BAY TIME INFORMER
SF Bay Area’s timelessly twisty trials, titillations, triumphs and tragedies
By p. joseph potocki on February 26, 2010
“Negros playing it. Eye shades, sleeves up, cigars in mouth. Gin and liquor and smoke and filth. But music!”
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged American jazz, birthplace of jazz, black music, Herbert Asbury, Jazz on the Barbary Coast, San Francisco history, San Francisco's Barbary Coast, the Barbary Coast, Tom Stoddard
By p. joseph potocki on February 17, 2010
“We were getting the real international lechers now, in the spring of ‘45. The United Nations delegates were very large stuff in San Francisco.”
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, COLUMNS, FEATURES | Tagged "The Fortress", 65th Anniversary of U.N. Conference of International Organization, Sally Stanford, San Francisco bordellos, San Francisco history, San Francisco sex industry, Sausalito, United Nations in San Francisco
By p. joseph potocki on February 15, 2010
The most entertaining speculation into Harding’s death comes from The Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency. They claim that Harding was first bitten by a vampire on a boat ride on the San Francisco Bay – and then poisoned to put him out of his misery.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, COLUMNS, FEATURES | Tagged Ambrose Bierce, attempted assasination of Gerald Ford, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency, George W. Bush, Palace Hotel, Presidents Day, Rutherford B. Hayes, San Francisco history, U.S. Presidential visits to San Francisco, U.S. presidents in San Francisco, Warren G. Harding, Warren G. Harding death, William McKinley, William Randolph Hearst
By p. joseph potocki on February 14, 2010
“…during the rainy season of 1849-50 horses, mules, and carts were sucked down into the mud and drowned; and many men, trying to cross the streets while drunk, narrowly escaped similar deaths.”
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged Barbary Coast, San Francisco blog, San Francisco history, San Francisco weather
By Dick Bingo on February 12, 2010
“No one refers to San Francisco by that title except people from Los Angeles,” said the court. “I am the chairman of the County Council of Defense, and I warn you that you stand in danger of being interned as an alien enemy. Don’t do it again.”
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES, VIDS | Tagged Don't call it Frisco, films shot in San Francisco, Frisco, movies about San Francisco, San Francisco cinematic history
By p. joseph potocki on February 9, 2010
“Reality” is as dead as the slide rule – and as barren as sterile rock. The nerd, who once was shunned…is today’s celebrated Digital Conquistador.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged Cooking with Bubbie, Digital Nation, PBS Frontline, The Matrix, World of Warcraft
By p. joseph potocki on January 21, 2010
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
—Jack London
“(Jack London writes) as if his digestion, like his politics and rhetoric, was out of order.”
—Ambrose Bierce
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged alcoholism, Ambrose Bierce, Ambrose Bierce quotations, Bohemian Club, Bohemian Grove, Devil's Dictionary, George Sterling, Jack London, San Francisco history, William Randolph Hearst
By p. joseph potocki on January 16, 2010
Though an infamous miser, Lick paid his workers well. He was an unassuming man whose monument to himself—an immense pyramid dwarfing even the Great Pyramid at Giza—was to be erected in downtown San Francisco.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged Catalina Island, Ghiradelli chocolate, Gold Rush San Francisco, Great Pyramid at Giza, James Lick, James Lick freeway, James Lick Observatory, Lick House, San Francisco history, Santa Clara Valley
By p. joseph potocki on January 10, 2010
Here, nature’s sublime perfection is re-imagined into Pixars and Lucasfilms, into oil refineries, cargo ports, nuclear arms and biotech labs; re-imagined into freeways and collapsing bridges, into internet communes and staid financial houses built on mud.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged Left Coast, robber barons, San Francisco Bay Area history, Wild West
By p. joseph potocki on January 8, 2010
They, like Emperor Norton, garnered reams of newsprint, but Bummer and Lazarus didn’t give one guttural growl about Joshua Norton.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged animal cruelty, Bummer and Lazarus, California Gold Rush, Edward Jump cartoons, Emperor Norton I, Joshua Abraham Norton, San Francisco history, San Francisco legend, The Three Bummers
By p. joseph potocki on January 7, 2010
Long before Rupert Murdoch’s quest for media hegemony spawned Fox, our nation marveled at a vast media empire built by San Francisco’s own prodigal son—William Randolph Hearst.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER | Tagged fascism, mass media, media consolidation, media moguls, propaganda, Rupert Murdoch, San Francisco history, San Francisco news, wealth, William Randolph Hearst, yellow journalism
By p. joseph potocki on January 1, 2010
O’Brien family legend holds that he landed his Riptides column, promoted as the “blend of California’s brilliant past and present” after he’d penned a short ditty about a moth’s lone ferry ride across the bay.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged Riptides, Robert O'Brien, San Francisco Chronicle columnist, San Francisco history
By p. joseph potocki on December 31, 2009
Happy Jack Harrington was the Barbary Coast’s own Beau Brummel, Bacchus and P.T. Barnum all rolled up into one… Happy Jack loved everyone, and everyone loved Happy Jack.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged Barbary Coast, delirium tremens, dive bars, Happy Jack Harrington, New Year's fable, San Francisco history, temperance
By Dick Bingo on December 11, 2009
…we’ve outsourced national intelligence services to Xe, the Christian-crusader-owned private army, formerly known as Blackwater.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES, NEWS | Tagged Afghanistan, Anti-Pinkerton Act, Blackwater, Christian crusader, Dashiell Hammett, Department of Justice, Erik Prince, fascism, HUAC, Iraq, no bid contracts, Pinkerton Agency, State Department, Total Intelligence Solutions, Xe
By p. joseph potocki on December 10, 2009
Now, as for you capital-fetishists out there who oppose taxing the rich because you expect to be a billionaire yourself one day—wake up!
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged Ayn Rand, bankruptcy laws, banks, Charlie Chaplin, corporate welfare, fascism, jobs, labor unions, Milton Friedman, Miwok, Mussolini, Ohlone, San Francisco Bay Area, socialism, the economy, Wappo, work
By p. joseph potocki on December 6, 2009
…one survivor still insists that Altamont’s Rolling Stones-headlined free concert was “way cooler than Woodstock.”
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged 1969, Altamont, Hells Angels, hippies, LSD, MK-ULTRA, Rolling Stones, Rupert Murdoch, San Francisco Bay Area history, Speedway Boogie, Wavy Gravy, Woodstock
By p. joseph potocki on November 25, 2009
…what can you say about someone with a Bohemian Grove Lakeside Chat entitled “Who lives, Who dies, Who pays”? Considering compassionate lectures like that, the cynic might expect Califano to hold a jaundiced view of cripples demanding their civil rights.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER | Tagged Bohemian Club, Bohemian Grove, civil rights, Department of Health Education and Welfare, disability rights, eugenics, Joseph Califano, Leroy Moore, performance art, Rehabilitation Act, San Francisco Bay Area, sex, Sins Invalid, Sparta
By p. joseph potocki on November 20, 2009
On November 20, 1969 Indians from all over the nation took back a tiny rock pile that had long ago been stolen from them. But this story isn’t about Alcatraz.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER, FEATURES | Tagged 1969, Alcatraz, Bloody Island Massacre, Clayton Earl Dunca, Gold Rush, Indian Occupation, Lake County history, Miwok, Pomo, San Francisco Bay Area, Wappo
By p. joseph potocki on November 18, 2009
Harold Wobber suddenly stopped midway across the span, removed his jacket and told his new found friend, “This is where I get off.”
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER | Tagged Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge suicide, Guyana, Jim Jones, Jonestown, KKK, MK-ULTRA, Peoples Temple, San Francisco history
By p. joseph potocki on November 17, 2009
Nature endowed Alma with both Aphrodite’s looks and with her libido; with Machiavellian cunning, the heart and will of a lion—and with the energy of a full throttle locomotive.
Posted in BAY TIME INFORMER | Tagged Alma Spreckels, Big Alma, Palace of Legion of Honor, San Francisco history, Spreckels, sugar daddy, Union Square