grammy-winning jazz writer Ashley Kahn, and saxophonists Branford Marsalis and Lakecia Benjamin — seems guaranteed to reignite conversation about an incipient phase in Coltrane’s restless evolution. And it’s worth recalling part of the answer he finally gave DeMicheal, for the piece in \u003cem>DownBeat.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13921584']“I think the main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe,” Coltrane said, sounding not the least bit defensive. “That’s what music is to me — it’s just another way of saying this is a big, beautiful universe we live in, that’s been given to us, and here’s an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is. That’s what I would like to do. I think that’s one of the greatest things you can do in life, and we all try to do it in some way. The musician’s is through his music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=John+Coltrane+and+Eric+Dolphy%27s+fearless+experiment+sets+a+new+album+ablaze+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A little over 60 years ago, the editor-in-chief of \u003cem>DownBeat\u003c/em> magazine asked John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy a deceptively simple question: \u003cem>What are you trying to do? \u003c/em>He rephrased slightly: \u003cem>What are you doing? \u003c/em>The two saxophonists sat for a long 30 seconds before Dolphy broke the silence. “That’s a good question,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>DownBeat \u003c/em>editor, Don DeMicheal, printed this exchange in the April 1962 issue, as part of \u003ca href=\"https://downbeat.com/microsites/prestige/dolphy-interview.html\">a fascinating article\u003c/a> headlined “John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy Answer the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/jazz\">Jazz\u003c/a> Critics.” Regular readers of the magazine would have known precisely what provoked this gesture: a scathing review of Coltrane’s quintet with Dolphy, decrying “an anarchistic course in their music that can but be termed anti-jazz.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>1961 had been a prolific and pivotal year for Coltrane. That spring, his sleek, intriguing quartet version of “My Favorite Things,” from \u003cem>The Sound of Music, \u003c/em>became a breakout hit. But later that year, as he signed to a new label, Impulse! Records, he wasn’t putting a premium on commercial success. Instead, he was exploring new sounds and configurations, often testing ideas on the bandstand. One such idea was the addition of Dolphy, a wildly original voice on both reeds and flute, and a close personal friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The intrepid depth of their musical rapport takes center stage on a stunning new archival release, \u003cem>Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy\u003c/em>, which \u003ca href=\"https://JohnColtrane.lnk.to/Shop\">Impulse! will release on July 14\u003c/a>. Tomorrow the label will share a preview track, “Impressions,” featuring Coltrane on soprano saxophone and Dolphy on alto saxophone and bass clarinet — along with drummer Elvin Jones, pianist McCoy Tyner and bassist Reggie Workman, who together make the song feel something like a runaway train. (Until then, you can hear it — exclusively — here.)\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/DYja5pH7ciM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/DYja5pH7ciM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Any time that we worked with John,” Workman, who is a few weeks shy of 86, tells NPR, “you could always hear transition in his music.” This was maybe never truer than it is here, in a recording made during a month-long residency in late-summer of 1961. \u003cem>Evenings at the Village Gate \u003c/em>actually opens with a version of “My Favorite Things,” and closes with the droning, polyrhythmic churn of “Africa.” Coltrane was in the process of reinventing his language, and by extension the language of jazz.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was growing into a place where he did not want to be inhibited by the steps and the changes that were prescribed by certain structures,” Workman says, adding: “He wanted us to be about a chant.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13929976\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13929976\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-800x625.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"625\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-800x625.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-1020x796.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-160x125.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM-768x600.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Screen-Shot-2023-06-01-at-10.33.31-AM.png 1158w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photo of the marquee at the Village Gate in New York, advertising John Coltrane’s performances in the summer of 1961. \u003ccite>(Herb Snitzer/Courtesy of Impulse! Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Village Gate was a large basement room with a growing reputation in 1961, home to folksingers and comedy acts as well as artists like Nina Simone. Coltrane worked there in August as part of a triple bill, alongside groups led by drummer Art Blakey and pianist Horace Silver. (A photograph of the club marquee by Herb Snitzer shows Coltrane billed with a quartet, underscoring how recently Dolphy had joined the fray.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Gate had a state-of-the-art sound system, installed by an ambitious young engineer named Richard Alderson. One night during Coltrane’s run, Alderson decided to test the system by capturing the band, using a single RCA ribbon microphone suspended above the stage, with a line running to a reel-to-reel tape recorder. The tapes were never intended for public consumption, and unauthorized in any case, so Alderson set them aside. They found their way to a collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where they were recently rediscovered by a Bob Dylan archivist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13929973\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13929973\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/jc-ed_3000x3000_packshot_revised_custom-330d48681258a72348dda94428b70420669ce944.jpg\" alt=\"An album cover depicts two men performing on stage, in shadow.\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/jc-ed_3000x3000_packshot_revised_custom-330d48681258a72348dda94428b70420669ce944.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/jc-ed_3000x3000_packshot_revised_custom-330d48681258a72348dda94428b70420669ce944-160x160.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Evenings at the Village Gate’ by John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Impulse! Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Coltrane admirers, jazz historians and anyone intrigued by the experimental end of improvisational music, \u003cem>Evenings at the Village Gate \u003c/em>will represent not only a welcome new find but also a link in a chain. The Coltrane-and-Dolphy frontline was short-lived, in part because it faced such strong headwinds from the jazz establishment, but it did leave behind a major testament: \u003cem>Coltrane “Live” at the Village Vanguard, \u003c/em>recorded at a different Greenwich Village club in November 1961, the same month that their unruly output jarred loose the indelible phrase “anti-jazz.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those Village Vanguard tapes, which later yielded a monumental four-disc set, amount to one of the most mysterious and thrilling documents in jazz history. A couple of years ago, Ben Ratliff, author of \u003cem>Coltrane: The Story of a Sound\u003c/em>, placed this music within a cultural context of “ambivalent possibility,” in a vivid essay for the \u003cem>Washington Post \u003c/em>titled “\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/11/03/john-coltrane-village-vanguard-1961/\">John Coltrane and the Essence of 1961\u003c/a>.” He observes: “The music sounds post-heroic and pre-cynical; interestingly free from grandiosity; full of room for the listener to find a place within it and make up their own mind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, after hearing the version of “Impressions” from \u003cem>Evenings at the Gate, \u003c/em>Ratliff elaborated on this idea. “It’s very hard to label or encapsulate, but it’s just so ferociously full of life force,” he said of the performance. “The musicians know how good this is, and they know how exciting it is — but beyond that, they don’t really know much, and it hasn’t been called anything yet. There’s a lot of the unknown here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13929974\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13929974\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/1961_johncoltrane_herbsnitzer_photographicprint_2-copy_custom-f56222536ca8d06c927a5cde2b64884d8f143a42.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"247\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/1961_johncoltrane_herbsnitzer_photographicprint_2-copy_custom-f56222536ca8d06c927a5cde2b64884d8f143a42.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/1961_johncoltrane_herbsnitzer_photographicprint_2-copy_custom-f56222536ca8d06c927a5cde2b64884d8f143a42-160x198.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A photograph of Eric Dolphy (left) and John Coltrane taken by Herb Snitzer during a performance at the Village Gate in New York in 1961. \u003ccite>(Herb Snitzer/Courtesy of Impulse! Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What came next for Coltrane was the most stable period of his career, as he solidified the personnel of his quartet — Tyner, Jones and bassist Jimmy Garrison, who can be heard on parts of the Village Vanguard corpus — and made venerated albums like \u003cem>Crescent, Ballads \u003c/em>and \u003cem>A Love Supreme.\u003c/em> Parting ways, Dolphy refocused on his own visionary music, making strong statements until his tragically untimely death, of a diabetic coma, in 1964. (Coltrane died only three years later, of liver cancer.) The last several years have brought revelatory archival releases from both saxophonists, but \u003cem>Evenings at the Gate\u003c/em> is a window onto the early bloom of their collaboration, when it must have felt like pure possibility to all involved.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 80-minute album — which will be released in physical formats with illuminating liner essays by Workman, Alderson, Grammy-winning jazz writer Ashley Kahn, and saxophonists Branford Marsalis and Lakecia Benjamin — seems guaranteed to reignite conversation about an incipient phase in Coltrane’s restless evolution. And it’s worth recalling part of the answer he finally gave DeMicheal, for the piece in \u003cem>DownBeat.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“I think the main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe,” Coltrane said, sounding not the least bit defensive. “That’s what music is to me — it’s just another way of saying this is a big, beautiful universe we live in, that’s been given to us, and here’s an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is. That’s what I would like to do. I think that’s one of the greatest things you can do in life, and we all try to do it in some way. The musician’s is through his music.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=John+Coltrane+and+Eric+Dolphy%27s+fearless+experiment+sets+a+new+album+ablaze+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 1973, March Fong Eu stood before an audience at Foothill College in Los Altos and made a searing speech, titled \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11639158/march-fong-eu-the-self-sufficient-woman\">\u003cem>The Self-Sufficient Woman\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. In it, she directed her gaze squarely at the patriarchy and despaired at the state of gender equality in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Maybe if some men had to bear and rear unwanted babies themselves, they would understand better our resentment of laws relating to our reproductive systems,” she said. “Maybe if some men let their wives involuntarily control their income, they would understand better our resentment of present discriminatory statutes directed toward women as a class. And maybe if some men were raped, and, in pursuit of justice, they found that they had to reveal humiliating information about their past lives, maybe then they would understand the anger of women who feel they are doubly wronged by rapists and the laws concerning rape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='news_11639158']Evidently, Fong Eu was not one to mince words. She was not one to be trifled with. The first generation daughter of Chinese immigrants spent her entire life working to smash down the barriers that women faced at every turn. And Fong Eu was successful in that pursuit at every stage of her career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, she graduated from UC Berkeley. Then came a Master’s from Mills. Finally, she earned her Ph.D at Stanford. In her first profession as a dental hygienist, Fong Eu became the first woman and first Asian American to chair UCSF’s Department of Dental Hygiene. Then, starting in 1956, Fong Eu served three terms on the Alameda County Board of Education, serving as its president between 1961 and ’62. After that came the big one: In 1966, she won a place on the California State Assembly — with a margin of more than a million votes. Representing Oakland and Castro Valley, Fong Eu was one of only two women serving on the 118-person assembly at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no argument to the opinion that this nation could benefit greatly by increased participation by women in decision-making positions,” she later said. “We do bring to bear unique experiences and insights, unlike our male counterparts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 1969, Fong Eu demonstrated that point when she went to war against pay toilets in public buildings. At the time, men’s urinals were free to use, but stalls cost a dime to access. It was an early example of what we now refer to as the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.investopedia.com/pink-tax-5095458\">pink tax\u003c/a>” — the extra money women are forced to pay for products and services. Fong Eu campaigned fervently for a statewide ban on the bathroom fee, using a combination of tenacity and humor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The campaign culminated in a stunt on the steps of Sacramento’s Capitol building, during which Fong Eu smashed a padlocked toilet with a sledgehammer. She flung the sledgehammer with such gusto, assembled journalists were forced to duck out of the way. The speech she made that day was unabashedly filled with toilet humor too, much to the amusement of the press. (“The movement is on!” she declared with a cheeky smile. “The pressure is mounting!”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek5ExFpHYMs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Toilets weren’t the only thing that got smashed when Fong Eu was an assemblywoman. On one occasion, one of her colleagues had promised to nominate her good friend Willie Brown for speaker, then failed to do so on the day. Fong Eu was so aghast, she physically reacted.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“March Fong Eu stood up and took her handbag and started whacking the guy on his head without saying a word!” Brown relayed to KPIX in 2018. “She didn’t tell me she was going to do it! Nobody understood that she had that potential.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13911567']In the end, it took five years after Fong Eu’s toilet stunt for then-Governor Ronald Reagan to sign legislation banning pay toilets. It is unlikely to have happened at all without Fong Eu loudly bringing the issue to the state’s attention. She used that fact in her 1974 campaign to become Secretary of State. Fong Eu would go on to win, with a record 3.4 million votes. (Four years later, she was so popular, that number had swelled to 4 million.) Fong Eu was the first woman to hold the position and the first Chinese-American elected to a constitutional office in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fong Eu’s fortitude was tested in 1986 when an axe-wielding burglar broke into her home and brutally beat her. She survived by handing over several hundred dollars, but was left with enough cuts and bruises to warrant a hospital stay. Her deputy, Anthony L. Miller. told the press at the time, “She’s a real scrapper and survivor. She feels very lucky to be alive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miller, incidentally, was an openly gay man that Fong Eu hired as Chief Deputy Secretary of State in 1980, saying she didn’t want the support of anyone who might have a problem with Miller’s sexuality. “Things are much different today,” Miller said in 2018, “because of people like March Fong Eu who led the way to tolerance, and acceptance and non-discrimination.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ong Eu held onto the position of Secretary of State for almost two decades and, in that time, transformed voting access for Californians. She introduced voter registration by mail, absentee ballots for anyone who requested them (no reason needed), candidate statements on ballot pamphlets and internet reporting of election results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13897608']While in office, Fong Eu pushed for the various divisions of the secretary of state’s office to be consolidated under one roof. The resulting \u003ca href=\"https://www.dgs.ca.gov/RESD/Resources/List-of-DGS-Managed-Office-Buildings/Page-Content/List-of-DGS-Office-Buildings/Sacramento-Region/Secretary-of-State-Archives\">downtown Sacramento building\u003c/a> has been named after her since 2019. Fong Eu was also an ardent supporter of the California State Archives — appropriate, given that the archive currently houses \u003ca href=\"https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c80g3sft/entire_text/\">72 boxes\u003c/a> of materials related to her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1994, President Bill Clinton named Fong Eu as U.S. Ambassador to Micronesia. She served for two years before resigning to assist in the Clinton-Gore election campaign. Though she never held a prominent office again, Fong Eu never stopped working or pushing for what she felt was right. In the ’90s, she spoke out against prejudice towards Asian-Americans. After the debacle of the 2000 Bush v. Gore election angered her, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Florida-Made-Her-Mad-At-79-March-Fong-Eu-wants-2942518.php\">Fong Eu took an axe to a punchcard voting machine\u003c/a> at a Sacramento news conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>March Fong Eu died in 2017 at the age of 95. Her casket was draped in an American flag and her funeral at Oakland’s Chapel of the Chimes was attended by colleagues and admirers from up and down California. The impact she made is almost impossible to measure — both on the careers of the female politicians coming up behind her and on the everyday lives of regular women statewide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps Fong Eu said it best herself, during a 1979 interview with the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>: “Not too bad for a lady born behind a Chinese laundry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n 1973, March Fong Eu stood before an audience at Foothill College in Los Altos and made a searing speech, titled \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11639158/march-fong-eu-the-self-sufficient-woman\">\u003cem>The Self-Sufficient Woman\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. In it, she directed her gaze squarely at the patriarchy and despaired at the state of gender equality in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Maybe if some men had to bear and rear unwanted babies themselves, they would understand better our resentment of laws relating to our reproductive systems,” she said. “Maybe if some men let their wives involuntarily control their income, they would understand better our resentment of present discriminatory statutes directed toward women as a class. And maybe if some men were raped, and, in pursuit of justice, they found that they had to reveal humiliating information about their past lives, maybe then they would understand the anger of women who feel they are doubly wronged by rapists and the laws concerning rape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Evidently, Fong Eu was not one to mince words. She was not one to be trifled with. The first generation daughter of Chinese immigrants spent her entire life working to smash down the barriers that women faced at every turn. And Fong Eu was successful in that pursuit at every stage of her career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, she graduated from UC Berkeley. Then came a Master’s from Mills. Finally, she earned her Ph.D at Stanford. In her first profession as a dental hygienist, Fong Eu became the first woman and first Asian American to chair UCSF’s Department of Dental Hygiene. Then, starting in 1956, Fong Eu served three terms on the Alameda County Board of Education, serving as its president between 1961 and ’62. After that came the big one: In 1966, she won a place on the California State Assembly — with a margin of more than a million votes. Representing Oakland and Castro Valley, Fong Eu was one of only two women serving on the 118-person assembly at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no argument to the opinion that this nation could benefit greatly by increased participation by women in decision-making positions,” she later said. “We do bring to bear unique experiences and insights, unlike our male counterparts.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In the end, it took five years after Fong Eu’s toilet stunt for then-Governor Ronald Reagan to sign legislation banning pay toilets. It is unlikely to have happened at all without Fong Eu loudly bringing the issue to the state’s attention. She used that fact in her 1974 campaign to become Secretary of State. Fong Eu would go on to win, with a record 3.4 million votes. (Four years later, she was so popular, that number had swelled to 4 million.) Fong Eu was the first woman to hold the position and the first Chinese-American elected to a constitutional office in California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fong Eu’s fortitude was tested in 1986 when an axe-wielding burglar broke into her home and brutally beat her. She survived by handing over several hundred dollars, but was left with enough cuts and bruises to warrant a hospital stay. Her deputy, Anthony L. Miller. told the press at the time, “She’s a real scrapper and survivor. She feels very lucky to be alive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Miller, incidentally, was an openly gay man that Fong Eu hired as Chief Deputy Secretary of State in 1980, saying she didn’t want the support of anyone who might have a problem with Miller’s sexuality. “Things are much different today,” Miller said in 2018, “because of people like March Fong Eu who led the way to tolerance, and acceptance and non-discrimination.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">F\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ong Eu held onto the position of Secretary of State for almost two decades and, in that time, transformed voting access for Californians. She introduced voter registration by mail, absentee ballots for anyone who requested them (no reason needed), candidate statements on ballot pamphlets and internet reporting of election results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>While in office, Fong Eu pushed for the various divisions of the secretary of state’s office to be consolidated under one roof. The resulting \u003ca href=\"https://www.dgs.ca.gov/RESD/Resources/List-of-DGS-Managed-Office-Buildings/Page-Content/List-of-DGS-Office-Buildings/Sacramento-Region/Secretary-of-State-Archives\">downtown Sacramento building\u003c/a> has been named after her since 2019. Fong Eu was also an ardent supporter of the California State Archives — appropriate, given that the archive currently houses \u003ca href=\"https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c80g3sft/entire_text/\">72 boxes\u003c/a> of materials related to her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1994, President Bill Clinton named Fong Eu as U.S. Ambassador to Micronesia. She served for two years before resigning to assist in the Clinton-Gore election campaign. Though she never held a prominent office again, Fong Eu never stopped working or pushing for what she felt was right. In the ’90s, she spoke out against prejudice towards Asian-Americans. After the debacle of the 2000 Bush v. Gore election angered her, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Florida-Made-Her-Mad-At-79-March-Fong-Eu-wants-2942518.php\">Fong Eu took an axe to a punchcard voting machine\u003c/a> at a Sacramento news conference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>March Fong Eu died in 2017 at the age of 95. Her casket was draped in an American flag and her funeral at Oakland’s Chapel of the Chimes was attended by colleagues and admirers from up and down California. The impact she made is almost impossible to measure — both on the careers of the female politicians coming up behind her and on the everyday lives of regular women statewide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps Fong Eu said it best herself, during a 1979 interview with the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>: “Not too bad for a lady born behind a Chinese laundry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>To learn about other Rebel Girls from Bay Area History, visit the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/rebelgirls\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rebel Girls homepage\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>A book celebrating women from the Rebel Girls series, \u003ca href=\"https://citylights.com/politics-current-events-history/unsung-heroines35-women-who-changed/\">‘Unsung Heroines: 35 Women Who Changed the Bay Area,’\u003c/a> is available now from City Lights.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Time a Bay Area Coffee Boycott Helped Stop a Civil War",
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"content": "\u003cp>When you spot the red Folgers tin in the coffee aisle at your local supermarket, you might think of the iconic tagline that says, “The best part of wakin’ up is Folgers in your cup.” But what many coffee lovers might not remember is the time in the early ‘90s when Folgers Coffee was the target of a nation-wide boycott that started right here in San Francisco. The goal? To help stop a civil war in El Salvador.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With all of the newer, trendier coffee brands that now dominate the Bay Area, it’s easy to forget that Folgers has a long history in San Francisco. It was one of the “Big Three” coffee companies, along with Hills Brothers and MJB, that was founded in San Francisco in the late 19th century. These days, the company is probably best known for the convenience of its instant coffee and ground coffee blends. But in the beginning, Folgers built up its reputation as one of America’s leading coffee brands on the basis of quality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Good quality beans, roasted properly, produce good quality coffee — and that was the name of the game,” says Monika Trobits, a coffee historian and the author of \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52771645-bay-area-coffee\">\u003ci>Bay Area Coffee\u003c/i>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In those early years, the highest-quality green, unroasted coffee beans arriving at the Port of San Francisco came from Central America — including a large quantity that was imported from El Salvador. \u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the same time, in the late 19th century, coffee had become one of the main sources of income for El Salvador’s wealthy landowner class. These coffee plantation owners were oligarchs who, over the course of the next 100 years, took more and more land from the country’s indigenous people, got rich off the crop and used that wealth to exert influence over the country’s politics and military. By the 1970s, socioeconomic inequality in El Salvador had become even more stark, and the country began to experience widespread civil unrest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Salvadorans needed agrarian reform, immediate education and healthcare,” explains Felix Kury, a retired San Francisco State lecturer who taught mental health courses in the Latin American Studies Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928589\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13928589\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury.jpg\" alt=\"Man in glasses shows an article that he's loaded onto his iPad.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-1536x2048.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Retired SF State lecturer Felix Kury was active in the grassroots movement advocating for political change in El Salvador. \u003ccite>(Sebastian Miño-Bucheli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Young Salvadorans like Kury began to leave their country to organize abroad, sending aid home or participating in direct protest actions such as occupying their local Salvadoran consulate. Back in El Salvador, left-leaning guerillas took to arms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 1980 \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-el-salvador-romero-idUSKCN1MY03P\">assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero\u003c/a>, who was popular for denouncing violence and criticizing the Salvadoran military, proved to be the last straw that plunged the country into civil war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[A soldier] shot him right as he was lifting the hostia (communion bread)…en el momento más sagrada” — the most sacred moment, Kury recalls. “The murder of the bishop gave a signal to anyone that no one will be safe.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o15gEAdlMUQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, in the U.S., Kury says, “All of us began to say, ‘What do we do? We have to go beyond working with Salvadorans to develop a movement.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, Salvadorans like Kury joined other like-minded supporters to form the East Bay Interfaith Task Force on El Salvador. One day in November 1980, he recalls, Salvadoran port workers informed the task force that the U.S. government was bringing tanks and heavy artillery to the ports in Oakland — and that they planned to send those arms to support the military regime in El Salvador.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the help of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the task force sprang into action, organizing a blockade that prevented ports all over the West Coast from sending arms to El Salvador. Similar to the United Farm Workers’ organizing efforts in the ‘60s, Salvadoran activists had begun to seek broad support for their movement. It was no longer just Salvadorans protesting the civil war — Chicanos and Americans showed up at the port too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blockade also set the stage for an even more ambitious protest action to hit El Salvador where it would hurt the most — the coffee industry that enabled the military regime’s most powerful members to build up their wealth.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A Grassroots Movement\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Around this time, a media organization called the Central American Television Project was working to spread awareness about U.S. policy in Central America. In 1985, it hired Fred Ross Jr., a San Francisco-based labor organizer — who \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/12/01/fred-ross-jr-obituary\">passed away last year \u003c/a>— as its new executive director. The organization’s name changed to Neighbor to Neighbor, and under Ross’ direction, it took a grassroots approach to stopping U.S. aid to Nicaragua and El Salvador.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This organization had people all over the country,” Ross’ widow, the labor attorney Margo Feinberg, recalls. “They impacted many congressional races to try to change the numbers in the legislature to cut back on the funding to El Salvador.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928599\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13928599\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott.jpg\" alt='A flyer reads, \"The Death Squad\" and \"Boycott Salvadoran Coffee.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"2485\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-800x1035.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-1020x1320.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-160x207.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-768x994.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-1187x1536.jpg 1187w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-1582x2048.jpg 1582w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of Neighbor to Neighbor’s flyers in support of the Salvadoran coffee boycott. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Neighbor to Neighbor)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>According to Feinberg, her late husband first witnessed the connection between what was happening to Salvadoran refugees and the U.S. role in the war when he worked as a public defender in San Francisco. Ross and his fellow organizers had already begun contemplating the idea of a coffee boycott when the murders of six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her daughter in 1989 \u003ca href=\"https://www.fredrossproject.org/fred-ross-jr-timeline\">propelled Neighbor to Neighbor to take immediate action\u003c/a>. The boycott’s main target was Folgers Coffee, for selling Salvadoran coffee beans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, around 60% of Salvadoran coffee harvests were shipped to the United States, the biggest buyer on the market. Neighbor to Neighbor argued that those coffee earnings were part of a vicious cycle of violence through which the wealthy plantation owners continued to finance the Salvadoran government and its death squads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Folgers claimed it only purchased 2% of its beans from El Salvador,” says Trobits, the coffee historian. “But Neighbor to Neighbor wanted them to not purchase any.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928588\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13928588\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249.jpg\" alt=\"Woman wearing glasses sits in front of a wall covered in old newspaper clippings and coffee advertisements.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Area coffee historian Monika Trobits’ wall is decorated with old coffee advertisements. \u003ccite>(Sebastian Miño-Bucheli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Trobits says once the news came out that a freighter carrying 34 tons of Salvadoran coffee beans was due to dock in San Francisco in February 1990, about a hundred Neighbor to Neighbor protesters gathered at Pier 96 in the Bayview to establish a picket line, with the support of the longshoremen’s union. \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-02-17-me-515-story.html\">Agents of the shipping company convinced the terminal operators\u003c/a> to offload all of the Colombian and Costa Rican coffee – but nothing from El Salvador.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So the captain decided to move on, sailed up to Vancouver and met the same kind of resistance,” Trobits says, detailing the ship’s journey up and down the Pacific coast. “This freighter — and every one of those beans — ended up going back to El Salvador.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928594\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13928594\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001.jpg\" alt='Black-and-white image of protestors taking a knee, holding signs that read, \"Boycott Folgers\" and \"U.S. Out of El Salvador.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1443\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-800x601.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-1020x767.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-768x577.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-1536x1154.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Supporters of the Salvadoran coffee boycott form a picket line at Pier 80 in San Francisco in February 1990. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Dennis Hearne / The Fred Ross Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Neighbor to Neighbor kept its picket lines going for the next two years. Around the same time, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors also voted to boycott Salvadoran coffee beans, and the California state legislature formally protested the human rights violations against civilians by the Salvadoran military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a direct result of the boycotts, one of the grandsons from the Gamble family, which founded Procter & Gamble — Folgers’ parent company — pushed for the company to stop buying Salvadoran coffee. P&G, Nestlé and Kraft even took out ads in Salvadoran newspapers urging the government to negotiate a peace settlement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8TZq_GLmR8&t=407s\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of this pressure eventually paid off: Hours before the New Year rang in for 1992, the Salvadoran president and the rebels signed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-01-01-mn-1052-story.html\">United Nations–sponsored peace accord\u003c/a>. The 12-year war in which 75,000 civilians died finally came to an end. Months later, Neighbor to Neighbor ended its two-year boycott.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A Legacy of Coffee Activism\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s been 30 years since the last shots were fired, but the Salvadoran coffee protest’s legacy hasn’t lost its relevance. Feinberg says the boycott’s success made it a model for all types of organizing that have taken place since then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13918088,arts_13899379,arts_13887962']\u003c/span>Today, coffee accounts for a much smaller portion of the Salvadoran economy, and the industry is no longer exclusively dominated by huge plantations — there are \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20090907031039/http://www.usaid.gov/stories/elsalvador/cs_elsalvador_coffee.pdf\">also smaller, more sustainability-focused farms \u003c/a>that now supply beans to some of the Bay Area’s trendier third-wave coffee shops. At least one of those shops specifically identifies as Salvadoran — \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/5/20/22445160/abanico-new-coffee-shop-opens-mission-san-francisco\">Abanico Coffee Roasters\u003c/a> in San Francisco’s Mission District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the coffee world continues to be fertile ground for progressive activism. There were, for instance, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/business/starbucks-blm-ban-reversed.html\">calls to boycott Starbucks\u003c/a> when it initially banned its employees from wearing Black Lives Matter attire. More recently, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1106884406/coffee-shop-starbucks-baristas-union-election-cafe\">baristas across the nation have been pushing to unionize their local shops\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, just like during the Salvadoran coffee boycott, the ethics of where a coffee company sources its beans continues to be an important issue. In fact, Trobits says there’s a sort of “fourth wave” of coffee happening right now that’s defined by ethical sourcing, how coffee growers respond to climate change, and baristas and other workers organizing to better their working conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not at the end,” Trobits says of the movement to make the coffee world more just. “It will probably not ever be over because I don’t see the coffee is going away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trobits says we’re all in this game, those of us who buy, sell or even just appreciate coffee. Like it or not, we all are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Correction: The article originally stated that Archbishop Romero was assassinated in 1979 instead of 1980; it has been updated to clarify the timeline of El Salvador’s left-wing guerrilla movement.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When you spot the red Folgers tin in the coffee aisle at your local supermarket, you might think of the iconic tagline that says, “The best part of wakin’ up is Folgers in your cup.” But what many coffee lovers might not remember is the time in the early ‘90s when Folgers Coffee was the target of a nation-wide boycott that started right here in San Francisco. The goal? To help stop a civil war in El Salvador.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With all of the newer, trendier coffee brands that now dominate the Bay Area, it’s easy to forget that Folgers has a long history in San Francisco. It was one of the “Big Three” coffee companies, along with Hills Brothers and MJB, that was founded in San Francisco in the late 19th century. These days, the company is probably best known for the convenience of its instant coffee and ground coffee blends. But in the beginning, Folgers built up its reputation as one of America’s leading coffee brands on the basis of quality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Good quality beans, roasted properly, produce good quality coffee — and that was the name of the game,” says Monika Trobits, a coffee historian and the author of \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52771645-bay-area-coffee\">\u003ci>Bay Area Coffee\u003c/i>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In those early years, the highest-quality green, unroasted coffee beans arriving at the Port of San Francisco came from Central America — including a large quantity that was imported from El Salvador. \u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Around the same time, in the late 19th century, coffee had become one of the main sources of income for El Salvador’s wealthy landowner class. These coffee plantation owners were oligarchs who, over the course of the next 100 years, took more and more land from the country’s indigenous people, got rich off the crop and used that wealth to exert influence over the country’s politics and military. By the 1970s, socioeconomic inequality in El Salvador had become even more stark, and the country began to experience widespread civil unrest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Salvadorans needed agrarian reform, immediate education and healthcare,” explains Felix Kury, a retired San Francisco State lecturer who taught mental health courses in the Latin American Studies Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928589\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13928589\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury.jpg\" alt=\"Man in glasses shows an article that he's loaded onto his iPad.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/felix-kury-1536x2048.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Retired SF State lecturer Felix Kury was active in the grassroots movement advocating for political change in El Salvador. \u003ccite>(Sebastian Miño-Bucheli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Young Salvadorans like Kury began to leave their country to organize abroad, sending aid home or participating in direct protest actions such as occupying their local Salvadoran consulate. Back in El Salvador, left-leaning guerillas took to arms.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 1980 \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/article/us-el-salvador-romero-idUSKCN1MY03P\">assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero\u003c/a>, who was popular for denouncing violence and criticizing the Salvadoran military, proved to be the last straw that plunged the country into civil war.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[A soldier] shot him right as he was lifting the hostia (communion bread)…en el momento más sagrada” — the most sacred moment, Kury recalls. “The murder of the bishop gave a signal to anyone that no one will be safe.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/o15gEAdlMUQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/o15gEAdlMUQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, in the U.S., Kury says, “All of us began to say, ‘What do we do? We have to go beyond working with Salvadorans to develop a movement.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, Salvadorans like Kury joined other like-minded supporters to form the East Bay Interfaith Task Force on El Salvador. One day in November 1980, he recalls, Salvadoran port workers informed the task force that the U.S. government was bringing tanks and heavy artillery to the ports in Oakland — and that they planned to send those arms to support the military regime in El Salvador.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the help of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the task force sprang into action, organizing a blockade that prevented ports all over the West Coast from sending arms to El Salvador. Similar to the United Farm Workers’ organizing efforts in the ‘60s, Salvadoran activists had begun to seek broad support for their movement. It was no longer just Salvadorans protesting the civil war — Chicanos and Americans showed up at the port too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The blockade also set the stage for an even more ambitious protest action to hit El Salvador where it would hurt the most — the coffee industry that enabled the military regime’s most powerful members to build up their wealth.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A Grassroots Movement\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Around this time, a media organization called the Central American Television Project was working to spread awareness about U.S. policy in Central America. In 1985, it hired Fred Ross Jr., a San Francisco-based labor organizer — who \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2022/12/01/fred-ross-jr-obituary\">passed away last year \u003c/a>— as its new executive director. The organization’s name changed to Neighbor to Neighbor, and under Ross’ direction, it took a grassroots approach to stopping U.S. aid to Nicaragua and El Salvador.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This organization had people all over the country,” Ross’ widow, the labor attorney Margo Feinberg, recalls. “They impacted many congressional races to try to change the numbers in the legislature to cut back on the funding to El Salvador.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928599\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13928599\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott.jpg\" alt='A flyer reads, \"The Death Squad\" and \"Boycott Salvadoran Coffee.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"2485\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-800x1035.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-1020x1320.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-160x207.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-768x994.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-1187x1536.jpg 1187w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/savadoran-coffee-boycott-1582x2048.jpg 1582w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of Neighbor to Neighbor’s flyers in support of the Salvadoran coffee boycott. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Neighbor to Neighbor)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>According to Feinberg, her late husband first witnessed the connection between what was happening to Salvadoran refugees and the U.S. role in the war when he worked as a public defender in San Francisco. Ross and his fellow organizers had already begun contemplating the idea of a coffee boycott when the murders of six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her daughter in 1989 \u003ca href=\"https://www.fredrossproject.org/fred-ross-jr-timeline\">propelled Neighbor to Neighbor to take immediate action\u003c/a>. The boycott’s main target was Folgers Coffee, for selling Salvadoran coffee beans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, around 60% of Salvadoran coffee harvests were shipped to the United States, the biggest buyer on the market. Neighbor to Neighbor argued that those coffee earnings were part of a vicious cycle of violence through which the wealthy plantation owners continued to finance the Salvadoran government and its death squads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Folgers claimed it only purchased 2% of its beans from El Salvador,” says Trobits, the coffee historian. “But Neighbor to Neighbor wanted them to not purchase any.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928588\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13928588\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249.jpg\" alt=\"Woman wearing glasses sits in front of a wall covered in old newspaper clippings and coffee advertisements.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/Monica-Trobits_CoffeeInterview03242023-2249-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Area coffee historian Monika Trobits’ wall is decorated with old coffee advertisements. \u003ccite>(Sebastian Miño-Bucheli)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Trobits says once the news came out that a freighter carrying 34 tons of Salvadoran coffee beans was due to dock in San Francisco in February 1990, about a hundred Neighbor to Neighbor protesters gathered at Pier 96 in the Bayview to establish a picket line, with the support of the longshoremen’s union. \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-02-17-me-515-story.html\">Agents of the shipping company convinced the terminal operators\u003c/a> to offload all of the Colombian and Costa Rican coffee – but nothing from El Salvador.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So the captain decided to move on, sailed up to Vancouver and met the same kind of resistance,” Trobits says, detailing the ship’s journey up and down the Pacific coast. “This freighter — and every one of those beans — ended up going back to El Salvador.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928594\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13928594\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001.jpg\" alt='Black-and-white image of protestors taking a knee, holding signs that read, \"Boycott Folgers\" and \"U.S. Out of El Salvador.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1443\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-800x601.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-1020x767.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-768x577.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/05/boycottfolgers2_001-1536x1154.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Supporters of the Salvadoran coffee boycott form a picket line at Pier 80 in San Francisco in February 1990. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Dennis Hearne / The Fred Ross Project)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Neighbor to Neighbor kept its picket lines going for the next two years. Around the same time, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors also voted to boycott Salvadoran coffee beans, and the California state legislature formally protested the human rights violations against civilians by the Salvadoran military.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a direct result of the boycotts, one of the grandsons from the Gamble family, which founded Procter & Gamble — Folgers’ parent company — pushed for the company to stop buying Salvadoran coffee. P&G, Nestlé and Kraft even took out ads in Salvadoran newspapers urging the government to negotiate a peace settlement.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/D8TZq_GLmR8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/D8TZq_GLmR8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of this pressure eventually paid off: Hours before the New Year rang in for 1992, the Salvadoran president and the rebels signed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-01-01-mn-1052-story.html\">United Nations–sponsored peace accord\u003c/a>. The 12-year war in which 75,000 civilians died finally came to an end. Months later, Neighbor to Neighbor ended its two-year boycott.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A Legacy of Coffee Activism\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>It’s been 30 years since the last shots were fired, but the Salvadoran coffee protest’s legacy hasn’t lost its relevance. Feinberg says the boycott’s success made it a model for all types of organizing that have taken place since then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>Today, coffee accounts for a much smaller portion of the Salvadoran economy, and the industry is no longer exclusively dominated by huge plantations — there are \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20090907031039/http://www.usaid.gov/stories/elsalvador/cs_elsalvador_coffee.pdf\">also smaller, more sustainability-focused farms \u003c/a>that now supply beans to some of the Bay Area’s trendier third-wave coffee shops. At least one of those shops specifically identifies as Salvadoran — \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/5/20/22445160/abanico-new-coffee-shop-opens-mission-san-francisco\">Abanico Coffee Roasters\u003c/a> in San Francisco’s Mission District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the coffee world continues to be fertile ground for progressive activism. There were, for instance, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/business/starbucks-blm-ban-reversed.html\">calls to boycott Starbucks\u003c/a> when it initially banned its employees from wearing Black Lives Matter attire. More recently, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1106884406/coffee-shop-starbucks-baristas-union-election-cafe\">baristas across the nation have been pushing to unionize their local shops\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, just like during the Salvadoran coffee boycott, the ethics of where a coffee company sources its beans continues to be an important issue. In fact, Trobits says there’s a sort of “fourth wave” of coffee happening right now that’s defined by ethical sourcing, how coffee growers respond to climate change, and baristas and other workers organizing to better their working conditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not at the end,” Trobits says of the movement to make the coffee world more just. “It will probably not ever be over because I don’t see the coffee is going away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trobits says we’re all in this game, those of us who buy, sell or even just appreciate coffee. Like it or not, we all are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Correction: The article originally stated that Archbishop Romero was assassinated in 1979 instead of 1980; it has been updated to clarify the timeline of El Salvador’s left-wing guerrilla movement.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Remembering Qued and Phred, the Weirdest Mascots in KQED History",
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"content": "\u003cp>If you’re an old-school KQED viewer, you might remember Qued and Phred — the very strange mascots of the now-defunct annual KQED auction. Qued is a mischievous-looking giant red devil creature who walks on all fours and often carries a “sold” sign in his mouth. Phred, who can usually be seen leading Qued on a leash, is what would happen if the Monopoly man had a baby with \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Babadook\">the Babadook\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For reasons that are fairly unfathomable now, these two “Monster Mash”-looking weirdos were an integral part of mainstream KQED culture between 1960 and 1990. Qued and Phred’s images adorned T-shirts, belt buckles, advertisements and studio backdrops. Now and again, we as a TV channel even made volunteers climb into mascot costumes in Qued and Phred’s likenesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I remember the first time I saw [the Qued costume],” says former auction worker Marianne Fu-Petroni. “It was a real big, human-sized costume. I was like ‘Somebody gets into there?!’ You know, you can’t really keep it clean after so many years…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928126\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928126\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM-800x1011.png\" alt=\"A man and woman stand between a table and a lined board with a list of items on it. They are surrounded by random objects including a clock, painting of flowers, carving of an Indigenous person, and full-sized figures of a devil and a man in a top hat.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1011\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM-800x1011.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM-160x202.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM-768x971.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM.png 932w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Qued and Phred looming terrifyingly over a KQED auction scene. \u003ccite>(KQED Archives)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The design for Qued and Phred arrived in 1960, five years after the first live auction was launched to keep KQED’s lights on. The characters came into being when a volunteer named Frannie Fleishhacker (wife of prominent Bay Area businessman \u003ca href=\"https://www.fleishhackerfoundation.org/about/history\">Mortimer Fleishhacker\u003c/a>) decided to seek out an eye-catching logo for the auction. Frannie reached out to Oakland advertising company \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_%26_Kleiser\">Foster & Kleiser\u003c/a> to see if anyone would be willing to create a design, gratis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13909983']A young illustrator named John DeBonis answered the call and took it upon himself to draw “a weird guy — you might even call him villainous — who goes to the auction and brings home something equally weird,” DeBonis later explained. “It seemed like it would be kind of fun. Not too deadly serious.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the reasons DeBonis’ design was so seemingly out of step with the idea of public media is because he had almost no idea what KQED was. “It was a little peanut of a station in those days,” he told the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> in 1971. “We didn’t even have a television set at the time and I had never seen their programs. The initial reaction [to Qued and Phred] at KQED was a pleasant one but I don’t recall that anyone jumped up and down…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the Qued character garnered a solid following fairly quickly. By the time the \u003cem>Chronicle\u003c/em> sat down with DeBonis for that interview, the paper was reporting that, despite Qued having “a slightly lewd expression … it’s impossible not to return his grin.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928124\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928124\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-800x627.jpg\" alt=\"Two stuffed toys. One is a white-faced figure with red eyes and grin of fangs, wearing a black suit and top hat. The other is a grinning red devil with pointed tail.\" width=\"800\" height=\"627\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-800x627.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-1020x800.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-160x125.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-768x602.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-1536x1204.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phred and Qued in stuffy form. These toys were once available to buy at auction — and they didn’t come cheap. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While Qued had a title from the time of his inception, it would take Phred a full 16 years to get his own name. That happened in May 1976, when KQED decided to hold — and please do marvel at how creative this title is — “A Contest to Name the Little Guy Who Leads Around the Qued Monster.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Berkeley Gazette\u003c/em> happily reported later that month that:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The winner was Peggy Fuson of Pinole who has christened the little man ‘King Phrederick IX, Pretender to the Throne of Bryant Street.’ Ms. Fuson, who wrote a ballad to go along with the new name is willing to let the monster man be called Phred for short.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>(So yes, people were definitely doing a lot of drugs in the 1970s.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928123\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928123\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Three separate images: One of four gold belt buckles, all depicting different versions of the same devil monster. One of a white watch with the devil monster on the clock face. One yellow t-shirt featuring the monster as seen on an auction broadcast.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Qued merch from decades past. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a representative of an unusual auction item, Qued wasn’t far off from reality. The KQED auction was indeed, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CdG334I_Ew\">hodgepodge of anything and everything\u003c/a> you could possibly think of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13910308']Auction items were gathered by volunteers and “auction solicitors” literally going door-to-door and calling around asking for donations. Paintings, clothing, food and wine, office, garden and pool equipment and even some houses (\u003cem>houses!\u003c/em>) were sold off alongside gift certificates for restaurants and other Bay Area businesses. In the late ’60s, Qued toys were so sought after, they sold for an impressive $100 (about $800 today).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The auction also featured so-called “priceless items” — experiences you couldn’t buy anywhere else. In 1970, a dinner with beloved \u003cem>Chronicle\u003c/em> columnist Herb Caen was auctioned for $300 (about $2,300 in 2023 money). That same year, dinners with Giants legends Willie Mays and Willie McCovey went for $350. On another occasion, Martin Yan of PBS’s \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://yancancook.com/home/\">Yan Can Cook\u003c/a>\u003c/em> offered up a homemade dinner for 12 people. He was stunned when someone bid $10,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most shocking things, looking back, is that living animals were also auctioned off on the air. These included an English bulldog donated by the Charter Bank of London and livestock. One year, a steer that had been raised on then-presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson’s Texas ranch found itself on the auction block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928125\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928125\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-800x1043.jpg\" alt=\"A model wearing a 1950s-style gown stands, smiling broadly, in front of a TV camera. At her side is a calf.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1043\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-800x1043.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-1020x1330.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-160x209.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-768x1001.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-1178x1536.jpg 1178w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-1571x2048.jpg 1571w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-1920x2503.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-scaled.jpg 1964w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A cow. Up for auction. In the KQED studio. Next to a woman in a gown. Yeah. \u003ccite>(KQED Archives)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What started in 1955 as a 12-hour auction morphed, over the years, into a grueling 10-day marathon at the Cow Palace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13927137']“The auction generally went from 8 a.m. to midnight,” recalls KQED’s Fu-Petroni, now executive director of membership operations. “In 1988 though, on the last night of the auction, they didn’t stop at midnight. They were just grabbing random stuff to auction! \u003ca href=\"https://emmysf.tv/circles/gold-circle-members/scalem-jim/\">Jimmy Scalem\u003c/a> was one of the auctioneers and he could just talk and talk and talk. Right around four in the morning, the phone rang on one of the desks and it was my mother asking when I was coming home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The KQED auction peaked in 1985, earning a final (astonishing) tally of $1.5 million. By 1990, however, it was calculated that for every dollar earned, 50 cents was being spent on organizing the auction. That, along with plummeting viewing figures (and an audience that wasn’t sticking around for regular KQED programming) led the station to axe auctions in favor of pledge drives. When the wacky fundraiser went away, so too did Qued and Phred — a sadly unceremonious end to the oddest pairing in KQED history.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "KQED Mascots Qued and Phred Were Truly Bizarre | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If you’re an old-school KQED viewer, you might remember Qued and Phred — the very strange mascots of the now-defunct annual KQED auction. Qued is a mischievous-looking giant red devil creature who walks on all fours and often carries a “sold” sign in his mouth. Phred, who can usually be seen leading Qued on a leash, is what would happen if the Monopoly man had a baby with \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Babadook\">the Babadook\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For reasons that are fairly unfathomable now, these two “Monster Mash”-looking weirdos were an integral part of mainstream KQED culture between 1960 and 1990. Qued and Phred’s images adorned T-shirts, belt buckles, advertisements and studio backdrops. Now and again, we as a TV channel even made volunteers climb into mascot costumes in Qued and Phred’s likenesses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I remember the first time I saw [the Qued costume],” says former auction worker Marianne Fu-Petroni. “It was a real big, human-sized costume. I was like ‘Somebody gets into there?!’ You know, you can’t really keep it clean after so many years…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928126\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928126\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM-800x1011.png\" alt=\"A man and woman stand between a table and a lined board with a list of items on it. They are surrounded by random objects including a clock, painting of flowers, carving of an Indigenous person, and full-sized figures of a devil and a man in a top hat.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1011\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM-800x1011.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM-160x202.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM-768x971.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-20-at-6.08.51-PM.png 932w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Qued and Phred looming terrifyingly over a KQED auction scene. \u003ccite>(KQED Archives)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The design for Qued and Phred arrived in 1960, five years after the first live auction was launched to keep KQED’s lights on. The characters came into being when a volunteer named Frannie Fleishhacker (wife of prominent Bay Area businessman \u003ca href=\"https://www.fleishhackerfoundation.org/about/history\">Mortimer Fleishhacker\u003c/a>) decided to seek out an eye-catching logo for the auction. Frannie reached out to Oakland advertising company \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_%26_Kleiser\">Foster & Kleiser\u003c/a> to see if anyone would be willing to create a design, gratis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>A young illustrator named John DeBonis answered the call and took it upon himself to draw “a weird guy — you might even call him villainous — who goes to the auction and brings home something equally weird,” DeBonis later explained. “It seemed like it would be kind of fun. Not too deadly serious.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the reasons DeBonis’ design was so seemingly out of step with the idea of public media is because he had almost no idea what KQED was. “It was a little peanut of a station in those days,” he told the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> in 1971. “We didn’t even have a television set at the time and I had never seen their programs. The initial reaction [to Qued and Phred] at KQED was a pleasant one but I don’t recall that anyone jumped up and down…”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, the Qued character garnered a solid following fairly quickly. By the time the \u003cem>Chronicle\u003c/em> sat down with DeBonis for that interview, the paper was reporting that, despite Qued having “a slightly lewd expression … it’s impossible not to return his grin.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928124\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928124\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-800x627.jpg\" alt=\"Two stuffed toys. One is a white-faced figure with red eyes and grin of fangs, wearing a black suit and top hat. The other is a grinning red devil with pointed tail.\" width=\"800\" height=\"627\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-800x627.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-1020x800.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-160x125.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-768x602.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934-1536x1204.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_172205-scaled-e1682039140934.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phred and Qued in stuffy form. These toys were once available to buy at auction — and they didn’t come cheap. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While Qued had a title from the time of his inception, it would take Phred a full 16 years to get his own name. That happened in May 1976, when KQED decided to hold — and please do marvel at how creative this title is — “A Contest to Name the Little Guy Who Leads Around the Qued Monster.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Berkeley Gazette\u003c/em> happily reported later that month that:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The winner was Peggy Fuson of Pinole who has christened the little man ‘King Phrederick IX, Pretender to the Throne of Bryant Street.’ Ms. Fuson, who wrote a ballad to go along with the new name is willing to let the monster man be called Phred for short.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>(So yes, people were definitely doing a lot of drugs in the 1970s.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928123\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928123\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Three separate images: One of four gold belt buckles, all depicting different versions of the same devil monster. One of a white watch with the devil monster on the clock face. One yellow t-shirt featuring the monster as seen on an auction broadcast.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Swag-final-scaled-e1682038954623.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Qued merch from decades past. \u003ccite>(Rae Alexandra)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As a representative of an unusual auction item, Qued wasn’t far off from reality. The KQED auction was indeed, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CdG334I_Ew\">hodgepodge of anything and everything\u003c/a> you could possibly think of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Auction items were gathered by volunteers and “auction solicitors” literally going door-to-door and calling around asking for donations. Paintings, clothing, food and wine, office, garden and pool equipment and even some houses (\u003cem>houses!\u003c/em>) were sold off alongside gift certificates for restaurants and other Bay Area businesses. In the late ’60s, Qued toys were so sought after, they sold for an impressive $100 (about $800 today).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The auction also featured so-called “priceless items” — experiences you couldn’t buy anywhere else. In 1970, a dinner with beloved \u003cem>Chronicle\u003c/em> columnist Herb Caen was auctioned for $300 (about $2,300 in 2023 money). That same year, dinners with Giants legends Willie Mays and Willie McCovey went for $350. On another occasion, Martin Yan of PBS’s \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://yancancook.com/home/\">Yan Can Cook\u003c/a>\u003c/em> offered up a homemade dinner for 12 people. He was stunned when someone bid $10,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most shocking things, looking back, is that living animals were also auctioned off on the air. These included an English bulldog donated by the Charter Bank of London and livestock. One year, a steer that had been raised on then-presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson’s Texas ranch found itself on the auction block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13928125\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13928125\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-800x1043.jpg\" alt=\"A model wearing a 1950s-style gown stands, smiling broadly, in front of a TV camera. At her side is a calf.\" width=\"800\" height=\"1043\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-800x1043.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-1020x1330.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-160x209.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-768x1001.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-1178x1536.jpg 1178w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-1571x2048.jpg 1571w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-1920x2503.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/20230420_174117-scaled.jpg 1964w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A cow. Up for auction. In the KQED studio. Next to a woman in a gown. Yeah. \u003ccite>(KQED Archives)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What started in 1955 as a 12-hour auction morphed, over the years, into a grueling 10-day marathon at the Cow Palace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The auction generally went from 8 a.m. to midnight,” recalls KQED’s Fu-Petroni, now executive director of membership operations. “In 1988 though, on the last night of the auction, they didn’t stop at midnight. They were just grabbing random stuff to auction! \u003ca href=\"https://emmysf.tv/circles/gold-circle-members/scalem-jim/\">Jimmy Scalem\u003c/a> was one of the auctioneers and he could just talk and talk and talk. Right around four in the morning, the phone rang on one of the desks and it was my mother asking when I was coming home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The KQED auction peaked in 1985, earning a final (astonishing) tally of $1.5 million. By 1990, however, it was calculated that for every dollar earned, 50 cents was being spent on organizing the auction. That, along with plummeting viewing figures (and an audience that wasn’t sticking around for regular KQED programming) led the station to axe auctions in favor of pledge drives. When the wacky fundraiser went away, so too did Qued and Phred — a sadly unceremonious end to the oddest pairing in KQED history.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "brendas-got-a-baby-tupac-shakur-ethel-love",
"title": "'Brenda's Got a Baby' — Then and Now",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927959\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927959\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-800x601.jpg\" alt=\"A young woman in a top ponytail holds a white blanket containing a baby\" width=\"800\" height=\"601\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-800x601.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-1020x767.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-768x577.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1.jpg 1410w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ethel Love, at age 17, as Brenda in Tupac Shakur’s music video for ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby.’ Love says the role came naturally, ‘because it was similar to my life already.’ \u003ccite>(YouTube/Interscope Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Editor’s note\u003c/strong>: This story is part of \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareahiphop\">That’s My Word\u003c/a>\u003cem>, KQED’s year-long exploration of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareahiphop\">Bay Area hip-hop\u003c/a> history, with new content dropping all throughout 2023.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">T\u003c/span>here’s an alley in downtown Oakland that connects Webster Street and Harrison Street, between 12th Street and 13th Street. Situated on the border of downtown and Chinatown, gated on both ends and naturally lit from above, the block-long walkway has been the site of day parties, shady doings, and a runway for rats in the middle of the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’d often walk past this alley when I lived on 13th and Webster, thinking nothing of it. That is, until one day when I was watching the 1992 music video for Tupac’s classic song, “Brenda’s Got A Baby.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It suddenly hit me: \u003cem>That’s the spot where Brenda’s body was found\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927967\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927967\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.49_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"520\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.49_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.49_am_720-160x116.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A scene from Tupac Shakur’s video for ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby.’ \u003ccite>(YouTube/Interscope Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the video, an OPD cruiser idles in the alley as Brenda’s body is covered by a bloody white sheet — not far from where, earlier in the video, she’d dropped her newborn in a dumpster. As Tupac narrates the story, Brenda’s death is shown reported on the front page of the Oakland Tribune.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brenda’s death may have been fictitious, but as the video notes, it was based on a true story. Tupac had been inspired by one particularly heinous account of a 12 year-old girl in New York who was molested and impregnated by a family member — a story that symbolizes the unfortunate reality too many young people face, then and now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the video begins, the character of Brenda walks down the street holding a baby wrapped in a white cloth. Her image then cross-dissolves, revealing Tupac surrounded by a crew of teenagers and young adults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Money B, rapper of Digital Underground fame and friend of Tupac, is among the people in the posse. Money B says everyone in that shot, aside from him and Pac’s childhood friend Mouse Man, were artists Pac was working to develop at the time. “Pac was very strategic in all of that,” Money B says, on a group call. “He understood product placement and branding from the very beginning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927969\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.46.18_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.46.18_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.46.18_am_720-160x118.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A scene from Tupac Shakur’s video for ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby.’ \u003ccite>(YouTube/Interscope Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There’s some other Easter eggs in the video too, says Money B, including Digital Underground’s DJ Fuze portraying a cop, a street pole adorned with an Oakland logo, and a cardboard sign reading “Bush Sucks,” a shot at George H.W. Bush, the United States’ sitting president at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to appearing in the video, Money B is featured on the song through a brief back and forth with Pac:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hear Brenda’s got a baby / But Brenda’s barely got a brain / A damn shame, the girl can hardly spell her name,” says Tupac.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s not our problem, that’s up to Brenda’s family,” says Money B.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To which Pac responds, “Well, let me show ya how it affects the whole community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Discussing the music video now, Money B laughs and says, “When I say that line, I’m leaning down, and I try to get up and I stumble, and I fall, and I do a smirk, like, ‘Oh shit, I scrubbed.’ But they kept it in there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_11696060']Tupac wrote the whole song, including that line for Money B, before Deon “Big D the Impossible” Evans produced the track. The day they recorded it, Money B happened to be hanging out with Chicago singer Dave Hollister (formerly of Blackstreet) and Roniece Levias (who has also worked with Too Short, E-40 and Digital Underground). When they heard the beat in Starlight studio, the two vocalists, both steeped in the church, began to sing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were going back and forth,” Money B says of Levias and Hollister. “They caught a groove and Pac was like, ‘Go in there and do that.’ That was on the spot, spur of the moment, lightning in a bottle.” Atron Gregory, Tupac’s former manager, chimes in on the call: “That was the first time on a hip-hop record that singing was done all the way through the record. There was singing on hip-hop records, but not all the way through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Money B points out another distinguishing feature of the song: “Brenda’s Got a Baby is just one verse,” he says. “It’s not like: song, hook, song, hook. All (Tupac) wanted to do is tell a story, and everything else just happened on the spot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927973\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927973\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.20.26_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"503\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.20.26_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.20.26_am_720-160x112.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ethel Love, who played Brenda in Tupac Shakur’s ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby Video,’ pictured in a recent photo. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Ethel Love)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">E\u003c/span>thel Love, the woman who portrayed Brenda in the music video, is watching her grandchildren when she joins the call. Bright-spirited and full of energy, she talks to us from a car in Georgia, preparing to celebrate her 49th birthday, remembering the video shoot vividly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t hear the story for the first time until after I did the video,” says Love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just 17 years old at the time, Love was tapped by her brother Deandre (a.k.a. Papa Doc), a friend of Tupac’s, to be the lead actress. Love says the video’s directors, Allen and Albert Hughes, let the song’s lyrics inform their direction, and simply told Love what they wanted her to do in each scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Love, who was raised between North and Central Richmond and grew up in the church, was involved in the arts through the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. But she’d never done anything of this magnitude.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRWUs0KtB-I\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Money B interjects, “Do you remember my momma being your momma?” His question about his real mother portraying Love’s mother in the video is met with a round of laughs. “Yes,” says Love, before explaining that arguing with her fictional mother on the set wasn’t a far stretch from her real life. “I’d just not too long ago went off on my momma … because I wanted to hang out, and my momma attacked me, and I was talking to her just like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Love was a mother of one at the time, and says she drew from her own experience in portraying the role of Brenda. “It was easy because it was similar to my life already,” she says. Aside from Brenda becoming a prostitute, the girls’ stories had eerie parallels. “All that was so real,” she says, “because I was living that life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The weight of the moment is broken by the laughter of one of Love’s four grandchildren in the background of the call. “Brenda’s still got a lot of babies,” Love jokes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13927968\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.28_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"430\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.28_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.28_am_720-160x96.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early ’90s, after the video dropped, life changed for Love. “It was hard walking down the hallway at school, because everyone thought I was different now, because I was on a popular video with this popular young man,” says Love. People questioned why she didn’t tell them what she was doing; all the while Love just wanted to remain low-key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was always secretive anyway,” says Love, anecdotally sharing that she had quietly been driving to school since the age of 13, parking around the corner and not telling anyone. But now she was on TV, and friends she grew up with were changing on her. People she didn’t know treated her equally as weird. “I couldn’t go outside like I used to for a while, especially with my daughter. It used to scare her,” says Love. “People used to come up to her and say, ‘Oh my god, you that girl from the video?!’ Screaming and trying to touch me and grab her. It was really weird.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Love soon had two more daughters, and as her children matured, she shared with them the story of the music video, the song and the golden plaque she received from her role in it all. She also warned her children not to tell anyone about her role in Tupac’s video, because she didn’t want them to be treated differently in school. But as the girls grew older, they kept seeing images of their mother on social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927976\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927976\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.22.01_am_720-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"678\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.22.01_am_720-1.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.22.01_am_720-1-160x151.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ethel Love as a teenager. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Ethel Love)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Only reason I’m \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/ethelloveeddy/\">on Facebook\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/therealbrenda2/?hl=en\">Instagram\u003c/a> is because my kids,” says Love. She imitates her children as she says, “Mom look, you in the feed again. They’re saying you’re LisaRaye.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Atron and Money B laugh, they’ve heard that rumor too. (LisaRaye appeared in a different Tupac video, “Toss It Up.”) Love sees no shade in being mixed up with another successful beautiful Black woman. But Love is not LisaRaye, nor is she “Brenda.” Instead, Love is quite clear on who she is and how, as a child, she portrayed an image that spoke to some of the largest issues facing society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like the bathroom scene,” Love tells me, referring to the moment in the video when Brenda is physically delivering the baby. “Because that is so real to people that have kids, but don’t know how to tell their parents they’re having a child. (They) end up having a child in the bathtub or in a bathroom,” says Love. One of her own family members, she adds, experienced this firsthand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Ethel’s grand-babies enters the screen as I ask about last year’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, reproductive rights and how hip-hop has addressed this issue—or added to the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Love says she didn’t understand at the time, but being a grandmother now, she sees the significance of her role. Not just as a character in a popular music video from four decades ago, but as a volunteer babysitter, reproductive health advocate and firm believer in the concept of a village raising a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927970\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927970\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.41.12_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"526\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.41.12_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.41.12_am_720-160x117.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A scene from Tupac Shakur’s video for ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby.’ \u003ccite>(YouTube/Interscope Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">W\u003c/span>hen she looks back at the music video, and considers how far she’s come, she realizes that, in many ways, she’s still that person — the one Tupac saw when he suggested her for the role. “It’s like he marked me,” says Love. “He knew that I was going to be that person. I’ve always been that person. I had other people’s kids before I had kids. I’m a nurturer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the note of reproductive health and healthy methods of community support, I ask Money B again about that line of his: “That’s not our problem, that’s up to Brenda’s family.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='pop_23762']Money B refers to he and Tupac’s shared Black Panther lineage. Pac’s mother, the late Afeni Shakur, was a New York Black Panther Party member and a part of the Panther 21. As a child in the Bay Area, Money B attended the Black Panther Party’s Freedom School in Oakland. With that community-oriented foundation, Money B and Tupac share the same mindset as Ethel Love: it takes a village.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the mentality that a lot of us have, or have had, when it comes to raising the youth,” says Money B. When done right, he says, it’s amazing the difference that we can collectively make.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the call ends, Mon, as friends call him, tells Love how happy he is to see her, and how proud he is of the woman she’s become; he brags that he’s going to tell his mother about her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Love responds, “Give her a hug and a kiss for me.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927959\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13927959\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-800x601.jpg\" alt=\"A young woman in a top ponytail holds a white blanket containing a baby\" width=\"800\" height=\"601\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-800x601.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-1020x767.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1-768x577.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/Brenda.MAIN_-1.jpg 1410w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ethel Love, at age 17, as Brenda in Tupac Shakur’s music video for ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby.’ Love says the role came naturally, ‘because it was similar to my life already.’ \u003ccite>(YouTube/Interscope Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Editor’s note\u003c/strong>: This story is part of \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareahiphop\">That’s My Word\u003c/a>\u003cem>, KQED’s year-long exploration of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareahiphop\">Bay Area hip-hop\u003c/a> history, with new content dropping all throughout 2023.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">T\u003c/span>here’s an alley in downtown Oakland that connects Webster Street and Harrison Street, between 12th Street and 13th Street. Situated on the border of downtown and Chinatown, gated on both ends and naturally lit from above, the block-long walkway has been the site of day parties, shady doings, and a runway for rats in the middle of the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’d often walk past this alley when I lived on 13th and Webster, thinking nothing of it. That is, until one day when I was watching the 1992 music video for Tupac’s classic song, “Brenda’s Got A Baby.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It suddenly hit me: \u003cem>That’s the spot where Brenda’s body was found\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927967\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927967\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.49_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"520\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.49_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.49_am_720-160x116.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A scene from Tupac Shakur’s video for ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby.’ \u003ccite>(YouTube/Interscope Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the video, an OPD cruiser idles in the alley as Brenda’s body is covered by a bloody white sheet — not far from where, earlier in the video, she’d dropped her newborn in a dumpster. As Tupac narrates the story, Brenda’s death is shown reported on the front page of the Oakland Tribune.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brenda’s death may have been fictitious, but as the video notes, it was based on a true story. Tupac had been inspired by one particularly heinous account of a 12 year-old girl in New York who was molested and impregnated by a family member — a story that symbolizes the unfortunate reality too many young people face, then and now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the video begins, the character of Brenda walks down the street holding a baby wrapped in a white cloth. Her image then cross-dissolves, revealing Tupac surrounded by a crew of teenagers and young adults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Money B, rapper of Digital Underground fame and friend of Tupac, is among the people in the posse. Money B says everyone in that shot, aside from him and Pac’s childhood friend Mouse Man, were artists Pac was working to develop at the time. “Pac was very strategic in all of that,” Money B says, on a group call. “He understood product placement and branding from the very beginning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927969\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.46.18_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"530\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.46.18_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.46.18_am_720-160x118.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A scene from Tupac Shakur’s video for ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby.’ \u003ccite>(YouTube/Interscope Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There’s some other Easter eggs in the video too, says Money B, including Digital Underground’s DJ Fuze portraying a cop, a street pole adorned with an Oakland logo, and a cardboard sign reading “Bush Sucks,” a shot at George H.W. Bush, the United States’ sitting president at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to appearing in the video, Money B is featured on the song through a brief back and forth with Pac:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I hear Brenda’s got a baby / But Brenda’s barely got a brain / A damn shame, the girl can hardly spell her name,” says Tupac.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s not our problem, that’s up to Brenda’s family,” says Money B.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To which Pac responds, “Well, let me show ya how it affects the whole community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Discussing the music video now, Money B laughs and says, “When I say that line, I’m leaning down, and I try to get up and I stumble, and I fall, and I do a smirk, like, ‘Oh shit, I scrubbed.’ But they kept it in there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Tupac wrote the whole song, including that line for Money B, before Deon “Big D the Impossible” Evans produced the track. The day they recorded it, Money B happened to be hanging out with Chicago singer Dave Hollister (formerly of Blackstreet) and Roniece Levias (who has also worked with Too Short, E-40 and Digital Underground). When they heard the beat in Starlight studio, the two vocalists, both steeped in the church, began to sing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They were going back and forth,” Money B says of Levias and Hollister. “They caught a groove and Pac was like, ‘Go in there and do that.’ That was on the spot, spur of the moment, lightning in a bottle.” Atron Gregory, Tupac’s former manager, chimes in on the call: “That was the first time on a hip-hop record that singing was done all the way through the record. There was singing on hip-hop records, but not all the way through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Money B points out another distinguishing feature of the song: “Brenda’s Got a Baby is just one verse,” he says. “It’s not like: song, hook, song, hook. All (Tupac) wanted to do is tell a story, and everything else just happened on the spot.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927973\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927973\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.20.26_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"503\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.20.26_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.20.26_am_720-160x112.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ethel Love, who played Brenda in Tupac Shakur’s ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby Video,’ pictured in a recent photo. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Ethel Love)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">E\u003c/span>thel Love, the woman who portrayed Brenda in the music video, is watching her grandchildren when she joins the call. Bright-spirited and full of energy, she talks to us from a car in Georgia, preparing to celebrate her 49th birthday, remembering the video shoot vividly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t hear the story for the first time until after I did the video,” says Love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just 17 years old at the time, Love was tapped by her brother Deandre (a.k.a. Papa Doc), a friend of Tupac’s, to be the lead actress. Love says the video’s directors, Allen and Albert Hughes, let the song’s lyrics inform their direction, and simply told Love what they wanted her to do in each scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Love, who was raised between North and Central Richmond and grew up in the church, was involved in the arts through the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. But she’d never done anything of this magnitude.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/NRWUs0KtB-I'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/NRWUs0KtB-I'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Money B interjects, “Do you remember my momma being your momma?” His question about his real mother portraying Love’s mother in the video is met with a round of laughs. “Yes,” says Love, before explaining that arguing with her fictional mother on the set wasn’t a far stretch from her real life. “I’d just not too long ago went off on my momma … because I wanted to hang out, and my momma attacked me, and I was talking to her just like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Love was a mother of one at the time, and says she drew from her own experience in portraying the role of Brenda. “It was easy because it was similar to my life already,” she says. Aside from Brenda becoming a prostitute, the girls’ stories had eerie parallels. “All that was so real,” she says, “because I was living that life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The weight of the moment is broken by the laughter of one of Love’s four grandchildren in the background of the call. “Brenda’s still got a lot of babies,” Love jokes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13927968\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.28_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"430\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.28_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.44.28_am_720-160x96.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the early ’90s, after the video dropped, life changed for Love. “It was hard walking down the hallway at school, because everyone thought I was different now, because I was on a popular video with this popular young man,” says Love. People questioned why she didn’t tell them what she was doing; all the while Love just wanted to remain low-key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was always secretive anyway,” says Love, anecdotally sharing that she had quietly been driving to school since the age of 13, parking around the corner and not telling anyone. But now she was on TV, and friends she grew up with were changing on her. People she didn’t know treated her equally as weird. “I couldn’t go outside like I used to for a while, especially with my daughter. It used to scare her,” says Love. “People used to come up to her and say, ‘Oh my god, you that girl from the video?!’ Screaming and trying to touch me and grab her. It was really weird.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Love soon had two more daughters, and as her children matured, she shared with them the story of the music video, the song and the golden plaque she received from her role in it all. She also warned her children not to tell anyone about her role in Tupac’s video, because she didn’t want them to be treated differently in school. But as the girls grew older, they kept seeing images of their mother on social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927976\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927976\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.22.01_am_720-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"678\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.22.01_am_720-1.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_8.22.01_am_720-1-160x151.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ethel Love as a teenager. \u003ccite>(Courtesy Ethel Love)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Only reason I’m \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/ethelloveeddy/\">on Facebook\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/therealbrenda2/?hl=en\">Instagram\u003c/a> is because my kids,” says Love. She imitates her children as she says, “Mom look, you in the feed again. They’re saying you’re LisaRaye.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Atron and Money B laugh, they’ve heard that rumor too. (LisaRaye appeared in a different Tupac video, “Toss It Up.”) Love sees no shade in being mixed up with another successful beautiful Black woman. But Love is not LisaRaye, nor is she “Brenda.” Instead, Love is quite clear on who she is and how, as a child, she portrayed an image that spoke to some of the largest issues facing society.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I like the bathroom scene,” Love tells me, referring to the moment in the video when Brenda is physically delivering the baby. “Because that is so real to people that have kids, but don’t know how to tell their parents they’re having a child. (They) end up having a child in the bathtub or in a bathroom,” says Love. One of her own family members, she adds, experienced this firsthand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Ethel’s grand-babies enters the screen as I ask about last year’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, reproductive rights and how hip-hop has addressed this issue—or added to the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Love says she didn’t understand at the time, but being a grandmother now, she sees the significance of her role. Not just as a character in a popular music video from four decades ago, but as a volunteer babysitter, reproductive health advocate and firm believer in the concept of a village raising a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13927970\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 720px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13927970\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.41.12_am_720.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"526\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.41.12_am_720.png 720w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/04/screenshot_2023-04-17_at_10.41.12_am_720-160x117.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A scene from Tupac Shakur’s video for ‘Brenda’s Got a Baby.’ \u003ccite>(YouTube/Interscope Records)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">W\u003c/span>hen she looks back at the music video, and considers how far she’s come, she realizes that, in many ways, she’s still that person — the one Tupac saw when he suggested her for the role. “It’s like he marked me,” says Love. “He knew that I was going to be that person. I’ve always been that person. I had other people’s kids before I had kids. I’m a nurturer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the note of reproductive health and healthy methods of community support, I ask Money B again about that line of his: “That’s not our problem, that’s up to Brenda’s family.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Money B refers to he and Tupac’s shared Black Panther lineage. Pac’s mother, the late Afeni Shakur, was a New York Black Panther Party member and a part of the Panther 21. As a child in the Bay Area, Money B attended the Black Panther Party’s Freedom School in Oakland. With that community-oriented foundation, Money B and Tupac share the same mindset as Ethel Love: it takes a village.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s the mentality that a lot of us have, or have had, when it comes to raising the youth,” says Money B. When done right, he says, it’s amazing the difference that we can collectively make.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before the call ends, Mon, as friends call him, tells Love how happy he is to see her, and how proud he is of the woman she’s become; he brags that he’s going to tell his mother about her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/global-news-podcast/id135067274?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
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}
},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Magazine-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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}
},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/4s8b",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"here-and-now": {
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"info": "One of public radio's most dynamic voices, Sam Sanders helped launch The NPR Politics Podcast and hosted NPR's hit show It's Been A Minute. Now, the award-winning host returns with something brand new, The Sam Sanders Show. Every week, Sam Sanders and friends dig into the culture that shapes our lives: what's driving the biggest trends, how artists really think, and even the memes you can't stop scrolling past. Sam is beloved for his way of unpacking the world and bringing you up close to fresh currents and engaging conversations. The Sam Sanders Show is smart, funny and always a good time.",
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