archive for October, 2008
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Timecapsule podcast: San Francisco, October 27-November 2
A weekly handful of weird, wonderful and wacky happenings dredged up from the kaleidoscopic depths of San Francisco history.
October 28, 1881:
A murder in Chinatown
A murder in Chinatown.
Newspapers, particularly the often very nasty San Francisco Chronicle, were full of anti-Chinese propaganda in the last decades before the turn of the century. Stories dealing with Chinese people were usually over-heated, pretty racist, and sometimes hard to even get through.
This item was short and straightforward, though, and I might have even skipped over it if I hadn’t noticed an article about the very same case in a legal journal. The tiny bit of testimony from the victim in that piece helps capture the flavour of the parallel world of 1880s Chinatown.
CHINESE CRIME
Shooting of a Courtesan in Kum Cook AlleyBetween 7:30 and 8 o’clock last evening, while Choy Gum, a Chinese courtesan, was bargaining with a fruitdealer in her room on Kum Cook Alley, a Chinaman named Fong Ah Sing walked up to her door and fired a shot at her … 3 Comments » - Posted in San Francisco history blog,San Francisco history podcasts by richard - sparkletack
Monday, October 20th, 2008
Timecapsule podcast — San Francisco, October 20-26
A weekly handful of weird, wonderful and wacky happenings dredged up from the kaleidoscopic depths of San Francisco history.
October 24, 1861
The transcontinental telegraph line is finished, literally uniting the United States by wire just as the country was disintegrating into Civil War.
Just before the shooting started, Congress had offered a substantial bribe (known as a subsidy) to any company agreeing to take on the seemingly impossible project — a hair-brained plan to hang a thin wire on poles marching hundreds of miles across the Great Plains, up the Rockies, and into the Wild West.
Work began in June of 1861. Just like the transcontinental railroad a few years later, one section started in the east, one in the west, with the goal of linking up in Utah.
The two crews worked their ways toward Salt Lake City for six long months, following the route established less than a year and a half earlier by the Pony Express. It was an epic struggle. Thousands of poles were planted in scorching heat and freezing snow, and the workers negotiated not only with the hostile elements, but with Native Americans and Mormons.
1 Comment » - Posted in San Francisco history blog,San Francisco history podcasts by richard - sparkletack
Monday, October 13th, 2008
Timecapsule podcast — San Francisco, October 13-19
A weekly handful of weird, wonderful and wacky happenings dredged up from the kaleidoscopic depths of San Francisco history.
October 18, 1851
On this date, after endless politicking and interminable delay, the mail ship Oregon steamed into San Francisco harbor with the news that California had been admitted to the Union.
The reaction of San Francisco’s 25,000 citizens is something I’ll allow the Daily Alta California to report:
“Business of almost every description was instantly suspended, the courts adjourned in the midst of their work, and men rushed from every house into the streets and towards the wharves, to hail the harbinger of the welcome news. When the steamer rounded Clark’s Point and came in front of the city, her masts literally covered with flags and signals, a universal shout arose from ten thousand voices on the wharves, in the streets, upon the hills, house-tops, and the world of shipping in the bay.
7 Comments » - Posted in San Francisco history blog,San Francisco history podcasts by richard - sparkletack
Monday, October 6th, 2008
Timecapsule podcast — San Francisco, October 6-12
A weekly handful of weird, wonderful and wacky happenings dredged up from the kaleidoscopic depths of San Francisco history.
October 9, 1776
Two hundred and thirty-two years ago this week, the original “Mission San Francisco de Asis” — better known as Mission Dolores — was officially dedicated on the banks of Dolores Lagoon, in today’s aptly named Mission District.
I’m not talking about the graceful white-washed adobe that stands at 16th and Dolores streets today — it would be some 15 years before the good padres, in an early chapter of the church’s “problematic” relationship with native Americans, would draft members of the Ohlone to construct that edifice. No, this was more like a cabin, a temporary log and thatch structure hacked together a little over a block east of the present Mission, near the intersection of Camp and Albion Streets.
3 Comments » - Posted in San Francisco history blog,San Francisco history podcasts by richard - sparkletack
Sparkletack was the blog and podcast of a guy obsessed with diggin' up San Francisco history. The site is on permanent hiatus.
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