Signal Events in San Francisco History

In a way, today is the birthday of San Francisco, CA

In 1835, the U.S. government offered to purchase what is now known as San Francisco bay from Mexico, but the Mexicans politely declined the offer. About a decade later, a dispute between the U.S. and Mexico over territory in Texas led to war. Shortly after the war began, U.S. Captain John Montgomery sailed into San Francisco Bay, anchoring just off Yerba Buena (as it was then called). On this day in 1846, Montgomery led a party of marines and sailors ashore. They met no resistance and claimed the settlement at the tip of the peninsula for the United States, raising the American flag in the central plaza.

As everyone knows, the planting of a flag is all it takes. In 1847, the Mexican government formally ceded California to the US in the Treaty of Guadalupe.

Richard Brautigan, the namesake of this here blog, spent most of his adult life in and around San Francisco, hanging out for a time at Ferlinghetti's famous bookstore, City Lights. He was there during the beat years but not quite a part of that scene. He wrote his first two novels in San Francisco. Here's an excerpt from "A Confederate General from Big Sur"(1964). The character Lee Mellon claims he's a direct descendant of a Confederate general, which is never verified. As the novel progresses, we discover that much of what Lee Mellon asserts is untrue, especially concerning the Shangri La he claims to have built overlooking the ocean at Big Sur.

Lee Mellon told me that he was born in Meridian, Mississippi, and grew up in Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, 'Near Asheville,' he said. 'That's Thomas Wolfe country.'

'Yeah,' I said.

Lee Mellon didn't have any Southern accent. 'You don't have much of a Southern accent,' I said.

'That's right, Jesse. I read a lot of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Kant when I was a kid,' Lee Mellon said.

I guess in some strange way that was supposed to get rid of a Southern accent. Lee Mellon thought so, anyway. I couldn't argue because I had never tried a Southern accent against the German philosophers.

 San Francisco is famous for many things, including the Haas lobby at the museum of modern art. 

Here's a good song about that city.

Another Bay area institution is the funk/soul band Tower of Power. Somewhere around here we still have their vinyl LP "East Bay Grease." Enjoy!