|
 San Francisco in the 1960s
was a little like the old joke about the blind men and the elephant -- what you thought it
was depended on where you grabbed it. To the beats, it was coffee houses, Birkinstock
sandles and nodding to Ferlinghetti in North Beach. To the hippies, it was the
Haight, the
park and panhandling. To straight bachelors, it was Vertigo, Sam Spade apartments
with pocket-door foyers on Geary Street, and very dry martinis; to office girls it was
looking for rich guys at the Buena Vista and seeing how many times you could wear the
paper dress before it got ratty. To a nice, normal, Rob-and-Laura family like mine, it was
my dad's office building at 49 4th Street, drives up to Point Reyes, seagrass rugs from
Cost Plus, Sunday morning hot chocolates at the Sea Witch in Ghirardelli Square, and
toe-dipping into some of the other realities in town. It seemed that there was at least
one San Francisco for every resident.
In 1967, the year of the miserably misnamed Summer of Love, my dad bought a
copy of a little, badly-printed guide book called My Secret San Francisco,
subtitled "How to Eat, Drink and Swing in San Francisco on Almost No Money."
(Why my dad, a 35-year-old happily married father of two, was interested in how to
"swing" is a question I refuse to research any further.) The book was written by
Arthur Fleming, and in 68 pages of his unique prose and perspective, he gives a
fascinating look into that particular snapshot in time, when the beats, the hippies, the
Playboy bachelors and perky girls coexisted for a moment in the bright sunshine before the
storm.
I'll shut up and let you read Mr. Fleming's opus. I originally planned to scan
just the text into HTML, but so much of the charm of the book is the Olivetti typography,
the wandering little corrections, and the cut-and-paste layout. So I've scanned the whole
thing as a series of 38 JPGs. They're big (c. 100K each), so consequently you have to have
the patience of a saint to read the whole thing. But give it a try. (Remember, you have to
hit your browser's "back" button after each JPG to get back here.)
Note: I've tried to find both Arthur Fleming and "Sea Classics Press,
International Airport, Oakland, California," the publisher of the book, to get
permission to put this thing up on the Web. I can't find either. If you know of them, or
want to bring me up to date on any of the places listed in the book, e-mail me.
Front and back cover
Inside cover and page a
Pages b and c
Pages d and 1
Pages 2 and 3
Pages 4 and 5
Pages 6 and 7
Pages 8 and 9
Pages 10 and 11
Pages 12 and 13
Pages 14 and 15
Pages 16 and 17
Pages 18 and 19
Pages 20 and 21
Pages 22 and 23
Pages 24 and 25
Pages 26 and 27
Pages 28 and 29
Pages 30 and 31
Pages 32 and 33
Pages 34 and 35
Pages 36 and 37
Pages 38 and 39
Pages 40 and 41
Pages 42 and 43
Pages 44 and 45
Pages 46 and 47
Pages 48 and 49
Pages 50 and 51
Pages 52 and 53
Pages 54 and 55
Pages 56 and 57
Pages 58 and 59
Pages 60 and 61
Pages 62 and 63
Pages 64 and 65
Pages 66 and 67
Page 68 and Inside Back Cover
Update: October 15, 2001 - I received the following email from Richard
Almassy, who also offered some pithy comments on my Jan Smithers page.
Finally, someone who can comment on how this book relates to reality!
Rough week. [Letter
was posted on September 14, 2001.] But I did read Arthur Fleming's My
Secret San Francisco on your website.
My general impression was that Mr. Fleming's San Francisco existed only
in his mind by 1966. A lot of the places he mentioned were certainly real,
but the overall climate of the city was very different than Mr. Fleming's
account. Maybe in the 1950's it was like he writes, but by 1966 it was very
different. First and FOREMOST, the one lecture I got from everyone I
met when I moved there was that you didn't use the word "Frisco."
It was referred to as either "The
City" or "San Francisco." Residences were adamant about
that. Second, the 1950s days of beatniks and coffee houses were definitely
gone. I'm sure--I looked for them. So was swinging and Residence Clubs.
I had also heard rumors of lots of single women in San Francisco but they
were just that, rumors. Mr. Fleming's only valid suggestion to meet women
was the same one I was told--join a church youth group. But you're not
going to meet swingers at a church group!
Third, I guess one mans treasure is
another mans junk. I thought the shops in Chinatown and the second hands
shop in the Tenderloin district were just
junk. He quaintly refers to them as
antiques. He also would not have recommended that tourists visit the Tenderloin.
It was pretty rough by then. He mentions running into some odd folks
on McAllister. By 1966 it was sound advice to stay out of the Tenderloin
by nightfall. Two more things lead me to believe his San Francisco
was earlier than the 60s. He mentions women wearing wool and men wearing
ivy-league suits. FAT CHANCE!!!!! I was used to east coast, rather formal
attire. San Francisco in the 1960s was the birthplace of casual attire.
I was absolutely stunned that tee shirts, cutoffs, and sandles were not
only allowed in college classrooms, it was standard attire. I was actually
ridiculed for wearing button down shirts and slacks to class. I don't
ever recall seeing anyone wearing suits, not even bankers. And lastly,
he refers to the hippies in the Haight. The Haight was not hippyland
by 1966. The hippy period was over. The Haight was FREAKLAND by 1966.
The hippy era began in the late 1950s/early 1960s and was basically homeless
teenagers living on the street or taken in by one of the large number of
churches in the Haight. They had tattered clothes and long hair because
that's all they could afford. They were runaway teenagers from all over
America. They went to San Francisco because of all the rumors about California
being America's promise land, and the lack of a harsh winter made living
on the streets a lot easier. By 1966, innocent street children had given
way to the drug lords, pimps, prostitutes, Jesus wannabes, flowerpower
fashioned set of assorted freaks and free spirited youth who used
the hippie movement as an excuse to defy society and do all the forbidden
things their parents taught them were wrong. The place was so overwhelming
populated by cohabitating, drug using, long haired freaks that the
SFPD actually didn't bother to try and enforce the law there or clean
the place up. The Haight was actually a
dangerous place to be. In 1967, I remember
discussing the difference between amorality and immorality in a Philosophy
class. The subject had come to the forefront because the San Francisco
court was deliberating the fate of a young Haight-Ashbury resident who
discovered his best friend and roommate chopped up in the trunk of his
car. He reported the murder to the police,
who found conclusive proof that the
young man had committed the crime himself while under the influence of LSD
(back then, INCREDIBLY, LSD was not illegal because our swift federal
government hadn't gotten around to putting it
on the controlled substance list). He
terribly regretted the crime, and did not intend to do it. He was found,
none the less, guilty of first degree murder.
Other than those differences, Mr.
Fleming's San Francisco was pretty much as he
stated. Now that he pointed it out, it did seem like about every third
doorway in San Francisco was a small eatery
of some kind. And he was not writing
about the low priced places! As a college student, I found many places
cheaper than he describes. There was a sandwich shop just off campus that
sold very basic--two slices of bread, one slice of meat, no
condiments--sandwiches for 25 cents. An offbrand cola was 10 cents more. I
remember lots of places mentioned in the book. My favorite was Zs All You
Can Eat on Kearny Street (page 31). I recall it being a couple of bucks in
1966, not $1.10. Still, a real steal! The place must have been a bar at
one time. The atmosphere resembled
the Dodge City Long Horn Saloon. The food was
plentiful, as advertised, but not as
good as Mom's home cooking, that's for sure.
But it was always packed with people (usually the college crowd) on
occasions when quantity was more important
than quality. He mentioned Castagnola's
on the wharf. Great fresh seafood. The Tower Cafe on Grant was at
the base of Coit Tower. I also ate many times at the Good Earth in Chinatown.
It was pretty well known, I suspect because of the book by the same
name. And of course anyone who claims to know The City has been to Rumpelstelskin's
off Union Square for ice cream. It was as much a tourist requirement
as buying a walkaway shrimp cocktail from Allioto's. No. 9. (I was
always curious how it got named No. 9. There was no 1 through 8)
In his updated version of the book, Mr.
Fleming casually mentions the
topless craze in North Beach. Of all the
turmoil of that period, and the 1960s
in the bay area epitomized turmoil, the saddest commentary about San
Francisco and human nature was the topless waitress craze. North Beach was
a class place in the mid 1960s. It
was a great place to take a date. Each night
club along Broadway had no cover charge but usually a two drink minimum
for about an hour show. You would walk in, be brought your two drinks,
the lights would go down, and the show would begin. In one evening you
could catch a jazz set with Cal Jader at Big Al's, catch the Smothers
Brothers act at the Purple Onion, or see
the Limelighters at the Hungry Eye,
and end the evening with satire at the
Committee Review (SNL before NYC had the
idea). Places like Big AL's and The Condor were legitimate luncheonettes
by day and night clubs by night. But North Beach was a little far
from downtown and the financial district to attract businessmen for
lunch. Especially, as Mr. Fleming points
out, when you pass so many other good
places on the way. So to attract a bigger lunch crowd, Carol Doda, a
waitress at the Condor Club, began waiting
tables nude from the waist up. She
was promptly arrested and promptly beat the rap. The City was, after
all, adult, sophisticated, and the trend
setter of America. (True San Franciscans
barely acknowledged the existence of the other big city on the east
coast when it came to being the leader in theater, the arts, and night
life). Lunch business boomed. Not to be
outdone, another female named Yvonne
D'Angier (sp?) swung topless on a trapeze suspended from the ceiling
above the crowd. The race for topless
waitresses was on!. Places that went topless survived. Places that didn't,
folded. Once all of North Beach went topless
at lunch, it was just a matter of time before the night clubs did at
night. Then came nude waitresses. Then came
massage parlors. Then came live sex
shows. By 1970, the legitimate night clubs couldn't compete with the sex
business and either folded, like the Hungry
Eye and Committee Review did, or moved out of North Beach, as the Purple
Onion did. It was a sad statement about
human choice. When I last visited San Francisco in 1992, it was not
to my dismay that North Beach had been
swallowed up by a hugely expanded Chinatown
and the sex industry had been pushed out.
Rich Almassy
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