Walking San Francisco On The Barbary Coast Trail

A guide to the Barbary Coast Trail, San Francisco's official historical walk.

John Pitman, Jr. didnt want to become a doctor. His father had been one and had faileda die-hard who had clung to cupping and purging as a means of ridding the bodys impurities. But as a stevedore on the docks of San Francisco no one could mend broken bones like John Pitmans lanky son Jack. Finally the young lad decides: If he is to become a doctor, he will be the best. INSIDE THE BARBARY COAST is where Jack Pitman chooses to open his medical practice. It is an area of San Francisco filled with saloons, parlor houses and opium dens, bordering on Chinatown. Fresh out of medical school, Jack saves the life of a young Chinese prince who is an actor in Dr. Pierre Louthans medical show. Louthan did not go to medical school but easily passes off as a learned physician with his European manner, silver-tongued ability to converse on any subject relating to anatomy, and his courses of treatment that involve a growing array of patent medicines. Jack falls in love with Louthans assistant, Marie, not realizing she is married to the quack doctor. Although Jacks nurse, the wise Madam Wong, cautions the young doctor, he is smitten nonetheless and fathers a child Louthan believes is his. Jack fights to discredit the huckster, hoping Marie will see Louthan as a charlatan and leave him. She, however, has plans of her own and manages to snare Jack in her own secret web. As Jack becomes consumed in his new practice, he tries valiantly to save the life of Hawaiis King David Kalakaua who is dying at the Palace Hotel. His friend, Gentleman Jim Corbett, the famous boxer, plays a role, as does Adolph Sutro, San Franciscos flamboyant mayor who built the famous Sutro Baths near the Cliff House facing the sea. Jack embraces electro-therapeutics because he believes it is the frontier of the New Medicine. When a prominent socialite is accidentally electrocuted in his office, he dismisses electrotherapy altogether and labels X-rays as another quack fad. But he is wrong and discovers his miscalculation just as tong wars break out in Chinatown and as President McKinley sends 10,000 young troops past the Golden Gate on their way across the Pacific to the Philippines. The young doctor from the Barbary Coast hones his surgical skills while serving as a medic in the Spanish-American War. When he returns, Marie still loves him but cannot find justification to divorce her husband. The bubonic plague hits San Francisco, giving the unions ammunition in their fight to exclude more Chinese from immigrating to the United States. Meanwhile, the always-scheming Dr. Louthan concocts a new patent medicine that increases sexual vigor. It is based on the findings of a European endocrinologist. Louthan experiments on himself, resulting in a fight with Marie that leaves their relationship damaged. But Pierre will not grant his wife a divorce, spurring Jack to join other physicians in San Francisco and around the country to discredit Louthan and other quack doctors like him. The plan works, and Louthan finds the underpinning to his nostrum business slipping away. Jack and Marie have just attended Enrico Carusos performance of Don Jos and taken a room at the Palace Hotel when a devastating earthquake rocks San Francisco. It is April 18, 1906. Shaken out of bed, Jack puts Marie in a taxi to go home and heads to the Pacific Anatomical Museum where he finds Louthan has been trapped by a fallen beam. As a fire erupts and flames begin licking their way closer, Nate Nordstrand, an old friend of Jacks who now works for Louthan, swings a fire ax to amputate the quack doctors leg to free him from the beam and encroaching inferno. But Nate is not finished and swings again, this time squarely across Louthans neck. An eye for an eye, he shouts, Jack knowing the full meaning of his cry. Jack returns home and finds th

Full-colour throughout, The Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area is the ultimate travel guide to the colourful Californian capital and its stunning surroundings. With 30 years experience and our trademark 'tell it like it is' writing style, Rough Guides cover all the basics with practical, on-the-ground details, as well as unmissable alternatives to the usual must-see sights. At the top of your to-pack list, and guaranteed to get you value for money, each guide also reviews the best accommodation and restaurants in all price brackets. We know there are times for saving, and times for splashing out. In The Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area: - Over 50 colour-coded maps featuring every listing - Area-by-area chapter highlights - Top 5 boxes - Things not to miss section Make the most of your trip with The Rough Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Now available in ePub format.

San Francisco is probably best known for its hills, ubiquitous fog, dungeness crab and the Golden Gate Bridge. But jazz music’s threads are similarly woven into the fabric of the city and its environs. Whether performed in renowned clubs like So Different, Jimbo’s Bop City, Black Hawk, and the Jazz Workshop or in halls like the Primalon Ballroom and Great American Music Hall, jazz has infused the city from the Barbary Coast to the Fillmore, thrilling audiences for over a century. San Franciscans have grooved to and incubated scores of jazz acts, hot and cool, raucous and contemplative. That tradition continues today.

The Great San Francisco Trivia and Fact Book"", by Janet Bailey, is a celebration of the City by the Bay. Although relatively young as compared to the world's great cities, it has had a greater influence than many older, larger cities.""

From the New York Times bestselling author of Zodiac, Auto Focus, and Black Fire. SO CLOSE TO SHORE, SO FAR FROM FORTUNE. WITH THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD, THEY CAME. San Francisco, 1849. Some arrived by land, but most came by sea. From packet to clipper, the first steamers, and even a stolen paddlewheeler, ships of every kind poured in through the Golden Gate. Packed to the gills with passengers and bursting to the brim with valuable cargo, they crowded Yerba Buena Cove. The perfect harbor in every way except one fatal flaw—its shallow waters offered no passage to shore. Fever overtook even the heartiest of men. Passengers and crew alike jumped ship and swam ashore. Within sight of their prize destination, a thousand majestic vessels were left adrift. Each incapacitated vessel’s fate locked in by the next. Some dedicated captains remained aboard these derelict hulks, in a short time forming a fantastic floating city, Graveyard Harbor. Families, commerce, intrigue, and crime all thrived and died within its skeletal framework. Among them were captains held hostage by their own cargo, families that could not afford nor find housing on land, criminals hiding out from the law, and their pursuers hot on their heels. A LANDLOCKED CAPTAIN. A KILLER WHO LOOKED LIKE CHRIST. HIS UNFORTUNATE DOPPELGÄNGER. THE BLOODTHIRST OF SAN FRANCISCO’S FIRST VIGILANTE SOCIETY. AND THE TEXAS RANGER TURNED SAN FRANCISCO SHERIFF. WOULD CRIME, JUSTICE OR VIGILANTISM PREVAIL? Illustrations by the author.

The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer, told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist who terrorized mid-nineteenth century San Francisco. When San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. He learned that Sawyer was a volunteer firefighter, local hero, and a former “Torch Boy,” racing ahead of hand-drawn fire engines at night carrying torches to light the way. When a mysterious serial arsonist known as “The Lightkeeper” was in the process of burning San Francisco to the ground, Sawyer played a key role in stopping him, helping to contain what is now considered the most disastrous and costly series of fires ever experienced by an American metropolis. By chronicling how Sawyer took it upon himself to investigate, expose, and stop the arsonist, Black Fire details Sawyer’s remarkable life and illustrates why Twain would later feel compelled to name his iconic character after him when writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. A vivid portrayal of the gritty, corrupt, and violent world of the Gold Rush-era West, Black Fire is the most vibrant and thorough account of Sawyer’s relationship with Mark Twain, and of the devastating fires that baptized San Francisco.