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Whither at Sixty?

Posted in Personal, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Feb 22, 2012| 5 Comments »


It’s four months now since I entered my sixtieth year on this blessed, blasted planet. In fact, 2012 is a rare year for major anniversaries – the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, the five hundreth anniversary of the death of Amerigo Vespucci, the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic and last, and definitely least, there’s lil’ ol’ me.

So how do you “celebrate” such a feat of stamina? Big family party? Trip of a lifetime? Crawl into a corner and curl up into a ball? Well, my 40th was spent in Amsterdam and my 50th in Paris, whilst my wife’s corresponding birthdays were played out in Paris and Venice respectively. Bit of a clue there then (though Janet also wangled a not inexpensive party for the latter in the boardroom of the local football league club)!

But I think you get the picture – we’ll be spending it somewhere other than home.

Janet has been “encouraging” me for months to decide where I wanted to spend the occasion. Unfortunately, I am no nearer making that decision than I was on my 59th birthday, though I have narrowed it down to a handful of candidates (feels a bit like I’m deciding on where the next but one Olympics or football World Cup will be held).

One trip that has been on my wish list for much of the past decade is what is known as the “Blues Highway”, effectively tracing the migration of blacks from the deep south to the north following the Civil War, and, in the process, reliving American musical history.

The tour starts in New Orleans, with extended stops at Nashville, Memphis, St Louis and eventually Chicago. Visits to such iconic venues as Graceland, Sun Studios and the Grand Ol’ Opry, would be essential, and we would also want to sample cajun and zydeco music in their locales.

A tour through blues history would not be complete without a pilgrimage to Moorhead, Mississippi where the Southern crosses the Yellow Dog or Dawg, the spot where the “father of the blues”, W.C. Handy, heard “the first blues song” in around 1903, or the crossroads (there is much dispute as to its location) at which the “king of the delta blues singers”, Robert Johnson, apocryphally, sold his soul to the devil. And an evening at the Ground Zero Blues Club, owned by Morgan Freeman, in Clarksdale, Mississippi would not go amiss.

But in August 2005 Hurricane Katrina put a temporary end to that dream.

The other front runner at present is the national parks and canyons of the American south west, notably Monument Valley, Bryce and Zion Canyons, the Arches and Canyonlands. Even this trip would have some musical resonance for me in the form of the great Jackson Browne / Glenn Frey song Take It Easy, popularised by The Eagles:

Well, I’m standing on a corner

In Winslow, Arizona

And such a fine sight to see

It’s a girl, my lord in a flatbed

Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me

Come on baby, don’t say maybe

I gotta know if your sweet love

Is gonna save me

We may lose and we may win though

We will never be here again

So open up, I’m climbin’ in

So take it easy

When I first started to ponder this, our adopted second home of San Francisco figured strongly in my plans. The timing would have enabled us to attend a Giants ball game or two on their last homestand of the regular season against the Pittsburgh Pirates. But since then, in an increasingly common fit of weakness, we have succumbed to its allure and – for us – late booked a two week trip to the city in April. And we have succeeded in purchasing tickets for two of the first games of the season – against the Pirates and the Philadelphia Phillies.

This has had the added advantage of granting me a stay of execution on the fateful decision on the birthday break, though I know that I cannot hide behind that excuse much longer, hence this post.

The downside is that it may now necessarily be shorter than we had originally envisaged – two rather than three or four weeks. But we shall see.

I should also mention another U.S. option – that of staying at a friend’s condominium in Tampa, Florida – because I know he will be reading this!  He has very kindly offered to accommodate us at any time, and we will certainly take him up on that offer, though perhaps not this year. So, Melvyn, you have been spared – but only for now!

And finally, I have begun to pine again for Italy, our favourite holiday destination before the United States colonised our travelling consciousness. So I would not rule out Rome, Tuscany or Sicily at this stage, though they remain dark horses.

Or perhaps I should just take my lead from Ellen de Generes’ grandmother “who started walking five miles a day when she was sixty.  She’s ninety seven now and we don’t know where the hell she is”.

So what would you vote for?

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Love and Haight in the City of Saint Francis

Posted in San Francisco, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Feb 16, 2012| 2 Comments »


Anyone with the merest acquaintance with this blog will observe a strong bias towards the city of San Francisco in it. If the heading of “A Golden Gate State of Mind” and accompanying photograph did not immediately give it away, the preponderance of posts on the city certainly will.

So what, you ask, is the attraction of what San Francisco based Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti called “this far-out city on the left side of the world” to a cricket loving, warm beer drinking Englishman?

Well, that is a very good question (I do wish you hadn’t asked it).  It’s not sufficient to say it is because I “love” it.  After all, there are many things that I love – my wife, my father, my football team, my favourite rock band, skiing, fish and chips, and the BBC Breakfast presenter, Susanna Reid (I’d be grateful if you didn’t tell my wife about that one) – the list goes on.

But “love” – like “great” – is an overused – or rather over abused – word today. In fact, I may have proved this conclusively in the preceding paragraph. Everyone will have places that they “love”, whether it be Paris, Rio de Janeiro, New York or even Leysdown-on-Sea. Few of us would deny “loving” their favourite holiday haunts, particularly if they return to them time and again.

So I think you deserve a more substantial explanation than that. After all, it took me nearly 43 years to finally feast my hungry eyes on the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, even though I had venerated the city from afar for nearly three decades before that. So what do I find so special about it now?

Before I answer it – and I’m not prevaricating, honest – I think it is worth considering what it is about a place that makes us become attached to it. After all, isn’t it nothing more nor less than a collection of natural features and man-made buildings?

I suppose that many of us, including myself, claim that we “love” the place in which we were born and / or raised. It is this emotional attachment, linked to childhood memories, that, I believe, is the crucial factor here. And the acknowledgement of that attachment may not manifest itself without the aid of age and distance.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder” and “there’s no place like home” may be cliches but they still have a sturdy ring of truth. James Joyce – that incomparable chronicler of place – could not, as he himself admitted, have written so profoundly or entertainingly about Dublin had he stayed there instead of leaving it to work and live in Trieste, Zurich and Paris.

My last post (www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/walking-with-our-mutual-friend/) conveys my affection for my own home town of Rochester in Kent, and an earlier one (www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/to-my-home-county/) describes the pride I have in being a Man of Kent, a grateful product of its rich embrace of coast and countryside.

So our attachment to place begins, as with so many of our passions, with our childhood experiences.

But I digress. We’re not in Kent(as) anymore, Toto. You want to read about why I “love” San Francisco. Well, I presume you still do or you would have given up by now. So here goes.

I could cite the stunning beauty of the bay and its glittering “bracelet of bridges”, the gorgeous skies, the cute, clanking cable cars, the abundance of fresh seafood in its classy restaurants, the diversity of its music and theatre scene, the richness of its ethnic neighbourhoods, the thrilling exploits of the Giants and 49ers, and, of course, its renowned tolerance and reputation as a haven for the otherwise discarded and disaffected – all of these are part of it.

However, thousands of other visitors have been equally captivated by most, if not all, of these qualities. It is not for nothing that many leave their heart in San Francisco.  But their “love” is invariably on loan, perhaps until the next trip or another geographical gigolo snatches their affection. Mine is permanent, organic, forever.  

So what is it about this place that has lured this individual into spending what time he can’t reside in it dreaming and writing about it?  Why has this place gotten hold of my heart” where other cities I delight in visiting, such as Venice, Florence, Barcelona, Dublin and New York have not? And why, with relatively little time left, and  just as I am about to resolve to go somewhere else, does it sing its siren (or is that sea lion) songs to me, steering my boat back into the dock of the bay?

For much of my life it was a platonic, long distance affair.  It started with the Summer of Love (1967) when San Francisco snared the imagination of many people across the globe, including one 14 year old English schoolboy an entire continent and ocean away. Intrigued by the love and peace mantra, he was inspired by Scott McKenzie and the Flowerpot Men to commit fashion suicide by wearing paisley shirts and, on at least one occasion, flowers (almost certainly plastic) in his hair, to football matches that year – fortunately, it pre-dated the skinhead era or he may not have been given such an easy ride!

Three years later, the music of the Bay Area, in the form of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service began to fill my head. “Everyone’s favourite city” had become the epicentre of my cultural universe. However, another two and a half decades passed before I set foot on San Francisco’s ever shifting soil.

And, for me, Haight-Ashbury, from whence that dazzling music came, still represents, more than any other location in the city, MY San Francisco, and where I gravitate to on every trip, however short. Free concerts by the Dead on flat bed trucks in the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park, tie-dye shirts and the pungent waft of marijuana smoke remain enduring images of that time.

And there is just enough of that atmosphere – at stores like Positively Haight Street, Haight-Ashbury T-shirts and Pipe Dreams, as well as Sami Sunchild’s Red Victorian (www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/great-san-franciscan-characters-14-sami-sunchild/) – to keep me enthused as I saunter down Haight Street today.

That is not to say that other parts – the Tenderloin and Civic Center no less than the trendy neighbourhoods and tourist honeypots – are not equally “real” embodiments of the modern city, all too real some might say. Though I embrace them all, the Haight remains the heart of my San Franciscan experience. Its only failing is that it does not aford bay views!  Or does it? I really must check on my next trip!

Another earlier post (www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/my-san-francisco-top-ten/) summarises those parts of the city that captivate me most, so I will not bore you by repeating them here.

It’s not just the physical sights and sounds that appeal, but the literature (Armistead Maupin, Jack Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Dashiel Hammett, Jack London) and history (the Barbary Coast, the earthquake and Great Fire, the cultural movements of the fifties and sixties) that fascinate me too.  And has there been a better chronicler of a city anywhere than Herb Caen(www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/great-san-franciscan-characters-6-herb-caen/), renowned columnist of the San Francisco Chronicle?

Indeed, it was Caen who wrote half a century ago in one of his many ruminations on what made a San Franciscan:

I don’t think that place of origin or number of years on the scene have anything to do with it really. There are newcomers who become San Franciscans overnight – delighted with and interested in the city’s traditions and history. They can see the Ferry Building for what it represents (not for what it is), they are fascinated with the sagas of Sharons, Ralstons, Floods and Crockers, they savor the uniqueness of cable car and foghorn. By the same token, I know natives who will never be San Franciscans if they outlive Methusalah. To them a cable car is a traffic obstruction, the fog is something that keeps them from getting a tan, and Los Angeles is where they really know how to Get Things Done.

I like to think that I fit into Caen’s San Francisco “newcomer” category, though I’ll settle for being the “sophisticated tourist” who is “charmed and fascinated” by the city.

I have used the word “home” in a number of features on San Francisco, and that, I think, is the key here. That is not to say that it replaces the town in which I was born and raised – though, equally, it might – but rather that the city engenders those same feelings, not just of comfort and security but also of confidence and pride that allows me to engage with it on all levels. Venice and New York do not. Nor even does “dear, dirty Dublin”, despite my Irish ancestry.

Back where we started then.

And my wife and I have deliberately fostered this feeling in recent years where, by staying in apartments in different neighbourhoods – Hayes Valley and North of the Panhandle, and for our upcoming (ninth) visit, Noe Valley – we aim to “live like locals”, whilst continuing to take in the traditional tourist sights too (our stays are still too short to omit them, even if we wanted to). It is another of San Francisco’s virtues that we can do both.

How many of us can say that anywhere, at least beyond the place in which we live, that we can call it “home”?

Do you have any place that exercises that same grip on you?

I’ll end with Herb Caen again:

thank God or Allah or whoever it was that blessed this small, special, annoying, irresistible place at the tip of a peninsula and the end of the world.

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The “Great San Franciscan Characters” Series

Posted in Great San Franciscan Characters, tagged , , , , , , , on Jan 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »


Having now posted the 16th article in the series, I think it is time to review the role of the “Great San Franciscan Characters” in my overall writing strategy. 

In my penultimate post of the last year (www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/99-not-out) I stated that not only would I be reinforcing the San Francisco theme of the blog, but also “working on more substantial, long term projects”.  One of those projects relates to this series. It had always been my intention that the material it contains might ultimately, with a fair wind, develop into a firm book proposal.  

Now if I am to make that a reality, and preserve the integrity of the subject matter, I will have to curtail publication of any more “chapters”, or else the book will already be in the public domain and available for free! Moreover, having read through a number of the preceding articles, I feel there is a clear need for significant revision, both to improve the quality of the individual articles and to ensure a coherent style and approach to the whole.  

So apologies for anyone who was actually enjoying the series.  I hope I can replace it on the blog with (equally) interesting and entertaining pieces.

Now Lillie Hitchcock Coit and Joe Montana are calling.

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Heavenly Thoughts Returning

Posted in Sport, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Jan 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »


Firstly, if you have landed on this site expecting subject matter a tad more racy or devotional than skiing, please leave now!

After spending our formative skiing years in Europe, we decided in 1999 to try America for our winter vacation. Lake Tahoe caught our imagination, not only because of its innate beauty and impressive snowfall record, but because it could comfortably be combined with a trip to San Francisco (and other parts of both California and Nevada).

We fell in love with Heavenly and the unique California / Nevada Stateline atmosphere instantly, and despite acknowledging that we should expand our skiing experience to the Rockies or Canada, we have remained loyal to it ever since.  We were even on the verge one year of booking Whistler or Banff and spending our “city time” in Vancouver, but when push came to shove, we hadn’t the heart to abandon Heavenly.

Nor, in the face of numerous recommendations from people on chairlifts, in restaurants and on the street, have we skiied a single day in any of the other Tahoe resorts. Lame excuse though it may seem, we have, in a sense, not wanted to “waste” one of our precious skiing days at Northstar, Squaw Valley or Sierra-at-Tahoe.  And where would we get a better breakfast than at the Driftwood Cafe in the village centre, or seafood dinner at the Riva Grill by the south shore of the lake? 

 

After our initial vacation we returned in 2002, followed by further trips in ’04, ’06, ’08 and ’10.  With a mountain that rises to over 10,000 feet and the largest snowmaking and grooming operation on Lake Tahoe if Mother Nature should fail to deliver, snow conditions have always been excellent. The weather during our stays has, however, been less predictable (for example, warm sunshine in ’04 and incessant snowfall in ’06, including 4 feet the night before we were heading for Vegas).

The biennial strategy collapsed last year when we went again just 12 months after our last trip. This appeared at first to be a smart move as a record season was already in full swing when we arrived in early March. Now, we confess to being fair weather skiers, always going relatively late in the season, initially in late February, more latterly in mid March (and now April!). The theory is that there will not only have been substantial accumulations of snow already, but that the weather will have warmed up. Spring in San Francisco can be very pleasant too.

So we scanned the web cams and drooled over the daily Another Heavenly Morning broadcast on the internet, watching the snowfall count escalating. Surely, this will have abated and Spring will have arrived with a swagger by the time we pitched up in the resort, allowing us to enjoy several days cruising on a deep snow base in balmy, sun-soaked weather?

No chance! As the travel diary on this blog demonstrated (links below) the only thing we saw was snow, and, in the words of A.A. Milne, it just “kept on snowing”, even after we had left for San Francisco towards the end of the month:

www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/western-diary-day-3-janet-falls-over/

www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/western-diary-day-4-Janet-falls-over-again-and-Tony-gets lost/

www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/western-diary-day-5-the-more-it-snows-tiddley-pom/

www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/western-diary-day-6-i-fall-over-and-Janet-loses-her-backpack/

The year did, indeed, turn out to be a record one with a total 0f 529 inches snowfall (the average is anywhere between 300 and 500). But, after such a disappointing experience, we vowed that we would now leave it a couple of years before returning to Heavenly, perhaps even going back in the interim to getting our skiing fix in Europe again.  

But here we are in mid January and the itch needs scratching again (problematic when you are plodding around with several layers of clothing on, including an esapecially fetching pair of tights). The lure of both Heavenly and San Francisco has become too much, causing us to alter our vacation plans for the year. The four weeks travelling around the canyons and National Parks of the West to celebrate my 60th birthday later in the year has now contracted to two.

We are undaunted by the uncharacteristically puny snowfall so far this year. Although the resort has been open every day since November 18th, the total snow for the season has only reached 13 inches (lower slopes) to 22 inches (upper elevations), and the base depth is just 18 to 24 inches. Only 215 acres out of a total of 4800, and 27 of the 97 runs (trails), are currently open.  

Limited terrain aside, the resort has still managed to provide high quality, if limited, snow in fine weather, with the army of “midnight riders” (groomers) putting in more than 1,200 snowmaking hours. And we have faith that the storms will come. In fact, as I pen this article, 3-6 feet is being forecast for the next week. 

It can snow now until early April as far as we are concerned. But please, let’s have a few days sunshine after that!

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Great San Franciscan Characters #16: Big Bertha

Posted in Great San Franciscan Characters, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Jan 18, 2012| 8 Comments »


“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun”.

Even those with the most basic knowledge of, or interest in, Shakespeare, will be familiar with these words from Romeo and Juliet. Of course, they are uttered by Romeo in the famous balcony scene in Act 2.

However, the scene before us is no Royal Shakespeare Company production in Stratford-upon-Avon but a gambling palace turned melodeon or music hall called the Bella Union, located at Washington and Kearney Streets in late nineteenth century San Francisco. 

And our “star-cross’d” lovers are not Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, or even Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, but a baseball bat wielding wild man and a 20 stone woman of whom it could not have been said for at least 30 years that she was “not yet fourteen”.  The incongruity does not end there – because of her bulk she cannot be trusted not to demolish the balcony the moment that she steps on to it, so she is placed centre stage whilst Romeo growls his immortal words from the balcony instead.

Romeo is played by Oofty Goofty, whom we have met already in this series (www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/great-san-franciscan-characters-12-oofty-goofty)   And his “all-seeing sun” was portrayed by Big Bertha, a wealthy woman with a dubious past.  Their performances are the talk of the town, although Oofty’s violent displays leave Bertha “covered with bruises from head to toe” every night, leading to her vowing never to play the part again.

Big Bertha, who is described by Herbert Asbury in his splendid The Barbary Coast as a “sprightly lass of 280 pounds”, had first appeared in the city in the mid 1880s claiming to be a wealthy Jewish widow in search of a man to help protect her fortune.  In order to test any suitor’s value and good faith, she required him to hand over to her a sum of money that she would then double and risk on an unnamed investment. 

This worked so successfully that she “collected several thousand dollars from a score of lovelorn males, not a penny of which was ever seen again by its rightful owner”. Although she was eventually arrested for a succession of such scams, none of her victims had the courage to charge her for fear of public humiliation. She was released on nominal bail and the case against her dropped.

She now decided to turn her attentions to a stage career, approaching Ned Foster and Jach Hallinan, managers of the Bella Union and Cremorne melodeons respectively. Recognising her potential they hired her immediately under joint management and put her on display in an empty storefront on Market Street. Dubbed the “Queen of the Confidence Women”, for ten cents she would, at regular intervals, rise from her reinforced chair and recount the list of dreadful crimes that she had committed in San Francisco and other cities, “embellishing her account with many vivid details”. 

She would then regale the assembled throng with horribly off key renditions of the only two songs she ever knew: A Flower from my Angel Mother’s Grave” and The Cabin Where the Old Folks Died. This proved so popular that, after a brief engagement at Bottle Koenig’s, where her erstwhile Romeo had also performed briefly, her act transferred to the Bella Union stage and converted into what became an equally celebrated song and dance revue in which she sang “sentimental ballads in a squeaky voice”.    

Aside from the Romeo and Juliet farce, Bertha was involved in one other crazy theatrical moment. She was cast in Byron’s Malzeppa as the eponymous hero strapped to a horse or, in her case, donkey as punishment for having an affair with a young countess. Her entrance always drew ecstatic applause, but one evening it all went horribly wrong.

Wilting under the nightly strain of carrying Bertha, the donkey lost its footing and crashed into the orchestra pit, taking the massively proportioned Bertha with it.  The musicians’ reaction has not been preserved for posterity but it is not unreasonable to speculate that their language was not equally as colourful as that bellowing from the lips of the hero / heroine’s. Neither can I report whether the hapless donkey sustained any lasting injury.

But it did herald the end of Bertha’s bizarre acting career, who confined herself to singing and, on occasions, dancing. This proved more successful, culminating in her wrestling ownership and management of the Bella Union in 1895. However, restrictions placed on the sale of liquor three years previously eventually forced her to sell up and leave.  And that is the last we hear of her.

“So please you, let me now be left alone”.  

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Finally I Get It: Go Niners!

Posted in General, Sport, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Jan 15, 2012| 5 Comments »


I have never understood, or cared to understand, American football.  That is until last night.

Purely because of our affinity with the city of San Francisco, my wife and I had considered celebrating our first wedding anniversary at Wembley Stadium in October 2010 when the 49ers came to town with the Denver Broncos – until we saw the exorbitant prices. We went to Dublin for the weekend instead.

Last season, as dozens of others before, had completely passed me by but I have followed the upturn in their fortunes this year, if  only by casting a cursory glance at the final scores. I had also read a lot about the exploits of quarterback, Alex Smith, which reminded me of the only 49ers player from the past I could honestly claim I could remember – Joe Montana.

So as they had reached the playoffs and were live on TV last night at a manageable hour (9.30pm) – even if it meant missing The Football League Show on BBC – I decided to tune in to the final two quarters as they were leading 17-14 against the New Orleans Saints at the time. Having led 14-0 earlier in the game but the prospects for the remainder of the game did not appear promising to one unsuspecting football virgin.  However, the sight of a scarlet hued Candlestick Park convinced me to stay the course.

I can’t claim to have followed everything of what was going on, though touchdowns and field goals were at least comprehensible.  And I can appreciate a long, accurate pass and even a mighty hit (I have always enjoyed these on the ice rink).  Anyway, the third quarter passed without much incident, other than that San Francisco extended its lead to 20-14.

The margin was still 6 points (23-17) as those final 3 portentous minutes started. It appeared to me that the home side was defending with increasing desperation and, with a history of supporting sports teams who so often ripped defeat from the jaws of victory, I felt staying up until nearly 1.30am would prove ultimately futile. 

And when the Saints went 24-23 ahead, it looked all over. But then Alex Smith, who had hardly had a bad game beforehand, ran in a 28 yard touchdown (I believe that’s the correct expression).  So we’d (notice that?) won it 29-24 hadn’t we? Now, hold on a cotton picking minute (who was it used to say that, Deputy Dawg I think) – back come the Saints with a touchdown of their own to “win” it 32-29.

Glorious failure then – a not uncommon feeling for this sports fan. With 14 seconds left, and my thumb poised on the off button on the remote control, Smith calls what seems to me to be a pointless timeout.  Now this is where my ignorance of American sport kicks in. Of course I should have known that within 5 seconds he would plant the ball in the arms of the grateful, and soon to be sobbing uncontrollably, tight end, Vernon Davis, for the winning touchdown. 36-32! 

I was reminded in the midst of all this mayhem of the word “torture” that so eloquently described the San Francisco Giants march to the World Series 15 months before.

I don’t think that I will still ever develop the affiliation I now have with the city’s baseball team – you might like to read my earlier post about how I fell in love with the San Francisco Giants (www.tonyquarrington.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/bitten-by-the-giants-baseball-bug) – but I have acquired sufficient interest to prompt me to learn more about the rules and tactics, purchase some 49ers merchandise, and be there in front of the TV for the next playoff game and, of course, the Super Bowl. OK, I’m probably getting  a little ahead of myself now, but that’s what fans do don’t they?

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Great San Franciscan Characters #15: James “Shanghai” Kelly

Posted in Great San Franciscan Characters, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Jan 10, 2012| 4 Comments »


“King of the Crimps”, James “Shanghai” Kelly was not, as you might have thought, a world renowned hairdresser or Vegas high roller but a notorious criminal in 19th century San Francisco. Crimping, or shanghaiing, was the practice of kidnapping men and forcing them to work on ships, and Kelly was the undisputed master of the art.

He was, as described by Herbert Asbury in his excellent “The Barbary Coast – An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld”, a “short, thick-set Irishman, with flaming red hair, a bristling red beard, and an irascible disposition”.  Seduced, like many of his contemporaries, by the prospect of great wealth as a result of the 1848 Gold Rush in California, he fled to San Francisco where he immediately established a three-storey sailors’ boardinghouse at 33 Pacific Street, between Drum and Davis Streets, in the heart of the area known as the Barbary Coast.  However, this was essentially a “front” for his unscrupulous but lucrative business of supplying sea captains with men to fill boats rendered increasingly empty by the desertion inland of prospective crew members to seek their fortune.

Kelly satisfied the ship captains’ need by arranging for runners to row out to arriving ships and offer free drink and other inducements to frequent his  boardinghouse and saloons. Once there, the unsuspecting sailors would be drugged with the “Miss Piggott Special”, his own cocktail of schnapps and beer spiked with opium, laudanum or chloral hydrate. The “Shanghai smoke”, a cigar heavily laced with opium, would follow, and that lethal combination failed to render them unconscious then they would be hit on the head” As one historian put it: “the tools of his trade were knock-out drops and a blackjack”.

Once divested of their belongings – including their clothes – they were wrapped in a blanket, lowered through one of three trapdoors in the front of the bar and rowed out to a waiting vessel. The captain paid the crimp the agreed fee, hauled anchor, and set sail. When the sailors regained consciousness, they were well out to sea – heading to such faraway destinations as Shanghai.

His pre-eminence in the crimping game was most dramatically illustrated in what has become known as his “birthday party” escapade.  With his boardinghouse uncharacterstically short of guests, he was commissioned by one desperate sea captain to find 100 sailors urgently. The ever-resourceful Kelly quickly came up with a plan. Chartering a decrepit old paddlewheel steamer, the Goliah, he put the word out on the streets that it was his birthday and everyone was invited aboard to celebrate with free food and drink.

 

Ninety men showed up and the Goliah put out to sea “amid great merriment of drinking, eating, and song”. As it left dock, Kelly proposed a toast: “to all my faithful friends, you’ve made me what I am today (heh-heh).  Now down the hatch”. As soon as all the drugged guests had passed out, Kelly ferried them to the infamous New York based sailing ship, the Reefer, and two other vessels anchored off the Heads, just outside the Golden Gate. The still unconscious “sailors” were handed over to their new captains, who sailed away.

Mindful that questions were sure to be asked when he returned with an empty Goliah, Kelly sailed down the California coast to ponder his next move – and struck lucky.  Encountering the Yankee Blade off Point Concepcion, west of Santa Barbara, that had run aground and was taking on water, he saved its whole crew and sailed them up to the Market Street Wharf where, unaware of the true story, the citizens of San Francisco proclaimed him a hero.

Some chroniclers of the Barbary Coast have shed doubt over the accuracy of this story but, nonetheless, it lives on in San Francisco legend. In fact, it was featured in an episode of the long-running TV show, Death Valley Days, narrated by Robert Taylor, in 1967. Kelly’s place in the city’s mythology was reinforced in 1985 by the opening of an old-time saloon named after him at Polk between Pacific and Broadway on Nob Hill.

His crimping days were over when he himself was shanghaied and ended up jumping ship in Peru, although the message that got back to his adopted city was that he had been shot by one of his former runners.

I am indebted to Gail MacGowan’s article on Kelly on www.sfcityguides.org which, in turn, is based upon works by Charles F. Adams, Herbert Asbury, Samuel Dickson and Bill Pickelhaupt.

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The Blog Speaks!

Posted in Blogging, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Dec 31, 2011| 4 Comments »


Please allow me to introduce myself – no, I’m not a “man of wealth and taste” but Blog – and I have been “around for a long, long year”. To be precise, I am one year and 100 posts old today. To celebrate this momentous event, the guy who usually drones on at you has finally seen sense and handed it over to me to share my thoughts on how well those 12 months have gone (or not as the case may be). 

You may have gathered if you read his last post that he’s feeling quite pleased with himself. Being naturally indolent, even he didn’t think he would ever reach this point. But, with my staunch, cheery support, he has, so I won’t begrudge him some credit for that.

Our relationship has been tense, sometimes tetchy, but we’ve muddled through. My main gripe is that he’s not consistent enough in the frequency with which he puts me to work. After a steady, manageable start he then launched into 24 days straight posting on his spring vacation. That might have been fun for him, swanning around Tahoe, Vegas and San Francisco, but it wore me out I can tell you. It was difficult enough acclimatising to an 11 hour flight and 8 hour time change, but then expecting me to work beyond midnight over an extended period was adding insult to injury. A trip to the blog tribunal was on the cards at that point.

But then he followed it with a very leisurely timetable – only 18 posts in 5 months during the summer. Admittedly, some of the articles were much longer, especially those on his beloved cricket (I really don’t understand the fascination at all myself), but it did leave me with a lot of time on my hands. Mind you, every cloud as they say, I was able to freelance on the off days, though don’t tell him – he places a lot of store by loyalty.

And then there’s the language he uses. Personally, I find it a trifle flowery, even pompous on occasions. But with a grammar school education and 30 years in the civil service behind him, he dosen’t stand much chance does he? He thinks he’s funny too – gimme a break! He really needs to work this year on getting the balance right between being informative, interesting and entertaining.  

I must admit I prefer his factual posts, y’know those about San Franciscan characters, to his ruminations on life and cricket (he seems to think the last two are the same thing!). I sometimes find the latter more embarassing than enlightening with their wistful, elegiac tone (he told me to use those particular words, God knows what they mean). 

I just hope he’ll revert to the San Francisco stuff more in the future. He’s promised to do so, so let’s hope he lives up to that – though once the cricket season raises its coy head in April, I doubt he’ll be able to contain his dewy-eyed sentimentality, and start blathering on again about the rhythm of the day’s play and the strategic importance of the tea interval and other such drivel.

Something else that bugs me – these writers continually bang on about the “block”, and how they suffer from it from time to time. I just don’t geddit  -what IS their problem?  Despite what I said earlier, I’m ready to perform 24/7 so why can’t they be?  

I believe he’s announced to you that he plans to alter my design and layout.  Now, I’m a simple chap, so I just hope he doesn’t try to turn me into a look-alike of those appalling Grateful Dead tie-dye shirts he is so beloved of.  I’m quite comfortable in my current skin, thank you.

He’s not that hot actually on the technical aspects, as you may have noticed by his use of photographs at times. But I have bitten my lip in the expectation that the penny will drop soon (I really don’t understand why he doesn’t take my advice on including more clichés in his articles).

He doesn’t read enough either and if he has pretensions to being a serious writer, he needs to step up his game on this.  I don’t hold out much hope, therefore, that he’ll bother to look at this post, let alone take on board my concerns (he’s never asked my opinion before now). Perhaps, dear reader, you could be my advocate and tell him in your comments on individual articles. But treat him gently – he’s a sensitive soul beneath the wisecracking exterior.

So what does the future hold? Well, for all that he frustrates and irritates me at times, I’m prepared to stick around for another year. After all, it’s “the nature of my game”.

I think I’ve probably upset him enough already, and abused the privilege of this audience with you, so I had better give it a rest now.  Besides, I don’t want him dumping me for a younger, fresher model – times are hard and “better the devil you know” has always been my motto. And I do quite fancy another spring break out west, not to mention a trip around the national parks in October, if he can get his act together and organise them.

I don’t suppose that I’ll get the chance to talk to you again in the near future, unless you place a comment at the bottom of the page (that’s a hint, right?), so I’ll sign off with a Happy New Year!

Ooh, who, who!

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99 Not Out

Posted in Blogging, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on Dec 30, 2011| 3 Comments »


I am writing this, my 99th post, on the day before the first anniversary of my blog. Around 65,000 words have soiled the screen since New Year’s Eve 2010 when I embarked, belatedly and anxiously, on this expedition (a word I prefer to that ubiquitous “journey” that every reality TV contestant and sportsperson seem to be on nowadays).

The birthday and century will be rung up tomorrow, fittingly, whilst I reside in the northern English town of Lancaster where it all started, though the blog has been half way around the world in that time – well, Barcelona, Northern France, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and the length and breadth of the UK.

I thought I should take the opportunity here to reflect upon the success or otherwise of my efforts over the past 12 months.  Although you’re burdened with my voice today, I have arranged for a guest writer to offer their own unique insights in tomorrow’s centenary post – of which more later.

In only my second post – This Writing Lark – I stated my aim was to produce “worthwhile written work that others might enjoy”.  I hope that I have succeeded in this, at least some of the time (“you can’t please all of the people…..”), and the comments, such as they have been, have certainly been positive. But I need to engage with my readers more if I am to build a significant platform for my work.  I have plans to ensure that this happens, courtesy of the advice from Kristen Lamb, Anne R. Allen and other luminaries on the blogging scene. 

As I indicated in my recent posts entitled Blogging versus Writing and Yes!!!! I AM a Writer it is only now that I am beginning to feel like a writer.  Ideas for posts present themselves more readily than before, especially than in the summer months when, to be fair, the distractions were greater. I now need rather then just want to write.

So what will the New Year bring? I will blog at least twice a week, essentially on the same subjects that have filled it this year, including the resurrection of the San Francisco themed features, and engage in much more comment and discussion with other bloggers than I have managed before.  Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, will complete my social networking activity.

But 2012 will be different – as I had always planned – in that I now intend to focus on other forms of writing than the blog.  In addition to submitting work to relevant publications I will also be dipping my toe in the competition waters.  Finally, and by no means least, I will be working on more substantial, long term projects, once I have clarified to my own satisfaction which of those should take precedence (or whether they should be tackled concurrently). 

One palpable change that I intend to make is in the design of the blog.  The current theme has served me well, and whilst it does fulfill the basic requirements – clear and well organised – it is a little dull.  I think a funkier image is necessary, so I will be researching the increasing range of WordPress themes to find the one that fits best.  I won’t rush into this, and it is possible my conclusion might still be to retain the current one, but, equally, don’t be surprised if you receive a more colourful greeting when you visit in the New Year.   

Before I sign off, I’d like to thank WordPress for making the task of designing and writing on the blog much less onerous than I had feared, as well as my friend Pete who recommended the platform in the first place – that was inspired advice. 

I will now leave you in the less predictable hands of my guest writer for the centenary blog, namely “Blog” himself (at least I think it’s a he), who will be offering his own idiosyncratic opinions on the past 12 months. 

I’ll see you again in the first post of 2012. Happy New Year!

Now, how do I get rid of that falling snow over the Golden Gate Bridge!

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Great San Franciscan Characters #12: Oofty Goofty

Posted in Great San Franciscan Characters, tagged , , , , , , , on May 17, 2011| 6 Comments »


Of all the eccentric characters that have graced San Francisco’s history, Oofty Goofty must rank amongst the most bizarre.  His real name (Leonard Borchardt appears to be the most likely contender), background (he may have been a deserter from the US Cavalry), and place and date of  both his birth and death are all bones of contention, yet his strange antics intrigued and entertained residents of the City during the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Herbert Asbury‘s 1933 book The Barbary Coast, An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld, upon which most of the limited knowledge we have of of Oofty is based, explained that he acquired his name during his first sideshow appearance before the San Francisco public as a wild man on Market Street:

“From crown to heel he was covered with road tar, into which were stuck great quantities of horsehair, lending him a savage and ferocious appearance.  He was then installed in a heavy cage, and when a sufficiently large number of people had paid their dimes to gaze upon the wild man recently captured in the jungles of Borneo and brought to San Francisco at enormous expense, large chunks of raw meat were poked between the bars by an attendant.  This provender the wild man gobbled ravenously, occasionally growling, shaking the bars, and yelping these fearsome words: “Oofty goofty! Oofty goofty!””

This frightening spectacle lasted no more than a week before he became ill, unable to perspire through his thick covering of tar and hair.  Doctors at the Receving Hospital tried in vain for several days to remove his costume, and only when he was “liberally doused with a tar solvent” and “laid out upon the roof of the hospital” did it finally come off.

His wild man career abruptly cut short, Oofty turned to the theatre, initially securing a spot at Bottle Koenig’s, a Barbary Coast beer hall.  After just one song and dance, however, he was flung into the street, a humiliating and painful experience had it not been for the fact that it showed him the direction in which his career, or “work” as he termed it, should now turn.

Despite being kicked ferociously and landing heavily upon a stone sidewalk, he discovered that he felt no physical pain. For the next 15 years he exploited this new found talent by touring the city and allowing himself, at a price dependent upon the degree of brutality inflicted, to be kicked and battered by others.  Let Asbury again describe his modus operandi:

“Upon payment of ten cents a man might kick Oofty Goofty as hard as he pleased, and for a quarter……..with a walking stick.  For fifty cents Oofty Goofty would become the willing, and even prideful, recipient of a blow with a baseball bat, which he always carried with him…..It was his custom to approach groups of men, in the streets and in bar-rooms, and diffidently inquire:  “Hit me with a bat for four bits, gents.  Only four bits to hit me with this bat, gents”.

It was only when heavyweight boxer John L. Sullivan struck Oofty with a billiard cue, fracturing three vertebrae, that he finally called it a day. He will no doubt have enjoyed Sullivan’s later World Championship defeat at the hands of San Francisco’s own James J. Corbett.  The blow from Sullivan caused Oofty to walk with a limp for the rest of his life, and he was no longer immune to pain, flinching at the slightest touch.

There are many other colourful stories surrounding Oofty, for example:

  • acting as a human skittle in Woodward’s Garden where customers could win a cigar if they hit him with a baseball;
  • performing alongside Big Bertha (another candidate for inclusion in this series) in a Shakespearean parody entitled “Borneo and Juliet”;
  • attempting to push a shiny red wheelbarrow to New York for a bet (a challenge that failed after just 40 miles when he was knocked over in the dark and landed head first in a creek); and
  • being shipped upside down in a box to Sacramento as a joke gift for a young lady and being left in the unopened package over the weekend.

Despite his physical debility he moved to Texas where he continued to play the fool for his living, drinking beer with a bar spoon and engaging in quail eating contests.

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