gesso logo.jpg

From our recording studio in Brooklyn, we make audio that celebrates human creativity, history and the spaces we live to learn about.

A glimpse into some of the earliest settlers, innovators, and innovations from 19th century San Francisco's "Loma Alta" down through its most notorious neighborhood.

1851-california-city-photo.jpg

Telegraph Hill

Call it the sadist in me, but I consider it a rite of passage for anyone visiting San Francisco to scale the summit of Telegraph Hill.  You just gotta do it (though if you opt to take a taxi, or the 39 bus, how will I know, really?).  From the pinnacle of the city down the submarine gutters once flooded with seawater and puke (and now just puke), you’re setting sail on a gut-busting, brow-beating journey through the origins of California herself.  Perhaps like no other neighborhood in the city, your descent down and around Telegraph Hill will furnish a comprehensive visual and historical panorama of the modern, man-made city named, ironically, after the simple beggar-monk, Saint Francis of Assisi. This, my anonymous friend, is a city founded on and sustained by materialism and violence far more than morality and pacifism.  From the dawn of the Gold Rush to the twilight of Silicon Valley, San Francisco has long been a ruthless city, one priding itself on innovation and progress, built and destroyed and rebuilt again upon the bones of the pirates and pioneers who came before in search of their own fortunes.

Looking out over the city from this, one of the seven main hills in a city chock-full of ‘em, you can guess why the Spanish originally called it “Alma Loma,” or “high hill.” Yet the logic kind of stops there: why does the architectural history vary so wildly from block to block?  And why is there no Beach in North Beach?  Let’s take it slow coming down the Alma Loma, onward to Columbus Avenue, and into the ferocious dawn of this great city and state.

English

1SFPPIntroScored.mp3

SF+ Bay.jpg

SF + Bay Area

San Francisco Cover-min.jpg

San Francisco.jpg

San Francisco Cover.jpg

Standing here, overlooking the great Golden Gate, drinking in that tangy marine air, you might presume Telegraph Hill is so-named for its telegraph, given your knowledge of how words work, and guess what?  You’re not wrong.  Yet before California’s first telegraph was installed here in 1853, there was actually something called a semaphore in its place, effectively a wooden, cactus-looking thing with swingable arms.  The semaphore was itself a crude form of telegraph, to be fair, manipulated by the watchman on the hill to give San Franciscans a head’s up as to what type of freight was pulling into the harbor.  If you were about to overpay on the last barrels of rum in town, for example, and a new shipful of hooch were pulling into the Bay on some galleon, the semaphore might, in theory, offer some kind of warning for you to hold off on your purchase. 
	
The wooden cactus would soon play a role arguably more significant than the discounting of liquor: in the days before the telegraph, the phone, and TikTok, the news was simply delivered like any other kind of cargo.  So when President Fillmore agreed on September 9, 1850 to forgo California’s status as a territory and skip straight to statehood, the news was loaded onto the SS Oregon and shipped via Panama; even before the Panama Canal, the overland route was the fastest way to go from East to West.  Five long weeks later, on October 18th, 1850, the Oregon chugged in through the golden gate, firing flares and flying celebratory flags to confirm to those atop the hill: California was officially the thirty-first state in the Union, and the semaphore shared the good news with the rest of the city straight away.  Hopefully they brought some of that rum with ‘em.

 \|||// Standing here, overlooking the great Golden Gate, drinking in that tangy marine air, you might presume Telegraph Hill is so-named for its telegraph, given your knowledge of how words work, and guess what?  You’re not wrong.  Yet before California’s first telegraph was installed here in 1853, there was actually something called a semaphore in its place, effectively a wooden, cactus-looking thing with swingable arms.  The semaphore was itself a crude form of telegraph, to be fair, manipulated by the watchman on the hill to give San Franciscans a head’s up as to what type of freight was pulling into the harbor.  If you were about to overpay on the last barrels of rum in town, for example, and a new shipful of hooch were pulling into the Bay on some galleon, the semaphore might, in theory, offer some kind of warning for you to hold off on your purchase. 
	
The wooden cactus would soon play a role arguably more significant than the discounting of liquor: in the days before the telegraph, the phone, and TikTok, the news was simply delivered like any other kind of cargo.  So when President Fillmore agreed on September 9, 1850 to forgo California’s status as a territory and skip straight to statehood, the news was loaded onto the SS Oregon and shipped via Panama; even before the Panama Canal, the overland route was the fastest way to go from East to West.  Five long weeks later, on October 18th, 1850, the Oregon chugged in through the golden gate, firing flares and flying celebratory flags to confirm to those atop the hill: California was officially the thirty-first state in the Union, and the semaphore shared the good news with the rest of the city straight away.  Hopefully they brought some of that rum with ‘em.

james-hartono-pLl7o1pB0PE-unsplash.jpg

Telegraph Hill and the Dawn of California

Tour Item

2TelegraphHillScored.mp3

That girthy, concrete monolith above you is Coit Tower, a San Francisco icon whose status was, er, cemented in Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO.  This is the legacy of Elizabeth “Lillie” Hitchcock -- no relation to the director -- whom The San Francisco Chronicle declared “the most original woman California has produced.”  Whatever that means. 

By the time California was declared a state, Lillie was a mere seven years old; her mother is said to have burned down the family plantation in North Carolina rather than allowing it to fall into the hands of the Union Army.  By 1851, Lillie’s family had moved to San Francisco, where she and her friends were reportedly trapped in a burning building at a time when the city was almost constantly engulfed in flames; a member of the Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5 managed to save Lillie, thankfully, but Lillie alone.  

This fire-induced trauma sure made its impression on Ol’ Firebell Lil, as she would be known, and forged her into nothing short of an American legend.  Whether suiting up in slacks to access male-only gambling parlours, or teasing scores of suitors in the ballrooms of the last monarch of France while serving as a Confederate spy, she lived large and she lived hard, and before her death willed a third of her considerable fortune -- well over $100,000, worth around $3.5 million today -- to the city she loved.  

Coit Tower -- Coit being Lillie’s married name, oddly enough -- was built in a wave of public works projects just after her death.  If you head inside, you’ll be welcomed by a panorama of uber-Californian Social Realist murals which freaked out the anti-Communists. Recalling the drama of Diego Rivera’s depiction of Lenin at Rockefeller Center, the destruction of which is referenced on one mural here, federal officials demanded that a hammer-and-sickle on another, by Clifford Wight, be scrubbed before Coit Tower opened in 1934.

Like Lillie Hitchcock Coit’s life itself, the tower remains mired in mythology, with some noting that Firehouse Lil’ built it to look like the phallus she didn’t have, or a hydrant in homage to the fire company she so notoriously loved.  All lies.  The simple gray monument, somewhere between neo-Classical and art-deco, stuck in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, despite its altitude, nevertheless stands erect over the city, a beacon of unity and a truly priapic reminder of one of San Francisco’s earliest and most fascinating characters.

1 Telegraph Hill Boulevard \|||// That girthy, concrete monolith above you is Coit Tower, a San Francisco icon whose status was, er, cemented in Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO.  This is the legacy of Elizabeth “Lillie” Hitchcock -- no relation to the director -- whom The San Francisco Chronicle declared “the most original woman California has produced.”  Whatever that means. 

By the time California was declared a state, Lillie was a mere seven years old; her mother is said to have burned down the family plantation in North Carolina rather than allowing it to fall into the hands of the Union Army.  By 1851, Lillie’s family had moved to San Francisco, where she and her friends were reportedly trapped in a burning building at a time when the city was almost constantly engulfed in flames; a member of the Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 5 managed to save Lillie, thankfully, but Lillie alone.  

This fire-induced trauma sure made its impression on Ol’ Firebell Lil, as she would be known, and forged her into nothing short of an American legend.  Whether suiting up in slacks to access male-only gambling parlours, or teasing scores of suitors in the ballrooms of the last monarch of France while serving as a Confederate spy, she lived large and she lived hard, and before her death willed a third of her considerable fortune -- well over $100,000, worth around $3.5 million today -- to the city she loved.  

Coit Tower -- Coit being Lillie’s married name, oddly enough -- was built in a wave of public works projects just after her death.  If you head inside, you’ll be welcomed by a panorama of uber-Californian Social Realist murals which freaked out the anti-Communists. Recalling the drama of Diego Rivera’s depiction of Lenin at Rockefeller Center, the destruction of which is referenced on one mural here, federal officials demanded that a hammer-and-sickle on another, by Clifford Wight, be scrubbed before Coit Tower opened in 1934.

Like Lillie Hitchcock Coit’s life itself, the tower remains mired in mythology, with some noting that Firehouse Lil’ built it to look like the phallus she didn’t have, or a hydrant in homage to the fire company she so notoriously loved.  All lies.  The simple gray monument, somewhere between neo-Classical and art-deco, stuck in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, despite its altitude, nevertheless stands erect over the city, a beacon of unity and a truly priapic reminder of one of San Francisco’s earliest and most fascinating characters.

riley-T8GpbV90bUI-unsplash.jpg

Coit Tower and the Legend of Firebell Lil

3CoitTowerScored.mp3

Before we descend from the top of the hill, let’s head over to what looks like a glorified planter to say a few words on just how prime this real estate is, and was.  In 1876, for the American Centennial, the land was purchased by a group led by George Hearst, former US Senator and father of the real-life Citizen Kane, under the patriotic stipulation that it be forever known as Pioneer Park.  It’s been known as Telegraph Hill ever since.

Now, if you look a little closer at the planter you’ll see some text referencing several politicians from Genova, a city that is famously not San Francisco.  Interestingly, from 1957 until 2020, this spot was occupied by the statue of Genova’s most famous citizen and one of history’s most successful failures: Christopher Columbus.  Awkwardly posed, lumpy, and staring off into the distance as if set to conquer a new land, the statue was executed by a member of Mussolini’s special group of voluntary “musketeers.” It seems the statue was donated by the Italians in a gesture of national solidarity here in a neighborhood originally settled by Irish people, once the burial ground specifically for non-Catholic sailors.  Despite its prime location, the statue was largely ignored until 2020, when the city finally removed this Fascist monument to a colonialist after activists threatened to throw it into the Bay.

On the subject of hubris, the former statue also marks the southern wall of a wooden restaurant and observatory known as Layman’s Folly.  Its owner, Frederick Layman, built his castle in 1882 at a time when Telegraph Hill was practically unreachable.  Layman built his own trolley line to the top of the hill, and effectively no one came.  He even resorted to hosting weekly jousting matches, but still, he got bubkas, and by the 1890s, the site was abandoned, ultimately scrapped for firewood.
That’s not to say that all castles on Telegraph Hill were failures!  Continue east on Greenwich Street to double up on your pseudo-castle fix. 

 \|||// Before we descend from the top of the hill, let’s head over to what looks like a glorified planter to say a few words on just how prime this real estate is, and was.  In 1876, for the American Centennial, the land was purchased by a group led by George Hearst, former US Senator and father of the real-life Citizen Kane, under the patriotic stipulation that it be forever known as Pioneer Park.  It’s been known as Telegraph Hill ever since.

Now, if you look a little closer at the planter you’ll see some text referencing several politicians from Genova, a city that is famously not San Francisco.  Interestingly, from 1957 until 2020, this spot was occupied by the statue of Genova’s most famous citizen and one of history’s most successful failures: Christopher Columbus.  Awkwardly posed, lumpy, and staring off into the distance as if set to conquer a new land, the statue was executed by a member of Mussolini’s special group of voluntary “musketeers.” It seems the statue was donated by the Italians in a gesture of national solidarity here in a neighborhood originally settled by Irish people, once the burial ground specifically for non-Catholic sailors.  Despite its prime location, the statue was largely ignored until 2020, when the city finally removed this Fascist monument to a colonialist after activists threatened to throw it into the Bay.

On the subject of hubris, the former statue also marks the southern wall of a wooden restaurant and observatory known as Layman’s Folly.  Its owner, Frederick Layman, built his castle in 1882 at a time when Telegraph Hill was practically unreachable.  Layman built his own trolley line to the top of the hill, and effectively no one came.  He even resorted to hosting weekly jousting matches, but still, he got bubkas, and by the 1890s, the site was abandoned, ultimately scrapped for firewood.
That’s not to say that all castles on Telegraph Hill were failures!  Continue east on Greenwich Street to double up on your pseudo-castle fix.

IMG_20210726_134142.jpg

A Colonialist, A Castle

4LaymansFollyScored.mp3

From Coit Tower, you can take one of two stairways down the hill: either the Filbert Steps, just south, or the Greenwich Steps, which we’re taking to Julius’ Castle.  Looking like it belongs on a miniature golf course for giants, this castle-restaurant was founded in 1923 by an Italian named Julian Roz in homage to the aforementioned Layman’s Folly.  

Popular amongst celebrities for eons, from the entire cast of Star Wars to Sir Edmund Hillary of Mt. Everest fame, it’s been in flux ever since Roz’ successor died in 2006, constantly opening and closing and reopening again.

Were you to continue down, you’d cut through a steep hill once quarried to oblivion, a hellish descent that would terminate at the lab where the television was invented in 1927 at the corner of Green and Sansome.  But I’ll spare you that walk.

Telegraph Hill had been blasted for ballast from the 19th century onward, which led to decades of devastating landslides.  At least until the Heslets arrived.  Valetta Heslet and her husband moved here in the 1930s, and with her mother, Grace Marchant, they bought out a series of decaying cottages below the castle, overseeing an unofficial anarchist collective of “bootleg architecture” known as The Compound.

But the real legacy of the family is the pair of gardens built along the steps, and the wild, Neotropical parrots who live here.  Inspired by her daughter’s gardening on these Greenwich Steps, Mrs. Marchant, already in her sixties and terribly arthritic, single-handedly hauled out a bounty of rusted debris and spent three decades building the garden on the Filbert Steps. After a ruthless legal battle against developers in the early 1980s, the community has since bought out Grace’s Garden, and it’s been in the hands of her successors ever since, each working pro bono to ensure that we, and the parrots, have a slightly more pleasant descent down this unforgiving hill.

308 Greenwich Street \|||// From Coit Tower, you can take one of two stairways down the hill: either the Filbert Steps, just south, or the Greenwich Steps, which we’re taking to Julius’ Castle.  Looking like it belongs on a miniature golf course for giants, this castle-restaurant was founded in 1923 by an Italian named Julian Roz in homage to the aforementioned Layman’s Folly.  

Popular amongst celebrities for eons, from the entire cast of Star Wars to Sir Edmund Hillary of Mt. Everest fame, it’s been in flux ever since Roz’ successor died in 2006, constantly opening and closing and reopening again.

Were you to continue down, you’d cut through a steep hill once quarried to oblivion, a hellish descent that would terminate at the lab where the television was invented in 1927 at the corner of Green and Sansome.  But I’ll spare you that walk.

Telegraph Hill had been blasted for ballast from the 19th century onward, which led to decades of devastating landslides.  At least until the Heslets arrived.  Valetta Heslet and her husband moved here in the 1930s, and with her mother, Grace Marchant, they bought out a series of decaying cottages below the castle, overseeing an unofficial anarchist collective of “bootleg architecture” known as The Compound.

But the real legacy of the family is the pair of gardens built along the steps, and the wild, Neotropical parrots who live here.  Inspired by her daughter’s gardening on these Greenwich Steps, Mrs. Marchant, already in her sixties and terribly arthritic, single-handedly hauled out a bounty of rusted debris and spent three decades building the garden on the Filbert Steps. After a ruthless legal battle against developers in the early 1980s, the community has since bought out Grace’s Garden, and it’s been in the hands of her successors ever since, each working pro bono to ensure that we, and the parrots, have a slightly more pleasant descent down this unforgiving hill.

IMG_20210726_133642.jpg

The Heslet Garden Compound

5TheGardenCompoundScored.mp3

Halfway down either stairway, make a right at Montgomery, past that streamlined art-deco apartment at 1360, which was used as Lauren Bacall’s residence in the 1947 film Dark Passage.  You’re looking for a tiny cul-de-sac named Alta Street.  You there?  Alta Street wasn’t actually graded on its north side until 1931; this should be evident by the architecture: #29, 31, and 33 across the street all date to the mid-1800s, as evidenced by the wooden shingles. 

The oldest house, perhaps in the entire city, is #31, looking like it two-stepped right out of a southern fable with its wooden balconies.  Once a “tea room” during Prohibition, it was advertised as having “all the atmosphere of the Montmartre with a marine view,” according to historian Rand Richards.  The hostess was a celebrated chef amongst her fellow residents, and when her speakeasy was busted by the cops, she became a celebrated chef amongst her fellow inmates.

Directly across the street, amidst the brutally modern apartment buildings, you may notice an orange mural poking through the trees at #60.  This is the Duck House, so-named given the ducks painted there by its original owner, an artist named Helen Forbes who painted similar works at the San Francisco Zoo.  After Forbes, a dancer named Mayris Martin lived there, and reportedly entertained Eleanor Roosevelt -- her longtime “friend” -- on several occasions.  After Martin, San Francisco’s most legendary journalist Herb Caen occupied the space, not to mention the author Armistead Maupin, who wrote a good chunk of his Tales of the City series on the premises before dedicating the first three volumes to his Alta Street neighbors.  

Let’s head west from Montgomery to Union Street, where we’ll finally hit North Beach en route to a completely different species of duck.

60 Alta Street \|||// Halfway down either stairway, make a right at Montgomery, past that streamlined art-deco apartment at 1360, which was used as Lauren Bacall’s residence in the 1947 film Dark Passage.  You’re looking for a tiny cul-de-sac named Alta Street.  You there?  Alta Street wasn’t actually graded on its north side until 1931; this should be evident by the architecture: #29, 31, and 33 across the street all date to the mid-1800s, as evidenced by the wooden shingles. 

The oldest house, perhaps in the entire city, is #31, looking like it two-stepped right out of a southern fable with its wooden balconies.  Once a “tea room” during Prohibition, it was advertised as having “all the atmosphere of the Montmartre with a marine view,” according to historian Rand Richards.  The hostess was a celebrated chef amongst her fellow residents, and when her speakeasy was busted by the cops, she became a celebrated chef amongst her fellow inmates.

Directly across the street, amidst the brutally modern apartment buildings, you may notice an orange mural poking through the trees at #60.  This is the Duck House, so-named given the ducks painted there by its original owner, an artist named Helen Forbes who painted similar works at the San Francisco Zoo.  After Forbes, a dancer named Mayris Martin lived there, and reportedly entertained Eleanor Roosevelt -- her longtime “friend” -- on several occasions.  After Martin, San Francisco’s most legendary journalist Herb Caen occupied the space, not to mention the author Armistead Maupin, who wrote a good chunk of his Tales of the City series on the premises before dedicating the first three volumes to his Alta Street neighbors.  

Let’s head west from Montgomery to Union Street, where we’ll finally hit North Beach en route to a completely different species of duck.

P1030483 (2).JPG

The Ducks of Alta Street

6DuckHouseScored.mp3

You should now be approaching a bohemian weirdo piazza named Washington Square, long a dumping ground for dead cats.  Squat in the center is a statue of Benjamin Franklin, that stout hero of restraint.  Built from cheap “monkey” metal by a wealthy temperance advocate named Cogswell, the statue is perhaps the last of hundreds of anti-booze water fountains he installed nationwide in the 19th century.  Note the shoutouts to local wells engraved at the base, including Vichy Springs located two hours north of The City.

Also chiseled into the base is a reference to the time capsule buried here in 1879, which a century later was discovered to contain, strangely, the tooth of Franklin’s contemporary, the French revolutionary Robespierre.  And should Ben still be here by 2079, future San Franciscans will find buried, among other things, a bottle of California Cabernet, a subtle dig at old Cogswell.   

Crossing to the northeast corner of the Square, at Filbert and Stockton, you might spot a commemorative bench. Fun, a bench!  This is in honor of Doña Juana Briones de Miranda, one of the first three settlers in what was then known as Yerba Buena.  I won’t try to summarize the incredible life of this Mexican-American ranchera, who peddled goods to and practiced medicine for countless sailors on shore leave, but know this: after her husband became abusive, she, despite her illiteracy, managed to legally separate from him, dropping his name and settling on this site, the deed to which she held in her own name.  In fact, what we now call North Beach was, during her lifetime, known simply as La playa de Juana Briones; the National Parks Service even notes that “Yerba Buena” is named after her healing practice.  All due respect to Saint Francis, but I’m in favor of renaming the city in honor of Juana.

600 Columbus Avenue \|||// You should now be approaching a bohemian weirdo piazza named Washington Square, long a dumping ground for dead cats.  Squat in the center is a statue of Benjamin Franklin, that stout hero of restraint.  Built from cheap “monkey” metal by a wealthy temperance advocate named Cogswell, the statue is perhaps the last of hundreds of anti-booze water fountains he installed nationwide in the 19th century.  Note the shoutouts to local wells engraved at the base, including Vichy Springs located two hours north of The City.

Also chiseled into the base is a reference to the time capsule buried here in 1879, which a century later was discovered to contain, strangely, the tooth of Franklin’s contemporary, the French revolutionary Robespierre.  And should Ben still be here by 2079, future San Franciscans will find buried, among other things, a bottle of California Cabernet, a subtle dig at old Cogswell.   

Crossing to the northeast corner of the Square, at Filbert and Stockton, you might spot a commemorative bench. Fun, a bench!  This is in honor of Doña Juana Briones de Miranda, one of the first three settlers in what was then known as Yerba Buena.  I won’t try to summarize the incredible life of this Mexican-American ranchera, who peddled goods to and practiced medicine for countless sailors on shore leave, but know this: after her husband became abusive, she, despite her illiteracy, managed to legally separate from him, dropping his name and settling on this site, the deed to which she held in her own name.  In fact, what we now call North Beach was, during her lifetime, known simply as La playa de Juana Briones; the National Parks Service even notes that “Yerba Buena” is named after her healing practice.  All due respect to Saint Francis, but I’m in favor of renaming the city in honor of Juana.

P1030518.JPG

Briones and Franklin in Washington Square

7WashintonSquareScored.mp3

1200px-thumbnail.jpg

Now, I’m sure you’ve noticed the huge church looming just west of that little bench.  Look closely above the entryway and you’ll find a simple devotional from the first Canto of Dante’s Paradise: La gloria di colui che tutto move/per l'universo penetra, e risplende/in una parte più e meno altrove (the glory of the One who moves everything/permeates the universe and shines/ from one part more and another less).  Such is the welcome to visitors of Saints Peter and Paul Church, considered the “Cathedral of the West.” We can interpret this inscription, yes, as a celebration of God, but also of the transition from the vertiginous Telegraph Hill to the relatively flat calm of North Beach.  Though it’s not officially recognized as a cathedral, and its address is the beastly 666 Filbert Street, Saints Peter and Paul is North Beach’s main religious center, not only for its Italian-Americans -- such as Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, who had one of his weddings and one of his funerals here -- but for Chinese-Americans as well, who now represent the majority of its parishioners.  

Though originally built in 1884, Saints Peter and Paul was leveled by the Earthquake of 1906, and wasn’t rebuilt until the 1920s, at which point the church was terrorized by four anticlerical, anarchist bombings in the course of a year.  Trying to stem further attacks, the cops beefed up their defense with espionage, disguising some officers as women and smuggling others into the church with laundry baskets. 

Finally, on my birthday in 1927, the police caught two men lighting a fuse at the entrance, gunning both down.  Historian Gary Kamiya suggests that they may have been followers of Luigi Galliani, who believed only spontaneous violence could kill Capitalism, though their precise motives remain unknown.  Maybe if the quote over the entryway were in English, they would’ve understood what Dante meant about God’s glory and all of this violence could’ve been avoided?

650 Filbert Street \|||// Now, I’m sure you’ve noticed the huge church looming just west of that little bench.  Look closely above the entryway and you’ll find a simple devotional from the first Canto of Dante’s Paradise: La gloria di colui che tutto move/per l'universo penetra, e risplende/in una parte più e meno altrove (the glory of the One who moves everything/permeates the universe and shines/ from one part more and another less).  Such is the welcome to visitors of Saints Peter and Paul Church, considered the “Cathedral of the West.” We can interpret this inscription, yes, as a celebration of God, but also of the transition from the vertiginous Telegraph Hill to the relatively flat calm of North Beach.  Though it’s not officially recognized as a cathedral, and its address is the beastly 666 Filbert Street, Saints Peter and Paul is North Beach’s main religious center, not only for its Italian-Americans -- such as Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, who had one of his weddings and one of his funerals here -- but for Chinese-Americans as well, who now represent the majority of its parishioners.  

Though originally built in 1884, Saints Peter and Paul was leveled by the Earthquake of 1906, and wasn’t rebuilt until the 1920s, at which point the church was terrorized by four anticlerical, anarchist bombings in the course of a year.  Trying to stem further attacks, the cops beefed up their defense with espionage, disguising some officers as women and smuggling others into the church with laundry baskets. 

Finally, on my birthday in 1927, the police caught two men lighting a fuse at the entrance, gunning both down.  Historian Gary Kamiya suggests that they may have been followers of Luigi Galliani, who believed only spontaneous violence could kill Capitalism, though their precise motives remain unknown.  Maybe if the quote over the entryway were in English, they would’ve understood what Dante meant about God’s glory and all of this violence could’ve been avoided?

P1030525.JPG

The Anarchists of St. Peter & Paul Church

8StPeterPaulScored.mp3

Leaving the park via Columbus Avenue, we’re now descending into a deeper, more convivial, circle of hell.  On your left, at Broadway, you’ll see the huge neon sign of the Condor Club, which maintains an important role in American history as being the first topless, and bottomless, bar in the country.  And it was all thanks to Carol Doda.
	
In 1964, the Condor’s PR man handed Doda a new fashion piece called the monokini designed by an Austrian man in the interest of “liberating women’s bodies.”  With her new topless bathing suit, the former prune picker became an instant sensation here, particularly as one of the first dancers to receive breast augmentations, spreading the topless, uh, craze, all over the nation.  Each night at the Condor, a white grand piano would be lowered from a hole in the ceiling, with Carol Doda dancing the watusi on top.  It wasn’t all happy funtime for that piano, however: in 1982, two employees mounted it to do the “ol’ slippery” when it began retracting into the ceiling.  The man was crushed to death, and the lady was pinned under his corpse until morning.
	
Doda was a maverick in her field, not merely for her breasts, but for her wit and charm as well, bringing dignity to her profession at a time when it was considered beyond obscene.  In fact, she found herself in court on multiple occasions, most notoriously in a landmark 1969 case which threatened to label such dancers as registered sex offenders.  From the Pink Pussy Kat club in Sacramento, judge Earl Warren, Jr. -- son of the Supreme Court Chief Justice -- called Doda to serve as an expert witness.  Doda delivered the goods from that stage, with Warren labelling her as “by far the best witness we had in the trial.”  
	
For more than two decades, Carol Doda dominated North Beach, not only inside the Condor, but also out, with that neon sign flashing her body, top to toe, complete with blinking nipples.  Since her retirement, the Condor hasn’t been the same, changing owners, names, and functions before being restored to its original whatever-this-is in 2007.  Though Ms. Doda passed on in 2015, her legacy is now ensured, with a particularly well-endowed rock formation in Yosemite National Park named in her honor.

560 Broadway \|||// Leaving the park via Columbus Avenue, we’re now descending into a deeper, more convivial, circle of hell.  On your left, at Broadway, you’ll see the huge neon sign of the Condor Club, which maintains an important role in American history as being the first topless, and bottomless, bar in the country.  And it was all thanks to Carol Doda.
	
In 1964, the Condor’s PR man handed Doda a new fashion piece called the monokini designed by an Austrian man in the interest of “liberating women’s bodies.”  With her new topless bathing suit, the former prune picker became an instant sensation here, particularly as one of the first dancers to receive breast augmentations, spreading the topless, uh, craze, all over the nation.  Each night at the Condor, a white grand piano would be lowered from a hole in the ceiling, with Carol Doda dancing the watusi on top.  It wasn’t all happy funtime for that piano, however: in 1982, two employees mounted it to do the “ol’ slippery” when it began retracting into the ceiling.  The man was crushed to death, and the lady was pinned under his corpse until morning.
	
Doda was a maverick in her field, not merely for her breasts, but for her wit and charm as well, bringing dignity to her profession at a time when it was considered beyond obscene.  In fact, she found herself in court on multiple occasions, most notoriously in a landmark 1969 case which threatened to label such dancers as registered sex offenders.  From the Pink Pussy Kat club in Sacramento, judge Earl Warren, Jr. -- son of the Supreme Court Chief Justice -- called Doda to serve as an expert witness.  Doda delivered the goods from that stage, with Warren labelling her as “by far the best witness we had in the trial.”  
	
For more than two decades, Carol Doda dominated North Beach, not only inside the Condor, but also out, with that neon sign flashing her body, top to toe, complete with blinking nipples.  Since her retirement, the Condor hasn’t been the same, changing owners, names, and functions before being restored to its original whatever-this-is in 2007.  Though Ms. Doda passed on in 2015, her legacy is now ensured, with a particularly well-endowed rock formation in Yosemite National Park named in her honor.

640px-Condor_Club_North_Beach1973_crop.jpg

El Condor Pasa

9TheCondorScored.mp3

P1030514 (2).JPG

Perhaps not coincidentally, the historical seat of stripping is also the geographical base of the “Beat” Generation, if that’s to mean anything at all: from Ferlinghetti’s City Lights to Vesuvio to Caffe Trieste, you have all you need to fully live and fully die in a day, with or without the poetry of ghosts haunting you in free verse.  But you don’t need me to tell you where we are, with all the banners and bric-a-brac throbbing lustfully, “Beat Beat Beat” from here to Kerouac Alley.  

Exhibit A is this, the Beat Museum, which was originally the site of the city’s first purpose-built county jail.  That building was dynamited during the 1906 Earthquake, theoretically to help control the fires from spreading.  Spread they did, however, destroying some 80% of the city.  Oops.

The museum and bookstore, having opened only in 2003, has managed to outlast its neighbor, a Bohemian North Beach eating institution called Enrico’s, named for its charismatic founder, Enrico Banducci.  I’ll note that Banducci also founded a legendary club called the hungry i just a few feet from here, a place which launched the careers of countless musicians and comics, including perhaps the most influential American comic of all time, Lenny Bruce.

Back in 1965, a year before his death, the museum was called the Swiss-American Hotel, and Bruce was one of its esteemed guests.  On March 29th, according to Banducci, that trailblazing, self-destructive, Beat-proximal free speech activist demanded a kiss from one of the guys hanging out in his room, up there on the second floor.  Finding no suitors, he did what any of us would, and jumped out of the window.

Bruce landed out here on the street, shattering both of his ankles as well as his hip.  With the comedian writhing in pain, Bruce’s friend, Eric Miller, rushed downstairs and greeted him with a sweet little kiss on the lips.  Too little, too late, Eric Miller.

540 Broadway \|||// Perhaps not coincidentally, the historical seat of stripping is also the geographical base of the “Beat” Generation, if that’s to mean anything at all: from Ferlinghetti’s City Lights to Vesuvio to Caffe Trieste, you have all you need to fully live and fully die in a day, with or without the poetry of ghosts haunting you in free verse.  But you don’t need me to tell you where we are, with all the banners and bric-a-brac throbbing lustfully, “Beat Beat Beat” from here to Kerouac Alley.  

Exhibit A is this, the Beat Museum, which was originally the site of the city’s first purpose-built county jail.  That building was dynamited during the 1906 Earthquake, theoretically to help control the fires from spreading.  Spread they did, however, destroying some 80% of the city.  Oops.

The museum and bookstore, having opened only in 2003, has managed to outlast its neighbor, a Bohemian North Beach eating institution called Enrico’s, named for its charismatic founder, Enrico Banducci.  I’ll note that Banducci also founded a legendary club called the hungry i just a few feet from here, a place which launched the careers of countless musicians and comics, including perhaps the most influential American comic of all time, Lenny Bruce.

Back in 1965, a year before his death, the museum was called the Swiss-American Hotel, and Bruce was one of its esteemed guests.  On March 29th, according to Banducci, that trailblazing, self-destructive, Beat-proximal free speech activist demanded a kiss from one of the guys hanging out in his room, up there on the second floor.  Finding no suitors, he did what any of us would, and jumped out of the window.

Bruce landed out here on the street, shattering both of his ankles as well as his hip.  With the comedian writhing in pain, Bruce’s friend, Eric Miller, rushed downstairs and greeted him with a sweet little kiss on the lips.  Too little, too late, Eric Miller.

P1030510.JPG

Lenny Bruce and the Many Beats

10TheBeatsScored.mp3

Heading south a few feet down Kearny Street (officially pronounced “Carney”, though no one here says it like that), you’ll run into a strikingly green wedge-shaped building sheathed in copper, known as Columbus Tower, or the Sentinel Building.  Once the original home of Enrico Banducci’s HUNGRY i, later the headquarters of the folk group THE KINGSTON TRIO, it was finally sold in 1972 to American Zoetrope, the studio founded by Bay Area film Gods George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. 
 
This neighborhood is dripping with Coppola juice.  Though he’s said to have written THE GODFATHER screenplay across the way at Caffe Trieste, success has afforded him his own Italianate eatery, called Cafe Zoetrope, sandwiched on the ground floor betwixt his offices.  It’s worth noting that when known as Caesar’s Grill, the cafe claimed to have invented the Caesar Salad, though I call BS on that.

Anchovies aside, the history here was weird from the moment they laid the foundation.  Just prior to the great earthquake of 1906, the building was to be the headquarters of the corrupt kingmaker Abe Ruef, a miserable guy who famously tried to empty Chinatown, just west of here, of its Chinese-Americans.  Ruef’s widespread graft helped change the face of the city following the earthquake, and got him sentenced to San Quentin Penitentiary for fourteen years, relieving the building of its original owner.  Yet Ruef was far from the only criminal to grace these streets; when we talk about the Wild West, there was no place wilder than where you’re standing right now.

900 Kearny Street \|||// Heading south a few feet down Kearny Street (officially pronounced “Carney”, though no one here says it like that), you’ll run into a strikingly green wedge-shaped building sheathed in copper, known as Columbus Tower, or the Sentinel Building.  Once the original home of Enrico Banducci’s HUNGRY i, later the headquarters of the folk group THE KINGSTON TRIO, it was finally sold in 1972 to American Zoetrope, the studio founded by Bay Area film Gods George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. 
 
This neighborhood is dripping with Coppola juice.  Though he’s said to have written THE GODFATHER screenplay across the way at Caffe Trieste, success has afforded him his own Italianate eatery, called Cafe Zoetrope, sandwiched on the ground floor betwixt his offices.  It’s worth noting that when known as Caesar’s Grill, the cafe claimed to have invented the Caesar Salad, though I call BS on that.

Anchovies aside, the history here was weird from the moment they laid the foundation.  Just prior to the great earthquake of 1906, the building was to be the headquarters of the corrupt kingmaker Abe Ruef, a miserable guy who famously tried to empty Chinatown, just west of here, of its Chinese-Americans.  Ruef’s widespread graft helped change the face of the city following the earthquake, and got him sentenced to San Quentin Penitentiary for fourteen years, relieving the building of its original owner.  Yet Ruef was far from the only criminal to grace these streets; when we talk about the Wild West, there was no place wilder than where you’re standing right now.

P1030527.JPG

Coppola at Columbus Tower

11ColumbusTowerScored.mp3

P1030534.JPG

We’re finishing off our tour at the corner of Battery and Pacific, at the oldest bar in the city.  Though it seems like you’re surrounded by terra firma, this was originally the land’s end.  Known as Clarke’s Point, it was an outcropping of earth surrounded by sea, the site where the Spanish first cast anchor, well in advance of the Gold Rush.  Over time, as folks came from all over the world in pursuit of riches and with little intent of leaving, many just abandoned their ships in a natural harbor known as Yerba Buena Cove.  Back then, the water would’ve stretched as far back as the TransAmerica Pyramid, that pointy white building dominating the skyline behind you.  It soon became a business to sink your ship here and claim the land below it, with some becoming hotels or shops; one abandoned ship even served as a prison from 1849-1851.  
While you’re not going to see an original mast inside the Old Ship Saloon, the name ain’t no gimmick: in 2016, workers unearthed parts of a  New York schooner called the Arkansas, confirming the legend that the original owner, back in 1851, just cut a hole in the hull and welcomed thirsty miners in through a gangplank.  

Today, the pub and its surrounds are distinctly business-casual, populated by bankers, CEOs, and other white collar criminals.  But back in the day, the collars were as blue as could be.

This neighborhood, known as the Barbary Coast, was dominated at the dawn of the Gold Rush by violent criminals, many of whom were from the penal colonies in Australia.  The worst-of-the-worst, however, would hang out here on Pacific Avenue in an area known as Sydney-Town, even if most were from Tasmania.  The Sydney Ducks, as they were known -- I promised you more ducks -- would stop at nothing to get their bounty, often setting fires to distract their victims, destroying much of the city in the process. The bars they would haunt here were beyond the imagination, including Boar's Head, which boasted a woman fornicating with a wild pig, and the Fierce Grizzly, named for its eponymous mascot chained outside.  At such sites, it was common for drunken sailors to be drugged, and smuggled against their will on long, labor-intensive voyages to the east, hence the term “shanghaied.”  Now, I complain about gentrification as much as the next guy, but I’m happy to live in an era where my bars are boar free. 

That being said, I see no sense in staying sober at this point, and encourage you, if you’re so inclined, to circle back to the nastiest bar you saw on this tour to tip a glass of rotgut in honor of the pirates and pioneers who came before you.  Cheers.

298 Pacific Avenue \|||// We’re finishing off our tour at the corner of Battery and Pacific, at the oldest bar in the city.  Though it seems like you’re surrounded by terra firma, this was originally the land’s end.  Known as Clarke’s Point, it was an outcropping of earth surrounded by sea, the site where the Spanish first cast anchor, well in advance of the Gold Rush.  Over time, as folks came from all over the world in pursuit of riches and with little intent of leaving, many just abandoned their ships in a natural harbor known as Yerba Buena Cove.  Back then, the water would’ve stretched as far back as the TransAmerica Pyramid, that pointy white building dominating the skyline behind you.  It soon became a business to sink your ship here and claim the land below it, with some becoming hotels or shops; one abandoned ship even served as a prison from 1849-1851.  
While you’re not going to see an original mast inside the Old Ship Saloon, the name ain’t no gimmick: in 2016, workers unearthed parts of a  New York schooner called the Arkansas, confirming the legend that the original owner, back in 1851, just cut a hole in the hull and welcomed thirsty miners in through a gangplank.  

Today, the pub and its surrounds are distinctly business-casual, populated by bankers, CEOs, and other white collar criminals.  But back in the day, the collars were as blue as could be.

This neighborhood, known as the Barbary Coast, was dominated at the dawn of the Gold Rush by violent criminals, many of whom were from the penal colonies in Australia.  The worst-of-the-worst, however, would hang out here on Pacific Avenue in an area known as Sydney-Town, even if most were from Tasmania.  The Sydney Ducks, as they were known -- I promised you more ducks -- would stop at nothing to get their bounty, often setting fires to distract their victims, destroying much of the city in the process. The bars they would haunt here were beyond the imagination, including Boar's Head, which boasted a woman fornicating with a wild pig, and the Fierce Grizzly, named for its eponymous mascot chained outside.  At such sites, it was common for drunken sailors to be drugged, and smuggled against their will on long, labor-intensive voyages to the east, hence the term “shanghaied.”  Now, I complain about gentrification as much as the next guy, but I’m happy to live in an era where my bars are boar free. 

That being said, I see no sense in staying sober at this point, and encourage you, if you’re so inclined, to circle back to the nastiest bar you saw on this tour to tip a glass of rotgut in honor of the pirates and pioneers who came before you.  Cheers.

Hear an Audio Sample

Reviews

Need to check this out

Excited for more

Well done

SF + BAY AREA

Telegraph Hill

Free

About

Get the App

Stay in Touch

Join our Newsletter

Get the App

About

Stay in Touch