THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1922: Flappers in the newspapers May 19, 1922 Flappers Right off the bat I have to admit the fact that -- to paraphrase Olympia Dukakis in Moonstruck -- what I don't know about San Francisco in the 1920s is a lot. I did know that all sorts of great Prohibition and gangster stuff must have gone on, though, so I started leafing through a couple of 1922 editions of the Chronicle looking for stories. And was immediately distracted by the flappers. You know,...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:1879: Stoddard, Stevenson, and Rincon Hill Sometime in 1879: The house on Rincon Hill Last week I read to you from In the Footprints of the Padres, Charles Warren Stoddard's 1902 reminiscences about the early days of San Francisco. That piece recounted a boyhood adventure, but this book is full of California stories from the latter years of the 19th century; some deservedly obscure, but some that ring pretty loud bells. Todays' short text is a great example...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:1854: A future poet's boyhood outing Spring 1854 Charles Warren Stoddard In 1854, the down-on-their-luck Stoddard family set off from New York City to try their luck in that brand new metropolis of the West: San Francisco. Charles Warren Stoddard was just 11 years old, and San Francisco -- still in the throes of the Gold Rush, a vital, chaotic, cosmopolitan stew pot -- was the most exciting place a little boy could dream of. Charles would grow up to play a...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:1906: Hotaling's Whiskey is spared by the Great Fire and Earthquake April 20th, 1906 The deliverance of Hotaling's Whiskey As of Friday the 20th, San Francisco was still on fire. The Great Earthquake had happened two days earlier, but the Fire (or fires) that devastated the city were still well underway. The eastern quarter of the city -- nearly five square miles -- would be almost completely destroyed. But after the smoke cleared, a few precious blocks would...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:1958: The Giants play the Dodgers in the first major league baseball game on the West Coast April 15, 1958 Major League Baseball in San Francisco! Exactly fifty-one years ago today, two New York City transplants faced each other for the first time on the fertile soil of the West Coast. Decades of storied rivalry already under their respective belts, these two legendary New York baseball clubs -- the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers -- were trapped in...

A weekly glance back at the weird and wonderful happenings that have made San Francisco, San Francisco. April 9, 1871: A hoodlum king's power is broken, 138 years ago this week -- and all because he hated the sound of music.

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:The San Francisco “Cocktail Route” 1890-something The Cocktail Route — “Champagne Days of San Francisco” Spring is most definitely in the air right now, which has brought my thoughts back to one of the great phenomena of San Francisco’s pre-earthquake era, the “Cocktail Route”. I know I’ve mentioned the “Cocktail Route” in previous shows, but I’m not sure if I’ve made it clear that it was both a real, chartable path and a kind of a beloved civic institution....

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:Slumming the Barbary Coast 1871 "A Barbary Cruise" I've been thinking about the fact that -- just like our out-of-town guests inevitably insist that we take 'em to Chinatown or Fisherman's Wharf -- in the 1870s, visitors from back in "the States" just had to go slumming in the infamous Barbary Coast. The piece I'm about to read to you was written by Mr. Albert Evans, a reporter from the good ol' Alta California. The Barbary Coast was part of his beat, and...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:America's "Master Birdman" makes his final flight March 15, 1915: "The Man Who Owns the Sky" It was the year of the legendary Panama-Pacific International Exposition. San Francisco had once again earned that phoenix on her flag by rising from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake and fire -- and just nine years later, the city celebrated its rebirth by winning the right to host the World's Fair. Visitors from every point on the compass swarmed towards California to...

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1956: Gold medals or Gold records? An athletic crooner makes a life-changing choice 1956: “Send blank contracts” Of course you know Johnny Mathis. The velvet-voiced crooner is a fixture of the softer side of American pop culture, providing reliably romantic background music for cuddling couples for over sixty years. He’s sold 350 million records worldwide, his Greatest Hits album was on the Billboard charts for almost a decade, and at one point he had five...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1852: English adventurer Frank Marryat pays a visit to a San Francisco Gold Rush barbershop. 1852: A Gold Rush shaving-saloon I love personal accounts of the goings-on in our little town more than just about anything. The sights, the smells, the daily routine ... I want the nuts and bolts of what it was like to live here THEN! It's even better when the eyeballs taking it all in belong to an outsider, a visiting alien to whom everything's an oddity. For my...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1921: the cornerstone of the Palace of the Legion of Honor is laid ... but what was underneath? February 19, 1921 Ghosts of Lands End On this date the cornerstone for San Francisco's spectacular Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum was levered into place. The Museum was to be a vehicle for the cultural pretensions of the notorious Alma Spreckels. This social-climbing dynamo envisioned her Museum as a far western outpost of French art and culture. Drawing on...

A weekly glance back at the weird and wonderful happenings that have made San Francisco, San Francisco. 1869: the fashionable neighborhood of Rincon Hill is sliced in two by the "Second Street Cut".

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1849: As the fateful year of 1849 begins, a newspaper editor scrutinizes San Francisco's gold rush future. February 1, 1849 The eye of the Gold Rush hurricane The spring of 1849 -- dawn of a year forever branded into the national consciousness as the era of the California Gold Rush. And so it was -- but that was back East, in the "States". In San Francisco, the Gold Rush had actually begun an entire year earlier. I'd better set the scene. The United...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1847: Thanks to a Spanish noblewoman and the quick thinking of Yerba Buena's first American alcalde, San Francisco gets its name. January 30, 1847: Yerba Buena becomes San Francisco Yerba Buena That was the name given to the tiny bayside settlement back in 1835, a name taken from the wild mint growing on the sand dunes that surrounded it. And if it hadn't been for the lucky first name of an elegant Spanish noblewoman, that's what the city of San Francisco...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1890: Nellie Bly blows through town; 1897: "Little Pete" (the King of Chinatown) is murdered in a barbershop. January 20, 1890 Miss Nellie Bly whizzes past San Francisco I got a hot tip that this was the anniversary of the day Miss Nellie Bly stopped by on the home stretch of her dash around the world. But as it turns out, well ... some background first, I guess. For starters, who the heck was Nellie Bly? Sixteen years old in 1880, Miss Elizabeth Jane...

THIS WEEK'S PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: 1861: the notorious countess Lola Montez dies in New York; 1899: a small boy defends himself in a San Francisco courtroom. January 17, 1861 Countess Lola Montez -- in Memorium As was undoubtedly marked on your calendar, San Francisco's patron saint Emperor Norton died last week, January 7, 1880. But his was not the only January passing worthy of note. Ten days later (and nineteen years earlier), we lost perhaps the most notorious personage ever to grace the...

THIS WEEK: San Francisco's notorious "Demon of the Belfry" goes to the gallows. January 7, 1898: The execution of Gilded Age San Francisco's most notorious criminal Sure, Jack the Ripper had set a certain tone for serial killing just a few years earlier, but the crimes of Theodore Durrant were even more shocking. See, Jack's victims had been prostitutes, but San Francisco's "Demon of the Belfry" had murdered a pair of girls who were respectable churchgoers. In his very own church. On the...

THIS WEEK: the fiery fate of the first Cliff House, and the case of a parrot who would not sing. Click the audio player above to listen in, or just read on ... December 25, 1894: First San Francisco Cliff House burns On Christmas Day, 1894, the first San Francisco Cliff House burned to the ground. As the Chronicle poetically reported the next morning, San Francisco's most historic landmark has gone up in flames. The Cliff House is a smouldering ruin, where the silent ghosts of memory...

A weekly handful of weird, wonderful and wacky happenings dredged up from the kaleidoscopic depths of San Francisco history. THIS WEEK:a couple of items from the newspaper files, and an escape from Alcatraz -- perhaps! December 15, 1849: The London Times looks west As I perused the pages of an 1849-era copy of the Alta California this week, I ran across a little item reprinted from the venerable London Times. I'd been on the hunt for, you know, colorful "Gold Rush-y" stuff, but...

A weekly handful of weird, wonderful and wacky happenings dredged up from the kaleidoscopic depths of San Francisco history. THIS WEEK: a hanging from 1852, and a Miss Goldie Griffin wants to become a cop in 1912. December 10, 1852: San Francisco's first official execution It certainly wasn't for any lack of local mayhem that it took so long for San Francisco to order its first "official" execution. The sleepy hamlet of Yerba Buena had ballooned from fewer than 500 to over 36,000...

A weekly handful of weird, wonderful and wacky happenings dredged up from the kaleidoscopic depths of San Francisco history. THIS WEEK: In 1856, the birth of a great newspaper; and in 1896, a legendary gunfighter referees a boxing match. December 1, 1856: Birthday of the "San Francisco Call" One of San Francisco's Gilded Age newspaper giants begins its life today: the San Francisco Call. San Francisco was lousy with newspapers in the Gold Rush era -- by 1858 there were at least a...

A weekly handful of the weird and wonderful happenings that have made San Francisco, San Francisco. November 24, 1899 - "Haberdashery Issue Stirs Butchertown" November 25, 1914 - Joltin' Joe DiMaggio's birthday! November 27, 1978 - Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk are brutally assassinated by disgruntled ex-cop, ex-firefighter and ex-supervisor Dan White.

A weekly handful of the weird and wonderful happenings that have made San Francisco, San Francisco. November 22, 1852 - An earthquake opens a wide fissure through which the waters of Lake Merced flow to the sea -- or does it? November 18, 1865 - San Francisco writer Mark Twain's wild west tale "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" becomes the talk of New York City. November 22, 1935 - The soon-to-be legendary "China Clipper" flying boat lifts off from San Francisco Bay, on its way to making...