The Story Of An Eyewitness by Jack London, Collier’s special Correspondent

Upon receipt of the first news of the earthquake, Collier’s telegraphed  Mr. Jack London – who lived only forty miles from San Francisco – requesting him to go to the scene of the disaster and write the story of what he saw. Mr. London started at once, and he sent the following dramatic description of the tragic events he witnessed in the burning city.

(First published in Collier’s Magazine, May 5, 1906)  (All photos by Jack and Charmain London) (These glass print photographs were taken immediately after the San Francisco Earthquake and are part of the collection at Jack London State Historic Park.)

The earthquake shook down in San Francisco hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of walls and chimneys. But the conflagration that followed burned up hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of property There is no estimating within hundreds of millions the actual damage wrought. Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories and a fringe of dwelling-houses on its outskirts. Its industrial section is wiped out. Its business section is wiped out. Its social and residential section is wiped out. The factories and warehouses, the great stores and newspaper buildings, the hotels and the palaces of the nabobs, are all gone. Remains only the fringe of dwelling houses on the outskirts of what was once San Francisco.

Within an hour after the earthquake shock the smoke of San Francisco’s burning was a lurid tower visible a hundred miles away. And for three days and nights this lurid tower swayed in the sky, reddening the sun, darkening the day, and filling the land with smoke.

On Wednesday morning at a quarter past five came the earthquake. A minute later the flames were leaping upward In a dozen different quarters south of Market Street, in the working-class ghetto, and in the factories, fires started. There was no opposing the flames. There was no organization, no communication. All the cunning adjustments of a twentieth century city had been smashed by the earthquake. The streets were humped into ridges and depressions, and piled with the debris of fallen walls. The steel rails were twisted into perpendicular and horizontal angles. The telephone and telegraph systems were disrupted. And the great water-mains had burst. All the shrewd contrivances and safeguards of man had been thrown out of gear by thirty seconds’ twitching of the earth-crust.
 

The Fire Made its Own Draft

By Wednesday afternoon, inside of twelve hours, half the heart of the city was gone. At that time I watched the vast conflagration from out on the bay. It was dead calm. Not a flicker of wind stirred. Yet from every side wind was pouring in upon the city. East, west, north, and south, strong winds were blowing upon the doomed city. The heated air rising made an enormous suck. Thus did the fire of itself build its own colossal chimney through the atmosphere. Day and night this dead calm continued, and yet, near to the flames, the wind was often half a gale, so mighty was the force.

Wednesday night saw the destruction of the very heart of the city. Dynamite was lavishly used, and many of San Francisco proudest structures were crumbled by man himself into ruins, but there was no withstanding the onrush of the flames. Time and again successful stands were made by the fire-fighters, and every time the flames flanked around on either side or came up from the rear, and turned to defeat the hard-won victory.

An enumeration of the buildings destroyed would be a directory of San Francisco. An enumeration of the buildings undestroyed would be a line and several addresses. An enumeration of the deeds of heroism would stock a library and bankrupt the Carnegie medal fund. An enumeration of the dead-will never be made. All vestiges of them were destroyed by the flames. The number of the victims of the earthquake will never be known. South of Market Street, where the loss of life was particularly heavy, was the first to catch fire.

Remarkable as it may seem, Wednesday night while the whole city crashed and roared into ruin, was a quiet night. There were no crowds. There was no shouting and yelling. There was no hysteria, no disorder. I passed Wednesday night in the path of the advancing flames, and in all those terrible hours I saw not one woman who wept, not one man who was excited, not one person who was in the slightest degree panic stricken.

Before the flames, throughout the night, fled tens of thousands of homeless ones. Some were wrapped in blankets. Others carried bundles of bedding and dear household treasures. Sometimes a whole family was harnessed to a carriage or delivery wagon that was weighted down with their possessions. Baby buggies, toy wagons, and go-carts were used as trucks, while every other person was dragging a trunk. Yet everybody was gracious. The most perfect courtesy obtained. Never in all San Francisco’s history, were her people so kind and courteous as on this night of terror.

A Caravan of Trunks

All night these tens of thousands fled before the flames. Many of them, the poor people from the labor ghetto, had fled all day as well. They had left their homes burdened with possessions. Now and again they lightened up, flinging out upon the street clothing and treasures they had dragged for miles.

They held on longest to their trunks, and over these trunks many a strong man broke his heart that night. The hills of San Francisco are steep, and up these hills, mile after mile, were the trunks dragged. Everywhere were trunks with across them lying their exhausted owners, men and women. Before the march of the flames were flung picket lines of soldiers. And a block at a time, as the flames advanced, these pickets retreated. One of their tasks was to keep the trunk-pullers moving. The exhausted creatures, stirred on by the menace of bayonets, would arise and struggle up the steep pavements, pausing from weakness every five or ten feet.

Often, after surmounting a heart-breaking hill. they would find another wall of flame advancing upon them at right angles and be compelled to change anew the line of their retreat. In the end, completely played out, after toiling for a dozen hours like giants, thousands of them were compelled to abandon their trunks. Here the shopkeepers and soft members of the middle class were at a disadvantage. But the working-men dug holes in vacant lots and backyards and buried their trunks.

The Doomed City

At nine o’clock Wednesday evening I walked down through the very heart of the city. I walked through miles and miles of magnificent buildings and towering skyscrapers. Here was no fire. All was in perfect order. The police patrolled the streets. Every building had its watchman at the door. And yet it was doomed, all of it. There was no water. The dynamite was giving out. And at right angles two different conflagrations were sweeping down upon it.

At one o’clock in the morning I walked down through the same section.  Everything still stood intact. There was no fire. And yet there was a change. A rain of ashes was falling. The watchmen at the doors were gone. The police had been withdrawn. There were no firemen, no fire-engines, no men fighting with dynamite. The district had been absolutely abandoned. I stood at the corner of Kearney and Market, in the very innermost heart of San Francisco.
 

Kearny Street was deserted. Half a dozen blocks away it was burning on both sides. The street was a wall of flame. And against this wall of flame, silhouetted sharply, were two United States cavalrymen sitting their horses, calming watching. That was all. Not another person was in sight. In the intact heart of the city two troopers sat their horses and watched.

Spread of the Conflagration

Surrender was complete. There was no water. The sewers had long since been pumped dry. There was no dynamite. Another fire had broken out further uptown, and now from three sides conflagrations were sweeping down. The fourth side had been burned earlier in the day. In that direction stood the tottering walls of the Examiner building, the burned-out Call building, the smoldering ruins of the Grand Hotel, and the gutted, devastated, dynamited Palace Hotel

The following will illustrate the sweep of the flames and the inability of men to calculate their spread. At eight o’clock Wednesday evening I passed through Union Square. It was packed with refugees. Thousands of them had gone to bed on the grass. Government tents had been set up, supper was being cooked, and the refugees were lining up for free meals

At half past one in the morning three sides of Union Square were in flames. The fourth side, where stood the great St. Francis Hotel was still holding out. An hour later, ignited from top and sides the St. Francis was flaming heavenward. Union Square, heaped high with mountains of trunks, was deserted. Troops, refugees, and all had retreated.

A Fortune for a Horse!

It was at Union Square that I saw a man offering a thousand dollars for a team of horses. He was in charge of a truck piled high with trunks from some hotel. It had been hauled here into what was considered safety, and the horses had been taken out. The flames were on three sides of the Square and there were no horses.

Also, at this time, standing beside the truck, I urged a man to seek safety in flight. He was all but hemmed in by several conflagrations. He was an old man and he Was on crutches. Said he: “Today is my birthday. Last night I was worth thirty thousand dollars. I bought five bottles of wine, some delicate fish and other things for my birthday dinner. I have had no dinner, and all I own are these crutches.”

I convinced him of his danger and started him limping on his way. An hour later, from a distance, I saw the truck-load of trunks burning merrily in the middle of the street.

On Thursday morning at a quarter past five, just twenty-four hours after the earthquake, I sat on the steps of a small residence on Nob Hill. With me sat Japanese, Italians, Chinese, and negroes–a bit of the cosmopolitan flotsam of the wreck of the city. All about were the palaces of the nabob pioneers of Forty-nine. To the east and south at right angles, were advancing two mighty walls of flame

I went inside with the owner of the house on the steps of which I sat. He was cool and cheerful and hospitable. “Yesterday morning,” he said, “I was worth six hundred thousand dollars. This morning this house is all I have left. It will go in fifteen minutes. He pointed to a large cabinet. “That is my wife’s collection of china. This rug upon which we stand is a present. It cost fifteen hundred dollars. Try that piano. Listen to its tone. There are few like it. There are no horses. The flames will be here in fifteen minutes.”

Outside the old Mark Hopkins residence a palace was just catching fire. The troops were falling back and driving the refugees before them. From every side came the roaring of flames, the crashing of walls, and the detonations of dynamite

The Dawn of the Second Day

I passed out of the house. Day was trying to dawn through the smoke-pall. A sickly light was creeping over the face of things. Once only the sun broke through the smoke-pall, blood-red, and showing quarter its usual size. The smoke-pall itself, viewed from beneath, was a rose color that pulsed and fluttered with lavender shades Then it turned to mauve and yellow and dun. There was no sun. And so dawned the second day on stricken San Francisco.

An hour later I was creeping past the shattered dome of the City Hall. Than it there was no better exhibit of the destructive force of the earthquake. Most of the stone had been shaken from the great dome, leaving standing the naked framework of steel. Market Street was piled high with the wreckage, and across the wreckage lay the overthrown pillars of the City Hall shattered into short crosswise sections.

This section of the city with the exception of the Mint and the Post-Office, was already a waste of smoking ruins. Here and there through the smoke, creeping warily under the shadows of tottering walls, emerged occasional men and women. It was like the meeting of the handful of survivors after the day of the end of the world.

Beeves Slaughtered and Roasted

On Mission Street lay a dozen steers, in a neat row stretching across the street just as they had been struck down by the flying ruins of the earthquake. The fire had passed through afterward and roasted them. The human dead had been carried away before the fire came. At another place on Mission Street I saw a milk wagon. A steel telegraph pole had smashed down sheer through the driver’s seat and crushed the front wheels. The milk cans lay scattered around.

All day Thursday and all Thursday night, all day Friday and Friday night, the flames still raged on.

Friday night saw the flames finally conquered. through not until Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill had been swept and three-quarters of a mile of wharves and docks had been licked up.

The Last Stand

The great stand of the fire-fighters was made Thursday night on Van Ness Avenue. Had they failed here, the comparatively few remaining houses of the city would have been swept. Here were the magnificent residences of the second generation of San Francisco nabobs, and these, in a solid zone, were dynamited down across the path of the fire. Here and there the flames leaped the zone, but these fires were beaten out, principally by the use of wet blankets and rugs.

San Francisco, at the present time, is like the crater of a volcano, around which are camped tens of thousands of refugees At the Presidio alone are at least twenty thousand. All the surrounding cities and towns are jammed with the homeless ones, where they are being cared for by the relief committees. The refugees were carried free by the railroads to any point they wished to go, and it is estimated that over one hundred thousand people have left the peninsula on which San Francisco stood.

The Government has the situation in hand, and, thanks to the immediate relief given by the whole United States, there is not the slightest possibility of a famine. The bankers and business men hare already set about making preparations to rebuild San Francisco.

– Collier’s, May 5, 1906

The post Jack London “Story Of An Eyewitness” appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

By Daniel Lazare

After premiering at the New York Film Festival in 1979, this powerful documentary about one of the most dramatic periods in American labor history has been newly restored.

The Wobblies (1979), directed by Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer.

[Screens across the country for International Workers’ Day (May 1). Cities include: New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC,  Seattle, San Francisco, Detroit, Cleveland, Denver, Austin, Park City, Omaha, Portland, and others.]

Looking for a way to celebrate May Day now that mass demonstrations no longer seem to be in style? The Wobblies might be a good place to start. Directed by Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer, it’s been given a full 4k restoration more than 40 years after it came out, and it’s opening up across the country just in time for International Workers’ Day. Although some might be inclined to dismiss it as an exercise in leftwing nostalgia – I confess I was part of that group – it’s in fact a powerful look at one of the most dramatic periods in American labor history. It features people like Roger Baldwin, a leftwing firebrand in his day who went on to found the American Civil Liberties Union, and a dozen or so lesser-known souls declaiming passionately about events in their youth.

The story they tell is about a vast upwelling of class conflict that is now largely forgotten. It takes us back more than a century to the days when America was the economic wonder of the world, an industrial colossus outproducing Britain, France, and Germany combined. To run its mines and mills, it was bringing in 15 million people a year, mostly from southern and eastern Europe. But considering that the country had nothing by way of welfare, unemployment insurance, labor law, or workplace regulations, immigrants who could barely speak English were at the mercy of one of the most rapacious business classes the world had ever seen. A coal-mine owner summed up the prevailing attitude in 1902 when he declared that “the rights and interests of the laboring men will be protected and cared for – not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom has given control of the property interests of this country.”

With God on the side of the bosses, whispering the word “strike” was blasphemous.

It was into this breach that the Industrial Workers of the World, better known as the Wobblies, stepped in 1905. In contrast to the frankly racist American Federation of Labor, a collection of elite craft unions run by the cigar-chomping Samuel Gompers, the IWW organized entire industries from the bottom up without regard to color, ethnicity, or gender. “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common,” the Wobbly constitution declared. “…Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization of the working class.” All the toilets, that is, not merely those who were white, male, native-born, and in possession of certain high-value skills.

Mass strikes erupted from the textile mills of Massachusetts to the logging camps of the Pacific Northwest. The times were not gentle. The Wobblies shows police cracking heads and blasting away with guns. One nonagenarian recounts an astonishing incident in Bisbee, Arizona, in July 1917 when the local sheriff deputized a mob of 2,000 vigilantes at the behest of the Phelps Dodge Corporation, loaded more than a thousand striking copper miners onto a freight train, transported them 200 miles into neighboring New Mexico, and then dumped them off in the middle of the desert. “There were machinegun,” the woman – unidentified, unfortunately – recalls in an Italian accent undiminished by age. “They were gonna shoot if anybody gonna jump from train.”

“1,270-some men,” she adds, “in boxcars – boxcars – like cattle! And then they take them down … to Columbus, New Mexico, without water, without anything.”

“Conditions became worse and worse,” recalls a veteran of an IWW strike in Paterson, New Jersey, the center at the time of the US silk industry. “And there was only one thing to do. You either had to just stop living or become a rebel. And that is when the IWW came in.”

“Agitators, a bunch of agitators are in Paterson,” another woman says. “Agitators! I used to get mad. I said, ‘they’re not agitating us, they just telling us the truth.’”

When 300 Wobblies took the ferry from Seattle to the town of Everett, 30 miles up the Washington coast, to support a strike by local lumber workers, hundreds of vigilantes met them at the dock and opened fire. At least five were killed. “I don’t know how many they shot,” another ex-Wobbly recounts. “Nobody knows. Lots of them went overboard, some jumped, some fell…it was terrible.”

That was in 1916. The next year saw worse as the US entered the war and newspaper headlines blared that the Wobblies were in league with the Kaiser. Repression was massive. The Russian Revolution meanwhile ended up splitting the IWW from within. After all, the Wobbly preamble, true to the union’s anarcho-syndicalist roots, had called on workers to avoid “affiliation with any political party.” Yet the Bolsheviks were a vanguard party par excellence. Lumber camps resounded with debate. “They had terrific arguments in the bunkhouses,” a veteran remembers. “The chairman, he’d get up and open the meeting and … he’d say, ‘Gather round here, fellow workers, we’ve got a goddamn revolution to talk about.’” The next year, 101 Wobblies received sentences of up to 20 years each after being found guilty of preventing the draft, encouraging desertion, and labor intimidation in a mass trial in federal court in Chicago. Membership recovered in the early ’20s, but the overall trajectory was clearly downwards.

The Wobblies is moving and intense, so it’s good to have it back after all these years. But the restoration is not without its poignant side. It would be easy to say that the movie is a reminder that such struggles are never-ending and that we’re all indebted to an earlier generation of rebels for putting their lives on the line. But decades later, we’re left with the uneasy feeling that despite such efforts, conditions have gotten worse, ie more atomized, more commodified, more fractious, and more discouraged. It’s not merely that today’s conditions are more complicated, but that society is losing ground. The Wobblies is not a feel-good movie, and that’s entirely to its credit.

Daniel Lazare is the author of The Frozen Republic and other books about the US Constitution and US policy. He has written for a wide variety of publications including Harper’s and the London Review of Books. He currently writes regularly for the Weekly Worker, a socialist newspaper in London.

The post Movie Overview: “The Wobblies” – A Transferring Story of a Largely Forgotten American Class Battle appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Well-composed aerial photographs of San Francisco, notably those with the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park featured as central subjects, are known to garner literally tens of thousands of likes and comments and shares across social media. (Our The Bay Area Snapshot series contains more than a handful of profiles of such images.) But on occasion, one of them tends to stick out above the proverbial fray. It sits differently on our eyes; it lands in our souls with perfect form. These specific stills remind us — in the flicker of a scrolling LED screen — just how fortunate we are to call the Bay Area home.

A recent snap of this grade, which was taken 5,000-feet above the Golden Gate Bridge and about three miles offshore, made rounds on Twitter and Instagram for its awe-inspiring nature.

“It’s amazing the response and amount of kind words I’ve gotten about this photo,” Oren Rubinstein, the photographer behind the still, told The Bold Italic in an email. “It reminds me of just how much a picture can mean to so many people — and take you completely by surprise.”

A Bay Area local for over thirty years, Rubinstein says that he’s been shooting pictures on an almost daily basis for many years now. His subjects? The region’s cornucopia of natural wonders and urban fixations.

“I’m intrigued by the natural beauty of the Bay Area, and how the urban/suburban landscape integrates within the canvas of the land, ocean, and bay waters,” he says. “Having lived on the coast-side for the past 20-years, the natural focus for me has been looking west towards the sea and northwest to the Gulf of the Farallones.”

With regards to this specific shot, Rubinstein (as well as TBI) like that the picture completely ignores downtown and SoMa, trading towering metropolitan sprawl for San Francisco’s more leveled, greener neighborhoods, like the Sunset District. There’s an uncanny feeling of unchanged-ness in this image — Golden Gate Park sitting largely as it has been for over 150 years; the Golden Gate Bridge still wearing its iconic red hues coming up for now 90 years — even though so much has shifted in SF.

“The ‘small towns’ of the Richmond and Sunset districts, feel connected and ‘bridged’ to that golden beauty of the Bay and beyond by the Golden Gate Bridge,” he adds in closing, before waxing on a bit more gratitude for how widely admired the picture has been.

When asked if we would like to have a more high-resolution photo of the image to use, Rubinstein noted that he actually preferred the more “paint-like” quality of the original photo. We’d have to agree with him, as we imagine other fans of the still—who’ve collectively liked and shared this photograph tens of thousands of times on Twitter, alone—do, too.

The post The Story Behind That Viral Shot of San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office unveiled a new section of its website on Friday that reveals a broad range of statistics regarding how often District Attorney Chesa Boudin and his staff file criminal charges. The announcement comes as Boudin continues to face harsh criticism from city leaders and even his own former prosecutors, who believe the latest release of data does little to exonerate Boudin’s office from what they describe as failing and dangerous polices.

According to Boudin’s office, the new digital dashboards provide current and historical data regarding the number of arrests and prosecutions for a wide range of crimes.

New digital dashboards, posted on the District Attorney’s Office website, reveal prosecution rates for a range of crimes.

Members of the public will be able to easily follow San Francisco crime data over time, the number of incidents and the arrest and prosecution rates for more than 60 types of incidents from 2011 to present.

Sara Yousuf, District Attorney’s Office Deputy Director of Communications

“Members of the public will be able to easily follow San Francisco crime data over time, the number of incidents and the arrest and prosecution rates for more than 60 types of incidents from 2011 to present,” wrote Sara Yousuf, Deputy Director of Communications for the District Attorney, who issued a statement on behalf of the office announcing the new feature. The District Attorney’s Office said the dashboards are intended to help residents see the relationship between incidents, arrests, and prosecutions.

Overall Prosecution Rate in SF Remains Largely the Same Under Boudin

According to the new dashboards, Boudin’s overall prosecution rate mirrors that of his predecessor, now current Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon. Out of all the arrests made by the city’s police department this year, Boudin’s office filed charges about 56 percent of the time, according to the office’s website.

“Simply providing the charging percentage doesn’t capture the full scope of the problem,” said Brooke Jenkins, a former assistant district attorney in Boudin’s office. Jenkins, who resigned last month and joined the effort to recall Boudin, spoke to the Investigative Unit shortly after the release of Boudin’s new dashboards, and voiced skepticism about using the data to draw any sort of concrete conclusions about Boudin’s performance.

Prosecutors Brooke Jenkins and Don Du Bain tell the Investigative Unit they have quit their jobs at the San Francisco District Attorney’s office and joined the effort to recall their former boss, Chesa Boudin. Bigad Shaban reports.

Former SF Prosecutors Accuse DA of Making City More Dangerous

Last month, in her first on-camera interview following her resignation, Jenkins accused Boudin of making San Francisco more dangerous by lessening criminal charges for violent offenders and, at times, failing to prosecute them at all.

“The fact that killers may go free just doesn’t sit very well with me,” Jenkins told the Investigative Unit in October.

While Boudin declined to be interviewed regarding the accusations, his office flatly denied the allegations, calling them “politically motivated.”

3) Prosecutor Don du Bain says he considers District Attorney Chesa Boudin a friend, but strongly believes he needs to be recalled.

“I’ve seen decisions made in this office … since Chesa took over, that shocked my conscience, and I’ve been a prosecutor for 30 years.”

WATCH: pic.twitter.com/vMky6xHY51

— Bigad Shaban (@BigadShaban) October 24, 2021

Longtime prosecutor Don du Bain, who also resigned from the District Attorney’s Office last month, joined Jenkins in voicing doubt about the possibility of gaining any legitimate insight from the newly released data.

He says it’s not enough for the public to know whether charges were filed. He argues it’s crucial to know what the exact charges were and whether those were the actual charges that remained in place when the case was ultimately resolved. Just because charges were filed in a case, he says, doesn’t mean those are the charges that ultimately stick.

#EXCLUSIVE:
1) Two San Francisco prosecutors just quit and tell us they’ve joined the effort to oust their former boss, District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

In their first tv interviews, they explain why they believe Boudin is making the city more dangerous. https://t.co/OJabSfIxHS

— Bigad Shaban (@BigadShaban) October 24, 2021

We are undercharging cases and sometimes not charging them at all.

Don du Bain, longtime prosecutor and former assistant district attorney in San Francisco

“There is a vast discrepancy between what a defendant is charged with versus what he ultimately pleads guilty to or was convicted of,” he said. “We are undercharging cases and sometimes not charging them at all.”

The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit recently reported on a man who was initially charged in San Francisco with assault with a deadly weapon, child endangerment, and several other charges as part of a domestic violence case. The District Attorney’s Office, however, ultimately allowed the defendant to plead to a misdemeanor for vandalism, which also included one year of domestic violence counseling and 3 years of probation.

While Boudin’s overall charging rate hasn’t veered greatly from the city’s rates over the past decade, his willingness to prosecute does differ when focusing on certain types of crimes. Lower-level offenses, for example, such as “disturbing the peace” and “disorderly conduct,” which may include loitering, begging, and being drunk in public, reflect a smaller charging rate in Boudin’s administration. According to the District Attorney’s Office website, Boudin’s staff only files new charges in those types of cases about 10 percent of the time. In the year prior to Boudin taking office, the charging rate was more than twice as high.

In a statement, Boudin said the new online features reflect his devotion to transparency.

My office is committed to transparency and data-driven policies and these new dashboards promote increased public access to criminal justice data.

District Attorney Chesa Boudin

“My office is committed to transparency and data-driven policies and these new dashboards promote increased public access to criminal justice data,” he wrote. “I commend the hard work of our data team in creating these new, straightforward dashboards to increase transparency and information access and we are proud to share them with the public.”

The announcement of the new website comes in the midst of an effort to recall Boudin. His opponents recently submitted more than 83,000 signatures to force him into a recall election next June. San Francisco’s Department of Elections must still certify the signatures, but organizers handed in about 32,000 more signatures than they need to get the recall question onto the ballot.

Supervisor Catherine Stefani, who represents San Francisco’s Marina district, said the new dashboards fall short of offering full transparency in how Boudin’s office prosecutes violent crime.

“It certainly doesn’t tell the big picture,” she said. “You have to provide what is happening on the back end.”

It certainly doesn’t tell the full story.

San Francisco Supervisor Catherine Stefani, referring to prosecution statistics just released by the District Attorney’s Office

9) @SupStefani hopes her legislation forces the DA’s Office to increase transparency. She says San Franciscans deserve to know how often violent offenders are set free.

Yesterday marked 139 days since we first started asking DA Chesa Boudin for an interview.@nbcbayarea pic.twitter.com/tUK76l62Qh

— Bigad Shaban (@BigadShaban) October 29, 2021

Proposed Law Would Require DA, Police Dept. to Regularly Disclose Details About Prosecutions and Arrests Involving Violent Offenders

Stefani says the public deserves to know how cases are ultimately resolved and not just how they are originally charged, which can often be totally different.

On Tuesday, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on an ordinance Stefani authored, which would force the District Attorney’s Office and police department to issue quarterly reports, detailing how often domestic violence offenders are arrested and prosecuted. The District Attorney’s Office would also be required to note exactly what kinds of sentences are handed down for each of those cases.

San Francisco Supervisor Catherine Stefani is trying to force District Attorney Chesa Boudin to release details about how his office prosecutes some of the city’s most violent offenders. Bigad Shaban reports.

In a letter sent to lawmakers last week, Boudin noted “key areas of concern” regarding “limitations of the proposed reporting requirements.”

“The requested statistics outlined in the ordinance overlook the wide array of victim services and advocacy that my office provides to survivors of domestic violence, irrespective of whether a criminal case is being pursued,” Boudin wrote. “These services include but are not limited to, assistance applying for civil protective orders, crisis support services and counseling, guidance to navigate the criminal justice system, referrals to local resources and services, support at court hearings, and a wide variety of both short term and ongoing support.”

The San Francisco Police Department voiced support for the legislation during a committee hearing on the ordinance last week.

Stefani tells the Investigative Unit she’s confident her legislation will pass.

“I know I have the six votes,” she said.

If approved, the new reporting requirements would go into effect during the first quarter of 2022.

“If you’re not explaining what is happening after the charges, you’re not getting the full picture of what is happening,” Stefani said. “It certainly doesn’t tell the full story.”

Contact The Investigative Unit

submit tips | 1-888-996-TIPS | email Bigad Shaban

Watch Our Entire Investigative Series

The post San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin Unveils New Crime Knowledge, Critics Say It Doesn’t Inform Full Story – NBC Bay Space appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

When you picture a residential street in San Francisco, you probably think of a row of ornate, brightly painted Victorian houses, all lined up on a steep hill. But there is one important feature of this image that is easy to miss, although without it it would make the scene very strange. A curved bay window wrapped in the facade is a signature piece of Bay Area architecture – even if it really has nothing to do with the Bay Area.

The typical bay window is not only found in Victorians – more on that later – but is just as important for the Bay Area as fog or the Golden Gate Bridge. The style of the windows is actually older than the Bay Area. It is unclear exactly when bay windows were “invented”, but they grew in popularity during the English Renaissance and saw a boom from the early 16th to the early 17th centuries. This explains why the windows are still so common in cities around the world, with a remarkable prevalence in the UK and later New England.

The bay window that most San Franciscans think of – the one displayed on a classic Victorian building like the Painted Ladies, for example – is a particular type of two shorter windows and one longer window that converge at angles to form a “bay window.” ” to build. Tim Kelley, an advisor and conservation advocate in San Francisco, said they performed in the city in the late 1880s.

They continued to enjoy great popularity during the Victorian era when so much of the architecture was praised for its function. “You get more light when you put a bay window in, and the Victorians took advantage of that,” said Bonnie Spindler, a San Francisco-based real estate agent and “Victorian Specialist”. “At the time they were built, [residents] relied on gas lighting and the interiors were painted dark to hide the soot from the gas lights and the soot from the coal burning. “

She said this helped especially in foggy San Francisco.

The windows protruding above the building also provided additional space. “While bay windows have aesthetic (shape) and functional (natural light and views) features that add to their iconic status in San Francisco architecture past and present, there is an economic motivation for bay windows that is often overlooked,” said Steven Doctors, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of San Francisco. “… Bay windows efficiently increase the number of square meters of a building, often by protruding beyond the property line and into the air space above the public pavement. This ‘free’ space in public space increases the number of square meters of the building and thus increases its economic value or rental income for private property owners. “

Row of seven Victorian houses in central San Francisco known as Painted Ladies.

LimeWave – Inspiration To Explore / Getty Images

San Francisco is also known for preserving older homes, and much of what has been preserved has been old Edwardian and Victorian homes that have bay windows, Spindler said.

There’s also an obvious reason why bay windows are mistakenly synonymous with the Bay Area – it’s in the name. “We are the Bay Area and they are bay windows,” said Spindler. “There are many other bays, but we are probably the most famous one.”

Today bay windows are more common in San Francisco than Victorian homes, and they come in all styles and sizes. They can be found in Art Deco, marina, and even some Tudor Revival homes, although many more use an arched window that includes four or more windows to create a more rounded arch. In any case, the houses still fulfill their original intention – more light and more square meters.

Rob Thomson, president of the Victorian Alliance, said bay windows in San Francisco can also be used as a handy shortcut when determining the age of a home. “No bay (flat front) or an angled bay usually means it’s 1870s or earlier. A box shaft is associated with the 1880s, and a rounded shaft means it’s 1890s or later, ”he said. “The system isn’t perfect, and there are exceptions, but it’s a useful tool and a great way to sound smart to your friends.”

Not only are Bay Area windows quintessential, they’re so popular that they even add value to a home, Spindler said. She said that having fireplaces makes them high on people’s list of favorite features when looking to buy real estate. But there is something incredibly unique about the windows that has almost no other function. “They are really bay windows that draw your attention from the outside of the building and draw your attention from the inside of the building,” she said. “There are very few functions that migrate from the inside to the outside.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include additional information about bay windows and the age of houses.

The post The story behind San Francisco’s iconic bay home windows appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

THE ANGEL – Oh, you can play football here all weekend until your brain boils and your pupils dilate. Even without an NFL team, you can hear cheering crowds on Fridays and Saturdays and scatter them over the entire spread on Sundays. Even if the return of an NFL team remains speculation at this point – Rams? Raider? Charger? – You can still swim in Los Angeless’ futuristic patchwork quilt of pro football supporters. ¶ If you are looking for a Crisly Run Spread Offensive on a Prep Friday Night, you may see a Crisly Run Spread Offensive on a Prep Friday Night. If you catch the right Saturday, you might find two gigantic college stadiums that welcome a collective of 145,918 spectators on the same evening. On Sundays, drive like a devil, park a grouse, and hit 10 NFL team-themed bars – from the Cleveland Browns at Chimneysweep in Sherman Oaks to the Oakland Raiders crowd at the Killarney Pub & Grill in Huntington Beach the Washington Redskins at Joxer Daly’s in Culver City, somewhere in between.

Check the map.

Over three days and portions of 13 games, you could have about 50 sports talks in Los Angeles. You could hear Los Angeles swell without the NFL, but wouldn’t that make it even better? You could hear an entire generation grow from infancy to adulthood without ever knowing a local team from the country’s top division. You might even hear the classic Los Angeles sports talk that goes like this:

Two footballers sit in the stands at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks on Friday night. One is a youth coach, the other helped him. They watch their 16-year-old sons play for the Southland’s top-ranked team, according to the Los Angeles Times: the Centennial Huskies from Corona, 45 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Youth coach Larry Reed said, “I think you’ve been here for so long without the NFL. You have some people, yes they are hungry, but most people, it has been 20 years . . .”

And the other man, Troy Spencer Jr., said, “Was it that long ago?”

It has, but not exactly. It’s been 21 years since Christmas Eve 1994 when the Raiders at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum lost to Kansas City 19-9 and the Rams lost to the Redskins 24-21 on Freeway 5 at Anaheim Stadium, and both left after that.

“Sometimes you go so long that we know how to go without it,” Spencer said before pointing to the horde of other options in the area. “I mean, it’s Southern California.”

Any new team “is well received as long as the team wins,” said Pat Haden, the Southern California athletic director who once played quarterback at the school and later for the Los Angeles Rams. “But I don’t think it’s a necessary part of the Southern California landscape, anymore.”

Raiders fans cheer at the Killarney Pub & Grill on Sunday. (Patrick T. Fallon / For the Washington Post)
Former raider John Vella signs an autograph. (Patrick T. Fallon / For the Washington Post)

Sight and sounds

This landscape is teeming with sounds, from the public address near halftime in Notre Dame on Friday evening (with Centennial 42: 0) leading – “As a reminder, there are snacks on both sides” – to the three-part, Spanish-speaking, tuba-including band, some ladies for a tailgate in front of the Los Angeles Coliseum to the disc jockey (!)

On a single Sunday in this unusual football city, at 11:11 am in Santa Monica you can hear Patriots fans groaning because Julian Edelman cannot handle Tom Brady’s passport to Redskins fans in Culver City singing, “DCD! DCD! ” as the defense stop the Rams in third place, to the Raiders fans in the south roaring in a packed crowd as Seth Roberts caught Derek Carr’s winning touchdown pass in Oakland, and then cheered again when the bar manager announced, “One fancy little tradition that we love to do here in Killarney when we win is shots!”

The landscape is also full of sights – from the last orange sunlight of the mainland as teams warm up next to a busy boulevard in Notre Dame, to the magically lit Rose Bowl from a hillside while UCLA has its third neighborhood in Arroyo Seco in. plays Pasadena, to the clipboard Victor Acosta holds with a list of Bears table reservations at 9:30 a.m., 30 minutes before kick-off, at the Tinhorn Flats Saloon & Grill in Burbank.

On a single Sunday, you might see a sign in O’Brien’s Irish Pub in Santa Monica – “All tables are reserved for the New York Giants Meetup Group only” – for enough Ravens fans to grab the happy ending up on Sunset Boulevard Baltimorean tourists Shavone Green and Jessica Gaither looked upbeat when Green said to a gathering of Seattle Seahawks fans down on Costa Mesa in a bowling alley bar, “We came up here and it felt like home.”

And there are tons of different feelings, not least the piping hot patch in the tailgate area at USC while 2Pac and NWA and J. Balvin boom in your ears, or the urgency on the Rose Bowl floor while UCLA and Brigham Young get ready and UCLA -Fans are booming in their ears, or the claustrophobia in Sunday bars with a hundred thick walls.

At the end of a football weekend in a city without professional football, the brain remembers so many jerseys from so many teams, so many years: a black Jerome Bettis # 32 (Steelers), a brown Gerard Warren # 94 (Browns), the obligatory one blue Rob Gronkowski No. 87 (Patriots), a blue Phil Simms No. 11 (Giants) with a blue Michael Strahan No. 92 (Giants), a Heath Shuler No. 5 (Redskins), a number of old Rams (Haden, Jack Youngblood, Leroy Irvin) and Ravens Purple on all four Baltimore women sitting upstairs front (Justin Forsett, Terrell Suggs, the still-loved Torrey Smith, and Anquan Boldin).

While absolutely everyone agrees that the country’s second largest metropolitan area can work without the NFL – it’s proven – it’s Los Angeles or Southland, so the angles vary from hope to desire to whatever.

She sold the high school memorabilia she created on a Friday night – Notre Dame Ladies Bling Shirts: $ 40, Scarves: $ 20, etc. – Stephanie Morgan-Russell of the San Francisco Bay Area who Affectionately reminiscent of the ’49s days of the 1980s and 1990s, said, “What’s the problem? There are two teams up there with 6 million people! 22 million people live here. And a lot of soccer fans. I do not get it.”

The Centennial Huskies enter the field before facing Notre Dame. (Patrick T. Fallon / For the Washington Post)

Matt Logan, the trainer at Centennial, a Seahawks fan because he likes Coach Pete Carroll, said, “I think it would be good. I do. However, I don’t know if I would like a team to move. I want a start-up team. I want an LA team. You know, when the Raiders come back, the Rams come back, the Chargers show up, everything’s kind of ‘been there, done that’. ”

Anthony Catalano, Centennial quarterback, a Buffalo Bills fan born in 1997, said, “I look at things when there’s an NFL team in LA, when it gets good it could be like the Lakers. It could be like a. be [shining] Franchise like that because that’s LA. I mean, everyone wants to live in Southern California. “

Southern California Trojans fan Danny Talamentes, 22, born and raised, believes a team could hold the region together, saying, for lack of a better word, walk through the Colosseum right there if you show up early enough. You see this person come in and say, ‘Oh my god this is my boy! I want to do that well! ‘ You don’t see them [now] regularly. I find it easier to identify with someone, for example Matt Leinart, than with Russell Wilson. Because Matt Leinart played here [in college]. Russell Wilson doesn’t. ”

He says, “If I had an NFL team that had the history or half the history of the Dodgers, I would be a huge NFL fan no matter which team was here.”

Members of the Southern California Rams Booster Club pose with their Return of the LA Rams scarves. (Patrick T. Fallon / For the Washington Post)
Young Rams fans spin a wheel to win a raffle prize at half time at Maggie’s Pub. (Patrick T. Fallon / For the Washington Post)

A generation not lost

They all point to a unique reality for a huge metropolis: a generation of children grew up locally without the NFL. In fact, at the big Rams meeting where fan club officers wear badges and lanyards, President Ralph Valdez discovers two such generations: the guys of today and those in their twenties, like his son, also Ralph, 28, who only talks to Tony recalls Banks playing quarterback in the final days of the Rams in Los Angeles.

“It still means the same thing because of the name ‘Rams’,” said the elder Valdez. “The St. Louis thing, they play in St. Louis, but we all feel the same. Rams fans feel no matter where the Rams are, whether it’s Greenland, Idaho, Virginia. As long as they are the Rams, we will follow them. ”At the same time:“ When you grew up as a Rams fan, you are missing something in your heart. It’s not here. “

Back under the high school lights on Friday night, Reed and Spencer marvel. Spencer says his son is missing an NFL team, but he likes the Rams because of Tavon Austin, whom he loved to watch when Austin played for West Virginia, a kind of random semi-andom that may be particularly typical in Los Angeles. “Lots of Cowboys fans, lots of Chargers fans, Seahawks fans, 49ers fans, Pittsburgh fans. . . . The diversity of fans makes it really scary to an NFL team. My thing is you’ve been away for so long, the young fans like my son, they don’t really have a team from LA, so are they really going to choose a team that lives here? “

It’s true, everyone seems to know if there’s a Packers bar on this boulevard, a Jets bar over there on this street. There is of course iron solidarity among the Raiders.

“You can’t come in here with a different jersey,” said Roland Lujan, 55, who had to watch the Raiders come and go in Los Angeles in his day. “You refuse. They don’t want fights or anything. Raider fans don’t fight against Raider fans. So you are not allowed. ”

Lujan remembers a lot of fans who long for one team, but not two, please. He thinks the Chargers should definitely stay in San Diego. His own father, 80, took him to the Raiders, lived next door, and later enjoyed his son’s daily call at 5:30 p.m. to enjoy the victory over the Ravens. At the end of a Sunday, when the last sun leaves the mainland, that is the second most touching story.

In the first, Rams Club Vice President Ernie Almeida told of that final game day against the Redskins in 1994. He remembered players lining up and high five fans saying goodbye to the Bend railings. Almeida didn’t quite believe it and shortly afterwards took a day off “to see if it was true”.

He went to Rams Park. He checked the moving van. “And my heart was broken,” he said. “It really happened. The semi-trailers drove off. It was gone.”

Shortly after the fans cheered loudly over a distant Rams sack in a large hall in a sloping football metropolis in 2015, Almeida said that if they came back, he would take off on another day and buy season tickets. He would try to see if the vans came back.

The post L.A. story: Soccer passions run excessive, even with no hometown professional workforce appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

In “Miracle: Letters to the President”, traveling on the train tracks is the only option

OnDemandKorea

Joon-kyeong, the protagonist in Miracle: Letters to the President, lives in such a remote village that getting to the nearest train station can be a matter of life or death. Trains run through his village, but they don’t stop there. To reach the school and other facilities, villagers have to walk on the train tracks, and given the unpredictable train schedule, such walks sometimes end in tragedy. Joon-kyeong, played by Park Jung-min, has a dream. It’s the only dream he dares to have, but he’s committed. He wants to build a train station in his village so that no more lives are lost.

Miracle: Letters to the President is a fictional account of the construction of Yangwon Railway Station in North Gyeongsang Province. South Korea’s only privately built train station opened in 1988 and stayed open until 2012 when transportation to the area improved. Set in the 1980s, the film is a hopeful story about the importance of staying true to a dream.

Joon-kyeong writes repeatedly to the President of Korea asking him to approve a train station for his village, but receives no response. When he starts high school, his commute across the train tracks is dangerous and time consuming. Fortunately, the long way to work does not affect his studies. He’s a math prodigy.

New opportunities open up for Joon-kyeong after meeting his enthusiastic classmate Ra-hee, played by Im Yoona. She is a firm believer in chasing dreams and wants to be his muse.

His father, played by Lee Sung-min, is a railroad engineer and the two don’t spend much time together. However, when Joon-Kyeong is offered a promising escape from their remote village, he is reluctant to leave. It is Joon-kyeong’s relationship with his sister that is the emotional core of the film, and realizing the extent of that relationship offers a new perspective on his decisions.

Miracle: Letters to the President will be published in South Korea on September 15, but will also be shown in the United States a few days later. OnDemandKorea (ODK) will present the film on September 17 in California at CGV Los Angeles and CGV Buena Park theaters as well as in Fairfax, Virginia. Further screenings are planned in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and New Jersey and the film will eventually also be broadcast on the streaming platform.

The film’s star, Park Jung-min, is best known for his roles in Bleak Night, Time To Hunt and Deliver Us From Evil. Soon he can be seen in the Netflix NFLX drama Hellbound.

Im Yoona, a member of the K-pop group Girls Generation, recently starred in the films Exit and Confidential Assignment 2. She also appeared in the drama Hush and will play a role in the drama Big Mouse.

Actor Lee Sung-min appeared in the films The Man Standing Next and Mr. Zoo. This year he will appear in the drama Juvenile Judgment and next year he will appear in the drama The Chaebol’s Youngest Son.

Lee Soo-kyung, who plays Joon-kyeong’s sister Bo-Kyeong, has appeared in the films Mr. Zoo and The Odd Family: Zombies on Sale, as well as in the dramas Law School and Where Stars Land.

In Miracle: Letters to the President, director Lee Jang-hoon created a moving story about the power of determination.

The post Letters To The President’ Brings A Transferring Story To US Screens appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

I was rummaging through the stacks of City Lights Bookstore in North Beach when I saw an attractive young woman in the Russian Literature section. She read The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol, one of my favorite authors. I pretended to be interested in the books nearby and took the courage to speak to her.

“I love the book you’re reading now,” I said. “I don’t drink coffee today. Only hot bread and onions. “

She gave me a strange look.

“This is from The Nose. It’s the third story. “

“I haven’t read that yet,” she said. She had a European accent.

She had beautiful green eyes and pale pink lips.

“You don’t meet a lot of fans of Russian literature,” I continued. “How did you discover Gogol?”

“A friend thought I would like it because it’s weird and twisted.”

“That was my major in college, weird and twisted.”

I was hoping for a laugh. She remained stoic.

“I’m Loren.”

“Adeline,” she said.

“Nice to meet you, Adeline. Where do you come from?”

“Germany.”

“What brought you to San Francisco?”

“I studied philosophy at Berkeley.”

“That should bring you a lot of job offers.”

She winced like my joke was an insult.

“I don’t usually start conversations in bookstores. I thought, since you’ve been reading Gogol, we might have something in common. “

“Maybe,” she said.

I took that as encouragement.

“How would you like to continue this conversation over dinner?”

“Okay,” she said.

“Big. How is Friday night?”

“OK.”

“Wonderful,” I said immediately and regretted the statement.

She took a pen from her purse and picked up a flyer for a bookstore announcing an upcoming lecture on death and dying. She scribbled her address on the back of the flyer and handed it to me.

“I’ll see you on Friday at six, Adeline.”

On Friday I took the bus to the Lower Haight District. I walked south on Divisadero Street through the panhandle toward Pacific Heights. 49ers pennants were everywhere to celebrate the team’s fourth Super Bowl win in nine years.

When I got to Block 1600, I was looking for Adeline’s apartment. I came to a large stone and glass building with a sign that said, Mount Zion Hospital Psychiatric Clinic. My heart has sunk She wrote down the wrong address so she wouldn’t go out with me.

I turned to leave when I decided to check the address anyway. The front door was locked. I pressed the buzzer. A nurse dressed in white appeared. He seemed upset with my presence. I asked if there was a woman named Adeline. He told me to wait and then disappeared into the building.

Adeline appeared a few minutes later, no makeup, her brown hair tied in a bun. She wore a long-sleeved green blouse with a ruffled collar. I did my best to hide my shock. Was she a patient in psychiatry?

We started walking on Divisadero.

“How are you?” I asked.

“OK.”

“Are you doing something interesting today?”

“I went to the Palace of Fine Arts.”

“It’s beautiful there.”

“I sat by the lake and read my book.”

“Have you already arrived at the story of The Nose?”

“I will never eat bread again,” she said.

I smiled. We turned onto Broadway and headed for North Beach. As we approached the Broadway tunnel, she stopped. The tunnel was about a quarter of a mile long, but it was dark and noisy with traffic. She seemed careful.

“Do you want to take the steps?”

She nodded yes. We went across the tunnel and descended the stairs on the other side. We drove down Broadway on Columbus Street, past the shabby strip bars and Italian cafes.

I took us to my favorite restaurant, Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store Cafe. We sat at a small table near the door. I ordered a carafe of Chianti.

“I don’t drink,” said Adeline.

“Would you like a soda?”

“Only water.”

The waiter brought water and wine. I’ve looked through the menu. Adeline stared out the window at Washington Square Park, where teenagers tossed frisbees and locals ate lunch. She looked sad. She noticed that I was staring and looking away.

We were both aware of the elephants in the cafe, their presence in the mental hospital. I decided to break the ice. I leaned forward and whispered, “Why are you in the hospital?”

She fidgeted.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

She looked me in the eye and searched for my safety. She rolled up her right sleeve and showed me her wrist. There was a thick pink scar, slightly raised and rough. I noticed other scars along her arm. She covered her wrist again.

“I tried to kill myself six months ago.” She was trembling.

“I’m glad you didn’t succeed,” I said, hiding my shock. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

“You want to get some food and sit in the park,” I asked.

“OK.”

She got a salad while I was ordering a small pizza. We walked through the park and sat on the steps in front of the Church of St. Peter and Paul. It was a beautiful day, the fast moving clouds dissolved over the Coit Tower. We observed a group of Chinese seniors practicing tai chi.

“I hope I can do this when I’m her age,” I said.

I devoured a slice of pizza.

“Are you from San Francisco,” she asked.

“I lived in Los Angeles until I was 24. Then my girlfriend broke up with me. It got me into a tailspin. I started drinking weed and smoking, and the next thing I thought was the world would be a better place without me. I made a list of ways to kill myself. I hated guns so that was out. Knives seemed too painful. I am against pharmaceuticals, that excludes sleeping pills. I thought of jumping off a building, but what if I land on someone? I was stoned one night listening to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” as I was falling into this dark hole. I got in my car and headed for Dead Man’s Curve on Mulholland Drive. There Jan from Jan and Dean drove over the cliff. I hit the gas. When I was about 100 meters away, I put on the brakes. I almost walked over the cliff anyway. I do not know what happened. I guess I was wrong. “

“Who are Jan and Dean?” She asked.

We both laughed.

“I’m glad you didn’t succeed.”

“Me too,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes sir.”

“Why did you give me the hospital address? We could have met anywhere and I wouldn’t have known you were a patient. “

“Maybe I wanted you to know.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it makes me feel less alone.”

A baseball rolled across the street from a stray throw between a father and son. I grabbed the ball and tossed it to the boy.

We finished eating and went for lattes. We went to Fisherman’s Wharf and listened to the sea lions barking. We strolled through an outdoor farmers market by the marina, then headed west on Union Street. We entered an art gallery with a collection of Polish movie posters. Adeline was drawn to a poster of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, on which a human skull was framed by a porthole. My favorite was a poster from Chinatown that had Jack Nicholson’s nose slit open.

We held hands as we walked. I felt butterflies and tingling on my arm like I was falling in love with Adeline. I also felt protective of her as I was aware of her weak condition. We crossed the steep hill of Fillmore Street. Once at the top we enjoyed the beautiful view of the San Francisco Bay. The Golden Gate Bridge was shrouded in mist, while Alcatraz shone like a diamond.

“I’ve always found Alcatraz cruel,” I said. “The prisoners were so close to the city that they could hear people laughing and singing while they were locked in a cage like animals.”

“That’s how I feel,” said Adeline. “Everything around me is beautiful, but I only see darkness.”

“You won’t always feel that way.”

“How do you know?”

“Not me. But neither do you.”

We entered Pacific Heights and sat at a table in front of an ice cream parlor. A woman in sweatpants approached a black and white husky. The dog licked Adeline’s hand. For the first time I saw her smile. She was beautiful.

“He doesn’t usually do that with strangers,” said the woman in the sweatpants.

As the sun went down, the temperature dropped. We went on, holding hands again. We’re driving down California Street to Divisadero. We approached the hospital where she was staying. I felt sad. I didn’t want the night to end.

“Can we do that again,” I asked.

She frowned and pulled her lips together tightly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My mom is from Germany. She brings me home. “

I felt the air escape from my lungs as if I’d been hit in the stomach.

“That’s great,” I said, feigning optimism. “You will be with the family. It’s a good thing. “

“I hope so,” she said.

I took a pen and notepad out of my back pocket and scribbled my address.

“We can be pen pals,” I said.

“I can’t promise I’ll write.”

“Of course, of course,” I replied. “No pressure.”

I leaned over and kissed her cheek and forehead. I hugged her. We held the hug long before she pulled back. She half smiled and then entered the building. I watched her disappear from view.

I stood there for a few minutes, stunned. I cursed my luck. Then I felt elated just as quickly. In San Francisco, I had finally made a connection. I started walking home.

Several years passed. One day I came home from work and found an airmail letter in my mailbox. It was from Adeline. I tore open the envelope and read her words.

The letter began: “You were right. I won’t always feel the way I felt in San Francisco. ”She added a smiley face. She wrote that she lived with her parents in Frankfurt. She worked in a veterinary clinic and helped find homes for lost dogs. She described the process of capturing abandoned animals on the street, nursing them back to health, and then finding loving families to take them in. This gave her a sense of purpose. She added that our night together helped her healing process and she was grateful to have met me. She ended the letter with a quote from Gogol.

“Everywhere above all the suffering out of which our life is woven, a radiant joy will happily flash by.”

She added a postscript saying she bought an album from Jan and Dean and when she played it she thought of me.

The post A San Francisco Relationship Story appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Just as the fog settles over San Francisco in July and the cable cars are overcrowded with tourists, the ovens in the kitchen of the Fairmont Hotel go on and the staff is busy.

They bake gingerbread cookies and mark the beginning of a five-month attempt to build a gingerbread house with the stature and complexity of a Victorian Queen Annes.

This year’s house plan called for 8,000 gingerbread cookies made from a typical recipe that includes flour, sugar, molasses, spices and butter. These were produced in summer and autumn and stored in a temperature-controlled room until construction began in November.

“It gets stale, but the stale the gingerbread, the harder the brick and the more stable the house,” says Emma Curtis, the hotel’s kitchen and restaurant manager. “It still smells good. You see people walking through the lobby and sniffing it.

“We don’t promote it, but we see people eating it too. The adults are the worst.”

Like the Christmas tree in Union Square and the wreaths in the windows of Macy’s, the Fairmont gingerbread house – now in its 11th year – has become a lovable San Francisco vacation tradition. It is enjoyed by hotel guests and locals who go on trips to the two-story House of Sweets annually while their children explore the sweet delicacies while sipping sparkling wine in the lobby.

The 2019 creation is the largest yet at 25 feet high and 45 feet wide; It has a private dining area that can seat up to 10 people. The exterior is adorned with twinkling lights, swirls of royal frosting, and a mix of candy. Lollipops grow in the planters, gummy candies frame the arched windows, and marshmallow sugar peeps in the shape of trees, reindeer, gingerbread and snowmen are used everywhere.

“Candy is ordered months in advance,” says Curtis. “We bought the last 15 boxes of peeps trees from Peeps. We’ll keep peeps in business.”

A total of 1,900 pounds of candy were used and everything was put together with 3,500 pounds of royal icing.

A team of six has spent more than 1,200 hours assembling this year’s house. Among them was Larry Walton who worked on the last 10 houses. Walton works as a painter for the hotel for most of the year, but in the fall he changes to the role of senior engineer at the gingerbread house, taking responsibility for the lights and animation display.

This year the main room features a scene in front of Santa’s house with letters flowing out of a mailbox. The letters were written to Santa Claus by the children of the hotel staff. One elf plays peak-a-boo, jumping in and out through a hole in the ground, and another elf climbs a ladder to the top of a reindeer barn.

Walton is handy and uses small motors made from everyday objects to set the figures and lawn ornaments in motion. He used a car seat motor to kick Santa’s legs out of the chimney.

On the gingerbread roof, Walton has put together a scene from Lombard Street, which is surrounded by Victorian houses, themed after “A Christmas Carol”. A cable car goes down the crooked road and the trees are shrouded in lights.

“I spent a day and a half putting all the Christmas lights on the miniature houses,” he says. “You have to cut the wires in half and re-solder.”

Walton says the team has learned from its mistakes over the years and is constantly improving the design.

The kitchen staff once tried adding vinegar to the icing because they heard the recipe would last longer. “You didn’t love the result”
he said. “It changed the smell.”

Another year a ceiling painted with chocolate melted and dripped on the heads of the visitors. Once a smoke machine placed in the chimney produced moisture and made the floor slippery.

“I kind of know what works and what doesn’t, and I can say, ‘Hey, we have to do this because I went through it,'” said Walton. “We used to hang gingerbread on the ceiling. And pieces cracked and fell on people.”

Amy Graff is a digital editor for SFGATE. Email: agraff@sfgate.com.

The post The wild story of how the Fairmont gingerbread home will get made appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

There is no shortage of great homes in San Francisco. From ornate Victorians to sprawling hilltop mansions, these ornate houses often have a distinctive feature in their midst – a plaster shield or coat of arms that adorns the facade.

Some buildings even have several. As soon as you spot them, you can’t see them anymore – you suddenly find that everyone from your neighbor to the rundown apartment building on the block has at least one small one hidden in an upper corner. While it is easy to assume that these are meaningful family crests that mark homes with an ancestral trait that could be passed down through generations, most of them appear to be simply ornamental plants. They’re not necessarily that old either.

In the 19th century, Victorian houses were often “cartouched” to indicate wealth or status through their home decor. These decorative, carved decorations were rather classic and did not show anything in the middle. Bob Buckter, an architectural colorist named Dr. Color, who is creating new color schemes for Victorian buildings in the Bay Area, said cartridges have been growing in popularity for thousands of years. They started with Egyptian papyrus art and usually had vertical ovals with a little message in them. “They are remnants of architectural details from ancient Europe and earlier,” he said.

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATE

In the past century, architects typically added coats of arms or cartouches to give the building “an interesting, classy look,” he said. Today, when he advises on renovation projects, clients often ask if they’d like to add them. “I recommend adding them only if they fit the era of the architecture and could possibly have been there originally,” said Buckter.

In the 20th century, the shields and coats of arms appeared more frequently in San Francisco, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, and showed “heraldry” in the decorative pieces.

“They’re most common in Mediterranean and Spanish style homes that are common in the United States [Richmond, the Sunset] and the marina, ”said Amy Firman, partner and mold maker at Lorna Kollmeyer Ornamental Plaster. “While we see specific coats of arms in some of these designs, it’s hard to tell if these were made specifically for their customers or if they reflect something from the designer’s family history and were only mass-produced to be decorative.”

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATE

San Francisco homeowners with a crumbling crest on their home can head to Lorna Kollmeyer’s store, the only place in the Bay Area that still does this type of cleaning job. The team can restore it, or even design and create a mold for a whole new one – a small shield can cost as little as $ 75, while more custom engineering on a larger crest can cost $ 2,000 or more.

From the sketch to the renovated house: Lorna Kollmeyer designed a new cartridge for this Sunset house.

Lorna Kollmeyer

While Kollmeyer said most of the coats of arms they make are decorative and usually use popular elements like a lion and lily, they occasionally have customers who want to recreate a family crest, or at least include the family initial in a shield. For the house of Queen Anne on 2307 Broadway (formerly owned by the film director Francis Ford Coppola), the late designer Jessica McClintock commissioned Kollmeyer with an individual coat of arms in 2019, which she designed based on her family history and which is still visible today.

The late designer Jessica McClintock commissioned an individual coat of arms for Queen Anne’s house on 2307 Broadway.

Lorna Kollmeyer

San Francisco historical writer Lorri Ungaretti agreed that most people consider them to be family crests, even if most don’t. “I know they were all the rage in the 1930s. … They were just one possible object to build houses (often at sunset) by stairs. “

And I’m not the first to wonder about their origins. Danielle Baskin, an artist living in SF, asked a question about the meaning of the coats of arms on Twitter back in January and received a multitude of responses. But a joke answer spurred an idea.

This was the blue check on Twitter

– Adam Scheuring (@admsch), January 29, 2021

Baskin created a website for “Blue Check Homes” within two hours of the initial idea and soon had 495 applicants for the fake service that “would prove to people outside your home that you are an authentic public figure”. The application required applicants to submit their names and social media accounts, and included absurd qualifications such as “thought leader” or a member of a professional esports league. The prank went so viral that Snopes even conducted an official fact-checking of the company, calling it satire.

1of14th

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATEshow moreShow less

2of14th

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATEshow moreShow less3of14th

4thof14th

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATEshow moreShow less

5of14th

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATEshow moreShow less6thof14th

7thof14th

Amy Firman, Lorna Kollmeyer and Mike Dyar from Lorna Kollmeyer Zierputz in the Hunter’s Point Shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATEshow moreShow less

8thof14th

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATEshow moreShow less9of14th

10of14th

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATEshow moreShow less

11of14th

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATEshow moreShow less12thof14th

13thof14th

Lorna Kollmeyer decorative plaster in the Hunter’s Point shipyard.

Patricia Chang / Special on SFGATEshow moreShow less14thof14th

Despite the joke’s popularity, a crest with a little secret seems a little more enticing than a blue tick.

The post The story behind the mysterious crests on previous San Francisco houses appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.