“Spirits of San Francisco” is a new history ebook written through Gary Kamiya, with illustrations by Paul Madonna.
By the end of 2020, it’s simple to view San Francisco through a myopic lens, walking your dog the same streets over and over again, with the cracks in the sidewalk fitting in with its main landmarks. But for historian Gary Kamiya, author of the new publication “Spirits of San Francisco,” the beginnings of the shelter-in-place order brought a greater appreciation of the city’s landscape that is the hallmark of his work, which includes the column “Portals of the Past” and e-book “Cool Gray City of Love”. “In fact, it is one of the most amazing physical blows in the world. It is an incredible convergence of hills, water and sky. So when it’s not crowded, you kind of feel like the city has returned to its herbal roots, in a way that you wouldn’t feel [in a position like] New York. Kamiya says. It briefly explores the concept of the pandemic city in a preface written in May, however, the rest of the ebook was studied and written before COVID-19 and highlights corners of San Francisco whose history not only stretches back decades, but to centuries. . Kamiya partnered with local illustrator Paul Madonna for the eeebook, with a bankruptcy that illuminated 16 other locations in the city, from the 3 universes of Joice Street to the Palace of Fine Arts. The eeebook is packed with engaging vignettes from San Francisco lore, a dense encyclopedia of some of the city’s most wacky and quirky characters. S. F. Newcomers will be briefed on everything new with one and both pages, but it takes more than a little trivia about a prominent construction to impress one of the city’s most committed historians. So, we asked Kamiya about some of the most compelling findings from his research.
“Spirits of San Francisco” is a new history ebook written through Gary Kamiya, with illustrations by Paul Madonna.
In the bankruptcy of the Golden Gate Park Music Competition, Kamiya explores the lesser-known of San Francisco’s 3 wonderful fairs: the Midwinter Fair. Although the Panama-Pacific and Golden Gate International Exhibitions of 1915 and 1939 are better known, this 1894 fair was the site of one of the largest and most significant cultural exhibitions in the city’s history. The organizers of the fair had planned to attract an entire town of villagers from the African kingdom of Dahomey, but when their arrival was delayed, two minstrel performers, Bert Williams and George Walker, were hired. to pretend to be them. After the arrival of the villagers, Williams and Walker learned more about their culture and eventually incorporated their stories into a Broadway exhibition called “In Dahomey,” which was one of the first black musicals to play on Broadway and has cemented the Williams and Walkers legacy as some of the greatest vital figures in African American art history. “This is just one of the ordinary old and weird coincidences and a bit of luck due to this highly problematic and racially questionable display in this living room. Without the fact that the other people presenting this exhibit needed some ringtones to portray the Africans, those two vital American comedians would never have acquired the cultural wisdom that allowed them to replace the history of black entertainment in America. crazy story. “
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When the 1906 earthquake struck, it shook the SoMA neighborhood. It was the epicenter of the earthquake, but it suffered even more because the domain was originally a swamp, then a dump, so the base was volatile at best. No construction survived and in many spaces the floor returned to its original decreasing elevation. People began to rebuild on the now diminished land, but the city entered and swept the streets a few feet higher. As a result, there are still several buildings that are literally buried buildings. “You see what a 6 foot overhead garage door was like, and one foot sticks out of the road. This Shipley Street space is one of them. I waited for one of the [residents] to come out and I asked this young man, ‘Hey, how’s this construction going?’ He said, ‘It’s absolutely cattywampus. ‘ “You can literally see a lot of those constructions that have been thrown to their knees, so to speak, and bow like they’re in a punch . . . There aren’t many places where you can get visual evidence of this incredible mess, still this Shipley Street is one of them “.
For his segment of the South Park book, Kamiya lists a list of crimes that took up position between 1903 and 1936, ranging from three-way knife fights to a component robbery that grossed a measly four dollars in loot. Based on Kamiya’s initial investigation, he planned to come up with an account from federal narcotics officer George H. White, who seriously injured a black man, took four other black men and women into custody as witnesses, and hired them. homeless with a deposit of $ 1,000. “It would create incredible fury today, but back then it was like ‘not much,'” Kamiya said. At the time, Kamiya’s idea that White was just another potentially racist cop, however, after submitting a first draft of the bankruptcy to his editor, connected the dots to two other infamous incidents that cemented White’s reputation as one of the highs of the city. debatable cops. history. White was also concerned about Billie Holiday’s drug theft while staying at the Mark Twain Hotel on Mason Street. “She was arrested, and she’s murky, yet a lot of other people think they put her in and put drugs on her. And George White was concerned on this bust too! Kamiya said. But White’s strangest exploits took a stand on Telegraph Hill in a position called “the platform” as a component of a branch of Operation MKUltra, in which the CIA unknowingly conducted brain control experiments. on subjects who use psychoactive drugs. From 1955 to 1965, he was involved in a mission called Operation Midnight Climax, in which the sex staff seduced North Beach bar shoppers and lured them to a safe space on Chestnut Street to be tested for LSD and drugs. will observe. “You can’t make these things up,” Kamiya said. “They were having sex with these prostitutes, then this agent was sitting in a two-way mirror, sitting on a portable toilet. And he squeezed and drank a jug of martinis as he watched the adult occasions in the next room. Simply incredible. Turns out the agent’s call was George White. “
You can find a lot of other stories like this in “Spirits of San Francisco”, which are on sale online and in all of San Francisco’s glorious independent bookstores.