I wonder how many visitors will come to San Francisco this month, just to see where the Summer of Love happened. I hope they remember their sweaters. Perhaps fans of San Francisco history will also trace the steps of Dashiell Hammett, who wrote The Thin Man and The Maltese Falcon. Or trace the steps of Hammett's fabled detective, Sam Spade. The tour would take them to the Flood Building on Market, where Dash Hammett worked for the Pinkerton Detective agency in the 1920s. His office was so conveniently located close to John's Grill on Ellis -- where a Hammett shrine can be found, though the recently-stolen replica of The Maltese Falcon itself is still missing.
The Flood Building, by the way, is named for James Flood -- an early San Francisco magnate, who made a staggering fortune -- not from gold -- but from silver. How did a saloon owner, a first-generation Irish boy from New York, become one of the owners of one of the richest silver mines in the world -- the Comstock Lode?
Just like he might have swung it today -- through insider trading.
Flood and partner William O'Brien came to San Francisco in 1840 and opened a pub. They were good listeners. They picked up stock tips from inebriated brokers, tongues loosened by liquor.
There was no Securities and Exchange Commission in those days. If there were, the commissioners would, no doubt, have one helluva bar tab.
Flood and O'Brien decided to become brokers themselves. The two did very well, bought into a Nevada silver mine speculation (on good information) and the rest is history. In the 1850s, Flood was making 500-thousand dollars a month. That puts him in the Bill Gates category of his time. (Out of curiosity, I called the Bureau of Labor Statistics to ask how much a half-million dollars in 1850 might be worth today. But there seems to be some kind of worker's walk-out over at BLS -- no one answered the phone.
I called the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco to ask the same thing. The information wasn't readily available. Then I asked how much a pound of flesh might be worth today -- compared to the time of Shylock, who ran a savings and loan in Venice. Here today, gondola tomorrow.
I was told to call Safeway and ask for the butcher's station. The Fed no longer deals in fresh meat as collateral, it seems.) James Flood later financed a project that diverted water from the High Sierra to Virgina City, Nevada -- center of the famous silver mines, called the Comstock Lode. Water in California was worth as much as gold or silver. Still is. Remember Polanski's film, Chinatown ?
Flood -- such an apt name for a water reclamation mobster.
There was a problem. Though plenty of water was flowing into town -- no one thought about how to get the stagnant water out of town.
The area was soon inundated with industrial, human and animal waste. It's still polluted in spots of western Nevada today. But Flood was too rich to worry about it. He could afford indoor plumbing. He built a mansion in Hillsborough. He built a mansion atop Nob Hill, designed by Willis Polk. Today, it's the Pacific Union Club.
Dago Mary's, the venerable Italian restaurant in the Bayview neighborhood that just closed, held pieces of furniture from the Flood Mansion at Hillsborough. The closing of Dago Mary's is, pardon the expression, a watershed moment. In the 1930's, Dago Mary's was a favorite of gangsters, cops, stevedores, pimps, gamblers, newspapermen, City Hall bosses, randy socialites, union officials, hookers, trenchermen and other colorful creatures.
Tourists now wander past the Flood Building and wonder aloud, "Flood? What flood? I've heard of the Big Earthquake -- but nothing about a flood..."
Tourists say the darndest things.
The legendary Powell-Hyde Street cable car -- launched well over 100 years ago -- turns around amid the less-than-picturesque public housing projects near Fisherman's Wharf.
"Imagine!" a woman scornfully observed. "Why would they put those pretty trolleys near those ugly buildings?"
It's true San Francisco has witnessed many disasters. But a flood is not among them.
"There have been all kinds of catastrophes here but the residents haven't been underwater -- not yet, anyway," stated Sue Nammi, with the U.S. Geological Survey. "The only big wave we've seen is the kind the fans make at Candlestick Park."
Quakes, fires, typhoons, typhoid, water spouts, downturns, updrafts, overdraughts, shipwrecks, sweat shops, assassinations, bad-acid rain, balcony collapses, nor'westers, squalls, squalor, errant schools of squid, pyramid schemes, colic, cholera, panic attacks, STD's, rip-tides, rip-offs, Ripple, rotgut, rents-run-riot, AIDS, mudslides, dueling publishers, hail, gas leaks, rats, sunspots, sinkholes, ozone depletion, road rage, cell-phone frenzy, margin calls, meteorites, tons of dead anchovies, intermittent drivel and fetid fog.
All kinds of disasters -- but nary a flood.
Well, maybe just the flood of tourists, here to see the city that produced the Summer of Love. Well, I guess we hope so.
Bruce Bellingham, author of Bellingham by the Bay, is also a columnist for the Marina Times, and a contributor to Rod McKuen's website, Flight Plan. Rod, who wrote Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows, remembers the Summer of Love as if it were Suddenly Last Summer.
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