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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n October of 1968, a reporter from the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> spent an evening inside a third floor office at 345 Franklin Street in San Francisco. By day, the place belonged to an attorney named Vincent Hallinan. After 7pm every Thursday, Hallinan offered his office—free of charge—for America’s very first post-abortion center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The free clinic was a safe space for young women who’d recently undergone illegal abortions and weren’t able see their regular doctors for post-operative care. The clinic also offered free pregnancy tests, birth control prescriptions and advice from a Planned Parenthood volunteer. It was staffed by volunteer gynecologists, a nurse, a receptionist and a lab technician named Pat Maginnis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was Maginnis who had started the clinic. It was she that was the most unapologetic about a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. And it was she that told a waiting room full of young women that night in 1968:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Remember. Your abortion is your business and no one else’s. You have a right to silence guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. Abortions performed outside of the state are not reportable to police.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By the time the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> paid Maginnis’ clinic a visit, she was already a well-known figure in San Francisco, and a pro-choice thorn in the side of anti-abortionists across the country. In 1962, Maginnis had started the Citizens Committee for Humane Abortion Laws, which was later renamed the Society for Humane Abortion (SHA). In 1964, she co-founded the Association to Repeal Abortion Laws (ARAL), alongside Rowena Gurner and Lana Phelan Kahn. (It was a precursor to today’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NARAL Pro-Choice America\u003c/a>.) Maginnis, Gurner and Kahn were such a force to be reckoned with that they earned the nickname ‘The Army of Three.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912998\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13912998 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-800x814.jpg\" alt=\"Three women wearing 1960s attire sit at a table strewn with papers. One of them holds up a sign that says 'REPEAL ABORTION LAWS'\" width=\"800\" height=\"814\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-800x814.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-160x163.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-768x781.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576.jpg 1007w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pat Maginnis organizing in Sausalito with (center) Anne Treseder who was the executive director of the Society for Humane Abortion, and another campaigner. \u003ccite>(Bettman)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The SHA and ARAL served different purposes, but enabled Maginnis and her likeminded campaigners to achieve goals on both an official and underground basis. Official operations included public campaigning and working diligently to change the laws of the day. Underground activities included the compiling and distribution of lists of safe abortionists, along with how much they charged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maginnis and her colleagues held classes across the United States to teach women how to book an appointment, what to expect and how to prepare for the procedure. Other lessons taught women about reproductive health, anatomy, step-by-step instructions on how to perform abortions at home, and even the best ways to deal with police after an abortion. Bomb threats and protests were not uncommon outside these gatherings and classes often had to be moved at the last minute to private homes, motel rooms, church basements and union halls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bay Area, Maginnis contended with protests staged by Mothers Outraged at the Murder of Innocents (MOMIS). MOMIS pushed district attorneys all over the region to prosecute Maginnis, to no avail. The D.A.s of San Francisco, Sacramento, Alameda, San Mateo, Sonoma and Santa Clara all refused to penalize Maginnis and her cohort for their work. By the end of the 1960s, local publications had started referring to her as “the Che Guevara of abortion reformers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13913761\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 596px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13913761\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM.png\" alt=\"The white and blue cover of a textbook titled THE ABORTION HANDBOOK.\" width=\"596\" height=\"856\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM.png 596w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM-160x230.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 596px) 100vw, 596px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the publications created by Pat Maginnis and Lana Phelan during their time as abortion educators in a pre-Roe v. Wade America. \u003ccite>(NPR/Courtesy of Andrea Bowers)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]P[/dropcap]atricia Theresa Maginnis’ road to becoming the most prominent pro-choice campaigner of the 1960s was not an easy one. She was compelled to act only after bearing witness, for many years, to the consequences of women being denied access to their own health decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of seven children, Maginnis was born in Okarche, a small town outside of Oklahoma City, in 1928. She was raised in dire poverty by a veterinarian father who never escaped the stigma of being born illegitimate, and a mother who endured chronic pain and ailments caused by giving birth so many times. (“My mother would tell you she enjoyed having children,” Maginnis once said. “I didn’t go through childhood with that impression.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1950, Maginnis left a job at the Bureau of Mines and joined the Women’s Army Corps, training as a surgical technologist. After being assigned to a pediatrics and obstetrics ward in Panama, she bore witness to the aftermath of botched abortions and forced births. In 1966, she told the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em>: “My first real contact with abortion was in the Army. A woman pregnant by another man and expecting her husband’s return tried to abort herself [and] was hospitalized. The poor thing, who received no sympathy or understanding, became so distraught, a wire cage was placed over her bed. She was held captive like an animal. I still shudder at the memory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maginnis left her three-year enlistment as a corporal and decided to attend San Jose State College under the G.I. Bill. During her studies there, she got pregnant three times. On the first occasion, she traveled to Mexico for an abortion. She administered the next two on herself at home. After one of them landed her in the hospital, she was asked if she had given herself an abortion. Her response? “Sure I did. Want me to demonstrate how in court?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13911567,arts_13894842,arts_13870056']After Maginnis graduated in 1961, aged 33, she worked nights as a medical technologist. Her late schedule was by design—she needed her days free for pro-choice campaigning. That year, she was arrested for the first time for distributing literature that advised women how to access abortion services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, Section 601 of the California Business and Professions Code made it a felony to “willfully compose and publish a notice and advertisement of a medicine and means for producing and facilitating a miscarriage and abortion.” Still, the judge at Maginnis’ trial concluded that she had been arrested on grounds that were unconstitutional, and promptly set her free. “Now I can paper the town with leaflets,” Maginnis joyfully announced after the verdict, “and that’s exactly what I plan to do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was by no means the end of Maginnis’ legal troubles; eight years later, Maginnis found herself convicted again of “willfully writing, composing and advocating abortion techniques.” In 1966, she and Rowena Gurner were arrested in San Mateo after teaching an abortion class. They paid their fines and carried on, unrepentant. Maginnis told the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> shortly afterwards, “It kills me to see these young healthy women be expected to jeopardize their lives for what is a simple, safe surgical procedure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That same year, Dr. Theodore Montgomery of the State Public Health Department stated that the number of legal abortions performed in California was around 500, sanctioned only when the life of the mother was in jeopardy. But Montgomery also estimated that around 100,000 California women were acquiring illegal abortions each year. Significantly, in 1968, the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> reported: “Some leading obstetricians say privately that when they feel they must refuse to abort a patient, they usually send her to Miss Maginnis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n addition to making her own doctor lists, health guides and abortion handbooks, Maginnis was also fond of drawing satirical cartoons. Many skewered the institutions that sought to deny women control over their reproductive healthcare. Maginnis continued to draw her cartoons after Roe v. Wade, concerned that it hadn’t yet been codified into law and that people were still being denied access to the procedure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13913763\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13913763\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-800x495.png\" alt=\"A cartoon of a sobbing woman, clutching $500 and begging at the feed of three men labeled 'MERCY HOSPITAL/POLITICIAN.' The caption reads: "Please may I have a US Supreme-Court-Approved, Politician Sanctioned, Psychiatrist Rubber-Stamped, Clergy-Counseled, Residency-Investigated, Committee-Inspected Therapueticked, US Health Dept Statistized, Contraceptive-Failure, Religious-Sect-Guilt-Surmounted ABORTION."\" width=\"800\" height=\"495\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-800x495.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-1020x631.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-160x99.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-768x475.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-1536x950.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM.png 1572w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A cartoon by Pat Maginnis lambasting the lengths women had to go to access an abortion—even in 1977, four years after Roe v. Wade. \u003ccite>(Pat Maginnis)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pat Maginnis stayed dedicated to activism for the rest of her 93 years—animal rights, gay rights and, yes, reproductive rights. Her interest in environmentalism inspired her to take up beekeeping in her 80s. At home, she painted watercolors. Those present at Occupy Oakland in 2011 might recall Maginnis showing up to hand out pea soup and hand-drawn cartoons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13912860']Pat Maginnis died on Aug. 30, 2021, just two days before \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13902723/texas-abortion-sb8-bay-area-activism-artists\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Texas enacted its six-week abortion ban\u003c/a>, SB 8. As America now braces for a future in which Roe v. Wade is overturned and millions of people no longer have legal access to abortion, Maginnis’ legacy is more important than ever. Her tenacity, her boldness, and her willingness to talk candidly about her own abortions may all serve as inspiration to a new generation facing life-stunting healthcare restrictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are personal matters, private matters. They don’t concern others—not doctors or judges or boards,” she told the \u003cem>Rapid City Journal\u003c/em> in 1969. “Women have got to fight. They’ve taken this kind of vile abuse too long.”\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 October of 1968, a reporter from the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> spent an evening inside a third floor office at 345 Franklin Street in San Francisco. By day, the place belonged to an attorney named Vincent Hallinan. After 7pm every Thursday, Hallinan offered his office—free of charge—for America’s very first post-abortion center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The free clinic was a safe space for young women who’d recently undergone illegal abortions and weren’t able see their regular doctors for post-operative care. The clinic also offered free pregnancy tests, birth control prescriptions and advice from a Planned Parenthood volunteer. It was staffed by volunteer gynecologists, a nurse, a receptionist and a lab technician named Pat Maginnis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was Maginnis who had started the clinic. It was she that was the most unapologetic about a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. And it was she that told a waiting room full of young women that night in 1968:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Remember. Your abortion is your business and no one else’s. You have a right to silence guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. Abortions performed outside of the state are not reportable to police.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>By the time the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> paid Maginnis’ clinic a visit, she was already a well-known figure in San Francisco, and a pro-choice thorn in the side of anti-abortionists across the country. In 1962, Maginnis had started the Citizens Committee for Humane Abortion Laws, which was later renamed the Society for Humane Abortion (SHA). In 1964, she co-founded the Association to Repeal Abortion Laws (ARAL), alongside Rowena Gurner and Lana Phelan Kahn. (It was a precursor to today’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.prochoiceamerica.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NARAL Pro-Choice America\u003c/a>.) Maginnis, Gurner and Kahn were such a force to be reckoned with that they earned the nickname ‘The Army of Three.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912998\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13912998 size-medium\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-800x814.jpg\" alt=\"Three women wearing 1960s attire sit at a table strewn with papers. One of them holds up a sign that says 'REPEAL ABORTION LAWS'\" width=\"800\" height=\"814\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-800x814.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-160x163.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576-768x781.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/GettyImages-515395576.jpg 1007w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pat Maginnis organizing in Sausalito with (center) Anne Treseder who was the executive director of the Society for Humane Abortion, and another campaigner. \u003ccite>(Bettman)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The SHA and ARAL served different purposes, but enabled Maginnis and her likeminded campaigners to achieve goals on both an official and underground basis. Official operations included public campaigning and working diligently to change the laws of the day. Underground activities included the compiling and distribution of lists of safe abortionists, along with how much they charged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maginnis and her colleagues held classes across the United States to teach women how to book an appointment, what to expect and how to prepare for the procedure. Other lessons taught women about reproductive health, anatomy, step-by-step instructions on how to perform abortions at home, and even the best ways to deal with police after an abortion. Bomb threats and protests were not uncommon outside these gatherings and classes often had to be moved at the last minute to private homes, motel rooms, church basements and union halls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Bay Area, Maginnis contended with protests staged by Mothers Outraged at the Murder of Innocents (MOMIS). MOMIS pushed district attorneys all over the region to prosecute Maginnis, to no avail. The D.A.s of San Francisco, Sacramento, Alameda, San Mateo, Sonoma and Santa Clara all refused to penalize Maginnis and her cohort for their work. By the end of the 1960s, local publications had started referring to her as “the Che Guevara of abortion reformers.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13913761\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 596px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13913761\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM.png\" alt=\"The white and blue cover of a textbook titled THE ABORTION HANDBOOK.\" width=\"596\" height=\"856\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM.png 596w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.27.35-PM-160x230.png 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 596px) 100vw, 596px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the publications created by Pat Maginnis and Lana Phelan during their time as abortion educators in a pre-Roe v. Wade America. \u003ccite>(NPR/Courtesy of Andrea Bowers)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">P\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>atricia Theresa Maginnis’ road to becoming the most prominent pro-choice campaigner of the 1960s was not an easy one. She was compelled to act only after bearing witness, for many years, to the consequences of women being denied access to their own health decisions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of seven children, Maginnis was born in Okarche, a small town outside of Oklahoma City, in 1928. She was raised in dire poverty by a veterinarian father who never escaped the stigma of being born illegitimate, and a mother who endured chronic pain and ailments caused by giving birth so many times. (“My mother would tell you she enjoyed having children,” Maginnis once said. “I didn’t go through childhood with that impression.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1950, Maginnis left a job at the Bureau of Mines and joined the Women’s Army Corps, training as a surgical technologist. After being assigned to a pediatrics and obstetrics ward in Panama, she bore witness to the aftermath of botched abortions and forced births. In 1966, she told the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em>: “My first real contact with abortion was in the Army. A woman pregnant by another man and expecting her husband’s return tried to abort herself [and] was hospitalized. The poor thing, who received no sympathy or understanding, became so distraught, a wire cage was placed over her bed. She was held captive like an animal. I still shudder at the memory.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maginnis left her three-year enlistment as a corporal and decided to attend San Jose State College under the G.I. Bill. During her studies there, she got pregnant three times. On the first occasion, she traveled to Mexico for an abortion. She administered the next two on herself at home. After one of them landed her in the hospital, she was asked if she had given herself an abortion. Her response? “Sure I did. Want me to demonstrate how in court?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>After Maginnis graduated in 1961, aged 33, she worked nights as a medical technologist. Her late schedule was by design—she needed her days free for pro-choice campaigning. That year, she was arrested for the first time for distributing literature that advised women how to access abortion services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, Section 601 of the California Business and Professions Code made it a felony to “willfully compose and publish a notice and advertisement of a medicine and means for producing and facilitating a miscarriage and abortion.” Still, the judge at Maginnis’ trial concluded that she had been arrested on grounds that were unconstitutional, and promptly set her free. “Now I can paper the town with leaflets,” Maginnis joyfully announced after the verdict, “and that’s exactly what I plan to do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was by no means the end of Maginnis’ legal troubles; eight years later, Maginnis found herself convicted again of “willfully writing, composing and advocating abortion techniques.” In 1966, she and Rowena Gurner were arrested in San Mateo after teaching an abortion class. They paid their fines and carried on, unrepentant. Maginnis told the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> shortly afterwards, “It kills me to see these young healthy women be expected to jeopardize their lives for what is a simple, safe surgical procedure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That same year, Dr. Theodore Montgomery of the State Public Health Department stated that the number of legal abortions performed in California was around 500, sanctioned only when the life of the mother was in jeopardy. But Montgomery also estimated that around 100,000 California women were acquiring illegal abortions each year. Significantly, in 1968, the \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> reported: “Some leading obstetricians say privately that when they feel they must refuse to abort a patient, they usually send her to Miss Maginnis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n addition to making her own doctor lists, health guides and abortion handbooks, Maginnis was also fond of drawing satirical cartoons. Many skewered the institutions that sought to deny women control over their reproductive healthcare. Maginnis continued to draw her cartoons after Roe v. Wade, concerned that it hadn’t yet been codified into law and that people were still being denied access to the procedure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13913763\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13913763\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-800x495.png\" alt=\"A cartoon of a sobbing woman, clutching $500 and begging at the feed of three men labeled 'MERCY HOSPITAL/POLITICIAN.' The caption reads: "Please may I have a US Supreme-Court-Approved, Politician Sanctioned, Psychiatrist Rubber-Stamped, Clergy-Counseled, Residency-Investigated, Committee-Inspected Therapueticked, US Health Dept Statistized, Contraceptive-Failure, Religious-Sect-Guilt-Surmounted ABORTION."\" width=\"800\" height=\"495\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-800x495.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-1020x631.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-160x99.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-768x475.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM-1536x950.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-20-at-12.09.39-PM.png 1572w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A cartoon by Pat Maginnis lambasting the lengths women had to go to access an abortion—even in 1977, four years after Roe v. Wade. \u003ccite>(Pat Maginnis)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pat Maginnis stayed dedicated to activism for the rest of her 93 years—animal rights, gay rights and, yes, reproductive rights. Her interest in environmentalism inspired her to take up beekeeping in her 80s. At home, she painted watercolors. Those present at Occupy Oakland in 2011 might recall Maginnis showing up to hand out pea soup and hand-drawn cartoons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Pat Maginnis died on Aug. 30, 2021, just two days before \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13902723/texas-abortion-sb8-bay-area-activism-artists\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Texas enacted its six-week abortion ban\u003c/a>, SB 8. As America now braces for a future in which Roe v. Wade is overturned and millions of people no longer have legal access to abortion, Maginnis’ legacy is more important than ever. Her tenacity, her boldness, and her willingness to talk candidly about her own abortions may all serve as inspiration to a new generation facing life-stunting healthcare restrictions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These are personal matters, private matters. They don’t concern others—not doctors or judges or boards,” she told the \u003cem>Rapid City Journal\u003c/em> in 1969. “Women have got to fight. They’ve taken this kind of vile abuse too long.”\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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"content": "\u003cp>In 1894, Golden Gate Park’s Midwinter Fair was the talk of the town. Featuring fairground rides, museums, an ostrich farm and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909983/victorian-attractions-san-francisco-chutes-gravity-railroad-woodwards-gardens-bonet-tower-auditorium-skating\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the closest thing San Francisco ever got to an Eiffel Tower\u003c/a>, the fair was a raging success with over two million visitors. There was just one element of the five-month exposition, however, that got visitors flustered and flabbergasted: the Gum Girls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hired to peddle chewing gum to the fair’s male clientele, the Gum Girls wore matching outfits, traveled in pairs, and were in the habit of whistling “Two Little Girls in Blue” any time they made a sale. Which was often. Chewing gum had only recently been transformed from its chicle-based roots into something fun and fruity. (The first fruit-flavored gum, Kis-Me, hit markets in 1886; Wrigley introduced Juicy Fruit just one year before the fair.) The song, penned by Charles Graham in 1893, became a near-constant refrain at the fair—particularly on the Midway, where the Gum Girls did most of their business.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M0-o7m4Uhg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As quaint as this all sounds, the Gum Girls were controversial figures from the very first day of the Midwinter Fair. For one, they flirted shamelessly with their male customers, largely motivated by the fact that they were working on commission. More scandalous still, they wore calf-length pleated skirts that exposed their ankles. That they also wore thick black stockings—meaning there was no bare flesh on display—did not quell the hullaballoo surrounding their revealing (by Victorian standards) attire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13894842']One \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> reporter could barely conceal his ire while writing about the Gum Girls in April 1894. He did his best to denigrate the young women, implying they lacked grace and class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The prevailing type of gum girl ranges in age from 25 to 40. Most of them are stout, with faces creased from experience. None of them are refined, of course … They never wear gloves, but their hands are protected from the wind by quantities of rings. From their necks boxes of gum are strung by means of a strap. The boxes are always open and the gum girl is always patronizing her own wares. With wagging jaws and a stereotyped smile she gazes at each passer-by and invites almost every man to purchase.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The report continued disdainfully:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Everybody calls the gum girls by their first names. To say ‘Mrs’ or ‘Miss’ would seem very inappropriate and if you don’t know their given names and say Mamie or Lizzie at a venture you are almost certain to strike it right. Old patrons ask the gum girls how their children or grandchildren are, and these attempts at wit invariably bring out a flood of choice slang.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912675\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912675\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1-800x624.jpg\" alt=\"Two young women stand close together, the taller with her arm around the shorter. They wear matching uniforms of calve-length skirts, formal jackets, white shirts and ties, and petite caps.\" width=\"800\" height=\"624\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1-800x624.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1-160x125.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1-768x599.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A pair of Gum Girls in front of the Walter Baker Cocoa Building. \u003ccite>(OpenSFHistory / wnp15.145)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Because the Gum Girls were routinely subjected to such disparagement, they found themselves on the receiving end of both verbal abuse and unwanted advances by men at the fair. (This was the primary reason they worked in pairs.) An incident on May 5, 1894, however, sent a loud and clear message to potential harassers all over the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gum Girl Violet Eilids was conducting a transaction one day, when the male customer reached over her gum box and started to “toy familiarly” with her necktie. Most displeased by the violation of her personal space, Eilids responded by punching the letch square in the face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next day, the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Miss Violet Eilids, a late addition to the rank and file of the gum brigade, knows how to handle her fists in a scientific manner … Doubling up her right, the girl planted a stiff, straight arm punch on the nose of her tormenter. He landed on his back among the [souvenir medal] machines, and now his nose is not as pretty as it used to be. The Gum Girl, who says she has taken boxing lessons from her brother, is now recognized as the champion of the brigade, which is thinking of taking an immediate course in the manly art as a means of self-protection.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912679\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912679\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146-800x630.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"630\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146-800x630.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146-160x126.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146-768x605.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gum Girls’ headquarters in Golden Gate Park, during the 1894 Midwinter Fair. \u003ccite>(OpenSFHistory / wnp15.146)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13902628']The incident added to the Gum Girls’ infamy, but these thoroughly modern women continued their mission to keep visitors chewing right up to the end of the fair. For some, their boldness paid off with subsequent modeling and acting jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One Gum Girl named Marion Nolan—said by the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> to be “the prettiest of the lot”—won a competition to be the face and body of a marble statue by sculptor Rupert Schmid. Nolan went on to marry a millionaire from Mexico City, became a San Francisco socialite, but was tragically \u003ca href=\"https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC19021021.2.9&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------\">gunned down by a stalker in 1902\u003c/a>. After Edward Marshuts had murdered Nolan in front of scores of witnesses on O’Farrell Street, he turned the gun on himself. Nolan’s likeness, however, lives on to this day in Schmid’s \u003ca href=\"http://collections.museumca.org/?q=collection-item/a53409\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003ci>California Venus\u003c/i> statue\u003c/a>, on display at the Oakland Museum of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would take 20 years after the Midwinter Fair for ankle-revealing skirts to hit the fashion mainstream. It also took that long for women who chewed gum in public to be seen as bold and independent, rather than simply unladylike. But for decades after they first strutted the paths of the Midwinter Fair, the Gum Girls’ reputations for being “bad girls” persisted by all who remembered them. Take, for example, this Dick Tracy newspaper cartoon from 1941.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912766\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912766\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-800x264.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"264\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-800x264.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-1020x336.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-160x53.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-768x253.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-1536x506.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-2048x675.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-1920x633.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dick Tracy suspects a Gum Girl of criminal activity in a cartoon strip from Oct. 1941, published by the ‘Salt Lake Tribune.’\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, it’s easier to see the Gum Girls for what they really were: women bucking expectations and making their own money on their own terms. Most of all? They were simply ahead of their time.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In 1894, Golden Gate Park’s Midwinter Fair was the talk of the town. Featuring fairground rides, museums, an ostrich farm and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909983/victorian-attractions-san-francisco-chutes-gravity-railroad-woodwards-gardens-bonet-tower-auditorium-skating\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the closest thing San Francisco ever got to an Eiffel Tower\u003c/a>, the fair was a raging success with over two million visitors. There was just one element of the five-month exposition, however, that got visitors flustered and flabbergasted: the Gum Girls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hired to peddle chewing gum to the fair’s male clientele, the Gum Girls wore matching outfits, traveled in pairs, and were in the habit of whistling “Two Little Girls in Blue” any time they made a sale. Which was often. Chewing gum had only recently been transformed from its chicle-based roots into something fun and fruity. (The first fruit-flavored gum, Kis-Me, hit markets in 1886; Wrigley introduced Juicy Fruit just one year before the fair.) The song, penned by Charles Graham in 1893, became a near-constant refrain at the fair—particularly on the Midway, where the Gum Girls did most of their business.\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/3M0-o7m4Uhg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/3M0-o7m4Uhg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>As quaint as this all sounds, the Gum Girls were controversial figures from the very first day of the Midwinter Fair. For one, they flirted shamelessly with their male customers, largely motivated by the fact that they were working on commission. More scandalous still, they wore calf-length pleated skirts that exposed their ankles. That they also wore thick black stockings—meaning there was no bare flesh on display—did not quell the hullaballoo surrounding their revealing (by Victorian standards) attire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>One \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> reporter could barely conceal his ire while writing about the Gum Girls in April 1894. He did his best to denigrate the young women, implying they lacked grace and class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The prevailing type of gum girl ranges in age from 25 to 40. Most of them are stout, with faces creased from experience. None of them are refined, of course … They never wear gloves, but their hands are protected from the wind by quantities of rings. From their necks boxes of gum are strung by means of a strap. The boxes are always open and the gum girl is always patronizing her own wares. With wagging jaws and a stereotyped smile she gazes at each passer-by and invites almost every man to purchase.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The report continued disdainfully:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Everybody calls the gum girls by their first names. To say ‘Mrs’ or ‘Miss’ would seem very inappropriate and if you don’t know their given names and say Mamie or Lizzie at a venture you are almost certain to strike it right. Old patrons ask the gum girls how their children or grandchildren are, and these attempts at wit invariably bring out a flood of choice slang.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912675\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912675\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1-800x624.jpg\" alt=\"Two young women stand close together, the taller with her arm around the shorter. They wear matching uniforms of calve-length skirts, formal jackets, white shirts and ties, and petite caps.\" width=\"800\" height=\"624\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1-800x624.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1-160x125.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1-768x599.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.145-1.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A pair of Gum Girls in front of the Walter Baker Cocoa Building. \u003ccite>(OpenSFHistory / wnp15.145)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Because the Gum Girls were routinely subjected to such disparagement, they found themselves on the receiving end of both verbal abuse and unwanted advances by men at the fair. (This was the primary reason they worked in pairs.) An incident on May 5, 1894, however, sent a loud and clear message to potential harassers all over the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gum Girl Violet Eilids was conducting a transaction one day, when the male customer reached over her gum box and started to “toy familiarly” with her necktie. Most displeased by the violation of her personal space, Eilids responded by punching the letch square in the face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next day, the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Miss Violet Eilids, a late addition to the rank and file of the gum brigade, knows how to handle her fists in a scientific manner … Doubling up her right, the girl planted a stiff, straight arm punch on the nose of her tormenter. He landed on his back among the [souvenir medal] machines, and now his nose is not as pretty as it used to be. The Gum Girl, who says she has taken boxing lessons from her brother, is now recognized as the champion of the brigade, which is thinking of taking an immediate course in the manly art as a means of self-protection.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912679\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912679\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146-800x630.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"630\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146-800x630.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146-160x126.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146-768x605.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/opensfhistory_wnp15.146.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gum Girls’ headquarters in Golden Gate Park, during the 1894 Midwinter Fair. \u003ccite>(OpenSFHistory / wnp15.146)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The incident added to the Gum Girls’ infamy, but these thoroughly modern women continued their mission to keep visitors chewing right up to the end of the fair. For some, their boldness paid off with subsequent modeling and acting jobs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One Gum Girl named Marion Nolan—said by the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> to be “the prettiest of the lot”—won a competition to be the face and body of a marble statue by sculptor Rupert Schmid. Nolan went on to marry a millionaire from Mexico City, became a San Francisco socialite, but was tragically \u003ca href=\"https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC19021021.2.9&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------\">gunned down by a stalker in 1902\u003c/a>. After Edward Marshuts had murdered Nolan in front of scores of witnesses on O’Farrell Street, he turned the gun on himself. Nolan’s likeness, however, lives on to this day in Schmid’s \u003ca href=\"http://collections.museumca.org/?q=collection-item/a53409\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003ci>California Venus\u003c/i> statue\u003c/a>, on display at the Oakland Museum of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It would take 20 years after the Midwinter Fair for ankle-revealing skirts to hit the fashion mainstream. It also took that long for women who chewed gum in public to be seen as bold and independent, rather than simply unladylike. But for decades after they first strutted the paths of the Midwinter Fair, the Gum Girls’ reputations for being “bad girls” persisted by all who remembered them. Take, for example, this Dick Tracy newspaper cartoon from 1941.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912766\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912766\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-800x264.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"264\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-800x264.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-1020x336.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-160x53.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-768x253.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-1536x506.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-2048x675.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Dick-Tracy-Salt-Lake-Tribune-Oct-26-1941-1920x633.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dick Tracy suspects a Gum Girl of criminal activity in a cartoon strip from Oct. 1941, published by the ‘Salt Lake Tribune.’\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, it’s easier to see the Gum Girls for what they really were: women bucking expectations and making their own money on their own terms. Most of all? They were simply ahead of their time.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Bummer and Lazarus: An Epic Gold Rush Tale of Triumph and Tragedy",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]G[/dropcap]old Rush San Francisco had a stray dog problem. Teams of snarling, scrapping mutts roamed the city untethered and reproducing faster than humans could handle. The dogs were as determined to survive as the locals who fed them scraps when there was meat to share. But they were an often-troublesome addition to city streets that were already wild by anyone’s standards. In April 1860, the \u003cem>Daily Alta California\u003c/em> reported: “We never knew a city in America so used with the canine nuisance as San Francisco. Sometimes at night, their howling is enough to drive one distracted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years after that report, the city took brutal measures to prevent the dog population from getting any larger. An ordinance was passed by the Board of Supervisors (est. 1856) that banned canines anywhere north of Ninth Street and east of Larkin. Dogs that had neither leash nor muzzle could be shot on sight by police officers, or else locked up in the pound by the local dogcatcher. The impounded pups were released only when a human companion forked over $5 (roughly $142 in 2022 money). Most were killed. The dogs that outsmarted the catcher weren’t much better off—their human neighbors were not averse to leaving poisoned meat scraps on the street to fell their numbers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a dark time for the dogs of San Francisco—well, most of them anyway. By some miracle, out of the anti-canine maelstrom emerged a puppy pair that the city actually wanted to root for: Bummer and Lazarus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13906656']Bummer was a black and white Newfoundland mix with ears that had been cropped unevenly. He earned his name by patrolling businesses up and down Montgomery Street and begging for scraps on a set schedule. He was understood to be uncommonly intelligent and was particularly popular at Martin & Horton’s. The saloon at 534 Montgomery, at the corner of Clay, was owned by Frederick Martin and renowned for the cheapness of its liquor. It was also frequented by the many reporters who worked in nearby newspaper offices. These journalists would go on to make Bummer famous across the city—but only after he took up with his less streetwise pal, Lazarus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lazarus was described in one paper as “part hound, part terrier and a good many parts of several other varieties.” In another, he was merely “a sleek, half-starved mongrel.” After Bummer rescued Lazarus from an attack by a bigger dog, the pair became fast and inseparable associates. Witnessing the friendship form, the reporters at Martin & Horton’s were rapt. Soon, so was the whole city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Jan. 18, 1861, Bummer and Lazarus made their first appearance in the \u003cem>Daily Alta\u003c/em> together:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Three or four days ago, a poor, lean, mangy cur [mongrel] was attacked in the street by a larger dog, and was getting unmercifully walloped when Bummer’s ire being aroused at the unequal contest, he rushed in and gave the attacking canine such a rough handling that he was glad to quit the field yelping … Every night since that, the two dogs have slept coiled up together, close to some doorway—Bummer always giving the lame cur the inside berth, and trying to keep him as warm as possible.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the four years that followed, any time a slow news day presented itself, readers of San Francisco’s newspapers could expect an update about Bummer and Lazarus. (The latter named after the biblical figure who was revived after four days of death.) The stories about the duo were frequent and dramatic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dogs were hailed as heroes after they apparently stopped a runaway horse and cart. There were reports about them taking scraps to each other when they were too sick to go out and beg themselves. There were tales about their run-ins with local merchants—in particular after the pair got into a jewelry store and smashed some display cases. (On another occasion, Lazarus accidentally got locked in a stationery store overnight.) If it was a particularly slow day, readers could expect a story about the pair stealing bones from other dogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912567\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912567\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-800x569.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"569\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-800x569.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-1020x726.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-768x547.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cartoonist Edward Jump often drew Bummer and Lazarus in the company of Emperor Norton. Norton was reportedly so angered by this image of him dining with the dogs, he broke his own cane. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yes, San Francisco loved the dogs because of their friendship and their adventures together. But, more than that, San Francisco loved Bummer and Lazarus because of one activity they both excelled at: killing rats. And there were enough rats in the city at the time to outnumber dogs and humans combined. The businesses Bummer and Lazarus frequented for food were paid back tenfold in rat population control. Legend has it, the pair once killed 85 rats in 20 minutes. At one rat-catching contest held between Clay and Merchant Streets, the duo beat out all other competition, including pedigree dogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13910308']One of the only people in the city not to know of the dogs’ ratting prowess—or their enormous popularity—was the dogcatcher who made the mistake of picking up Lazarus in June 1862. “If that dog-catcher had not made good haste out of the neighborhood,” the \u003cem>San Francisco Call\u003c/em> reported on July 3, 1892, “he would have been roughly handled for his zeal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within hours of the news spreading down Montgomery, Clay, Sansome and Merchant, enough donations had been collected from saloons, butcher shops and eateries to free Bummer’s BFF from the pound. But people’s relief at the dogs’ reunion was short-lived. Concern quickly spread that one of downtown’s most beloved dogs would soon be caught again. It was then that a plan was hatched to acquire permanent protections for Bummer and Lazarus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A petition was quickly written up, asking for: “The consecration of the two dogs as city property, whereby they may be exempted from taxation or destruction.” Hundreds of Bummer and Lazarus fans signed the document and then presented it to the Board of Supervisors on June 16, 1862.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The following day, the \u003cem>Daily Alta\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A mammoth petition was presented to the Board of Supervisors last evening, praying that the public dogs, Bummer and Lazarus be exempt from the provisions of the present stringent Ordinance for the destruction of the race … At the hour of convening the board of supervisors they lay crouched at the threshold of the chamber, apparently eager to hear what was to be said and done for their benefit. If any man carried them there, it was a cute dodge to get favorable action on their petition; if they went there voluntarily, they ought to have free run of the town during the rest of their lives.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>And guess what? After the hearing, Bummer and Lazarus \u003cem>were\u003c/em> granted free run of the town for the rest of their lives, safe and unimpeded by the dogcatcher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13909983'][dropcap]S[/dropcap]adly, the freedom to roam the city could not save them from the cruelty within it. In October 1863, Lazarus died after eating poisoned meat. The city mourned his loss, but mourned Bummer’s bereavement even more so. The \u003cem>Daily Evening Bulletin\u003c/em> printed an obituary titled “Lament for Lazarus,” which referred to Bummer and his fallen companion as “two dogs with but a single bark, two tails that wagged as one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bummer survived two more years without his pal. And though he occasionally took a new friend under his wing, he never bonded with another dog the way he had bonded with Lazarus. Like his old friend, Bummer died a cruel death, kicked down some stairs by a drunk named Henry Rippey. Rippey was apprehended, punched in the nose by his cell-mate and forced to pay a hefty fine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bummer was warmly eulogized just as Lazarus had been. On Nov. 3, 1865, the \u003cem>Daily Evening Bulletin\u003c/em> wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>[Bummer’s] independence and the novelty of his genius took with the people, and from that day he has been the pet of everybody without distinction of party … His remarkable friendship for … Lazarus will now deathless meet its reward, and thee twain can once more walk side by side.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>After shuffling off this mortal coil, Bummer and Lazarus were both stuffed and put on display in their former haunts. Lazarus ended up in a Sansome Street business owned by one Gus Van Bergen. Bummer’s taxidermied body was purchased by a Mr. Erlenwein, who had assumed ownership of Martin & Horton’s. The dogs were displayed together at 1894’s Midwinter Fair, and donated to the Golden Gate Park Museum in 1906, but ultimately destroyed sometime in the early 20th century. Which is appropriate given that, by that point, what was left of the dogs had definitely seen better days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912564\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912564\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-800x365.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-800x365.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-1020x465.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-160x73.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-768x350.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed.png 1062w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The poor, old, taxidermied bodies of Bummer (L) and Lazarus (R). \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Today, the memory of Bummer and Lazarus lives on in San Francisco. Bayview’s Raff Distillerie makes a \u003ca href=\"https://raffdistillerie.com/gin.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bummer and Lazarus gin\u003c/a>, featuring an ornate label adorned with the dogs. Even more fitting is the tribute that \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Clampus_Vitus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">E Clampus Vitus\u003c/a> (aka The Clampers) installed in Redwood Park, in the shadow of the Transamerica building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sitting right in the heart of Bummer and Lazarus’ old stomping grounds since March 1992, a plaque dedicated to their memory declares:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Their devotion to each other endeared them to the citizenry, and the newspapers reported their joint adventures … They were welcomed, regular customers at popular eating and drinking establishments on Montgomery Street. Contrary to common belief, they were not Emperor Norton’s dogs. They belonged to no one person. They belonged to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Correction: A previous version of this story stated the year that Bummer and Lazarus’ taxidermied skins were destroyed. The exact year is unknown. \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\">G\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>old Rush San Francisco had a stray dog problem. Teams of snarling, scrapping mutts roamed the city untethered and reproducing faster than humans could handle. The dogs were as determined to survive as the locals who fed them scraps when there was meat to share. But they were an often-troublesome addition to city streets that were already wild by anyone’s standards. In April 1860, the \u003cem>Daily Alta California\u003c/em> reported: “We never knew a city in America so used with the canine nuisance as San Francisco. Sometimes at night, their howling is enough to drive one distracted.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two years after that report, the city took brutal measures to prevent the dog population from getting any larger. An ordinance was passed by the Board of Supervisors (est. 1856) that banned canines anywhere north of Ninth Street and east of Larkin. Dogs that had neither leash nor muzzle could be shot on sight by police officers, or else locked up in the pound by the local dogcatcher. The impounded pups were released only when a human companion forked over $5 (roughly $142 in 2022 money). Most were killed. The dogs that outsmarted the catcher weren’t much better off—their human neighbors were not averse to leaving poisoned meat scraps on the street to fell their numbers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was a dark time for the dogs of San Francisco—well, most of them anyway. By some miracle, out of the anti-canine maelstrom emerged a puppy pair that the city actually wanted to root for: Bummer and Lazarus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Bummer was a black and white Newfoundland mix with ears that had been cropped unevenly. He earned his name by patrolling businesses up and down Montgomery Street and begging for scraps on a set schedule. He was understood to be uncommonly intelligent and was particularly popular at Martin & Horton’s. The saloon at 534 Montgomery, at the corner of Clay, was owned by Frederick Martin and renowned for the cheapness of its liquor. It was also frequented by the many reporters who worked in nearby newspaper offices. These journalists would go on to make Bummer famous across the city—but only after he took up with his less streetwise pal, Lazarus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lazarus was described in one paper as “part hound, part terrier and a good many parts of several other varieties.” In another, he was merely “a sleek, half-starved mongrel.” After Bummer rescued Lazarus from an attack by a bigger dog, the pair became fast and inseparable associates. Witnessing the friendship form, the reporters at Martin & Horton’s were rapt. Soon, so was the whole city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Jan. 18, 1861, Bummer and Lazarus made their first appearance in the \u003cem>Daily Alta\u003c/em> together:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Three or four days ago, a poor, lean, mangy cur [mongrel] was attacked in the street by a larger dog, and was getting unmercifully walloped when Bummer’s ire being aroused at the unequal contest, he rushed in and gave the attacking canine such a rough handling that he was glad to quit the field yelping … Every night since that, the two dogs have slept coiled up together, close to some doorway—Bummer always giving the lame cur the inside berth, and trying to keep him as warm as possible.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n the four years that followed, any time a slow news day presented itself, readers of San Francisco’s newspapers could expect an update about Bummer and Lazarus. (The latter named after the biblical figure who was revived after four days of death.) The stories about the duo were frequent and dramatic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dogs were hailed as heroes after they apparently stopped a runaway horse and cart. There were reports about them taking scraps to each other when they were too sick to go out and beg themselves. There were tales about their run-ins with local merchants—in particular after the pair got into a jewelry store and smashed some display cases. (On another occasion, Lazarus accidentally got locked in a stationery store overnight.) If it was a particularly slow day, readers could expect a story about the pair stealing bones from other dogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912567\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912567\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-800x569.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"569\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-800x569.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-1020x726.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0-768x547.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1200x0.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cartoonist Edward Jump often drew Bummer and Lazarus in the company of Emperor Norton. Norton was reportedly so angered by this image of him dining with the dogs, he broke his own cane. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Yes, San Francisco loved the dogs because of their friendship and their adventures together. But, more than that, San Francisco loved Bummer and Lazarus because of one activity they both excelled at: killing rats. And there were enough rats in the city at the time to outnumber dogs and humans combined. The businesses Bummer and Lazarus frequented for food were paid back tenfold in rat population control. Legend has it, the pair once killed 85 rats in 20 minutes. At one rat-catching contest held between Clay and Merchant Streets, the duo beat out all other competition, including pedigree dogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>One of the only people in the city not to know of the dogs’ ratting prowess—or their enormous popularity—was the dogcatcher who made the mistake of picking up Lazarus in June 1862. “If that dog-catcher had not made good haste out of the neighborhood,” the \u003cem>San Francisco Call\u003c/em> reported on July 3, 1892, “he would have been roughly handled for his zeal.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within hours of the news spreading down Montgomery, Clay, Sansome and Merchant, enough donations had been collected from saloons, butcher shops and eateries to free Bummer’s BFF from the pound. But people’s relief at the dogs’ reunion was short-lived. Concern quickly spread that one of downtown’s most beloved dogs would soon be caught again. It was then that a plan was hatched to acquire permanent protections for Bummer and Lazarus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A petition was quickly written up, asking for: “The consecration of the two dogs as city property, whereby they may be exempted from taxation or destruction.” Hundreds of Bummer and Lazarus fans signed the document and then presented it to the Board of Supervisors on June 16, 1862.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The following day, the \u003cem>Daily Alta\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>A mammoth petition was presented to the Board of Supervisors last evening, praying that the public dogs, Bummer and Lazarus be exempt from the provisions of the present stringent Ordinance for the destruction of the race … At the hour of convening the board of supervisors they lay crouched at the threshold of the chamber, apparently eager to hear what was to be said and done for their benefit. If any man carried them there, it was a cute dodge to get favorable action on their petition; if they went there voluntarily, they ought to have free run of the town during the rest of their lives.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>And guess what? After the hearing, Bummer and Lazarus \u003cem>were\u003c/em> granted free run of the town for the rest of their lives, safe and unimpeded by the dogcatcher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">S\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>adly, the freedom to roam the city could not save them from the cruelty within it. In October 1863, Lazarus died after eating poisoned meat. The city mourned his loss, but mourned Bummer’s bereavement even more so. The \u003cem>Daily Evening Bulletin\u003c/em> printed an obituary titled “Lament for Lazarus,” which referred to Bummer and his fallen companion as “two dogs with but a single bark, two tails that wagged as one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bummer survived two more years without his pal. And though he occasionally took a new friend under his wing, he never bonded with another dog the way he had bonded with Lazarus. Like his old friend, Bummer died a cruel death, kicked down some stairs by a drunk named Henry Rippey. Rippey was apprehended, punched in the nose by his cell-mate and forced to pay a hefty fine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bummer was warmly eulogized just as Lazarus had been. On Nov. 3, 1865, the \u003cem>Daily Evening Bulletin\u003c/em> wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>[Bummer’s] independence and the novelty of his genius took with the people, and from that day he has been the pet of everybody without distinction of party … His remarkable friendship for … Lazarus will now deathless meet its reward, and thee twain can once more walk side by side.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>After shuffling off this mortal coil, Bummer and Lazarus were both stuffed and put on display in their former haunts. Lazarus ended up in a Sansome Street business owned by one Gus Van Bergen. Bummer’s taxidermied body was purchased by a Mr. Erlenwein, who had assumed ownership of Martin & Horton’s. The dogs were displayed together at 1894’s Midwinter Fair, and donated to the Golden Gate Park Museum in 1906, but ultimately destroyed sometime in the early 20th century. Which is appropriate given that, by that point, what was left of the dogs had definitely seen better days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912564\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912564\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-800x365.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-800x365.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-1020x465.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-160x73.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed-768x350.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/stuffed.png 1062w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The poor, old, taxidermied bodies of Bummer (L) and Lazarus (R). \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Today, the memory of Bummer and Lazarus lives on in San Francisco. Bayview’s Raff Distillerie makes a \u003ca href=\"https://raffdistillerie.com/gin.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bummer and Lazarus gin\u003c/a>, featuring an ornate label adorned with the dogs. Even more fitting is the tribute that \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Clampus_Vitus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">E Clampus Vitus\u003c/a> (aka The Clampers) installed in Redwood Park, in the shadow of the Transamerica building.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sitting right in the heart of Bummer and Lazarus’ old stomping grounds since March 1992, a plaque dedicated to their memory declares:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Their devotion to each other endeared them to the citizenry, and the newspapers reported their joint adventures … They were welcomed, regular customers at popular eating and drinking establishments on Montgomery Street. Contrary to common belief, they were not Emperor Norton’s dogs. They belonged to no one person. They belonged to San Francisco.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Correction: A previous version of this story stated the year that Bummer and Lazarus’ taxidermied skins were destroyed. The exact year is unknown. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The 1960s Women Whose Environmental Activism Saved the Bay",
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"content": "\u003cp>The \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> story set off alarm bells across the region. Published April 23, 1961, “Our Shrinking Bay” dared to gaze 40 years into the future at what the Bay Area would look like if urban development continued unchecked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By 2020,” Ed Salzman wrote, “the Bay could be little more than a wide river. Berkeley would extend so far west that part of the city would be in San Francisco County. And much more of the southern Eastbay shoreline would belong to San Mateo County.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t a work of Salzman’s imagination. The journalist had recently seen a paper the Army Corps of Engineers had written for the Department of Commerce. It explained in some detail that 70% of the Bay was less than 18 feet deep—meaning it could be filled and paved over relatively easily. Not only were plans afoot to start that process, but at the time there were zero rules against such development. The private companies who owned the shoreline could do whatever they pleased with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13898345']Shortly after the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em> published the article, a woman named Esther Gulick was visiting her friend Catherine “Kay” Kerr to drop off some home-baked almond cookies. The two had become friends through their husbands, who were both members of the U.C. Board of Regents. (Gulick herself was a U.C. Berkeley graduate who had majored in economics. Kerr had graduated from Stanford with a major in political science.) After the pair got to chatting about Salzman’s story, Kerr asked Gulick if she might have a little spare time to try and prevent the decimation of the Bay. Gulick said that she did, and the pair quickly started organizing with Sylvia McLaughlin—a Vassar graduate, mom of two and another Board of Regents wife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of the women had any idea they were about to embark on a lifelong journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1961, the San Francisco Bay was not in good shape. It had been a century since the Gold Rush, and at least 80% of the Bay’s wetlands had been lost to development. The water was filthy, tainted by oil slicks, shipping pollution, trash from multiple garbage dumps at the edge of the water and, worst of all, untreated sewage. At low tide, the stench emanating from the water wafted from Mill Valley to Oakland. At night, Gulick, who had a view of the Bay from her Berkeley home, watched in horror as trash was dumped in the shallows and set on fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick assumed they could join forces with an already established group who could guide and inform their campaign. In 1961, the women invited every local environmentalist they could think of to Gulick’s home for a meeting. Those in attendance included reps from the \u003ca href=\"https://act.sierraclub.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sierra Club\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.savetheredwoods.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Save the Redwoods League\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://act.audubon.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Audubon\u003c/a> and several local grassroots groups. They even invited author \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Gilliam\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Harold Gilliam\u003c/a> because of his work profiling the waterfront in his 1957 book \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15721143-san-francisco-bay\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>San Francisco Bay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the trio had carefully laid out the Bay’s urgent need for intervention, each of their attendees warmly agreed—then explained they were too busy with their own campaigns, and encouraged the women to start their own organization. To help, the Sierra Club’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sierraclub.org/library/david-brower\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">David Brower\u003c/a> handed over his organization’s mailing list and made himself available for advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That night, the Save the San Francisco Bay Association—now popularly known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=408SHpeOt8o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Save the Bay—was born\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13882943']Almost half a century after he attended that first meeting, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-the-bay-was-saved-Development-threatened-to-2564089.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Harold Gilliam wrote for \u003cem>SFGate\u003c/em>\u003c/a>: “My own feeling was that any attempt to stop the filling of the bay would be hopeless … I was certain that the three Berkeley women were too naive and inexperienced to realize the bay was as doomed as the orchards of the Santa Clara Valley … The notion that the big-buck developers, the shoreline cities and some of the country’s biggest corporations could be turned back by a few starry-eyed bay savers seemed preposterous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within two years, the association had proved Gilliam wrong, winning its first major victory. And it was a major one. Save the Bay almost single-handedly stopped the City of Berkeley from expanding into 2,000 acres of Bay waters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912297\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-800x894.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"894\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-800x894.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-1020x1139.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-160x179.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-768x858.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter.png 1298w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Save the San Francisco Bay Association’ newsletter, sent out to subscribers in Dec. 1968. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick, it turned out, were a force to be reckoned with. They understood that the only way to win was to combine grassroots people power with irrefutable data. They used targeted flyer campaigns, phone chains and gatherings to attract more members to their cause. They charged $1 per year to receive their newsletter—a simple but effective way to fundraise. And they consulted with biologists, engineers, economists, architects, legal scholars and city planners to prepare official arguments for all eventualities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s easy to forget now, but environmental campaigns were a fringe issue at the time that Save the Bay first started. Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick instinctively knew how to take them mainstream. In 1968, for example, they distributed handmade “Save the Bay” flags to a gala parade of boats who were celebrating the start of yachting season. This simple but savvy move garnered them press coverage without even having to organize a protest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With attention, of course, came personal scrutiny. The women—and their supporters—were often subjected to mockery and name-calling. Gulick noted in one 1988 speech that they were called: “enemies of progress, impractical idealists, do-gooders, posy pickers, eco-freaks, enviromaniacs, little old ladies in tennis shoes and almond cookie revolutionaries.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, even an \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> columnist piled on. In 1963, Al Martinez wrote facetiously of the work Save the Bay was doing: “O, lo, the Bay is shrinking, the Bay is shrinking! Really? That’s what they tell me,” he scoffed. “We can always spray the waterfront with an air-sweetener or deodorizer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through it all, Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick harbored no hesitations about testifying at hearings, hassling government officials, petitioning state agencies and leading protests to Sacramento. All three steadfastly refused to be intimidated by the corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, landowners and occasional journalists who attempted to block their path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912298\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912298\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-800x1004.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1004\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-800x1004.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-1020x1280.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-160x201.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-768x964.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM.png 1026w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Save the San Francisco Bay Association’ newsletter, sent to subscribers in July 1970. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The tenacious organizing undertaken by these three women has influenced the ecology of the Bay Area in too many ways to comprehensively list. But it is thanks to them that we have a state commission whose sole job it is to protect the San Francisco Bay. (The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has been in place since 1965. And that, in turn, inspired the creation of the California Coastal Commission in 1972.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without Save the Bay’s campaigning and influence, Berkeley and San Mateo may have succeeded in expanding their city limits into the waterfront in 1980. David Rockefeller and his associates may have succeeded in sucking up 27 miles of coastline for a major new development in the early 1970s. Without Save the Bay, we probably wouldn’t have the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fws.gov/refuge/don-edwards-san-francisco-bay\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge\u003c/a>, nor the 85,000 acres of wetlands still protected by 1977’s \u003ca href=\"https://bcdc.ca.gov/plans/suisun_marsh_preservation_act.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Suisun Marsh Preservation Act\u003c/a>. We wouldn’t have the permanently protected McLaughlin Eastshore State Park that runs between Emeryville and Richmond. (It was named after Sylvia in 2011.) In fact, between the time Save the Bay formed and 2007, the bay \u003cem>expanded\u003c/em> by 40,000 acres. The environmental impact of the organization cannot be overstated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13871297']Gulick died in 1995. Both McLaughlin and Kerr died just months before their 100th birthdays, in 2016 and 2010 respectively. McLaughlin continued to attend protests well into her 90s—even ones that involved climbing trees. In a 1988 speech she noted: “Esther, Kay and I were inspired by the vision of what we felt San Francisco Bay could be and the reality of what was happening to it. We regarded the Bay as one of this country’s national treasures and to us, and to many others, it was unthinkable that most of this beautiful natural resource could be filled.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> journalist who wrote “Our Shrinking Bay” \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sixty-years-of-saving-san-francisco-bay/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">talked to the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em>\u003c/a> about the 1961 story that started it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I covered presidents and governors and all kinds of big shots,” Ed Salzman said at the age of 89. “But when you look back, I don’t remember those stories at all. This story I remember in detail, because—let’s face it—the saving of San Francisco Bay is still going on.”\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>The \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> story set off alarm bells across the region. Published April 23, 1961, “Our Shrinking Bay” dared to gaze 40 years into the future at what the Bay Area would look like if urban development continued unchecked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“By 2020,” Ed Salzman wrote, “the Bay could be little more than a wide river. Berkeley would extend so far west that part of the city would be in San Francisco County. And much more of the southern Eastbay shoreline would belong to San Mateo County.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t a work of Salzman’s imagination. The journalist had recently seen a paper the Army Corps of Engineers had written for the Department of Commerce. It explained in some detail that 70% of the Bay was less than 18 feet deep—meaning it could be filled and paved over relatively easily. Not only were plans afoot to start that process, but at the time there were zero rules against such development. The private companies who owned the shoreline could do whatever they pleased with it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Shortly after the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em> published the article, a woman named Esther Gulick was visiting her friend Catherine “Kay” Kerr to drop off some home-baked almond cookies. The two had become friends through their husbands, who were both members of the U.C. Board of Regents. (Gulick herself was a U.C. Berkeley graduate who had majored in economics. Kerr had graduated from Stanford with a major in political science.) After the pair got to chatting about Salzman’s story, Kerr asked Gulick if she might have a little spare time to try and prevent the decimation of the Bay. Gulick said that she did, and the pair quickly started organizing with Sylvia McLaughlin—a Vassar graduate, mom of two and another Board of Regents wife.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of the women had any idea they were about to embark on a lifelong journey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1961, the San Francisco Bay was not in good shape. It had been a century since the Gold Rush, and at least 80% of the Bay’s wetlands had been lost to development. The water was filthy, tainted by oil slicks, shipping pollution, trash from multiple garbage dumps at the edge of the water and, worst of all, untreated sewage. At low tide, the stench emanating from the water wafted from Mill Valley to Oakland. At night, Gulick, who had a view of the Bay from her Berkeley home, watched in horror as trash was dumped in the shallows and set on fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At first, Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick assumed they could join forces with an already established group who could guide and inform their campaign. In 1961, the women invited every local environmentalist they could think of to Gulick’s home for a meeting. Those in attendance included reps from the \u003ca href=\"https://act.sierraclub.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sierra Club\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.savetheredwoods.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Save the Redwoods League\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://act.audubon.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Audubon\u003c/a> and several local grassroots groups. They even invited author \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Gilliam\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Harold Gilliam\u003c/a> because of his work profiling the waterfront in his 1957 book \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15721143-san-francisco-bay\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>San Francisco Bay\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the trio had carefully laid out the Bay’s urgent need for intervention, each of their attendees warmly agreed—then explained they were too busy with their own campaigns, and encouraged the women to start their own organization. To help, the Sierra Club’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sierraclub.org/library/david-brower\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">David Brower\u003c/a> handed over his organization’s mailing list and made himself available for advice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That night, the Save the San Francisco Bay Association—now popularly known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=408SHpeOt8o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Save the Bay—was born\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Almost half a century after he attended that first meeting, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/How-the-bay-was-saved-Development-threatened-to-2564089.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Harold Gilliam wrote for \u003cem>SFGate\u003c/em>\u003c/a>: “My own feeling was that any attempt to stop the filling of the bay would be hopeless … I was certain that the three Berkeley women were too naive and inexperienced to realize the bay was as doomed as the orchards of the Santa Clara Valley … The notion that the big-buck developers, the shoreline cities and some of the country’s biggest corporations could be turned back by a few starry-eyed bay savers seemed preposterous.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within two years, the association had proved Gilliam wrong, winning its first major victory. And it was a major one. Save the Bay almost single-handedly stopped the City of Berkeley from expanding into 2,000 acres of Bay waters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912297\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912297\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-800x894.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"894\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-800x894.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-1020x1139.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-160x179.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter-768x858.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/1968-newsletter.png 1298w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Save the San Francisco Bay Association’ newsletter, sent out to subscribers in Dec. 1968. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick, it turned out, were a force to be reckoned with. They understood that the only way to win was to combine grassroots people power with irrefutable data. They used targeted flyer campaigns, phone chains and gatherings to attract more members to their cause. They charged $1 per year to receive their newsletter—a simple but effective way to fundraise. And they consulted with biologists, engineers, economists, architects, legal scholars and city planners to prepare official arguments for all eventualities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s easy to forget now, but environmental campaigns were a fringe issue at the time that Save the Bay first started. Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick instinctively knew how to take them mainstream. In 1968, for example, they distributed handmade “Save the Bay” flags to a gala parade of boats who were celebrating the start of yachting season. This simple but savvy move garnered them press coverage without even having to organize a protest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With attention, of course, came personal scrutiny. The women—and their supporters—were often subjected to mockery and name-calling. Gulick noted in one 1988 speech that they were called: “enemies of progress, impractical idealists, do-gooders, posy pickers, eco-freaks, enviromaniacs, little old ladies in tennis shoes and almond cookie revolutionaries.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, even an \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> columnist piled on. In 1963, Al Martinez wrote facetiously of the work Save the Bay was doing: “O, lo, the Bay is shrinking, the Bay is shrinking! Really? That’s what they tell me,” he scoffed. “We can always spray the waterfront with an air-sweetener or deodorizer.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through it all, Kerr, McLaughlin and Gulick harbored no hesitations about testifying at hearings, hassling government officials, petitioning state agencies and leading protests to Sacramento. All three steadfastly refused to be intimidated by the corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, landowners and occasional journalists who attempted to block their path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912298\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912298\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-800x1004.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1004\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-800x1004.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-1020x1280.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-160x201.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM-768x964.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-21-at-9.44.04-PM.png 1026w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A ‘Save the San Francisco Bay Association’ newsletter, sent to subscribers in July 1970. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of the California Historical Society)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The tenacious organizing undertaken by these three women has influenced the ecology of the Bay Area in too many ways to comprehensively list. But it is thanks to them that we have a state commission whose sole job it is to protect the San Francisco Bay. (The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has been in place since 1965. And that, in turn, inspired the creation of the California Coastal Commission in 1972.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without Save the Bay’s campaigning and influence, Berkeley and San Mateo may have succeeded in expanding their city limits into the waterfront in 1980. David Rockefeller and his associates may have succeeded in sucking up 27 miles of coastline for a major new development in the early 1970s. Without Save the Bay, we probably wouldn’t have the \u003ca href=\"https://www.fws.gov/refuge/don-edwards-san-francisco-bay\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge\u003c/a>, nor the 85,000 acres of wetlands still protected by 1977’s \u003ca href=\"https://bcdc.ca.gov/plans/suisun_marsh_preservation_act.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Suisun Marsh Preservation Act\u003c/a>. We wouldn’t have the permanently protected McLaughlin Eastshore State Park that runs between Emeryville and Richmond. (It was named after Sylvia in 2011.) In fact, between the time Save the Bay formed and 2007, the bay \u003cem>expanded\u003c/em> by 40,000 acres. The environmental impact of the organization cannot be overstated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Gulick died in 1995. Both McLaughlin and Kerr died just months before their 100th birthdays, in 2016 and 2010 respectively. McLaughlin continued to attend protests well into her 90s—even ones that involved climbing trees. In a 1988 speech she noted: “Esther, Kay and I were inspired by the vision of what we felt San Francisco Bay could be and the reality of what was happening to it. We regarded the Bay as one of this country’s national treasures and to us, and to many others, it was unthinkable that most of this beautiful natural resource could be filled.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last year, the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> journalist who wrote “Our Shrinking Bay” \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sixty-years-of-saving-san-francisco-bay/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">talked to the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em>\u003c/a> about the 1961 story that started it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I covered presidents and governors and all kinds of big shots,” Ed Salzman said at the age of 89. “But when you look back, I don’t remember those stories at all. This story I remember in detail, because—let’s face it—the saving of San Francisco Bay is still going on.”\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": "HBO's 'The Survivor' Shields Viewers From Harry Haft's Whole Truth",
"headTitle": "HBO’s ‘The Survivor’ Shields Viewers From Harry Haft’s Whole Truth | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>There is a plethora of books and films available that portray the unfathomably cruel acts rendered commonplace during World War II. The most effective ones tend to tighten focus on individual accounts, with all of their small and devastating details. These stories do the work of making the atrocities more tangible to those of us several generations removed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hertzko “Harry” Haft’s life story is one such tale, but it raises more moral quandaries than most.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haft was a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz by bare-knuckle boxing with other prisoners at the behest—and for the entertainment—of SS guards. Haft was protected and provided with food by an officer named Schneider as long as the prisoner continued to fight. Schneider saved Haft time and time again, not just because Haft provided the guard with entertainment. Schneider was also motivated by a promise that Haft made to relay the officer’s good deeds to the allies if the German was ever captured.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13877930']In Haft’s time at Auschwitz, he won all of his boxing matches, declared winner only after he had knocked out his rival. To lose the match would be to lose his life: all 76 of his opponents were immediately killed by either a bullet or the gas chamber upon defeat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the war, aged 21 and having been imprisoned in seven concentration camps in five years, Haft made a dramatic escape from a Nazi death march, and began a new life in Brooklyn. He continued boxing for years after the war, his most famous fight against Rocky Marciano, one of the all-time greats. “After all I’ve been through,” Haft famously said in 1948, “what harm can a man with gloves on his hands do me?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can read the details of Haft’s fascinating life in Reinhard Kleist’s excellent 2012 graphic novel \u003ca href=\"https://www.reinhard-kleist.de/en/comics/the-boxer/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Boxer\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, and in \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/627025.Harry_Haft\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Harry Haft\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the 2006 biography by Haft’s son Alan Scott Haft, on which the graphic novel was based. Now comes HBO’s \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em>, a biopic directed by Barry Levinson (\u003cem>Rain Man\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Wag the Dog\u003c/em>), and consulted on by the \u003ca href=\"https://sfi.usc.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">USC Shoah Foundation\u003c/a>—an organization that collects Holocaust survivor stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ETYBNs6ZA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> benefits, first and foremost, from beautiful direction and an excellent cast. Ben Foster is unrecognizable as Haft, and entirely convincing at every gut-wrenching step of his performance. During scenes at Auschwitz, Foster embodies the expressions of a desperate human living perpetually in survival mode. For Haft’s early days in Brooklyn, Foster effectively captures the torment of a person attempting to live a normal life after surviving a living hell. And for Haft’s later years, Foster allows his performance to take on the gnarled and calloused edges of a man who never came to terms with what happened to him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Foster’s side in Haft’s post-war boxing world are scene-stealing performances by John Leguizamo (who plays Haft’s trainer, Pepe) and Danny DeVito (as Rocky Marciano’s trainer Charley Goldman, who secretly gave Hast tips before the big fight). Both Leguizamo and DeVito imbue the film with much-needed moments of light and humor. Meanwhile, Vicky Krieps’s portrayal of Haft’s wife, Miriam Wofsoniker, includes just the right combination of sympathy, sensitivity and frustration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13874146']\u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> is a stunning and heart-wrenching portrayal of one man’s literal fight to survive, and the deep emotional scars it left behind. The film quietly asks thought-provoking questions about morality, spirituality, trauma and the meaning of true strength. And the broad arc of Haft’s story, as presented here, is accurate. Where \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> falters is in its compulsion to insert Hollywood versions of events in place of real-life details that would have more than sufficed. And it goes far beyond small instances of artistic license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For one, the biopic glosses over the abuse to which Haft subjected his son Alan later in life. “You’re talking about a Holocaust survivor who’s got PTSD,” Alan once said of writing his father’s biography, “talking to a second-generation Holocaust survivor who’s got PTSD from having survived growing up with him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> creates a fictional backstory for the relationship Haft had with his wife, lest the true story be deemed unromantic. In reality, Haft and Wofsoniker were neighbors who married just a week after meeting, in part because the elderly woman Haft was boarding with had died, rendering him homeless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> grittily recreates Haft’s fights at Auschwitz as he later relayed them to his son—often, fights with men far too depleted to defend themselves. There’s a harrowing depiction of the fight Haft had to win against a champion French heavyweight brought to Auschwitz by Berlin generals. But the filmmakers, apparently unsure whether the truth would suitably move the audience, also concoct a fictional scenario in which Haft is forced to fight a dear friend. This scene is taken to such an overwrought conclusion that one can only hope viewers recognize it as a fabrication. (I was compelled to fact-check it the moment it was over.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912202\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912202\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-800x515.png\" alt=\"An emaciated shirtless man with a shaved head stands with a look of steely determination. Opposite a nazi SS officer gives him instructions. Behind them, fences and other soldiers are visible.\" width=\"800\" height=\"515\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-800x515.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-1020x656.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-160x103.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-768x494.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-1536x988.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-2048x1318.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-1920x1235.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Foster as Harry Haft and Billy Magnussen as Dietrich Schneider, the SS officer who saved Haft’s life repeatedly, as long as the young man agreed to box. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> consistently rewrites Haft’s story to raise the emotional stakes. The conclusion presented for the relationship between Haft and SS officer Schneider is entirely (and depressingly) fabricated. Worse, tying the two men’s story up in a neat little bow impacts how \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> presents Haft’s real-life escape—a story absolutely worth telling. Is the movie version more satisfying than what really happened? Of course. But at this stage in history, surely telling the truth about every detail of the Holocaust is more important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The truth is that Haft’s daring escape also involved killing three civilians. While on the run, Haft killed an SS officer, stole his uniform and, shortly after, took shelter in the home of an elderly German couple. After they had welcomed him in, given him food and the chance to bathe, Haft grew fearful of being discovered as an imposter and shot them both dead. Further down the road, when a woman recognized that he was neither German nor a soldier, Haft shot her dead and told her young son to hide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13908730']Erasing the dark reality of what Haft did in pursuit of his own freedom might, on the surface, make sense: it renders Haft a more sympathetic protagonist. But this is a two-hour biopic that repeatedly asks the viewer to think about the lengths to which we might go to survive an abhorrent situation. Denying us a full picture of what Haft did to make it out alive seems in direct opposition to the movie’s primary goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, \u003cem>The Survivor—\u003c/em>while compelling and impactful—squanders the opportunity to tell Harry Haft’s story as he himself was willing to do. This truth is especially important at a time when few Holocaust survivors are around to tell us exactly what happened to them. (Haft died in 2007.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Changing these details wasn’t just unnecessary, it also implies Haft’s life wasn’t quite good enough, or sad enough, to tell honestly. In so doing, the project arguably passes judgment on a man who was, in impossible circumstances, simply trying to stay alive.\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=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Survivor’ premieres on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Wednesday April 27, on HBO.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There is a plethora of books and films available that portray the unfathomably cruel acts rendered commonplace during World War II. The most effective ones tend to tighten focus on individual accounts, with all of their small and devastating details. These stories do the work of making the atrocities more tangible to those of us several generations removed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hertzko “Harry” Haft’s life story is one such tale, but it raises more moral quandaries than most.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Haft was a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz by bare-knuckle boxing with other prisoners at the behest—and for the entertainment—of SS guards. Haft was protected and provided with food by an officer named Schneider as long as the prisoner continued to fight. Schneider saved Haft time and time again, not just because Haft provided the guard with entertainment. Schneider was also motivated by a promise that Haft made to relay the officer’s good deeds to the allies if the German was ever captured.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In Haft’s time at Auschwitz, he won all of his boxing matches, declared winner only after he had knocked out his rival. To lose the match would be to lose his life: all 76 of his opponents were immediately killed by either a bullet or the gas chamber upon defeat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the war, aged 21 and having been imprisoned in seven concentration camps in five years, Haft made a dramatic escape from a Nazi death march, and began a new life in Brooklyn. He continued boxing for years after the war, his most famous fight against Rocky Marciano, one of the all-time greats. “After all I’ve been through,” Haft famously said in 1948, “what harm can a man with gloves on his hands do me?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can read the details of Haft’s fascinating life in Reinhard Kleist’s excellent 2012 graphic novel \u003ca href=\"https://www.reinhard-kleist.de/en/comics/the-boxer/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Boxer\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, and in \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/627025.Harry_Haft\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Harry Haft\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, the 2006 biography by Haft’s son Alan Scott Haft, on which the graphic novel was based. Now comes HBO’s \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em>, a biopic directed by Barry Levinson (\u003cem>Rain Man\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Wag the Dog\u003c/em>), and consulted on by the \u003ca href=\"https://sfi.usc.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">USC Shoah Foundation\u003c/a>—an organization that collects Holocaust survivor stories.\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/s0ETYBNs6ZA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/s0ETYBNs6ZA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> benefits, first and foremost, from beautiful direction and an excellent cast. Ben Foster is unrecognizable as Haft, and entirely convincing at every gut-wrenching step of his performance. During scenes at Auschwitz, Foster embodies the expressions of a desperate human living perpetually in survival mode. For Haft’s early days in Brooklyn, Foster effectively captures the torment of a person attempting to live a normal life after surviving a living hell. And for Haft’s later years, Foster allows his performance to take on the gnarled and calloused edges of a man who never came to terms with what happened to him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Foster’s side in Haft’s post-war boxing world are scene-stealing performances by John Leguizamo (who plays Haft’s trainer, Pepe) and Danny DeVito (as Rocky Marciano’s trainer Charley Goldman, who secretly gave Hast tips before the big fight). Both Leguizamo and DeVito imbue the film with much-needed moments of light and humor. Meanwhile, Vicky Krieps’s portrayal of Haft’s wife, Miriam Wofsoniker, includes just the right combination of sympathy, sensitivity and frustration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> is a stunning and heart-wrenching portrayal of one man’s literal fight to survive, and the deep emotional scars it left behind. The film quietly asks thought-provoking questions about morality, spirituality, trauma and the meaning of true strength. And the broad arc of Haft’s story, as presented here, is accurate. Where \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> falters is in its compulsion to insert Hollywood versions of events in place of real-life details that would have more than sufficed. And it goes far beyond small instances of artistic license.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For one, the biopic glosses over the abuse to which Haft subjected his son Alan later in life. “You’re talking about a Holocaust survivor who’s got PTSD,” Alan once said of writing his father’s biography, “talking to a second-generation Holocaust survivor who’s got PTSD from having survived growing up with him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition, \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> creates a fictional backstory for the relationship Haft had with his wife, lest the true story be deemed unromantic. In reality, Haft and Wofsoniker were neighbors who married just a week after meeting, in part because the elderly woman Haft was boarding with had died, rendering him homeless.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> grittily recreates Haft’s fights at Auschwitz as he later relayed them to his son—often, fights with men far too depleted to defend themselves. There’s a harrowing depiction of the fight Haft had to win against a champion French heavyweight brought to Auschwitz by Berlin generals. But the filmmakers, apparently unsure whether the truth would suitably move the audience, also concoct a fictional scenario in which Haft is forced to fight a dear friend. This scene is taken to such an overwrought conclusion that one can only hope viewers recognize it as a fabrication. (I was compelled to fact-check it the moment it was over.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13912202\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13912202\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-800x515.png\" alt=\"An emaciated shirtless man with a shaved head stands with a look of steely determination. Opposite a nazi SS officer gives him instructions. Behind them, fences and other soldiers are visible.\" width=\"800\" height=\"515\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-800x515.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-1020x656.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-160x103.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-768x494.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-1536x988.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-2048x1318.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/schneider-1920x1235.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Foster as Harry Haft and Billy Magnussen as Dietrich Schneider, the SS officer who saved Haft’s life repeatedly, as long as the young man agreed to box. \u003ccite>(HBO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> consistently rewrites Haft’s story to raise the emotional stakes. The conclusion presented for the relationship between Haft and SS officer Schneider is entirely (and depressingly) fabricated. Worse, tying the two men’s story up in a neat little bow impacts how \u003cem>The Survivor\u003c/em> presents Haft’s real-life escape—a story absolutely worth telling. Is the movie version more satisfying than what really happened? Of course. But at this stage in history, surely telling the truth about every detail of the Holocaust is more important.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The truth is that Haft’s daring escape also involved killing three civilians. While on the run, Haft killed an SS officer, stole his uniform and, shortly after, took shelter in the home of an elderly German couple. After they had welcomed him in, given him food and the chance to bathe, Haft grew fearful of being discovered as an imposter and shot them both dead. Further down the road, when a woman recognized that he was neither German nor a soldier, Haft shot her dead and told her young son to hide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Erasing the dark reality of what Haft did in pursuit of his own freedom might, on the surface, make sense: it renders Haft a more sympathetic protagonist. But this is a two-hour biopic that repeatedly asks the viewer to think about the lengths to which we might go to survive an abhorrent situation. Denying us a full picture of what Haft did to make it out alive seems in direct opposition to the movie’s primary goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, \u003cem>The Survivor—\u003c/em>while compelling and impactful—squanders the opportunity to tell Harry Haft’s story as he himself was willing to do. This truth is especially important at a time when few Holocaust survivors are around to tell us exactly what happened to them. (Haft died in 2007.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Changing these details wasn’t just unnecessary, it also implies Haft’s life wasn’t quite good enough, or sad enough, to tell honestly. In so doing, the project arguably passes judgment on a man who was, in impossible circumstances, simply trying to stay alive.\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=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Survivor’ premieres on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Wednesday April 27, on HBO.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "sfmoma-soapbox-derby-san-francisco-wacky-races-pops-mint-parkside-tricycle-mclaren-park",
"title": "5 Wacky San Francisco Races to Rival SFMOMA's Soapbox Derby",
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"headTitle": "5 Wacky San Francisco Races to Rival SFMOMA’s Soapbox Derby | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13911650\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13911650\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-800x570.png\" alt=\"A referee in a black and white shirt splashes an adult competitor in a tricycle race with a bucket of water.\" width=\"800\" height=\"570\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-800x570.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-1020x726.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-160x114.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-768x547.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-1536x1094.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-2048x1458.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-1920x1367.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A competitor in Thee Parkside’s annual tricycle races gets doused with a bucket of water, mid-ride. \u003ccite>(Instagram/@theeparkside)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As you may have noticed, San Francisco is gearing up \u003cem>hard\u003c/em> for this Sunday’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/2022-soapbox-derby-at-mclaren-park/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SFMOMA Soapbox Derby at McLaren Park\u003c/a>. The wacky race—announced live by KQED Arts’ own \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ogpenn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/a>—was inspired by a similar \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11910363/wacky-homemade-cars-will-soon-roll-down-the-hill-in-sfs-mclaren-park-again\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1975 event in which artists hurled themselves down a hill\u003c/a> in vehicles of their own making. (The materials back then included everything from bread to vibrators.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s not forget, however, that beyond the SFMOMA event, Bay Area residents have a long and rich history of participating in foolish races on wheels—usually for nothing more than the glory of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are five of the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Illegal Soapbox Society’s Bernal Hill Races\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYCAF5EnVi0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back before the internet existed, unusual humans who wanted to connect and bond with other unusual humans were forced to regularly leave their homes and endanger themselves physically. San Francisco’s Illegal Soapbox Society formed in 1992 to facilitate this, holding races down Bernal Hill every third Sunday between the months of May and October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13910308']The competing soapboxes were officially divided into three categories: cars with hard wheels, cars with tires and “customized kiddie carts.” But \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/It-s-All-Downhill-From-Here-Soapbox-racers-2840221.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">one 1997 \u003cem>SFGate \u003c/em>article\u003c/a> also reported the participation of “a lowrider Safeway shopping cart that throws flames, smoke and water; a wooden pallet on wheels; a lawn chair; a two-man bobsled called Amphetamine Reptile; and a one-man chopped skateboard that functions as a luge.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though initially inspired by the 1975 SFMOMA Soapbox Derby, the Bernal offshoot took on a life of its own, with a distinctly ’90s flavor—even appearing in a 1994 episode of \u003cem>The Real World\u003c/em>. “This is mostly the bike messenger crowd,” \u003cem>SFGate\u003c/em> observed, “drinking beer from cans in bags, enticed by the opportunity to see contact between skin and asphalt.” Fittingly, the legacy of the races lives on today at the Mission District bar Zeitgeist, which still has souvenir posters from the races on display.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Mint’s Memorial Day Tricycle Race\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZRNYrAuGeU\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The year was 1972, the starting point was the Mint on Market Street, and the competition was fierce. It was the first annual Memorial Day Tricycle Race—an event that would ultimately run for over two decades. The colorful and chaotic fundraiser involved scores of two-person teams—sometimes in costume, sometimes in drag, sometimes in almost nothing at all—racing between bars all over the city. One person sat on the tricycle while the other pushed, and wherever the duos landed en route, they got free drinks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The race was thought up by Mint employee Les Balmain and Mint owner Charlotte Coleman, who owned a wealth of legendary gay bars in the city, including Twin Peaks. In its 21 years, the Memorial Day Tricycle Race raised thousands of dollars for both AIDS- and guide dog-related charities. Media coverage of the tricycle race peaked in 1976 when Jimmy Carter’s 26-year-old son Chip took part, and repeatedly asked onlookers to “vote for daddy.” Carter is reported to have continued even after his handlebars fell off.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Rambler Cup Relay Race\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13911625\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13911625\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-800x480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-800x480.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-1020x612.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-160x96.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-768x461.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-1536x921.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-2048x1229.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-1920x1152.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Illustrations that accompanied the San Francisco Examiner’s report about 1894’s Rambler Relay race that traveled from San Francisco to Oakland via San Jose. \u003ccite>(SF Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On Apr. 9, 1894, the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> provided an exhaustive summary about this then-popular relay bicycle race that ran from San Francisco to Oakland via San Jose. Seven local bicycle clubs took part in the 100-mile course, starting out from Ninth and Market. “There was a strong armed man behind every racer,” the paper reported, “and when [the] whistle blew, those brawny gentlemen shoved and the seven men shot down Market Street like seven skyrockets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13909983']The race lasted five hours and 22 minutes, causing disruption, excitement and a plethora of injury along the way. The \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> described racers colliding with two dogs, a cow and a human bystander, and made it abundantly clear that nobody in this race had any regard for anything else going on around them. “What made Magill so late at the end of the sixth relay was his attempt to ride under the legs of a moving horse,” it noted at one point. “Magill went down, rubbed his skinned knees and rode off with the loss of some minutes and some cuticle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of Oakland” came out to see the Garden City Club cross the finish line first.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Pop’s/Parkside Independence Day Tricycle Race\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gqqz4dJQB4\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There were a combination of factors that swiftly made Pop’s one of the Mission District’s greatest dives after it first opened in 2003. Strong drinks, hedonistic patrons, an abnormally flattering photo booth and, yes, the annual Fourth of July tricycle races. Just grown humans, most of them drunk, riding children’s tricycles, trying to weave around tiny orange cones on the York Street side of the bar. Looking on—loudly—were the Pop’s patrons who were either too long-limbed, too drunk or too sensible to participate, who instead spilled out of the bar to holler from the sidelines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Malia Spanyol sold Pop’s in 2014, the tricycle races moved to her other venue, Thee Parkside, and added another component: \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk5wAOKFsUZ/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ladies’ arm wrestling\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bring Your Own Big Wheel Race\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFJgs7b_zgU\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It all started calmly enough. In 2000, a man named John Brumit decided to ride a children’s big wheel toy down the Lombard St. wiggle because: San Francisco. After Brumit drew a small crowd, he decided to perform the hilarious stunt every year. This, of course, grew into a full-blown race in 2007 because—again—San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The anarchy that ensued that year was enough to get the calamitous competition moved in 2008, to the \u003cem>real\u003c/em> crookedest street in San Francisco—the Vermont Street wiggle near 20th Street in Potrero Hill. That’s where the race happens annually to this day—including Sunday, Apr. 17 beginning at 2pm. To register and check the rules (no rubber wheels!), visit \u003ca href=\"https://bringyourownbigwheel.com/bring-your-own-big-wheel-is-currently-a-go-for-2022/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BringYourOwnWheel.com\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "From flame-throwing shopping carts to drunken tricycle races, this city's always offered a deranged race for everyone. ",
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"title": "5 Wacky San Francisco Races to Rival SFMOMA's Soapbox Derby | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13911650\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13911650\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-800x570.png\" alt=\"A referee in a black and white shirt splashes an adult competitor in a tricycle race with a bucket of water.\" width=\"800\" height=\"570\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-800x570.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-1020x726.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-160x114.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-768x547.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-1536x1094.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-2048x1458.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Screen-Shot-2022-04-07-at-5.05.13-PM-1-1920x1367.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A competitor in Thee Parkside’s annual tricycle races gets doused with a bucket of water, mid-ride. \u003ccite>(Instagram/@theeparkside)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As you may have noticed, San Francisco is gearing up \u003cem>hard\u003c/em> for this Sunday’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/2022-soapbox-derby-at-mclaren-park/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SFMOMA Soapbox Derby at McLaren Park\u003c/a>. The wacky race—announced live by KQED Arts’ own \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/ogpenn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Pendarvis Harshaw\u003c/a>—was inspired by a similar \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11910363/wacky-homemade-cars-will-soon-roll-down-the-hill-in-sfs-mclaren-park-again\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1975 event in which artists hurled themselves down a hill\u003c/a> in vehicles of their own making. (The materials back then included everything from bread to vibrators.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s not forget, however, that beyond the SFMOMA event, Bay Area residents have a long and rich history of participating in foolish races on wheels—usually for nothing more than the glory of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here are five of the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Illegal Soapbox Society’s Bernal Hill Races\u003c/h2>\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/uYCAF5EnVi0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/uYCAF5EnVi0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Back before the internet existed, unusual humans who wanted to connect and bond with other unusual humans were forced to regularly leave their homes and endanger themselves physically. San Francisco’s Illegal Soapbox Society formed in 1992 to facilitate this, holding races down Bernal Hill every third Sunday between the months of May and October.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The competing soapboxes were officially divided into three categories: cars with hard wheels, cars with tires and “customized kiddie carts.” But \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/It-s-All-Downhill-From-Here-Soapbox-racers-2840221.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">one 1997 \u003cem>SFGate \u003c/em>article\u003c/a> also reported the participation of “a lowrider Safeway shopping cart that throws flames, smoke and water; a wooden pallet on wheels; a lawn chair; a two-man bobsled called Amphetamine Reptile; and a one-man chopped skateboard that functions as a luge.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though initially inspired by the 1975 SFMOMA Soapbox Derby, the Bernal offshoot took on a life of its own, with a distinctly ’90s flavor—even appearing in a 1994 episode of \u003cem>The Real World\u003c/em>. “This is mostly the bike messenger crowd,” \u003cem>SFGate\u003c/em> observed, “drinking beer from cans in bags, enticed by the opportunity to see contact between skin and asphalt.” Fittingly, the legacy of the races lives on today at the Mission District bar Zeitgeist, which still has souvenir posters from the races on display.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Mint’s Memorial Day Tricycle Race\u003c/h2>\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/mZRNYrAuGeU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/mZRNYrAuGeU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The year was 1972, the starting point was the Mint on Market Street, and the competition was fierce. It was the first annual Memorial Day Tricycle Race—an event that would ultimately run for over two decades. The colorful and chaotic fundraiser involved scores of two-person teams—sometimes in costume, sometimes in drag, sometimes in almost nothing at all—racing between bars all over the city. One person sat on the tricycle while the other pushed, and wherever the duos landed en route, they got free drinks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The race was thought up by Mint employee Les Balmain and Mint owner Charlotte Coleman, who owned a wealth of legendary gay bars in the city, including Twin Peaks. In its 21 years, the Memorial Day Tricycle Race raised thousands of dollars for both AIDS- and guide dog-related charities. Media coverage of the tricycle race peaked in 1976 when Jimmy Carter’s 26-year-old son Chip took part, and repeatedly asked onlookers to “vote for daddy.” Carter is reported to have continued even after his handlebars fell off.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Rambler Cup Relay Race\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13911625\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13911625\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-800x480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-800x480.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-1020x612.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-160x96.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-768x461.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-1536x921.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-2048x1229.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/04/Rambler-Race-1920x1152.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Illustrations that accompanied the San Francisco Examiner’s report about 1894’s Rambler Relay race that traveled from San Francisco to Oakland via San Jose. \u003ccite>(SF Examiner)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On Apr. 9, 1894, the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> provided an exhaustive summary about this then-popular relay bicycle race that ran from San Francisco to Oakland via San Jose. Seven local bicycle clubs took part in the 100-mile course, starting out from Ninth and Market. “There was a strong armed man behind every racer,” the paper reported, “and when [the] whistle blew, those brawny gentlemen shoved and the seven men shot down Market Street like seven skyrockets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The race lasted five hours and 22 minutes, causing disruption, excitement and a plethora of injury along the way. The \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> described racers colliding with two dogs, a cow and a human bystander, and made it abundantly clear that nobody in this race had any regard for anything else going on around them. “What made Magill so late at the end of the sixth relay was his attempt to ride under the legs of a moving horse,” it noted at one point. “Magill went down, rubbed his skinned knees and rode off with the loss of some minutes and some cuticle.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“All of Oakland” came out to see the Garden City Club cross the finish line first.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Pop’s/Parkside Independence Day Tricycle Race\u003c/h2>\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/6gqqz4dJQB4'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/6gqqz4dJQB4'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>There were a combination of factors that swiftly made Pop’s one of the Mission District’s greatest dives after it first opened in 2003. Strong drinks, hedonistic patrons, an abnormally flattering photo booth and, yes, the annual Fourth of July tricycle races. Just grown humans, most of them drunk, riding children’s tricycles, trying to weave around tiny orange cones on the York Street side of the bar. Looking on—loudly—were the Pop’s patrons who were either too long-limbed, too drunk or too sensible to participate, who instead spilled out of the bar to holler from the sidelines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After Malia Spanyol sold Pop’s in 2014, the tricycle races moved to her other venue, Thee Parkside, and added another component: \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk5wAOKFsUZ/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ladies’ arm wrestling\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bring Your Own Big Wheel Race\u003c/h2>\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/GFJgs7b_zgU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/GFJgs7b_zgU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>It all started calmly enough. In 2000, a man named John Brumit decided to ride a children’s big wheel toy down the Lombard St. wiggle because: San Francisco. After Brumit drew a small crowd, he decided to perform the hilarious stunt every year. This, of course, grew into a full-blown race in 2007 because—again—San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The anarchy that ensued that year was enough to get the calamitous competition moved in 2008, to the \u003cem>real\u003c/em> crookedest street in San Francisco—the Vermont Street wiggle near 20th Street in Potrero Hill. That’s where the race happens annually to this day—including Sunday, Apr. 17 beginning at 2pm. To register and check the rules (no rubber wheels!), visit \u003ca href=\"https://bringyourownbigwheel.com/bring-your-own-big-wheel-is-currently-a-go-for-2022/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BringYourOwnWheel.com\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Celebrating the Sexual Anarchy of The Cockettes at the San Francisco Public Library",
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"content": "\u003cp>The year was 1969. Stonewall was kickstarting an LGBTQ+ revolution. Feminism’s second wave was hitting mainstream culture with a list of demands. And in San Francisco, a tight community of flamboyant hippies were out in front of it all, rejecting gender constructs altogether and trying to liberate the world. (Via free love and show tunes, among other things.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were The Cockettes, a group of performers for whom drag was a way of life. They embraced LSD, communal living and a hefty dose of exhibitionism. Their ranks included disco superstar \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD6cPE2BHic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sylvester\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.famousfix.com/topic/miss-harlow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Miss Harlow\u003c/a>—a groupie who, alongside her friend \u003ca href=\"https://pleasekillme.com/cynthia-plaster-caster/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cynthia Plaster Caster\u003c/a>, helped immortalize the genitals of the biggest rock stars of the day. For a decade, The Cockettes enthralled audiences. First, with anarchic, boundary-pushing musical theater and later, with bizarre, low-budget movies. That they were friends with John Waters and Divine should come as no surprise. That their fans included Janis Joplin, John Lennon and Andy Warhol is even more noteworthy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD6cPE2BHic\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Starting this month, San Francisco’s main library is honoring The Cockettes with an exhibition at the Hormel LGBTQIA Center and a series of events that will run through August. The exhibition, titled \u003ci>The Cockettes: Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy\u003c/i> pulls together photos and memories from original Cockette, Fayette Hauser, along with material from other people’s personal collections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hanging on the Hormel’s interior and the walls immediately outside it, the collection explains who The Cockettes were and why each individual was special. Cabinets with flyers and magazine articles from the 1970s, along with one costume and a table of personal accessories are also featured. As is a Spotify playlist of music from the era that feels decidedly straight-laced for a Cockettes exhibit. (Artists featured include The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Free.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those familiar with this period of San Francisco history—especially the ones who have already seen the 2002 documentary, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cockettes.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Cockettes\u003c/em>\u003c/a>—will not likely learn much from this exhibit they didn’t already know. But for newbies unfamiliar with this particular group of misfits, it’s a decent primer that piques the interest enough to prompt further research. The most valuable historical information, however, will likely come during the library’s five upcoming events in The Cockettes’ honor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the opening reception this Thursday, March 17, Hauser will share personal reminiscences in conversation with journalist and San Francisco historian Jim Van Buskirk. Hauser will also be back on March 31 to talk about her book, \u003ca href=\"https://thecockettes.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Cockettes: Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Most exciting of all, on April 28, there will be a screening of three Cockettes movies—\u003cem>Palace\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Elevator Girls in Bondage\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Tricia’s Wedding\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgWJFdeZD4o\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those wishing to get a flavor of the group’s original stage shows might wish to attend a night of “Cockette Cabaret” featuring “\u003ca href=\"http://www.scrumblymusic.com/pages/bio.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Scrumbly & Co.\u003c/a>” on June 23. Hauser will also present a spoken word performance on May 26 backed up by circus troupe, the \u003ca href=\"https://vaudeviresociety.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vau de Vire Society\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keep in mind before attending all or any of the above that John Waters—the King of Bad Taste, himself—has been known to refer to The Cockettes as “hippie acid freak drag queens” \u003cem>and\u003c/em> “complete sexual anarchy.” You have been warned.\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=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Cockettes: Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy’ is on view March 17–Aug. 11 in the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center on the third floor of the San Francisco Main Library (100 Larkin Street). \u003ca href=\"https://sfpl.org/exhibits/2022/03/12/cockettes-acid-drag-sexual-anarchy\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The year was 1969. Stonewall was kickstarting an LGBTQ+ revolution. Feminism’s second wave was hitting mainstream culture with a list of demands. And in San Francisco, a tight community of flamboyant hippies were out in front of it all, rejecting gender constructs altogether and trying to liberate the world. (Via free love and show tunes, among other things.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They were The Cockettes, a group of performers for whom drag was a way of life. They embraced LSD, communal living and a hefty dose of exhibitionism. Their ranks included disco superstar \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD6cPE2BHic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sylvester\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.famousfix.com/topic/miss-harlow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Miss Harlow\u003c/a>—a groupie who, alongside her friend \u003ca href=\"https://pleasekillme.com/cynthia-plaster-caster/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cynthia Plaster Caster\u003c/a>, helped immortalize the genitals of the biggest rock stars of the day. For a decade, The Cockettes enthralled audiences. First, with anarchic, boundary-pushing musical theater and later, with bizarre, low-budget movies. That they were friends with John Waters and Divine should come as no surprise. That their fans included Janis Joplin, John Lennon and Andy Warhol is even more noteworthy.\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/gD6cPE2BHic'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gD6cPE2BHic'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Starting this month, San Francisco’s main library is honoring The Cockettes with an exhibition at the Hormel LGBTQIA Center and a series of events that will run through August. The exhibition, titled \u003ci>The Cockettes: Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy\u003c/i> pulls together photos and memories from original Cockette, Fayette Hauser, along with material from other people’s personal collections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hanging on the Hormel’s interior and the walls immediately outside it, the collection explains who The Cockettes were and why each individual was special. Cabinets with flyers and magazine articles from the 1970s, along with one costume and a table of personal accessories are also featured. As is a Spotify playlist of music from the era that feels decidedly straight-laced for a Cockettes exhibit. (Artists featured include The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Free.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those familiar with this period of San Francisco history—especially the ones who have already seen the 2002 documentary, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cockettes.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Cockettes\u003c/em>\u003c/a>—will not likely learn much from this exhibit they didn’t already know. But for newbies unfamiliar with this particular group of misfits, it’s a decent primer that piques the interest enough to prompt further research. The most valuable historical information, however, will likely come during the library’s five upcoming events in The Cockettes’ honor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the opening reception this Thursday, March 17, Hauser will share personal reminiscences in conversation with journalist and San Francisco historian Jim Van Buskirk. Hauser will also be back on March 31 to talk about her book, \u003ca href=\"https://thecockettes.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The Cockettes: Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. Most exciting of all, on April 28, there will be a screening of three Cockettes movies—\u003cem>Palace\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Elevator Girls in Bondage\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Tricia’s Wedding\u003c/em>.\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/OgWJFdeZD4o'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/OgWJFdeZD4o'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Those wishing to get a flavor of the group’s original stage shows might wish to attend a night of “Cockette Cabaret” featuring “\u003ca href=\"http://www.scrumblymusic.com/pages/bio.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Scrumbly & Co.\u003c/a>” on June 23. Hauser will also present a spoken word performance on May 26 backed up by circus troupe, the \u003ca href=\"https://vaudeviresociety.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vau de Vire Society\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keep in mind before attending all or any of the above that John Waters—the King of Bad Taste, himself—has been known to refer to The Cockettes as “hippie acid freak drag queens” \u003cem>and\u003c/em> “complete sexual anarchy.” You have been warned.\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=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘The Cockettes: Acid Drag & Sexual Anarchy’ is on view March 17–Aug. 11 in the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center on the third floor of the San Francisco Main Library (100 Larkin Street). \u003ca href=\"https://sfpl.org/exhibits/2022/03/12/cockettes-acid-drag-sexual-anarchy\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "city-of-oakland-hot-air-balloon-idora-park-piedmont-baths-neptune-beach",
"title": "5 Long-Lost East Bay Attractions That Should’ve Been Saved",
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"content": "\u003cp>These days, anyone in the Bay Area seeking fairground thrills and spills needs to travel to Vallejo or Santa Clara to get ’em. But in the days before Six Flags, Great America and, well, regular people owning cars, the amusements mostly stayed close to Oakland and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909983\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">San Francisco\u003c/a> to maximize visitor numbers. And that’s not all that was on offer… Here are five old East Bay attractions that should’ve been saved from the scrap pile.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Idora Park\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910338\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910338\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-800x490.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"490\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-800x490.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-1020x625.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-160x98.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-768x471.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-1536x942.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-2048x1255.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-1920x1177.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the rides at Oakland’s Idora Park—a giant swing.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s a fairly anonymous patch of Oakland now—residential homes, freeway underpasses, parking lots and such—but for 25 years, the plot of land between 56th, 58th, Telegraph and Shattuck was a glorious amusement ground. Idora Park opened in 1904 and was originally conceived as a “trolley park”—an attraction specifically designed to get people to ride public transportation on the weekends. But, oh boy, did the park offer ample incentives for visitors to flock there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13900997']Idora featured beautiful \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/3743\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">gardens\u003c/a>, a giant \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/3744\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">roller-skating rink\u003c/a>, a zoo, racetrack, archery range, dance hall, miniature railway, amphitheater with grand outdoor stage, bandstand, Japanese garden \u003cem>and\u003c/em> ostrich farm. All for an entry fee of 10 cents (about three dollars in 2022 money). Plus—there’s more!—peppered throughout the park were \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/162\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">roller coasters\u003c/a> and a variety of fairground attractions including a \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/179\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">mountain slide\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/163\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">circular swing\u003c/a>, penny arcade and whatever \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/184\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shooting the Rapids\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/189\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tickler\u003c/a> and the Social Whirl were.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fun came crashing down after cars became more affordable in the 1920s, and folks in Oakland had the means to venture further afield. Idora Park was demolished in 1929. Today, its name is primarily invoked by \u003ca href=\"https://www.532aileen.com/neighborhood-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">realtors trying to sell homes in the Temescal district\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The ‘City of Oakland’ Hot Air Balloon\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910326\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910326\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-800x480.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-800x480.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-1020x612.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-768x461.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-1536x922.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-2048x1230.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-1920x1153.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The “City of Oakland” hot air balloon, surrounded by throngs of well-wishers in 1909, as it prepared to take off from 14th and Franklin in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>City of Oakland\u003c/em>’s maiden voyage happened on Aug. 14, 1909. Surrounded by throngs of people, the balloon took off from 14th and Webster in Oakland. Its 40-foot diameter narrowly avoided a collision with the spires of the First Presbyterian Church, almost drifted out to sea, and eventually plunged to the ground three hours later when 50-mile-per-hour winds hit. Balloon pilots (or “aeronauts” as they were known), Professor A. Van der Naillen Jr. and P. A. Van Tassel, were dragged for half a mile across the floor of a rocky canyon—and through two barbed wire fences!—before the balloon came to a stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“During the half mile of dragging we experienced, the basket turned completely over once and I am still wondering how we kept from falling out,” Van der Naillen later told the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em>. Regardless, the voyage was considered a success, with the \u003cem>City of Oakland\u003c/em> reaching its optimum altitude of 5,000 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the next year, the \u003cem>City of Oakland\u003c/em> went out, up and down the coast, again and again, winning races and giving The Town’s residents a boost of pride. In October 1909, the balloon won a race against the \u003cem>Queen of the Pacific\u003c/em>—a newsworthy event because both were piloted by women. The following month, the balloon beat a \u003cem>City of San Francisco\u003c/em> vessel in a race that started on 11th and Market in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which all begs the question: Why is this thing not on permanent display somewhere?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Piedmont Baths\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910344\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910344\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-800x471.png\" alt=\"A sprawling red brick structure with rounded exterior walls and tall chimneys behind. \" width=\"800\" height=\"471\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-800x471.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-1020x600.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-160x94.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-768x452.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-1536x904.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-1920x1130.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM.png 1954w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Piedmont Baths, in all of their turn-of-the-century glory. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>You know the Whole Foods currently standing at Bay Place and Vernon Street? Just up the street from \u003ca href=\"https://fairyland.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fairyland\u003c/a> and Lake Merritt? Well, that site used to be home to a luxurious and sprawling bathhouse and spa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_103040']Founded in 1890, Piedmont Baths provided Victorians with “20 different kinds of baths” (including Turkish and Russian), hot tubs (salt or fresh water), massages, plus a café and candy stand for snack time. It also housed a stunning 70-foot-by-120-foot swimming pool, complete with springboards and a trapeze. The saltwater was drawn from Lake Merritt using a Worthington pump (which could supply 500 gallons per minute) and a circular pump. The water was heated by waste steam from a nearby cable car power plant owned by the Oakland Transit Company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ad in the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em>, placed Sept. 10, 1900, confidently stated: “People who have visited all the principal baths in this country and Europe all agree that the Piedmont Baths are the most complete in detail and are finished and furnished the best of any baths they have seen in their tour around the world.” The promotion added: “Doctors recommend swimming in tepid saltwater as the very best kind of exercise for young and old, sick and well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Tompkins Park Roller Coaster\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910519\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910519\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-800x589.png\" alt=\"Seven children, most around the age of 10, all wearing white shirts, hats and suspenders, sit in a miniature railway car.\" width=\"800\" height=\"589\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-800x589.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-1020x750.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-160x118.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-768x565.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM.png 1370w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The scrappy bunch of kids who built their own 200-foot-long roller coaster in West Oakland in 1915. \u003ccite>(Oakland Tribune, March 27, 1915)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Picture it: West Oakland, 1915. A bunch of streetwise children spend a lot of free time hanging out in Tompkins Park. Directly opposite is an infamous vacant lot that’s known as the “dumps” on account of how much junk and trash gets discarded there. One day, local kids Vincent Carvalho and Raymond Antwiler notice a set of rails and part of a miniature railway have joined the junk pile. So they decide to build themselves a roller coaster. When word spreads of the project, five more enterprising kids—Joey Gomez, Marion Cabral, Ben Viera, Joe Swartz and Frank Dominguez—step up to assist. And, within two weeks, against the odds (insert inspiring montage here), the ragtag crew actually succeeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13909983']On March 27, 1915, the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> reported on the structure which was set up on a path through and over refuse in the dumps. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909983\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">gravity railroad\u003c/a>-style ride was apparently held up—and propelled—by a large boiler at the top, followed by “a trestle of wood blocks, and driftwood from the beach.” The boys even added some novel customizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a switch in the system,” the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em> reported, “and a side tracking a sharp curve between an old concrete mixer and a discarded boiler … About 200 feet of track in all was laid and a swift trip, though one perhaps somewhat lacking in scenic attractions, was provided for the throngs of young ones that clamored for the privilege.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Neptune Beach\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910351\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910351\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-800x510.png\" alt=\"An old postcard depicts one giant swimming pool, and a smaller one next to it, surrounded by green space and fairground attractions.\" width=\"800\" height=\"510\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-800x510.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-1020x651.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-160x102.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-768x490.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-1536x980.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM.png 1812w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alameda’s Neptune Beach was considered the ‘Coney Island of the West.’\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There are many legends about Neptune Beach. This Alameda water and amusement park is where the popsicle, snow cone \u003cem>and\u003c/em> Kewpie doll all apparently made their debuts! Open between 1917 and 1939 where \u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/parks/visitor-centers/crab-cove\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Crab Cove\u003c/a> is today, Neptune Park had two outdoor pools (one was Olympic-sized), a dance hall, barbecue pits and rentable vacation cottages. Non-swimmers could amuse themselves on the massive roller coaster, Ferris wheel and a carousel that was hand-carved by Philadelphia’s \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentzel_Carousel_Company\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dentzel Company\u003c/a>. Entry to the park was just a dime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attendance slowed down during the Great Depression, and hit a major slump after the Bay Bridge opened in 1936. By 1939, the park was in deep debt. That year, the Central Bank of Oakland foreclosed and, in 1940, the once-hallowed contents of Neptune Beach were sold off at auction for a pittance. Today, the last remaining sign that it was ever there are the \u003ca href=\"https://www.neptunecourtapartments.com/history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Neptune Court Apartments\u003c/a>, built in the 1920s by \u003ca href=\"https://alamedasun.com/news/100-years-later-remembering-robert-strehlow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Robert Strehlow\u003c/a>, who was a co-founder of the park. You can currently rent a one-bedroom there for $2,200 and up.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A giant hot air balloon. Lavish baths. A West Oakland roller coaster built by children. Here’s what made Oakland hella fun.",
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"title": "5 Long-Lost East Bay Attractions That Should’ve Been Saved | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>These days, anyone in the Bay Area seeking fairground thrills and spills needs to travel to Vallejo or Santa Clara to get ’em. But in the days before Six Flags, Great America and, well, regular people owning cars, the amusements mostly stayed close to Oakland and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909983\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">San Francisco\u003c/a> to maximize visitor numbers. And that’s not all that was on offer… Here are five old East Bay attractions that should’ve been saved from the scrap pile.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Idora Park\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910338\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910338\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-800x490.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"490\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-800x490.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-1020x625.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-160x98.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-768x471.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-1536x942.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-2048x1255.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-12.32.21-PM-1920x1177.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the rides at Oakland’s Idora Park—a giant swing.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It’s a fairly anonymous patch of Oakland now—residential homes, freeway underpasses, parking lots and such—but for 25 years, the plot of land between 56th, 58th, Telegraph and Shattuck was a glorious amusement ground. Idora Park opened in 1904 and was originally conceived as a “trolley park”—an attraction specifically designed to get people to ride public transportation on the weekends. But, oh boy, did the park offer ample incentives for visitors to flock there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Idora featured beautiful \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/3743\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">gardens\u003c/a>, a giant \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/3744\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">roller-skating rink\u003c/a>, a zoo, racetrack, archery range, dance hall, miniature railway, amphitheater with grand outdoor stage, bandstand, Japanese garden \u003cem>and\u003c/em> ostrich farm. All for an entry fee of 10 cents (about three dollars in 2022 money). Plus—there’s more!—peppered throughout the park were \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/162\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">roller coasters\u003c/a> and a variety of fairground attractions including a \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/179\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">mountain slide\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/163\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">circular swing\u003c/a>, penny arcade and whatever \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/184\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shooting the Rapids\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://alamedainfo.com/idora-park-oakland-california/#bwg2/189\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tickler\u003c/a> and the Social Whirl were.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fun came crashing down after cars became more affordable in the 1920s, and folks in Oakland had the means to venture further afield. Idora Park was demolished in 1929. Today, its name is primarily invoked by \u003ca href=\"https://www.532aileen.com/neighborhood-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">realtors trying to sell homes in the Temescal district\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The ‘City of Oakland’ Hot Air Balloon\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910326\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910326\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-800x480.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-800x480.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-1020x612.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-768x461.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-1536x922.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-2048x1230.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-09-at-4.47.28-PM-1920x1153.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The “City of Oakland” hot air balloon, surrounded by throngs of well-wishers in 1909, as it prepared to take off from 14th and Franklin in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>City of Oakland\u003c/em>’s maiden voyage happened on Aug. 14, 1909. Surrounded by throngs of people, the balloon took off from 14th and Webster in Oakland. Its 40-foot diameter narrowly avoided a collision with the spires of the First Presbyterian Church, almost drifted out to sea, and eventually plunged to the ground three hours later when 50-mile-per-hour winds hit. Balloon pilots (or “aeronauts” as they were known), Professor A. Van der Naillen Jr. and P. A. Van Tassel, were dragged for half a mile across the floor of a rocky canyon—and through two barbed wire fences!—before the balloon came to a stop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“During the half mile of dragging we experienced, the basket turned completely over once and I am still wondering how we kept from falling out,” Van der Naillen later told the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em>. Regardless, the voyage was considered a success, with the \u003cem>City of Oakland\u003c/em> reaching its optimum altitude of 5,000 feet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the next year, the \u003cem>City of Oakland\u003c/em> went out, up and down the coast, again and again, winning races and giving The Town’s residents a boost of pride. In October 1909, the balloon won a race against the \u003cem>Queen of the Pacific\u003c/em>—a newsworthy event because both were piloted by women. The following month, the balloon beat a \u003cem>City of San Francisco\u003c/em> vessel in a race that started on 11th and Market in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which all begs the question: Why is this thing not on permanent display somewhere?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Piedmont Baths\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910344\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910344\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-800x471.png\" alt=\"A sprawling red brick structure with rounded exterior walls and tall chimneys behind. \" width=\"800\" height=\"471\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-800x471.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-1020x600.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-160x94.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-768x452.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-1536x904.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM-1920x1130.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-1.23.00-PM.png 1954w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Piedmont Baths, in all of their turn-of-the-century glory. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>You know the Whole Foods currently standing at Bay Place and Vernon Street? Just up the street from \u003ca href=\"https://fairyland.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fairyland\u003c/a> and Lake Merritt? Well, that site used to be home to a luxurious and sprawling bathhouse and spa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Founded in 1890, Piedmont Baths provided Victorians with “20 different kinds of baths” (including Turkish and Russian), hot tubs (salt or fresh water), massages, plus a café and candy stand for snack time. It also housed a stunning 70-foot-by-120-foot swimming pool, complete with springboards and a trapeze. The saltwater was drawn from Lake Merritt using a Worthington pump (which could supply 500 gallons per minute) and a circular pump. The water was heated by waste steam from a nearby cable car power plant owned by the Oakland Transit Company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An ad in the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em>, placed Sept. 10, 1900, confidently stated: “People who have visited all the principal baths in this country and Europe all agree that the Piedmont Baths are the most complete in detail and are finished and furnished the best of any baths they have seen in their tour around the world.” The promotion added: “Doctors recommend swimming in tepid saltwater as the very best kind of exercise for young and old, sick and well.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Tompkins Park Roller Coaster\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910519\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910519\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-800x589.png\" alt=\"Seven children, most around the age of 10, all wearing white shirts, hats and suspenders, sit in a miniature railway car.\" width=\"800\" height=\"589\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-800x589.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-1020x750.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-160x118.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM-768x565.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-11-at-4.43.51-PM.png 1370w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The scrappy bunch of kids who built their own 200-foot-long roller coaster in West Oakland in 1915. \u003ccite>(Oakland Tribune, March 27, 1915)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Picture it: West Oakland, 1915. A bunch of streetwise children spend a lot of free time hanging out in Tompkins Park. Directly opposite is an infamous vacant lot that’s known as the “dumps” on account of how much junk and trash gets discarded there. One day, local kids Vincent Carvalho and Raymond Antwiler notice a set of rails and part of a miniature railway have joined the junk pile. So they decide to build themselves a roller coaster. When word spreads of the project, five more enterprising kids—Joey Gomez, Marion Cabral, Ben Viera, Joe Swartz and Frank Dominguez—step up to assist. And, within two weeks, against the odds (insert inspiring montage here), the ragtag crew actually succeeds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>On March 27, 1915, the \u003cem>Oakland Tribune\u003c/em> reported on the structure which was set up on a path through and over refuse in the dumps. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909983\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">gravity railroad\u003c/a>-style ride was apparently held up—and propelled—by a large boiler at the top, followed by “a trestle of wood blocks, and driftwood from the beach.” The boys even added some novel customizations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There was a switch in the system,” the \u003cem>Tribune\u003c/em> reported, “and a side tracking a sharp curve between an old concrete mixer and a discarded boiler … About 200 feet of track in all was laid and a swift trip, though one perhaps somewhat lacking in scenic attractions, was provided for the throngs of young ones that clamored for the privilege.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Neptune Beach\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910351\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910351\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-800x510.png\" alt=\"An old postcard depicts one giant swimming pool, and a smaller one next to it, surrounded by green space and fairground attractions.\" width=\"800\" height=\"510\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-800x510.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-1020x651.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-160x102.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-768x490.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM-1536x980.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-10-at-2.01.07-PM.png 1812w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alameda’s Neptune Beach was considered the ‘Coney Island of the West.’\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There are many legends about Neptune Beach. This Alameda water and amusement park is where the popsicle, snow cone \u003cem>and\u003c/em> Kewpie doll all apparently made their debuts! Open between 1917 and 1939 where \u003ca href=\"https://www.ebparks.org/parks/visitor-centers/crab-cove\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Crab Cove\u003c/a> is today, Neptune Park had two outdoor pools (one was Olympic-sized), a dance hall, barbecue pits and rentable vacation cottages. Non-swimmers could amuse themselves on the massive roller coaster, Ferris wheel and a carousel that was hand-carved by Philadelphia’s \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentzel_Carousel_Company\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dentzel Company\u003c/a>. Entry to the park was just a dime.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Attendance slowed down during the Great Depression, and hit a major slump after the Bay Bridge opened in 1936. By 1939, the park was in deep debt. That year, the Central Bank of Oakland foreclosed and, in 1940, the once-hallowed contents of Neptune Beach were sold off at auction for a pittance. Today, the last remaining sign that it was ever there are the \u003ca href=\"https://www.neptunecourtapartments.com/history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Neptune Court Apartments\u003c/a>, built in the 1920s by \u003ca href=\"https://alamedasun.com/news/100-years-later-remembering-robert-strehlow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Robert Strehlow\u003c/a>, who was a co-founder of the park. You can currently rent a one-bedroom there for $2,200 and up.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "victorian-attractions-san-francisco-chutes-gravity-railroad-woodwards-gardens-bonet-tower-auditorium-skating",
"title": "5 Long-Lost San Francisco Attractions the City Should’ve Kept",
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"content": "\u003cp>For many of us looking back, the Victorian era doesn’t look like a whole lot of fun. (Too many séances and mourning dresses, not enough sex and deodorant, thanks.) It turns out, though, that Victorians in San Francisco had way more fun crap to climb, plunge down and scream on than we currently do—and I’m not even talking about \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playland_(San_Francisco)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Playland-at-the-Beach\u003c/a>. Here, then, are five old amusements that the city would still be super into if they’d survived.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Chutes\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910208\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910208\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-800x481.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"481\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-800x481.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-1020x613.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-768x462.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-1536x924.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-2048x1232.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-1920x1155.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The view from the top of The Chutes. And yes, that road with the vehicles on, behind the man-made lake, is Haight Street circa 1895. \u003ccite>(Public Domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Picture it. Haight Street between Cole and Clayton. Only instead of all the stores, bars and hotels lined up between Hobson’s Choice and Goodwill, there’s an old-timey, giant version of Splash Mountain there. This was the glorious reality at the turn of the century when “The Chutes”—a huge waterslide, ridden in a flat-bottomed boat—were shooting scores of people into a man-made lake, all day every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13910308']On Dec. 14, 1895—the same year the ride opened—the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> reported: “The amphibious boats were sent flying after one another down the chute into the pond as fast and full as safety would permit. Many went to watch only, and then seeing what an exhilarating sport the chuting was for others, decided to try it themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ride was 350 feet long, 70 feet tall and ran up to 60 miles per hour. It was a bargain, too, charging kids a nickel and adults a dime (about $3 in 2022 money) to ride. The Chutes were incredibly popular, but were moved to Fulton Street (between 10th and 11th) in 1902. Another version located at Ocean Beach was the launching pad for Playland at the Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Gravity Pleasure Railroad\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910007\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910007\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-800x427.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-800x427.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-1020x544.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-160x85.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-768x410.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM.png 1492w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The circular Gravity Pleasure Railroad at Eighth and Mission likely resembled this one from the same period. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An ad was placed in the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> on Dec. 12, 1884, advertising the city’s newest attraction. Under the all caps title “ROLLER COASTER,” the notice read:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The California Gravity Railroad Co. SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. A sled-ride down hill without snow! Great sport! Physicians recommend it! Bring your family and enjoy yourselves. Open day and evening. Electric Lights.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The 25-foot-high thrill ride was 200 feet in diameter and situated at the intersection of 8th and Mission Streets. Opened Nov. 27, 1884, the Gravity Railroad was designed to operate under its own weight. Each car held 10 to 12 passengers, and was pushed down the steepest part of the track at great speed, the momentum of which would propel it back up again to where it had started. It cost five cents to ride. Sadly, the gravity railroad didn’t last long. It was destroyed in May 1887 by a fire that started in a nearby candy store.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Woodward’s Gardens\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910003\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910003\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-800x527.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"527\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-800x527.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-1020x672.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-160x105.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-768x506.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-1536x1012.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-1920x1265.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM.png 1958w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Woodward’s Gardens, for all of your two-headed animal needs. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Open in the Mission District between 1866 and 1891, Woodward’s Gardens was completely bananas. In addition to its botanical gardens, art gallery, zoo, aquarium and four museums, it also featured live music and housed a variety of curiosities, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13884403/for-one-week-in-1871-san-francisco-went-loopy-over-haunted-windows\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“haunted” windows from North Beach\u003c/a>, a stuffed two-headed calf, and an insect display. Special guest appearances—from the likes of “Chang, the Chinese Giant” and “Admiral Dot, a perfect man in miniature”—also made the venue extremely popular at a time when society had few qualms about such shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is unfathomable how owner Robert B. Woodward fit all of this into the blocks bordered by Valencia, Ridley (now Duboce), Mission and 15th Streets—but apparently it was all too much for the neighbors. The park wound up closing down after locals complained about unpleasant “odors and horrible noises.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bonet’s Electric Tower\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910061\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910061\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-2.56.29-PM-800x558.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"558\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leopold Bonet’s Electric Tower, as seen at night during the California Midwinter International Exposition, in Golden Gate Park, 1894. \u003ccite>(Public Domain/ Originally created by Marvin Nathan and Arthur Chandler)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 left Golden Gate Park with a couple of gifts that continue to thrive today—the Japanese Tea Garden and the De Young Museum (which started life as the expo’s Fine Arts Building). If things had played out a little differently, we might also still have Bonet’s Electric Tower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13884403']The tower was 272 feet tall, covered in thousands of multicolored lights and modeled after Paris’ Eiffel Tower—though architect Leopold Bonet used steel, not iron like the original. During the expo, the Electric Tower acted as a central attraction and viewing platform for fairgoers, who could travel to the top of it in an elevator. At night, the tower’s 6,000-pound searchlight—then the largest and most powerful in America—could be seen in the sky for miles. The attraction was the biggest financial success of the Midwinter Fair, costing a dime to get to the tower’s first level and a quarter to get to the top. The tower also housed the Bella Vista Café.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Midwinter Fair closed in July 1894 after a booming five months in operation. But Bonet’s Electric Tower was left standing for two years after the fact. Hopes to keep it as a permanent landmark were dashed after Golden Gate Park’s horticulturalist John McLaren—who vocally opposed holding the expo there in the first place—had the tower blown up with explosives and sold for scrap.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Auditorium Skating Rink\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910035\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-800x459.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"459\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-800x459.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-1020x585.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-160x92.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-768x440.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-1536x881.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM.png 1782w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist’s rendition of the Fillmore’s Auditorium skating rink, as seen in the ‘San Francisco Call’ in 1906.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Opened 1906, the Auditorium occupied the entire block between Fillmore and Steiner Streets along Page. This grand marble hall had a skating space that measured about 335 feet by 100 feet. But at capacity, the entire space could accommodate 8,000 people. Which is why it also served as a major venue, hosting military balls, boxing matches, hospital benefits, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations and all manner of other events. The interior featured 6,000 lights, oak walls, classical paintings and mirrored pillars. There were even smoking rooms to retire to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13898226']The Auditorium’s primary use, of course, was for roller discos (the bandstand was big enough to hold 110 musicians) and roller polo matches (a no-brainer given that Auditorium manager Frank Rittigstein was the president of the Pacific Coast Roller Polo League). While covering a match at the Auditorium in 1907, the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> referred to roller polo as, “By far the most exciting indoor game in the present day.” The newspaper continued: “It is extremely dangerous to the players and only the most expert roller skaters are allowed to play.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1913, the Fillmore venue ran into trouble after alcohol was apparently served to minors. The Auditorium subsequently lost its liquor license. Two years later, the building was destroyed by a massive fire that took down four neighboring stores and killed a firefighter. Thankfully, today the Church of Eight Wheels is keeping skating alive in the neighborhood, just a couple of blocks from where the Auditorium once stood.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A giant water ride on Haight Street. An elaborate fairground in the Mission. Here's how the Victorians lived it up.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For many of us looking back, the Victorian era doesn’t look like a whole lot of fun. (Too many séances and mourning dresses, not enough sex and deodorant, thanks.) It turns out, though, that Victorians in San Francisco had way more fun crap to climb, plunge down and scream on than we currently do—and I’m not even talking about \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playland_(San_Francisco)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Playland-at-the-Beach\u003c/a>. Here, then, are five old amusements that the city would still be super into if they’d survived.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>The Chutes\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910208\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910208\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-800x481.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"481\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-800x481.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-1020x613.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-160x96.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-768x462.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-1536x924.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-2048x1232.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-07-at-3.13.17-PM-1920x1155.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The view from the top of The Chutes. And yes, that road with the vehicles on, behind the man-made lake, is Haight Street circa 1895. \u003ccite>(Public Domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Picture it. Haight Street between Cole and Clayton. Only instead of all the stores, bars and hotels lined up between Hobson’s Choice and Goodwill, there’s an old-timey, giant version of Splash Mountain there. This was the glorious reality at the turn of the century when “The Chutes”—a huge waterslide, ridden in a flat-bottomed boat—were shooting scores of people into a man-made lake, all day every day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>On Dec. 14, 1895—the same year the ride opened—the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> reported: “The amphibious boats were sent flying after one another down the chute into the pond as fast and full as safety would permit. Many went to watch only, and then seeing what an exhilarating sport the chuting was for others, decided to try it themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ride was 350 feet long, 70 feet tall and ran up to 60 miles per hour. It was a bargain, too, charging kids a nickel and adults a dime (about $3 in 2022 money) to ride. The Chutes were incredibly popular, but were moved to Fulton Street (between 10th and 11th) in 1902. Another version located at Ocean Beach was the launching pad for Playland at the Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Gravity Pleasure Railroad\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910007\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910007\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-800x427.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-800x427.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-1020x544.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-160x85.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM-768x410.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-6.10.12-PM.png 1492w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The circular Gravity Pleasure Railroad at Eighth and Mission likely resembled this one from the same period. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>An ad was placed in the \u003cem>San Francisco Examiner\u003c/em> on Dec. 12, 1884, advertising the city’s newest attraction. Under the all caps title “ROLLER COASTER,” the notice read:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The California Gravity Railroad Co. SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. A sled-ride down hill without snow! Great sport! Physicians recommend it! Bring your family and enjoy yourselves. Open day and evening. Electric Lights.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The 25-foot-high thrill ride was 200 feet in diameter and situated at the intersection of 8th and Mission Streets. Opened Nov. 27, 1884, the Gravity Railroad was designed to operate under its own weight. Each car held 10 to 12 passengers, and was pushed down the steepest part of the track at great speed, the momentum of which would propel it back up again to where it had started. It cost five cents to ride. Sadly, the gravity railroad didn’t last long. It was destroyed in May 1887 by a fire that started in a nearby candy store.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cstrong>Woodward’s Gardens\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910003\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910003\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-800x527.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"527\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-800x527.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-1020x672.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-160x105.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-768x506.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-1536x1012.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM-1920x1265.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-02-at-5.26.17-PM.png 1958w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Woodward’s Gardens, for all of your two-headed animal needs. \u003ccite>(Public domain)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Open in the Mission District between 1866 and 1891, Woodward’s Gardens was completely bananas. In addition to its botanical gardens, art gallery, zoo, aquarium and four museums, it also featured live music and housed a variety of curiosities, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13884403/for-one-week-in-1871-san-francisco-went-loopy-over-haunted-windows\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“haunted” windows from North Beach\u003c/a>, a stuffed two-headed calf, and an insect display. Special guest appearances—from the likes of “Chang, the Chinese Giant” and “Admiral Dot, a perfect man in miniature”—also made the venue extremely popular at a time when society had few qualms about such shows.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is unfathomable how owner Robert B. Woodward fit all of this into the blocks bordered by Valencia, Ridley (now Duboce), Mission and 15th Streets—but apparently it was all too much for the neighbors. The park wound up closing down after locals complained about unpleasant “odors and horrible noises.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Bonet’s Electric Tower\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910061\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910061\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-2.56.29-PM-800x558.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"558\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leopold Bonet’s Electric Tower, as seen at night during the California Midwinter International Exposition, in Golden Gate Park, 1894. \u003ccite>(Public Domain/ Originally created by Marvin Nathan and Arthur Chandler)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 left Golden Gate Park with a couple of gifts that continue to thrive today—the Japanese Tea Garden and the De Young Museum (which started life as the expo’s Fine Arts Building). If things had played out a little differently, we might also still have Bonet’s Electric Tower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The tower was 272 feet tall, covered in thousands of multicolored lights and modeled after Paris’ Eiffel Tower—though architect Leopold Bonet used steel, not iron like the original. During the expo, the Electric Tower acted as a central attraction and viewing platform for fairgoers, who could travel to the top of it in an elevator. At night, the tower’s 6,000-pound searchlight—then the largest and most powerful in America—could be seen in the sky for miles. The attraction was the biggest financial success of the Midwinter Fair, costing a dime to get to the tower’s first level and a quarter to get to the top. The tower also housed the Bella Vista Café.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Midwinter Fair closed in July 1894 after a booming five months in operation. But Bonet’s Electric Tower was left standing for two years after the fact. Hopes to keep it as a permanent landmark were dashed after Golden Gate Park’s horticulturalist John McLaren—who vocally opposed holding the expo there in the first place—had the tower blown up with explosives and sold for scrap.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Auditorium Skating Rink\u003c/h2>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13910035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13910035\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-800x459.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"459\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-800x459.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-1020x585.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-160x92.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-768x440.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM-1536x881.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-03-03-at-1.42.08-PM.png 1782w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An artist’s rendition of the Fillmore’s Auditorium skating rink, as seen in the ‘San Francisco Call’ in 1906.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Opened 1906, the Auditorium occupied the entire block between Fillmore and Steiner Streets along Page. This grand marble hall had a skating space that measured about 335 feet by 100 feet. But at capacity, the entire space could accommodate 8,000 people. Which is why it also served as a major venue, hosting military balls, boxing matches, hospital benefits, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations and all manner of other events. The interior featured 6,000 lights, oak walls, classical paintings and mirrored pillars. There were even smoking rooms to retire to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Auditorium’s primary use, of course, was for roller discos (the bandstand was big enough to hold 110 musicians) and roller polo matches (a no-brainer given that Auditorium manager Frank Rittigstein was the president of the Pacific Coast Roller Polo League). While covering a match at the Auditorium in 1907, the \u003cem>Examiner\u003c/em> referred to roller polo as, “By far the most exciting indoor game in the present day.” The newspaper continued: “It is extremely dangerous to the players and only the most expert roller skaters are allowed to play.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1913, the Fillmore venue ran into trouble after alcohol was apparently served to minors. The Auditorium subsequently lost its liquor license. Two years later, the building was destroyed by a massive fire that took down four neighboring stores and killed a firefighter. Thankfully, today the Church of Eight Wheels is keeping skating alive in the neighborhood, just a couple of blocks from where the Auditorium once stood.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "sarah-mildred-jones-sacramentos-first-black-principal-fremont-school-ungraded-number-2",
"title": "Sacramento’s First Black Principal Fought Tirelessly for Children of Color",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hite people called it “the colored school.” In Sacramento, city documents, and local newspapers, it was referred to as: “Ungraded School No. 2—Colored.” But to the children who attended, it was simply “Miss Jones’ school.” And those children—many of them honor students—enjoyed an excellent education, high scores on their public school exams, and a teacher who was deeply invested in their futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Mildred Jones was the first Black female teacher in Sacramento in the two decades after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881675/the-19th-century-teacher-who-fought-to-give-black-children-an-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood\u003c/a> set up the city’s first school for children of color in her own home in 1854. By all accounts, Jones’ classroom was a vibrant place to learn. One description of the “closing exercises” before summer break appeared in the \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> newspaper in 1883. The July report stated:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The walls were profusely draped with the red, white and blue, gathered in festoons caught up by trim-colored rosettes, while evergreen national flags and other patriotic emblems were tastefully disposed throughout the room, together with bouquets of flowers … The pupils were promptly in their seats, presented a bright and attractive appearance and manifested the liveliest interest in the proceedings … There was a promptness in recitation and dialogue, and a vivacity in the class singing that testified to good training.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Jones took over Ungraded School No. 2 in August 1873 after Emily A. Aubrey—a white teacher who had been there since 1869—was repeatedly denied a raise and resigned in frustration. The school’s designation as “ungraded” means Jones was responsible for teaching children of all ages and abilities in a single room. (Ungraded schools were a product of small, still-developing communities. Ungraded School No. 1, for example, was for white children.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13881675']Jones was born in Missouri, graduated from Ohio’s Oberlin college in 1865, and first worked as a teacher in Washington, D.C. She headed west in 1873, quickly earned her California teaching certificate—scoring in the 95th percentile—and went right to work with the 52 primary and intermediary pupils of Ungraded School No. 2. Jones was light-skinned and could have passed for white at a time when concealing her identity might have meant an easier—and more lucrative—career path. But she didn’t shy away from her role within her community; she felt the place she could have the most positive impact was with younger Black students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Jones arrived in Sacramento, the question of race in schools was something the local school board, teachers and city officials were still very much wrestling with. Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood had set up the first school for Black children in 1854 because public schools in Sacramento were for white children only. Even after Flood’s popular school was quickly accepted into Sacramento’s official school district, she was still denied funding. Public funding for Black schools only became mandated in 1870, after state law was amended to say that “children of African descent and Indian” must be provided with “separate schools,” or “admitted into the schools of white children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One need only look at the white principal of the Sacramento City Grammar School, Alexander Holmes McDonald, to get a flavor of education-based tensions at the time. At the start of 1873, McDonald had been endorsed by the Democratic City Central Committee to be the city superintendent of schools. That was, until McDonald refused to commit, in writing, to the exclusion of Black children from his grammar school. He was quickly passed over and a man named Addison Hinkson was hired as superintendent instead. When McDonald accepted two Black girls into his grammar school in Dec. 1873, Hinkson put him on notice. “You are hereby instructed to admit no children of African descent, or Indian children into your school,” Hinkson wrote. When McDonald defied Hinkson’s order, he was promptly fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_108474']Jones would later have her own battle with Hinkson, after he publicly suggested she was in favor of school segregation. In response to these assertions, Jones clarified in \u003cem>The Sacramento Bee\u003c/em>, “I would rather teach my students separately, as opposed to having them taught by a white teacher and be made to feel inferior because of their skin color.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he strides forward that Jones swiftly made at Ungraded School No. 2 were no small feats. Just months after her arrival, Jones managed to acquire a second classroom after lobbying the Sacramento School Board. On April 27, 1874, the chairman of the board’s building committee declared:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>We are satisfied that notwithstanding her eminent qualifications for the position which she holds, [Jones] can not do justice to that number of pupils in an ungraded school without doing great injustice to herself. And therefore, without the question of separate schools, we are emphatically of the opinion that another teacher and room are required.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A week later, Jones was also given a raise—taking her monthly wages from $90 to $100—after the school board introduced a resolution to pay teachers $100 a month. Jones advocated on her own behalf to make sure she would earn the same as white teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After segregation was outlawed in California schools in 1880, Ungraded School No. 2 was moved and attached to the Capitol Grammar School. And while the two classrooms there were still not integrated with the rest of the grammar school, the move brought Black and white children together in new ways. On Aug. 27, 1881, a columnist for the \u003cem>Sacramento Daily Record Union\u003c/em> wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Day after day, I see three or four negro girls with school books and lunch pails trudging along side-by-side with one or more white girls, always in earnest conversation, and there seems to be no thought of race between them. Since the abolishment of the colored school we not infrequently find names that belonged to it on our rolls of honor, and the experiment has worked well.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>With her stellar reputation preceding her, in 1894 Jones became the first Black woman in Sacramento to become principal of a fully integrated elementary school. She was the only Black member of the Fremont Primary School’s faculty, where the vast majority of pupils were white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By that time, Jones’ 20 years of dedicated service to the children of Sacramento was so well-established, not even protests by 36 racist parents shook her position at the downtown school. When the parents called for her removal, 98 of her fellow teachers stepped up with a petition in her defense. (Including, delightfully, the niece of Addison Hinkson.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Oct. 3, 1894, after arguments between both sides were heard, Jones also spoke in her own defense before a gathering of both the school board and the parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Miss Jones appeared and stated her case, and made a deep impression by her straightforward manner. She pointed to the fact that the school, opened only two days, was full, already; that for the first time it had two fifth grade classes, and that did not look like ill success. She recited a list of her educational certificates, from her Eastern collegiate diploma to her State life certificate, and outlined her teaching career of 18 years in the city, and asked for time for the people of the district to see and know her. She spoke with feeling, but with dignity … A motion to receive and file the petition prevailed unanimously and the matter was dropped, the sense of the board being to give the teacher a trial, in view of her qualifications and success.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The matter was never revisited.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she was safely appointed at the Fremont School, Jones went about saving the two beloved classrooms of Ungraded School No. 2, which had been slated for demolition. She successfully persuaded the school district to move them to the Fremont School to ease overcrowding in the elementary department. Not only did the district oblige, they also agreed to Jones’ request to elevate the classrooms to protect them from flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]J[/dropcap]ones’ dedication to children extended beyond her own city. In April 1906, she joined forces with Rev. Mary Bowen to establish a “toy department” for San Francisco children who had lost everything in the recent earthquake and fire. The pair asked principals all over the Bay to collect used “toys, books, pictures and other trinkets [pupils] have no further use for.” And this simple gesture towards San Francisco’s children was a source of immediate comfort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A report in the \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> on April 27, 1906 stated:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The first consignment of toys yesterday reached the children of fire sufferers from San Francisco and the little ones were so overjoyed that they seemed beside themselves. They laughed and cried by turns. There was a touching little scene when a child was given a doll which she declared was the veritable one she thought had been burned in the big fire. She pressed the doll to her bosom in an ecstasy of delight, calling the new-found doll by the old name, and no one had the heart to dispel her illusion and tell her that it was a case of mistaken identity.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Even after Jones officially retired as principal in 1914, she kept working to make the lives of Bay Area children better. She served on the Sacramento School Board until 1920—just five years before her death at the age 83. In her will, she left $1,000 to Booker T. Washington School in Tuskegee, Alabama, and $500 to St. Andrews Church, which had once housed Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood’s school for children of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13892514']In Feb. 1996, an expert on Jones’ life named Marilyn Demas told the \u003cem>Sacramento Bee\u003c/em> that this groundbreaking teacher should be an example to us all. “[Jones] shows that there is hope,” Demas said. “People can triumph, can persevere. Nobody opened doors for her. She was a woman. She was Black. And she was extremely successful. She had that—what can you say?—that burning light.”\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\">W\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hite people called it “the colored school.” In Sacramento, city documents, and local newspapers, it was referred to as: “Ungraded School No. 2—Colored.” But to the children who attended, it was simply “Miss Jones’ school.” And those children—many of them honor students—enjoyed an excellent education, high scores on their public school exams, and a teacher who was deeply invested in their futures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Mildred Jones was the first Black female teacher in Sacramento in the two decades after \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13881675/the-19th-century-teacher-who-fought-to-give-black-children-an-education\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood\u003c/a> set up the city’s first school for children of color in her own home in 1854. By all accounts, Jones’ classroom was a vibrant place to learn. One description of the “closing exercises” before summer break appeared in the \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> newspaper in 1883. The July report stated:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The walls were profusely draped with the red, white and blue, gathered in festoons caught up by trim-colored rosettes, while evergreen national flags and other patriotic emblems were tastefully disposed throughout the room, together with bouquets of flowers … The pupils were promptly in their seats, presented a bright and attractive appearance and manifested the liveliest interest in the proceedings … There was a promptness in recitation and dialogue, and a vivacity in the class singing that testified to good training.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Jones took over Ungraded School No. 2 in August 1873 after Emily A. Aubrey—a white teacher who had been there since 1869—was repeatedly denied a raise and resigned in frustration. The school’s designation as “ungraded” means Jones was responsible for teaching children of all ages and abilities in a single room. (Ungraded schools were a product of small, still-developing communities. Ungraded School No. 1, for example, was for white children.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Jones was born in Missouri, graduated from Ohio’s Oberlin college in 1865, and first worked as a teacher in Washington, D.C. She headed west in 1873, quickly earned her California teaching certificate—scoring in the 95th percentile—and went right to work with the 52 primary and intermediary pupils of Ungraded School No. 2. Jones was light-skinned and could have passed for white at a time when concealing her identity might have meant an easier—and more lucrative—career path. But she didn’t shy away from her role within her community; she felt the place she could have the most positive impact was with younger Black students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Jones arrived in Sacramento, the question of race in schools was something the local school board, teachers and city officials were still very much wrestling with. Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood had set up the first school for Black children in 1854 because public schools in Sacramento were for white children only. Even after Flood’s popular school was quickly accepted into Sacramento’s official school district, she was still denied funding. Public funding for Black schools only became mandated in 1870, after state law was amended to say that “children of African descent and Indian” must be provided with “separate schools,” or “admitted into the schools of white children.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One need only look at the white principal of the Sacramento City Grammar School, Alexander Holmes McDonald, to get a flavor of education-based tensions at the time. At the start of 1873, McDonald had been endorsed by the Democratic City Central Committee to be the city superintendent of schools. That was, until McDonald refused to commit, in writing, to the exclusion of Black children from his grammar school. He was quickly passed over and a man named Addison Hinkson was hired as superintendent instead. When McDonald accepted two Black girls into his grammar school in Dec. 1873, Hinkson put him on notice. “You are hereby instructed to admit no children of African descent, or Indian children into your school,” Hinkson wrote. When McDonald defied Hinkson’s order, he was promptly fired.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Jones would later have her own battle with Hinkson, after he publicly suggested she was in favor of school segregation. In response to these assertions, Jones clarified in \u003cem>The Sacramento Bee\u003c/em>, “I would rather teach my students separately, as opposed to having them taught by a white teacher and be made to feel inferior because of their skin color.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">T\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>he strides forward that Jones swiftly made at Ungraded School No. 2 were no small feats. Just months after her arrival, Jones managed to acquire a second classroom after lobbying the Sacramento School Board. On April 27, 1874, the chairman of the board’s building committee declared:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>We are satisfied that notwithstanding her eminent qualifications for the position which she holds, [Jones] can not do justice to that number of pupils in an ungraded school without doing great injustice to herself. And therefore, without the question of separate schools, we are emphatically of the opinion that another teacher and room are required.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>A week later, Jones was also given a raise—taking her monthly wages from $90 to $100—after the school board introduced a resolution to pay teachers $100 a month. Jones advocated on her own behalf to make sure she would earn the same as white teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After segregation was outlawed in California schools in 1880, Ungraded School No. 2 was moved and attached to the Capitol Grammar School. And while the two classrooms there were still not integrated with the rest of the grammar school, the move brought Black and white children together in new ways. On Aug. 27, 1881, a columnist for the \u003cem>Sacramento Daily Record Union\u003c/em> wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Day after day, I see three or four negro girls with school books and lunch pails trudging along side-by-side with one or more white girls, always in earnest conversation, and there seems to be no thought of race between them. Since the abolishment of the colored school we not infrequently find names that belonged to it on our rolls of honor, and the experiment has worked well.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>With her stellar reputation preceding her, in 1894 Jones became the first Black woman in Sacramento to become principal of a fully integrated elementary school. She was the only Black member of the Fremont Primary School’s faculty, where the vast majority of pupils were white.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By that time, Jones’ 20 years of dedicated service to the children of Sacramento was so well-established, not even protests by 36 racist parents shook her position at the downtown school. When the parents called for her removal, 98 of her fellow teachers stepped up with a petition in her defense. (Including, delightfully, the niece of Addison Hinkson.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Oct. 3, 1894, after arguments between both sides were heard, Jones also spoke in her own defense before a gathering of both the school board and the parents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> reported:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>Miss Jones appeared and stated her case, and made a deep impression by her straightforward manner. She pointed to the fact that the school, opened only two days, was full, already; that for the first time it had two fifth grade classes, and that did not look like ill success. She recited a list of her educational certificates, from her Eastern collegiate diploma to her State life certificate, and outlined her teaching career of 18 years in the city, and asked for time for the people of the district to see and know her. She spoke with feeling, but with dignity … A motion to receive and file the petition prevailed unanimously and the matter was dropped, the sense of the board being to give the teacher a trial, in view of her qualifications and success.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>The matter was never revisited.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she was safely appointed at the Fremont School, Jones went about saving the two beloved classrooms of Ungraded School No. 2, which had been slated for demolition. She successfully persuaded the school district to move them to the Fremont School to ease overcrowding in the elementary department. Not only did the district oblige, they also agreed to Jones’ request to elevate the classrooms to protect them from flooding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">J\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>ones’ dedication to children extended beyond her own city. In April 1906, she joined forces with Rev. Mary Bowen to establish a “toy department” for San Francisco children who had lost everything in the recent earthquake and fire. The pair asked principals all over the Bay to collect used “toys, books, pictures and other trinkets [pupils] have no further use for.” And this simple gesture towards San Francisco’s children was a source of immediate comfort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A report in the \u003cem>Record-Union\u003c/em> on April 27, 1906 stated:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>The first consignment of toys yesterday reached the children of fire sufferers from San Francisco and the little ones were so overjoyed that they seemed beside themselves. They laughed and cried by turns. There was a touching little scene when a child was given a doll which she declared was the veritable one she thought had been burned in the big fire. She pressed the doll to her bosom in an ecstasy of delight, calling the new-found doll by the old name, and no one had the heart to dispel her illusion and tell her that it was a case of mistaken identity.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Even after Jones officially retired as principal in 1914, she kept working to make the lives of Bay Area children better. She served on the Sacramento School Board until 1920—just five years before her death at the age 83. In her will, she left $1,000 to Booker T. Washington School in Tuskegee, Alabama, and $500 to St. Andrews Church, which had once housed Elizabeth Thorn Scott Flood’s school for children of color.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In Feb. 1996, an expert on Jones’ life named Marilyn Demas told the \u003cem>Sacramento Bee\u003c/em> that this groundbreaking teacher should be an example to us all. “[Jones] shows that there is hope,” Demas said. “People can triumph, can persevere. Nobody opened doors for her. She was a woman. She was Black. And she was extremely successful. She had that—what can you say?—that burning light.”\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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"headTitle": "Here’s the Story Behind Black History Month—and Why it’s Celebrated in February | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Every February, the U.S. honors the contributions and sacrifices of African Americans who have helped shape the nation. Black History Month celebrates the rich cultural heritage, triumphs and adversities that are an indelible part of our country’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13825847']This year’s theme, \u003ca href=\"https://asalh.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2022-Black-History-Theme-Executive-Summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Black Health and Wellness\u003c/a>, pays homage to medical scholars and health care providers. The theme is especially timely as we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately affected minority communities and placed \u003ca href=\"https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-02-01/black-doctors-covid-burden-patients-social-ills-and-workplace-bigotry\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">unique burdens\u003c/a> on Black health care professionals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no American history without African American history,” said Sara Clarke Kaplan, executive director of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.american.edu/centers/antiracism/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Antiracist Research & Policy Center\u003c/a> at American University in Washington, D.C. The Black experience, she said, is embedded in “everything we think of as ‘American history.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>First, there was Negro History Week\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13908786\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13908786\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/CarterGWoodson_custom-d5d1457f0e2a1e5ffb5c73df29901e26f8aade17.jpg\" alt=\"A black and white portrait of a young Black man wearing a smart suit jacket, tie and starched white shirt.\" width=\"200\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/CarterGWoodson_custom-d5d1457f0e2a1e5ffb5c73df29901e26f8aade17.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/CarterGWoodson_custom-d5d1457f0e2a1e5ffb5c73df29901e26f8aade17-160x214.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) was an American historian, a scholar and the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Woodson was instrumental in launching Negro History Week in 1926. \u003ccite>(Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Critics have long argued that Black history should be taught and celebrated year-round, not just during one month each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carter-G-Woodson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Carter G. Woodson\u003c/a>, the “father of Black history,” who first set out in 1926 to designate a time to promote and educate people about Black history and culture, according to W. Marvin Dulaney. He is a historian and the president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (\u003ca href=\"https://asalh.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ASALH\u003c/a>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodson envisioned a weeklong celebration to encourage the coordinated teaching of Black history in public schools. He designated the second week of February as Negro History Week and galvanized fellow historians through the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which he founded in 1915. (ASNLH later became ASALH.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea wasn’t to place limitations but really to focus and broaden the nation’s consciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Woodson’s goal from the very beginning was to make the celebration of Black history in the field of history a ‘serious area of study,’ ” said Albert Broussard, a professor of Afro-American history at Texas A&M University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea eventually grew in acceptance, and by the late 1960s, Negro History Week had evolved into what is now known as Black History Month. Protests around racial injustice, inequality and anti-imperialism that were occurring in many parts of the U.S. were pivotal to the change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Colleges and universities also began to hold commemorations, with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kent.edu/cas/did-you-know#:~:text=In%20February%201970%2C%20Kent%20State,which%20was%20established%20in%201976.&text=Since%201976%2C%20each%20president%20has,Month%20and%20endorsed%20a%20theme.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kent State University\u003c/a> being one of the first, according to Kaplan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty years after the first celebrations, President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized Black History Month during the country’s 1976 bicentennial. Ford called upon Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history,” History.com\u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-month\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> reports\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Why February was chosen as Black History Month\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13874566']February was chosen primarily because the second week of the month coincides with the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Lincoln was influential in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.biography.com/us-president/abraham-lincoln\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">emancipation of slaves\u003c/a>, and Douglass, a former slave, was a prominent leader in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">abolitionist movement\u003c/a>, which fought to end slavery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lincoln and Douglass were each born in the second week of February, so it was traditionally a time when African Americans would hold celebrations in honor of emancipation, Kaplan said. (Douglass’ exact date of birth wasn’t recorded, but he came to celebrate it on Feb. 14.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thus, Woodson created Negro History Week around the two birthdays as a way of “commemorating the black past,” according to \u003ca href=\"https://asalh.org/about-us/origins-of-black-history-month/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ASALH\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forty years after Ford formally recognized Black History Month, it was Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, who \u003ca href=\"https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/02/18/remarks-president-black-history-month-reception\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">delivered a message\u003c/a> of his own from the White House, a place built by slaves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13908790\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13908790\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-800x443.png\" alt=\"Barack and Michelle Obama stand on stage in front of a golden yellow curtain and American flag, while a packed audience holds up cell phones to take their photo.\" width=\"800\" height=\"443\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-800x443.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-1020x565.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-160x89.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-768x426.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-1536x851.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-672x372.png 672w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-1038x576.png 1038w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM.png 1674w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama host the annual reception for Black History Month at the White House on Feb. 18, 2016. \u003ccite>(Mike Theiler/Pool/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Black History Month shouldn’t be treated as though it is somehow separate from our collective American history or somehow just boiled down to a compilation of greatest hits from the March on Washington or from some of our sports heroes,” Obama said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about the lived, shared experience of all African Americans, high and low, famous and obscure, and how those experiences have shaped and challenged and ultimately strengthened America,” he continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(Canada also commemorates Black History Month in February, while the U.K. and \u003ca href=\"https://www.irishcentral.com/news/how-ireland-is-celebrating-national-black-history-month\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ireland\u003c/a> celebrate it in October.)\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>There’s a new theme every year\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>ASALH designates a \u003ca href=\"https://asalh.org/black-history-themes/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">new theme\u003c/a> for Black History Month each year, in keeping with the practice Woodson established for Negro History Week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13875319']This year’s Black Health and Wellness theme is particularly appropriate, Dulaney said, as the U.S. continues to fight the coronavirus pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As [Black people], we have terrible health outcomes, and even the coronavirus has been affecting us disproportionately in terms of those of us who are catching it,” Dulaney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s never been a time where Black people and others should not celebrate Black history,” Broussard said. “Given the current racial climate, the racial reckoning that began in wake of George Floyd’s murder … this is an opportunity to learn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Here%27s+the+story+behind+Black+History+Month+%E2%80%94+and+why+it%27s+celebrated+in+February&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Every February, the U.S. honors the contributions and sacrifices of African Americans who have helped shape the nation. Black History Month celebrates the rich cultural heritage, triumphs and adversities that are an indelible part of our country’s history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>This year’s theme, \u003ca href=\"https://asalh.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2022-Black-History-Theme-Executive-Summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Black Health and Wellness\u003c/a>, pays homage to medical scholars and health care providers. The theme is especially timely as we enter the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately affected minority communities and placed \u003ca href=\"https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-02-01/black-doctors-covid-burden-patients-social-ills-and-workplace-bigotry\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">unique burdens\u003c/a> on Black health care professionals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is no American history without African American history,” said Sara Clarke Kaplan, executive director of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.american.edu/centers/antiracism/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Antiracist Research & Policy Center\u003c/a> at American University in Washington, D.C. The Black experience, she said, is embedded in “everything we think of as ‘American history.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>First, there was Negro History Week\u003c/h3>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13908786\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 200px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13908786\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/CarterGWoodson_custom-d5d1457f0e2a1e5ffb5c73df29901e26f8aade17.jpg\" alt=\"A black and white portrait of a young Black man wearing a smart suit jacket, tie and starched white shirt.\" width=\"200\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/CarterGWoodson_custom-d5d1457f0e2a1e5ffb5c73df29901e26f8aade17.jpg 200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/CarterGWoodson_custom-d5d1457f0e2a1e5ffb5c73df29901e26f8aade17-160x214.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) was an American historian, a scholar and the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Woodson was instrumental in launching Negro History Week in 1926. \u003ccite>(Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Critics have long argued that Black history should be taught and celebrated year-round, not just during one month each year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carter-G-Woodson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Carter G. Woodson\u003c/a>, the “father of Black history,” who first set out in 1926 to designate a time to promote and educate people about Black history and culture, according to W. Marvin Dulaney. He is a historian and the president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (\u003ca href=\"https://asalh.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ASALH\u003c/a>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Woodson envisioned a weeklong celebration to encourage the coordinated teaching of Black history in public schools. He designated the second week of February as Negro History Week and galvanized fellow historians through the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which he founded in 1915. (ASNLH later became ASALH.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea wasn’t to place limitations but really to focus and broaden the nation’s consciousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Woodson’s goal from the very beginning was to make the celebration of Black history in the field of history a ‘serious area of study,’ ” said Albert Broussard, a professor of Afro-American history at Texas A&M University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea eventually grew in acceptance, and by the late 1960s, Negro History Week had evolved into what is now known as Black History Month. Protests around racial injustice, inequality and anti-imperialism that were occurring in many parts of the U.S. were pivotal to the change.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Colleges and universities also began to hold commemorations, with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kent.edu/cas/did-you-know#:~:text=In%20February%201970%2C%20Kent%20State,which%20was%20established%20in%201976.&text=Since%201976%2C%20each%20president%20has,Month%20and%20endorsed%20a%20theme.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kent State University\u003c/a> being one of the first, according to Kaplan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fifty years after the first celebrations, President Gerald R. Ford officially recognized Black History Month during the country’s 1976 bicentennial. Ford called upon Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history,” History.com\u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-month\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> reports\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Why February was chosen as Black History Month\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>February was chosen primarily because the second week of the month coincides with the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Lincoln was influential in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.biography.com/us-president/abraham-lincoln\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">emancipation of slaves\u003c/a>, and Douglass, a former slave, was a prominent leader in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">abolitionist movement\u003c/a>, which fought to end slavery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lincoln and Douglass were each born in the second week of February, so it was traditionally a time when African Americans would hold celebrations in honor of emancipation, Kaplan said. (Douglass’ exact date of birth wasn’t recorded, but he came to celebrate it on Feb. 14.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thus, Woodson created Negro History Week around the two birthdays as a way of “commemorating the black past,” according to \u003ca href=\"https://asalh.org/about-us/origins-of-black-history-month/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ASALH\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Forty years after Ford formally recognized Black History Month, it was Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, who \u003ca href=\"https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/02/18/remarks-president-black-history-month-reception\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">delivered a message\u003c/a> of his own from the White House, a place built by slaves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13908790\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13908790\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-800x443.png\" alt=\"Barack and Michelle Obama stand on stage in front of a golden yellow curtain and American flag, while a packed audience holds up cell phones to take their photo.\" width=\"800\" height=\"443\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-800x443.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-1020x565.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-160x89.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-768x426.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-1536x851.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-672x372.png 672w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM-1038x576.png 1038w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-01-at-12.18.45-PM.png 1674w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama host the annual reception for Black History Month at the White House on Feb. 18, 2016. \u003ccite>(Mike Theiler/Pool/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Black History Month shouldn’t be treated as though it is somehow separate from our collective American history or somehow just boiled down to a compilation of greatest hits from the March on Washington or from some of our sports heroes,” Obama said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s about the lived, shared experience of all African Americans, high and low, famous and obscure, and how those experiences have shaped and challenged and ultimately strengthened America,” he continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(Canada also commemorates Black History Month in February, while the U.K. and \u003ca href=\"https://www.irishcentral.com/news/how-ireland-is-celebrating-national-black-history-month\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ireland\u003c/a> celebrate it in October.)\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>There’s a new theme every year\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>ASALH designates a \u003ca href=\"https://asalh.org/black-history-themes/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">new theme\u003c/a> for Black History Month each year, in keeping with the practice Woodson established for Negro History Week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>This year’s Black Health and Wellness theme is particularly appropriate, Dulaney said, as the U.S. continues to fight the coronavirus pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“As [Black people], we have terrible health outcomes, and even the coronavirus has been affecting us disproportionately in terms of those of us who are catching it,” Dulaney said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s never been a time where Black people and others should not celebrate Black history,” Broussard said. “Given the current racial climate, the racial reckoning that began in wake of George Floyd’s murder … this is an opportunity to learn.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">visit NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Here%27s+the+story+behind+Black+History+Month+%E2%80%94+and+why+it%27s+celebrated+in+February&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Poly Styrene Documentary ‘I Am a Cliché’ is Much More Than a Punk Profile",
"headTitle": "Poly Styrene Documentary ‘I Am a Cliché’ is Much More Than a Punk Profile | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Ostensibly, \u003cem>I Am a Cliché\u003c/em> is a profile of British punk icon Poly Styrene, who founded and fronted X-Ray Spex between 1976 and ’79. But this 95-minute documentary, directed by Poly’s daughter \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/celestabella/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Celeste Bell-Dos Santos\u003c/a> and filmmaker \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7098521/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Paul Sng\u003c/a>, proves to be much, much more than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13902953']\u003cem>Cliché\u003c/em> unpacks a lot. It’s about art on the margins. It’s about the race and gender barriers that have historically policed popular culture. It’s about mental illness, the stigma it carries, and society’s reluctance to deal with it. It’s about dysfunctional families and finding love. And, most surprisingly of all—because of Poly Styrene’s lifelong fear of a culture built on plastic and artifice—it’s about now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That sounds like a lot. Maybe too much. But nothing about \u003cem>I Am a Cliché\u003c/em> feels in the least bit labored. It moves with ease and grace thanks in large part to the forthright narration and emotional grounding provided by Celeste. Styrene’s daughter—who spent portions of her childhood terrified of her own mother—is determined not just to tell her mother’s story, but also to grant the singer a new degree of understanding.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stXSFuUOdeU\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Poly Styrene’s story starts out simply enough: mixed-race girl grows up in working-class neighborhood of South London during a turbulent time in Britain. She discovers punk, takes the initiative to form a band, smashes expectations and breaks boundaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The impact of Poly—staunchly unconventional, even in a sea of snarling punks—is worth pausing on to appreciate. Rhoda Dakar of \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bodysnatchers_(band)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Bodysnatchers\u003c/a> explains that, in some ways, she and Poly were readily accepted into a punk scene dominated by white men, precisely for the ways that they didn’t fit into it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Back then,” Dakar explains, “it was fairly unusual to be biracial. In a way, we were embraced by punk because it was full of people that nobody else wanted. We were welcomed because we were already outsiders.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is Dakar and Poly’s other female peers in \u003cem>Cliché\u003c/em>, who best express the quagmire of being a woman in punk in 1970s Britain. Gina Birch from \u003ca href=\"http://www.theraincoats.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Raincoats\u003c/a> says: “A lot of men in the media didn’t want women to step into that place. To be given more power and more say and more visibility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writer \u003ca href=\"https://www.viviengoldman.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vivien Goldman\u003c/a> notes: “Everyone always talks about ‘\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogypBUCb7DA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oh Bondage Up Yours\u003c/a>’ because, in a way, that sound cut through a sort of glass ceiling of what women singers could do with their voice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUBXwxjoAus\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond her fearless on-stage persona, Poly was sensitive, empathic and deeply philosophical. She worried about humanity’s future; she worried about a life lived without substance. And unrelenting, sexist scrutiny of her body and image in the music press made her worry she wasn’t good enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13852873']“She felt like journalists were celebrating her by insinuating that she was unattractive and overweight,” Celeste remembers. “[They were] totally not getting what she was trying to achieve by choosing not to overexpose her voluptuous form on stage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Poly’s situation was further destabilized by the fact that she was bipolar but initially misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. All of those elements together made the chaos and propulsion of touring particularly difficult for her. This became very apparent in 1977 when X-Ray Spex spent time in New York and played the legendary punk venue CBGB. (Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore was in attendance and the memories he shares of the show in \u003cem>Cliché\u003c/em> are pure gold.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13907828\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13907828\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-800x538.png\" alt=\"The singer for X-Ray Spex, wearing a red and yellow band jacket, gazes into a mirror and applies make-up to her cheeks.\" width=\"800\" height=\"538\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-800x538.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-1020x687.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-160x108.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-768x517.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-1536x1034.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-2048x1379.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-1920x1292.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poly Styrene getting ready to perform, sometime in the late 1970s. \u003ccite>('I Am a Cliché')\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While the rest of her band simply found New York fascinating and fun, Poly was so overwhelmed by the rampant consumerism, seedy underbelly and drug culture of the city that she never quite recovered from the trip. Celeste says New York annihilated the last shreds of “whatever innocence [Poly Styrene] had left.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Poly’s own writings prove it. After returning to London, she wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>New York totally blew me apart. I saw everything I’d been writing about, but extreme and for real. For them it wasn’t a joke, it was the way they lived. For me, it was all a joke … It’s so bad that you think ‘God, if that’s what it’s gonna be like, I don’t want it.’ The weird thing about all the plastic is that people don’t actually like it. But in order to cope with it, they develop a perverse kind of fondness for it. Which is what I did … That was what was so frightening about New York.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Viewed from 2022, Poly’s fears about the future—and in particular a culture dominated by plastic (in all senses of the word)—seem positively prophetic. That they were shrugged off by most people in her own time can’t help but feel tragic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1979, Poly’s inner struggles led her to break up the band at the peak of its powers. “Poly Styrene had to die,” Celeste explains, “so that Marianne Elliott [Styrene’s real name] could survive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a time after X-Ray Spex, Celeste and her mother lived in a Hare Krishna community. Later, the two lived alone and Poly lapsed into a severe state of depression. Celeste describes being hungry and neglected to the degree that, at the age of eight, she climbed out of a window to get to the social service employees who had come to check on her. Celeste later declared in court that she would rather live with her grandmother—a choice that caused long-term rifts in the family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13894169']Almost a decade before Poly’s death from cancer in 2011, mother and daughter reunited and became close. But much remained a mystery about Poly when Celeste suddenly lost her. “By the time I started to really appreciate how lucky I was to have such a remarkable woman as a mother and a role model,” Celeste says, “it was too late. She was leaving her body.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it sounds like I’ve told you the whole story laid bare in \u003cem>I Am a Cliché\u003c/em>, fear not—I’ve barely scratched the surface. I haven’t yet mentioned that it’s also a brilliant snapshot of British punk in its late-’70s heyday. Or that it’s about the importance of community, empathy and tolerance. Or that, at its core, it’s a beautiful meditation on what parents and children owe to one other. More than that, it’s about the tiny earthquakes that rumble around the world and forever change it when marginalized people elbow their way into closed-off spaces, and force other people to listen to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Poly Styrene was one of those people. Her legacy is bigger than you might think.\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=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘I Am a Cliché’ arrives in movie theaters across the U.S. on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. It will be available on demand starting Feb. 4, and begins streaming on Showtime in June. \u003ca href=\"https://www.polystyrenefilm.net/release\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Ostensibly, \u003cem>I Am a Cliché\u003c/em> is a profile of British punk icon Poly Styrene, who founded and fronted X-Ray Spex between 1976 and ’79. But this 95-minute documentary, directed by Poly’s daughter \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/celestabella/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Celeste Bell-Dos Santos\u003c/a> and filmmaker \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7098521/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Paul Sng\u003c/a>, proves to be much, much more than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cem>Cliché\u003c/em> unpacks a lot. It’s about art on the margins. It’s about the race and gender barriers that have historically policed popular culture. It’s about mental illness, the stigma it carries, and society’s reluctance to deal with it. It’s about dysfunctional families and finding love. And, most surprisingly of all—because of Poly Styrene’s lifelong fear of a culture built on plastic and artifice—it’s about now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That sounds like a lot. Maybe too much. But nothing about \u003cem>I Am a Cliché\u003c/em> feels in the least bit labored. It moves with ease and grace thanks in large part to the forthright narration and emotional grounding provided by Celeste. Styrene’s daughter—who spent portions of her childhood terrified of her own mother—is determined not just to tell her mother’s story, but also to grant the singer a new degree of understanding.\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/stXSFuUOdeU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/stXSFuUOdeU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Poly Styrene’s story starts out simply enough: mixed-race girl grows up in working-class neighborhood of South London during a turbulent time in Britain. She discovers punk, takes the initiative to form a band, smashes expectations and breaks boundaries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The impact of Poly—staunchly unconventional, even in a sea of snarling punks—is worth pausing on to appreciate. Rhoda Dakar of \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bodysnatchers_(band)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Bodysnatchers\u003c/a> explains that, in some ways, she and Poly were readily accepted into a punk scene dominated by white men, precisely for the ways that they didn’t fit into it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Back then,” Dakar explains, “it was fairly unusual to be biracial. In a way, we were embraced by punk because it was full of people that nobody else wanted. We were welcomed because we were already outsiders.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is Dakar and Poly’s other female peers in \u003cem>Cliché\u003c/em>, who best express the quagmire of being a woman in punk in 1970s Britain. Gina Birch from \u003ca href=\"http://www.theraincoats.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Raincoats\u003c/a> says: “A lot of men in the media didn’t want women to step into that place. To be given more power and more say and more visibility.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writer \u003ca href=\"https://www.viviengoldman.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vivien Goldman\u003c/a> notes: “Everyone always talks about ‘\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogypBUCb7DA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oh Bondage Up Yours\u003c/a>’ because, in a way, that sound cut through a sort of glass ceiling of what women singers could do with their voice.”\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/RUBXwxjoAus'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/RUBXwxjoAus'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Beyond her fearless on-stage persona, Poly was sensitive, empathic and deeply philosophical. She worried about humanity’s future; she worried about a life lived without substance. And unrelenting, sexist scrutiny of her body and image in the music press made her worry she wasn’t good enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“She felt like journalists were celebrating her by insinuating that she was unattractive and overweight,” Celeste remembers. “[They were] totally not getting what she was trying to achieve by choosing not to overexpose her voluptuous form on stage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Poly’s situation was further destabilized by the fact that she was bipolar but initially misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. All of those elements together made the chaos and propulsion of touring particularly difficult for her. This became very apparent in 1977 when X-Ray Spex spent time in New York and played the legendary punk venue CBGB. (Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore was in attendance and the memories he shares of the show in \u003cem>Cliché\u003c/em> are pure gold.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13907828\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13907828\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-800x538.png\" alt=\"The singer for X-Ray Spex, wearing a red and yellow band jacket, gazes into a mirror and applies make-up to her cheeks.\" width=\"800\" height=\"538\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-800x538.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-1020x687.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-160x108.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-768x517.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-1536x1034.png 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-2048x1379.png 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Poly-mirror-1920x1292.png 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Poly Styrene getting ready to perform, sometime in the late 1970s. \u003ccite>('I Am a Cliché')\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While the rest of her band simply found New York fascinating and fun, Poly was so overwhelmed by the rampant consumerism, seedy underbelly and drug culture of the city that she never quite recovered from the trip. Celeste says New York annihilated the last shreds of “whatever innocence [Poly Styrene] had left.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Poly’s own writings prove it. After returning to London, she wrote:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>New York totally blew me apart. I saw everything I’d been writing about, but extreme and for real. For them it wasn’t a joke, it was the way they lived. For me, it was all a joke … It’s so bad that you think ‘God, if that’s what it’s gonna be like, I don’t want it.’ The weird thing about all the plastic is that people don’t actually like it. But in order to cope with it, they develop a perverse kind of fondness for it. Which is what I did … That was what was so frightening about New York.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Viewed from 2022, Poly’s fears about the future—and in particular a culture dominated by plastic (in all senses of the word)—seem positively prophetic. That they were shrugged off by most people in her own time can’t help but feel tragic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By 1979, Poly’s inner struggles led her to break up the band at the peak of its powers. “Poly Styrene had to die,” Celeste explains, “so that Marianne Elliott [Styrene’s real name] could survive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For a time after X-Ray Spex, Celeste and her mother lived in a Hare Krishna community. Later, the two lived alone and Poly lapsed into a severe state of depression. Celeste describes being hungry and neglected to the degree that, at the age of eight, she climbed out of a window to get to the social service employees who had come to check on her. Celeste later declared in court that she would rather live with her grandmother—a choice that caused long-term rifts in the family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Almost a decade before Poly’s death from cancer in 2011, mother and daughter reunited and became close. But much remained a mystery about Poly when Celeste suddenly lost her. “By the time I started to really appreciate how lucky I was to have such a remarkable woman as a mother and a role model,” Celeste says, “it was too late. She was leaving her body.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If it sounds like I’ve told you the whole story laid bare in \u003cem>I Am a Cliché\u003c/em>, fear not—I’ve barely scratched the surface. I haven’t yet mentioned that it’s also a brilliant snapshot of British punk in its late-’70s heyday. Or that it’s about the importance of community, empathy and tolerance. Or that, at its core, it’s a beautiful meditation on what parents and children owe to one other. More than that, it’s about the tiny earthquakes that rumble around the world and forever change it when marginalized people elbow their way into closed-off spaces, and force other people to listen to them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Poly Styrene was one of those people. Her legacy is bigger than you might think.\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=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>‘I Am a Cliché’ arrives in movie theaters across the U.S. on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. It will be available on demand starting Feb. 4, and begins streaming on Showtime in June. \u003ca href=\"https://www.polystyrenefilm.net/release\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Details here\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"soldout": {
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