whole lotta lovin / urban history
jwz just posted on this eccentric character from early San Francisco, the King of Pain.
One link led to another and now I am obsessed with the actress and performer Lotta Crabtree, "The San Francisco Favorite" of the 1850s-70s. Why favorite? I think this picture says it all.
She was an urchin dancing for pennies in the gold rush, and when she retired she was a millionaire from her stage performances. She bequeathed that incredibly ugly monument at Market and Montgomery to the city, which used to be a working fountain. It's the oldest monument in San Francisco! It was a rallying point in the aftermath of the earthquake, so someone had the idea to create a public performance, Lotta's Opera, for the centennial in 2006.
San Francisco does seem to have more than its share of colorful characters. There are so many you could probably throw a costume party on that theme.
Or... perhaps what makes SF different is that here, for some reason, they celebrated eccentrics from day one. So these stories aren't as suppressed. In my experience, people who are in on the beginnings of anything always seem to be larger than life, or maybe the freedom of being in a not-totally-settled-down environment encourages them.
I don't know much about the early history of Vancouver but there seems to be a rich untold past, suppressed by the stuffy sensibilities of colonial Canada.
The so-called National Dream of Canada was embodied in the transcontinental railroad. But maybe the railroad wasn't such a good idea after all. Even today, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco seem to have more in common than they do with their eastern neighbors. (Alaska and SoCal, not so much). One day, all the weirdos nurtured by the waters of the Pacific will join together in one freaky nation. One day....
One link led to another and now I am obsessed with the actress and performer Lotta Crabtree, "The San Francisco Favorite" of the 1850s-70s. Why favorite? I think this picture says it all.
She was an urchin dancing for pennies in the gold rush, and when she retired she was a millionaire from her stage performances. She bequeathed that incredibly ugly monument at Market and Montgomery to the city, which used to be a working fountain. It's the oldest monument in San Francisco! It was a rallying point in the aftermath of the earthquake, so someone had the idea to create a public performance, Lotta's Opera, for the centennial in 2006.
San Francisco does seem to have more than its share of colorful characters. There are so many you could probably throw a costume party on that theme.
Or... perhaps what makes SF different is that here, for some reason, they celebrated eccentrics from day one. So these stories aren't as suppressed. In my experience, people who are in on the beginnings of anything always seem to be larger than life, or maybe the freedom of being in a not-totally-settled-down environment encourages them.
I don't know much about the early history of Vancouver but there seems to be a rich untold past, suppressed by the stuffy sensibilities of colonial Canada.
The so-called National Dream of Canada was embodied in the transcontinental railroad. But maybe the railroad wasn't such a good idea after all. Even today, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco seem to have more in common than they do with their eastern neighbors. (Alaska and SoCal, not so much). One day, all the weirdos nurtured by the waters of the Pacific will join together in one freaky nation. One day....