#sally stanford

[restauranthistorian]

Themes: bordellos

In the 1960s turn-of-the-century brothels inspired restaurant decor, even in some places pitching to the family trade.

Isn’t it strange that some restaurants with this type of decoration were meant to represent family good times? Mom and dad and the kids, for instance, eating burgers and fries while enjoying the songs of Lusty Lil and company at The Red Garter Saloon in a Shakopee MN amusement…

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[owlpockets]

It doesn’t take much to produce a good merchant of cash-and-carry love; just courage, an infinite capacity for perpetual suspicion, stamina on a 24-hour-a-day basis, the deathless conviction that the customer is always wrong, a fair knowledge of first and second aid, do-it-yourself gynecology, judo - and a tremendous sense of humor.

Sally Stanford, Lady of the House (1966)

[burritosandpeppermint]

Stanford ran one of San Francisco's most notorious brothels. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, writing about the UN, said "the United Nations was founded at Sally Stanford's whorehouse," because of the number of delegates to the organization's 1945 San Francisco founding conference who were Stanford customers; many actual, if informal, negotiating sessions took place in the brothel's living room.

[cemlurk]

Have a Drink on Sally... These words are inscribed into a drinking fountain found at the Ferry Building in Sausalito, and they forever memorialize the truly indomitable spirit of Sally Stanford. Let's start out by looking at some numbers: Sally Stanford went by 25 different names, beat 17 arrests, survived 11 heart attacks, was married 7 times, took 6 attempts to get voted into Sausalito's City Council, and adopted 2 children as infants. She was also one of San Francisco's most famous madams and later, the mayor of Sausalito, California.

Sally was born Mabel Janice Busby in 1903, dropped out of school in 3rd grade, did a couple year bid in Oregon when 16, and then began to amass wealth as a bootlegger in Ventura, California during her first few years of adulthood. At age 21, she moved to San Francisco, and ran brothels around the city for the next 25 years - hosting many politicians and of course entertaining numerous entertainers. She recalls fond memories of visits by Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra, but had to give Humphrey Bogart the boot for acting the fool. Stanford was fancy, stylist and unapologetic.  After the United Nations founding conference was held in SF in 1945, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Herb Caen wrote "The United Nations was founded at Sally Stanford’s whorehouse."

After the good ol' days ran their course, Stanford moved across the Golden Gate Bridge into Sausalito and bought a waterfront restaurant called the Valhalla Inn.  She remained a member of high society, and was loved and celebrated by (a lot of) the community.  She ran the restaurant for years, and as mentioned above, eventually became mayor of Sausalito.  Flags were flown at half mast in town when she died in 1982.  

Oh, a couple things I forgot to mention above - one day she randomly picked the name Stanford after hearing a Stanford Cardinal football game, because she thought it had a nice ring to it. She wrote an autobiography called The Lady of the House in 1966, which was made into a tv movie of the same name in 1978. Read more about her wild life here and here and here. 

Sally is buried in a magical cemetery in San Rafael, CA called Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery along with other notable folks such as Quicksilver Messenger Service's Dino Valenti, Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Lefty Gomez, and Indian classical musician Ali Akbar Kahn. Domestic animals are barred from the cemetery, as all wild animals are protected.  I found deer poop all over the place, and scored a deer antler as well. The staff was very helpful when I called ahead to ask for locations of specific graves, and even put a cute package together for me with maps of the plots I needed to look in. 

- Paul