Was surfing and found a San Francisco history site, with some interesting snippets that could evolve into a story …
[22 Dec 1857] A dreadful murder and suicide took place at the Red House, near the Race Course. The proprietor, SYLVESTER MURPHY, aged 27, a native of PITTSBURG, PA; murdered a servant named MARY ANN MCGLYNN, aged 23, by shooting her in the head and then cutting her throat; afterwards he took his own life by inflicting with a small knife, eight stabs upon his left breast and also by cutting his own throat. The whole affair is wrapped in mystery.
Leah Garchik writes in today’s Chron that Joe D’Alessandro’s staff at the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, where he is CEO, created a Joe D’Allesandro Wikipedia page for him for his bday.
Adds Garchik, “This not only was a nice ego booster; it also differentiated him from Warhol-era sex symbol Joe Dallesandro.”
1910. Former church. Now SFH. Check out the photo gallery. What parties I could have! I’d have room for all my books and more! Seismic retrofit. No longer on the City’s Unreinforced Masonry Building list.
Formerly the Golden Gate Lutheran Church, this stunning Gothic Revival style building is now one of the most extraordinary and largest single family homes in San Francisco. This one-of-a-kind property features an enormous living area that includes the original sanctuary with soaring, coffered and hand-painted ceilings, arched windows framing Dolores Park as well as most of the original stained glass windows, custom mahogany wood finishes, four wood-burning fireplaces, a new chef’s kitchen and a spacious dining room. The Master suite level features a marble Roman tub room, dressing room and incredible 360 degree views from the tower meditation room and deck. The home includes an expansive ground floor level that could be used as exhibition space, recording studio, gym and/or home office. There is also a garage that accommodates 4-6 cars.
Room for my books!
Be still my heart.
This is why every once in a blue moon I buy a Lotto ticket.
Oh, my. …
$9,950,000 but I betcha they’d take $9m if I were paying cash.
Update: Looking at what he paid for it less than two years ago, back when it was a church. Yes, granted he did the transformation to SFH, reinforced the masonry and added all sorts of stuff, still …
At the beginning of the year we lost John Flinn, the Travel Editor, and Lynette Evans, the Home & Garden Editor.
Starting February 1, Home & Garden moves to Sunday from Wednesday and Saturday. Food (which was all of four pages yesterday) moves to Sunday, where it will share a section with Wine, which is moving from Friday to Sunday. Restaurant news and the Inside Scoop column will show up in the Datebook section on Thursdays.
Beginning Sunday, The Chronicle will offer its readers an enhanced newspaper that will better capture the essence of living in the Bay Area. Not only will readers notice a new look and new features in its daily sections, but there will also be new sections and features that will add to the value of the Sunday newspaper.
What does my crystal ball have to say about these moves?
People who currently subscribe because they want the Wednesday Food Section AND the Friday Wine Section AND the Sunday paper will cut their subscription to Sunday-only or drop it altogether. Why bother when the food/wine/home stuff has all moved to Sunday and the current news is on the Web? We’re reading stale news in the morning paper for the most part anyway. Sunday’s a nice day to go out for a walk, pick up a paper from the newstand and walk back home for coffee and a read.
Circulation will fall. Subscriptions will fall. Ad revenue (based on circ stats) will fall as well.
By Christmas, the Chron will decide to exist as a Sunday-only print paper — tabloid format — with all other news content on the Web.
Last week we walked by the Maritime Museum on our walkabout and commented that the rehab of the bleachers didn’t seem to be moving very fast. They seemed pretty much intact except for a couple rows where the facing concrete pavers had been removed.
On my way to looking for something else, I found the following …
Authorities pulled the liquor license of the Black Cat (710 Montgomery — the Bohemian Bar in Kerouac’s On the Road) in 1949. Why? Because it attracted (nay, in truth catered to) gay men.
Sol Stoumen, the straight owner, took the case all the way to state Supreme Court, which ruled in 1951 that a business couldn’t be shut down just because homosexuals gathered there.
But, backing up a bit, earlier the Superior Court and the Court of Appeals had sided against Stoumen. In fact Superior Court Judge Robert L. McWilliams wrote in his decision:
It would be a sorry commentary on the law as well as on the morals of the community to find that persons holding liquor licenses could permit their premises to be used month after month as meeting places for persons of known homosexual tendencies. … An occasional fortuitous meeting of such persons at restaurants for the innocent purpose mentioned is one thing. But for a proprietor of a restaurant knowlingly to permit his premises to be regularly used “as a meeting place” by persons of the type mentioned with all of the potentialities for evil and immorality drawing out of such meetings is, in my opinion, conduct of an entirely different nature.
We saw Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and — most recently — Outliers and also staff writer for The New Yorker) last night at the City Arts & Lectures series at Herbst Theatre (“in conversation” with Kevin Berger, Salon) with tickets my brother gave his nibs for Christmas.
What a funny, bright guy Gladwell is. Sharp. Verbal. Quick.
I really don’t care if you think he dumbs down science or puts his own spin on things. I think he’d be a great guy to hang out with at a coffee shop and discuss the world and what he was working on.
I’ll be looking for his writing in The New Yorker even more than I was before.
Bits from last night.
KB: You start Outliers talking about hockey players (and why successful professional hockey players are usually born in January, February, and March). Why?
MG: Well, because I’m Canadian.
Jeb Bush quote about the struggles he had to reach where he is today, which MG characterized as an “heroic struggle against advantage.”
MG talked about the Beatles and how they became the best band evah. He mentioned that most people don’t consider the fact that for years before they came to America and were discovered, they’d been the house band at a Hamburg strip club where they played eight hours a day for six days a week. Live. On stage. They were playing live (and getting better and better) for thousands of hours before they “made it.”
“We have chosen to overlook the extraordinary discipline they devoted to their vocation.”
We say, oh, they’re talented. Or oh, they’re lucky. They were neither. They played over a thousand live gigs before they “made it.”
The talk was very interesting. Interesting enough that I’m Googling (Hi, Sergey! Hi, Larry!) as I speak. How many other videos are there out there of Gladwell doing his schtick.
He closed with a discussion of his mother, a brown Jamaican (as he called her), mixed race, and the advantages she had, and her parents, and her parents parents going back that made her what she is today.
His point is that just because you live here and are successful and don’t worry where your next meal is coming from or where the fresh water is or the fuel you need to cook … this all isn’t due to the fact you worked so hard and sacrificed and were lucky but is more due to the fact that you were born into circumstances that put you where you are today.
Don’t forget that.
Don’t forget that those in less fortunate circumstances weren’t born to your parents.
