more than one thing

articles to illuminate California's interstitial past

[panelswithoutpeople]

Rip Off Press: The Golden Era from Rip Off Comix No. 21

by Jaxon

[nobrashfestivity]

Unknown, Lady of Guadalupe Shrine painted on a freeway wall at the end of a dead-end street in Boyle Heights, date unknown.

(Scanned from Chicano and Chicana Art A Critical Anthology)

[sanfranciscoblog]

Trump calls off 'surge' in San Francisco

The liberal city was bracing for the arrival of federal agents.

President Trump reversed plans to deploy federal forces to San Francisco at the behest of Marc Benioff and Nvidia's Jensen Huang.

Trump, in a statement on Truth Social, said “friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress. I spoke to Mayor Lurie last night and he asked, very nicely, that I give him a chance to see if he can turn it around.” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday that he backed off after Lurie “asked, very nicely.” Trump said friends based in the area had conveyed to him that Lurie “was making substantial progress.”

Tech billionaires lobbying the president not to "send in the troops" with his unchecked authority, because we don't please him, isn't how the United States is supposed to work.

[california-slow-take]

Here on the edge of the fog belt, we are having the coldest summer this century.

[fiercefaggotry]

[udc793]

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night? – On the Road (at City Lights Booksellers & Publishers) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwbJtRBAQuezLsIyOvpdNP_3V8FCgACBnrG6Nw0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=18a11kvhsxdki

[random-brushstrokes]

John Falter - Man in Window Playing Guitar, San Francisco (1948)

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She was one of SF's most decorated chefs. Now she feeds the Tenderloin for free

Michelle Polzine closed her beloved 20th Century Café mid-Covid. Now she’s baking for anyone who needs a free meal.

[california-slow-take]

I don't know why I can't post links with previews on this sideblog anymore - I haven't posted in a while because of this, but it doesn't seem to be fixing itself so I guess I'll have to change my posting style!

It's been an eventful, strange, heartbreaking election season in the US and California is no different, although the trends here are largely underappreciated by the national media because we are still voting blue. I am quite concerned about the rise of the billionaires in San Francisco and Bay Area politics, so that San Francisco voters appear to be rejecting Measure D and voting for Measure E, choosing more bureaucracy instead of more mayoral power, does warm my heart a bit.

Stay well and send me dispatches from other parts of the state. It's time to wake up and look around.

[california-slow-take]

Why Bay Area athletes are chasing container ships

Efforts mount to stop dangerous “wake boarding” in San Francisco Bay, when hydrofoilers surf the waves of giant ships.

[vaspider]

The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco

If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not okay.

Simply put, there is a ton of fascist-chic cosplay involved. Once an officer joins the Grays, they get a special uniform designed by their tech overlords. The Grays will also donate heavily to police charities and “merge the Gray and police social networks.” Then, in a show of force, they’ll march through the city together. “A huge win would be a Gray Pride parade with 50,000 Grays,” said Srinivasan. “That would start to say: ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’ You have the A.I. Flying Spaghetti Monster. You have the Bitcoin parade. You have the drones flying overhead in formation.... You have bubbling genetic experiments on beakers.… You have the police at the Gray Pride parade. They’re flying the Anduril drones …”

Everyone would be welcome at the Gray Pride march—everyone, that is, except the Blues. Srinivasan defines the Blue political tribe as the liberal voters he implies are responsible for the city’s problems. Blues will be banned from the Gray-controlled zones, said Balaji, unlike Republicans (“Reds”). “Reds should be welcomed there, and people should wear their tribal colors,” said Srinivasan, who compared his color-coded apartheid system to the Bloods vs. Crips gang rivalry. “No Blues should be welcomed there.”

While the Blues would be excluded, they would not be forgotten. Srinivasan imagines public screenings of anti-Blue propaganda films: “In addition to celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses.… There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.”

Balaji goes on—and on. The Grays will rename city streets after tech figures and erect public monuments to memorialize the alleged horrors of progressive Democratic governance. Corporate logos and signs will fill the skyline to signify Gray dominance of the city. “Ethnically cleanse,” he said at one point, summing up his idea for a city purged of Blues (this, he says, will prevent Blues from ethnically cleansing the Grays first).

[nobrashfestivity]

Unknown, Japanese geranium farm near Malibu Beach, 1950s This postcard shows the colorful geranium farm that used to be visible from the Pacific Coast Highway in central Malibu, just west of Malibu Creek. This was the Takahashi Geranium Farm owned and operated by a Japanese-American family from at least the 1940s to the early 1970s. Serra Retreat is visible in the distance at the right of the image. Eric Wienberg Collection of Malibu Matchbooks, Postcards, and Ephemera 0129:

[california-slow-take]

'Heartbreaking': Extremely rare animal on the brink of extinction in Bay Area

Burrowing owls are on the brink of extinction in the Bay Area, but conservation groups are urging California officials to list them as endan

[1five1two]

Panorama of San Francisco, USA. 1878. High Resolution.

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Judge in wealthy Calif. enclave bans all remodels, upgrades until new housing plans move forward

Judge in Beverly Hills, California bans permits for all remodels, upgrades until new housing plans move forward.

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‘This history is in our backyard’: East Oakland memorial honors victims of Jonestown massacre

Jonestown survivor John Cobb has tended the monument at Evergreen Cemetery for over a decade. He hopes more people will visit.

Once a month, John Cobb stops by Evergreen Cemetery in East Oakland to check on the Jonestown Memorial. Eleven of his family members are buried there, including his mother and five siblings. He’ll sit on the bench, contemplating those he lost, or get to work wiping away the acorn shells and foxtails on the granite memorial plaques he helped put in place over a decade ago.

The memorial exists to ensure the stories of his loved ones aren’t forgotten. It sits on a half-moon-shaped hill in the cemetery, which is located just below MacArthur Boulevard between 64th and 68th avenues, overlooking the Coliseum in the distance. The memorial is remarkably humble — four plaques with 918 engraved names of the Peoples Temple members who died 45 years ago  — and belies how big Jonestown has loomed in the collective imagination. 

Cobb lives near the memorial and now runs a furniture business. But when the Jonestown tragedy happened, he was 18 years old and part of Jim Jones’ personal security detail in Guyana. Jones started Peoples Temple church in the 1950s, first in Indiana then San Francisco, championing racial equality during a time of overt segregation. It ended with him using drugs, paranoid in a “promised land” he called Jonestown in the interior jungle of Guyana, where he forced death on members via poisoned Flavor Aid and gunshot. Over a third were under the age of 18.  

When Cobb is at the memorial, reading the names, his memories are nothing like the horrific images from Guyana that flooded the media in the days that followed. What he sees are ordinary moments of ordinary people: Sharon “Tobi” Stone, who said little but hit that cowbell hard in Cobb’s R&B band, Black Velvet; Free movie tickets for the kids in the hands of Patty Cartmell, who could talk her way into anything; Marceline Jones’s love of burnt toast. 

[california-slow-take]

Biden, Xi meet at Bay Area mansion that made soap opera history

A moment captured in Filoli, a mansion in Woodside, Calif., 42 years ago changed pop culture forever.

Wednesday’s meeting of presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping at Filoli adds even more history to the fascinating and illustrious Bay Area mansion. Although this meeting will certainly have more geopolitical implications, a moment captured in Filoli’s library 42 years ago changed pop culture forever. 

...

With his fortune, Bourn built or bought some of the most beautiful homes in California and Ireland: Villa Eden Del Mar on Pebble Beach’s 17-Mile Drive, Bourn Mansion at 2550 Webster St. in San Francisco, Muckross House in Killarney, Ireland, and Filoli in Woodside. The pseudo-Italian name was a mashup of letters from Bourn’s credo: “Fight for a just cause. Love your fellow man. Live a good life.”

After William and wife Agnes’ deaths, the mansion was bought by Lurline Matson Roth, the heiress to the Matson shipping empire. Due to the immense costs of maintaining the estate, the mansion was in decline when Roth gifted it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the 1970s. It was restored and opened to the public for tours.

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But its true star turn came in 1981 when a new soap opera called “Dynasty” shot its three-episode pilot there. The sexy, scandalous lives of the Carrington family unfolded in their Denver mansion, which was actually Filoli. Stars John Forsythe, Linda Evans, Pamela Sue Martin and Al Corley filmed in the home and gardens, including a scene in the Filoli library that would make television history. It was there that son Steven Carrington came out to patriarch Blake Carrington, making Steven the first openly gay lead on a primetime drama.