"BEFORE THE FIRE"
San Fransiscans love to show their city off. Nevertheless they take a
curious delight in countering against the enthusiasm of the alien with a
solemn wag of the head and the invariable:
{seen }
{felt }
"Ah, but you should have {tasted } it before the Fire!"
{smelled}
{heard }
They say that about everything, old and new. They say it
indiscriminately, without thought of what it means. They love the sound
of it, and have made it a fixed habit. They say it about districts and
buildings, about hotels, and the Barbary Coast (which is much like the
old Bowery, in New York, and where ragtime dancing is said to have
originated), and the Presidio (the military post, overlooking the sea),
and Golden Gate Park (a semitropical wonder-place, built on what used to
be sand dunes, and guarded by Park Policemen who carry lassos with which
to stop runaways), and Chinatown, and the Fish Market (which resembles a
collection of still-life studies by William M. Chase), and the Bank
Exchange (which is not a commercial institution, but a venerable bar,
presided over by Duncan Nicol, who came around the Horn with his
eye-glasses over his ear, where he continues to wear them while mixing
Pisco cocktails). They say it also of "Ernie" and his celebrated "Number
Two" cocktail, with a hazelnut in it; and of the St. Francis Hotel
(which is one of the best run and most perfectly cosmopolitan hotels in
the country), and of the Fairmont Hotel (a wonderful pile, commanding
the city and the bay as Bertolini's commands the city and the bay of
Naples), and the Palace Hotel (where drinks are twenty-five cents each,
as in the old days; where ripe olives are a specialty, and where, over
the bar, hangs Maxfield Parrish's "Pied Piper," balancing the continent
against his "Old King Cole," in the Knickerbocker bar, in New York).
They say it about the Cliff House, (with its Sorrento setting, its seals
barking on the rocks below, and its hectic turkey-trotting nights),
about Tait's, and Solari's, and the Techau, and Frank's, and the Poodle
Dog, and Marchand's, and Coppa's, and all the other restaurants; about
the private diningrooms (which are a San Francisco specialty), about
the pretty girls (which are another specialty), about the clubs (which
are still another), about cable-cars, taxicabs, flowers, shrimps, crabs,
sand-dabs (which are fish almost as good as English sole), and about
everything else. They use it instead of "if you please," "thank you,"
"good-morning," and "good-night." If there are no strangers to say it to
they say it to one another. If you admire a man's wife and children he
will say it, and the same thing occurs if you approve of his new hat.
If the old San Francisco was indeed so far superior to the new, then
Bagdad in the days of Haroun-al-Raschid would have been but a dull
prairie town, compared with it.
But was it?
The San Francisco attitude upon this subject reminds me of that of the
old French Royalists.
A friend of mine, an American living in Paris, happened to inquire of a
venerable Marquis concerning the _Palais de Glace_, where Parisians go
to skate.
"Ah, yes," replied the ancient aristocrat, raising his shoulders
contemptuously, "one hears that the world now goes to skate under a
roof, upon ice manufactured. Truly, all is changed, my friend. I assure
you it was not like this under the Empire. In those times the lakes in
the Bois used to freeze. But they do so no longer. It is not to be
expected. Bah! This _sacre_ Republic!"
* * * * *
While in San Francisco, I noted down a number of odd items, some of them
unimportant, which, when added together, have much to do with the flavor
of the town. Having used the word "flavor," I may as well begin with
drinks.
Drinks cut an important figure in San Francisco life, as is natural in a
wine-producing country. The merit of the best California wines is not
appreciated in the East. Some of them are very good--much better,
indeed, than a great deal of the imported wine brought from Europe. I
have even tasted a California champagne which compares creditably with
the ordinary run of French champagne, though when it comes to special
vintages, California has not attained the French level.
It is a general custom, in public bars and clubs to shake dice for
drinks, instead of clamoring to "treat," according to the silly eastern
custom, which as every one knows, often causes men to drink more than
they wish to, just to be "good fellows." The free lunch, in connection
with bars, is developed more highly in San Francisco than in any other
city that I know of; also, Easterners will be surprised to find small
onions, or nuts, in their cocktails, instead of olives. A popular
cocktail on the Coast is the "Honolulu," which is like the familiar
"Bronx," excepting that pineapple juice is used in place of orange
juice.
When my companion and I were in San Francisco a prohibition wave was
threatening. Such a movement in a wine-producing country engenders very
strong feeling, and I found, attached to the bills-of-fare in various
restaurants, earnest pleas, addressed to voters, to turn out and cast
their ballots against the temperance menace.
Of prohibition the town had already had a taste--if one may use the
expression. The reform movement had struck the Barbary Coast, the rule,
at the time of our visit, being that there should be no dancing where
alcoholic drinks were served, and no drinks where there was dancing.
This law was enforced and it made the former region of festivity a sad
place. Even the sailors and marines sitting about the dance-halls,
consuming beer-substitutes, at a dollar a bottle, were melancholy
figures, appearing altogether unresponsive to the sirens who surrounded
them.
Ordinary drinks at most bars in San Francisco are fifteen cents each, or
two for a quarter, as in most other cities. That is to say, two drinks
for "two bits."
Like the American mill, or the English Guinea, the "bit," familiar on
the Pacific Slope, is not a coin. The Californian will ask for change
for a "quarter," or a "half," as we do in the East, but in making small
purchases he will ask for two, or four, or six "bits' worth," a "bit"
representing twelve-and-a-half cents. In the old days there were also
"short bits" and "long bits," meaning, respectively ten cents, and
fifteen cents, but these terms with their implied scorn of the copper
cent, have died out.
The humble penny is, however, still regarded contemptuously in San
Francisco. Until quite recently all newspapers published there sold at
five cents each, and that is still true of the morning papers, the
"Chronicle" and the "Examiner." Lately the "Call" and the "Bulletin,"
evening papers, have dropped in price to one cent each, but when the
princely Son of the Golden West buys them, he will frequently pay the
newsboy with a nickel, ignoring the change. Nor is the newsboy to be
outdone in magnificence: when a five-cent customer asks for one paper
the boy will very likely hand him both. They understand each other,
these two, and meet on terms of a noble mutual liberality.
As to Chinatown, those who knew it before the fire declare that its
charm is gone, but my companion and I found interest in its shops, its
printing offices and, most of all, in its telephone exchange.
The San Francisco Telephone Directory has a section devoted to
Chinatown, in which the names of Chinese subscribers are printed in both
English and Chinese characters. Thus, if I wish to telephone to Boo Gay,
Are Too, Chew Chu & Co., Doo Kee, Fat Hoo, the Gee How Tong, Gum Hoo,
Hang Far Low, Jew Bark, Joke Key, King Gum, Shee Duck Co., Tin Hop &
Co., To To Bete Shy, Too Too Guey, Wee Chun, Wing On & Co., Yet Bun
Hung, Yet Ho, Yet You, or Yue Hock, all of whom I find in the
directory--if I wish to telephone to them, I can look them up in English
and call "China 148," or whatever the number may be. But if a Chinaman
who cannot read English wishes to call, he calls by name only, which
makes it necessary for operators to remember not merely the name and
number of each Chinese subscriber, but to speak English and
Chinese--including the nine Chinese provincial dialects.
The operators are, of course, Chinese girls, and the exchange, which has
over a thousand subscribers, representing about a tenth of the
population of the Chinese district, is under the management of Mr. Loo
Kum Shu, who was born in California and educated at the University of
California. His assistant, Mr. Chin Sing, is also a native of the
State, and is a graduate of the San Francisco public schools.
For a "soulless corporation" the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company
has shown a good deal of imagination in constructing and equipping its
Chinatown exchange. The building with its gaily decorated pagoda roof
and balconies, makes a colorful spot in the center of Chinatown. Inside
it is elaborately frescoed with dragons and other Chinese designs, while
the woodwork is of ebony and gold. The switchboard is carved and is set
in a shrine, and this fascinating incongruity, with the operators, all
dressed in the richly colored silk costumes of their ancient
civilization, poking in plugs, pulling them out, chattering now in
English, now in Chinese, teaches one that anachronism may, under some
conditions, be altogether charming.
* * * * *
One rumor concerning San Francisco restaurants appealed to my sinful
literary imaginings. I had heard that these establishments resembled
those of Paris, not only in cuisine, but because, as in Paris, the
proprietors did not deem it necessary to stipulate that private
diningrooms should never be occupied save by parties of more than two.
Of one of these restaurants, in particular, I had been told the most
amazing tales: A taxi would drive into the building by a sort of tunnel;
great doors would close instantly behind it; it would run onto a large
elevator and be taken bodily to some floor above, where the occupants
would alight practically at the door of their clandestine
meeting-place--an exquisite little apartment, decorated like the boudoir
of some royal favorite. If it were indeed true that such a picturesquely
shocking place existed, I intended--entirely in the interest of my
readers, you will understand--to see it; and honesty forces me to add
that I hoped, with journalistic immorality, that it did exist.
One night I went there. True, the conditions were somewhat prosaic. It
was quite late; my companion and I were tired, but we were near the end
of our stay in San Francisco, and I insisted upon his accompanying me to
the mysterious cafe, although he protested violently--not on moral
grounds, but because he is sufficiently sophisticated to know that there
is no subject upon which exaggeration gives itself _carte blanche_ as it
does when describing gilded vice.
The taxi did drive in through a kind of tunnel--a place suggesting coal
wagons--but there were no massive, silent doors to close behind it.
Passing into an inner court, which was like an empty garage, it stopped
beside a little door.
"Where is the elevator?" I asked the taxi driver.
"In there," he answered, indicating the door.
"But," I complained, "I heard that there was a big elevator here, that
took taxis right up stairs."
"There ain't," he said, succinctly.
Telling him to wait, we entered the door and came upon an elevator and a
solitary waiter, whom we informed of our desire to see the place.
Obligingly he took us to an upper floor and opening the door of an
apartment, showed us in.
"Of course," he said, "all of them are not so fine as this."
Alas for my imaginings, here was no rose-pink boudoir, no scene for a
romantic meeting, but a room like one of those frightful parlor "sets"
one sometimes sees in the cheapest moving pictures. However, in the
movies one is spared the color of such a room; one may see that the
wallpaper is of hideous design, but one cannot see its ghastly scrambled
browns and greens and purples. As I glanced at the various furnishings
it seemed to me that each was uglier than the last, and when finally my
eye fell upon an automatic piano in a sort of combination of dark oak
and art nouveau, with a stained glass front and a nickel in the slot
attachment, my dream of a setting for sumptuous and esthetic sin was
dead. It was a room in which adventure would taste like stale beer.
My companion placed a nickel in the slot that fed the terrible piano.
There was a whirring sound, succeeded, not by low seductive strains, but
by a sudden din of ragtime which crashed upon our ears as the
decorations had upon our eyes.
Hastily I moved towards the door. My companion followed.
[Illustration: The switchboard of the Chinatown telephone exchange is
set in a shrine and the operators are dressed in Chinese silks]
"If the gentlemans would wish to see some other apartments--?" suggested
the obliging waiter, as we closed the door.
"Oh, no thanks," I said. "This gives us a good idea of it."
As we moved towards the elevator the waiter asked politely: "The
gentlemans have never been in here before?"
"No," I said, "we don't live in San Francisco. We had heard about this
place and wanted to see it before we went away."
"It is a famous place," he said. Then, with a shake of the head, he
added, "But before the Fire----Ah, the gentlemans should have seen it
then!"