SF Bites!

San Francisco Bites! SFPL Teen Vampire Writing Contest, courtesy of the San Francisco Public Library.

We've been writing a lot lately about the SFPL exhibition San Francisco Eats, but a recent addition to the San Francisco History Center stacks makes it clear that some San Franciscans want to sink their teeth into more than what our world-famous restaurants have to offer. Over 30 San Francisco teens fed their hunger for vampires by composing entries for "San Francisco Bites! SFPL 2010 Teen Vampire Writing Contest." Some wrote stories, others wrote poems, but all had to adhere to the contest's rules: entries had to be original and unpublished works, under 2,000 words, and entrants had to be between the ages of 12 and 19.

Twenty-seven of the original submissions have been bound into a book by the San Francisco Public Library's Preservation Department and can be viewed in the SF History Center's reading room. However, if all this talk about vampire stories has got your blood pumping, you can read the three contest-winning stories online at the SFPL Teen Blog site, Dropbox.

Clipper Cards

 


Today's Clipper card



Clipper card 1859, from Clipper Ship Sailing Cards, p. 119





  Today's Clipper cards are electronic passes to San Francisco Bay Area public transit services and sport a streamlined, iconic suggestion of a clipper ship, but clipper cards of the mid-19th century served a different function and were much more elaborate in their artistic details. Also known as "sailing cards," clipper ship cards advertised specific voyages--mostly from New York and Boston to San Francisco--and featured the then-new technology of color printing. Clipper Ship Sailing Cards by Bruce D. Roberts reproduces dozens of these cards, while outlining the history of clipper ships, the evolution of clipper ship cards and the elements of their printing, and surveying the printers and engravers. 



 Visit the San Francisco History Center during our open hours to look at Clipper Ship Sailing Cards for yourself.

Painting of clipper ship "Shooting Star" [n.d.]. Courtesy of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection.

Teaching San Francisco Black Heritage

[Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Cow Palace for a "Freedom Riders" rally.] July 24, 1961. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

The San Francisco Public Library will be closed today in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, but join us tomorrow for the first of a five-part series of lectures on San Francisco Black Heritage by local historian John William Templeton. Each lecture will focus on a different period in San Francisco history, with Tuesday's presentation focusing on the years 1770-1849. Subsequent lectures will be held at different locations throughout San Francisco. For more information check out the flier on the San Francisco Public Library African American Center's blog Habari Gani.

Come To The Water: Teaching San Francisco Black Heritage
Tuesday, January 18th, 6-7:30pm in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room A

To Your Health - San Francisco Eats

Last month, Sheila Himmel, guest curator of San Francisco Eats and former restaurant critic of the San Jose Mercury News, was interviewed by the San Francisco Weekly blog SFoodie. One question about the exhibition was "What got left out?" The San Francisco History Center asked Sheila Himmel to be our guest blogger and answer the question.



To Your Health by Sheila Himmel

In picking menus to display for San Francisco Eats, curators came to the final display case and had to choose between desserts and restaurants focusing on health. Dessert won out. The San Francisco History Center’s collection of books and menus featuring diets, vegetables and healthy options remains to be explored. 

Early San Francisco menus offered meat, roasted or boiled. The city now has raw vegan, upscale vegan, Buddhist vegetarian, organic sushi and Chinese vegetarian among its health-focused restaurants.

In the 1930s, Ella Brodersen’s Health Way Cafeteria may have been the first health food restaurant in San Francisco. In The Guide to United States Popular Culture, Pat Browne writes: “A Seventh Day Adventist who had lived in the South Pacific, Brodersen served roasts made of vegetables and melba toast, juices of dandelion or turnip, and tropical breadfruit accompanied by honey and melted butter.” In the 1920s and 1930s a number of stores and restaurants specializing in natural foods flourished in California.

In the late 1960s, the natural foods movement was tied to critiques of capitalism, with the growth of co-operative markets and restaurants owned and run by employees. Freshness and purity were watchwords. San Francisco’s Flower Children ate a lot of organic peanut butter and wheat germ. Alfalfa sprouts became inescapable in restaurants.

“Get high on beautiful food” was the vegetarian restaurant Shandygaff’s motto.

In the 1970s, restaurants boasted of their “diet specials” and “Weight Watchers’ Lunch. India House asked, helpfully, “Watching your weight?”  and offered the Dieter’s Special: India Baked Chicken with Cottage Cheese.”

Greens Restaurant menu circa 1979

Here are some other health-focused menus in the San Francisco History Center Menu Collection:

New Shanghai
Stock Exchange Club  (Weight Watchers' special)
Harvey Wallbanger (Weight Watchers' lunch)
India House  (“Watching your weight?”)
Iron Horse  (“diet special” circa 1970s)
Paoli’s 1975
Unique Principle c. 1970
Wildwood 1977
Coffee Cantata (vegetarian special)
Greens (all vegetarian)
Millennium (upscale vegetarian / vegan)

Firsts

Apropos of its being the first month of the new year, this week's post features our card file of  San Francisco "firsts." The San Francisco History Center has an entire drawer's worth of subject cards under the heading "Firsts," neatly alphabetized, with citations to newspaper articles (and sometimes with the clippings pasted right on the card). Below are some of my favorite "S.F. Firsts" cards; if you haven't yet come up with a New Year's resolution, or if you're already discouraged about the one you made, maybe reading about the city's firsts will inspire you to your own:

First:

• arrest by telegraph (1861, one Marguerite Niebla, for kidnapping a child)
• crab race (Nov. 1960 at Fisherman's Wharf)
• escalator in a bank (1948)
• fog signal (a cannon at Point Bonita "some time prior to 1857")
• gold coins ("about the end of 1849")
• hive of bees purchased (Sept. 1854 for $150)
• lipstick machine (for mixing colors to a customer's specifications)
• psychedelic wedding (1967, of course)
• second-hand store (selling your clothes and buying "new" ones was cheaper than sending out laundry)
• speed limit (8 mph, in 1901)
• strike (by Chinese laborers)
• syrup, artificial (the clip on the card doesn't say what flavor)

On a more macro level, the "firsts" card file is strong on racial and ethnic minority firsts, such as first Black Federal Judge, or first Chinese American baseball player to go pro; and "maritime firsts," citing various types of ships, routes, cargoes, and nations that first entered or left San Francisco Bay.

In case you haven't yet seen it on our facebook page, the San Francisco History Center and Book Arts & Special Collections are now open on Mondays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Please visit us in the reading room.

SF Eats Events

[Barbara Lais, Betty Jean Phillips and Mary Ruth Morris at the Farmers' Market on Alemany Boulevard] Aug. 7, 1947.  Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

Come by the Main Library this week for a program focusing on eating local:

"Farm to Table" - Tuesday, January 11th, 6pm in the Koret Auditorium
This panel discussion investigates how local and organically grown produce shapes San Francisco cooking and dining. Panelists include: Mark Sullivan, chef, Spruce; Dave Stockdale, Executive Director for CUESA; Sam Mogannam, owner of Bi-Rite Market; and Jeannette Ferrary, food writer and historian. The moderator will be Dava Guthmiller of Slow Food San Francisco. Speakers explore current food trends and how these trends shape and influence future dining in San Francisco, and on a national scale. This is a Green Stacks program.

San Francisco Eats - Dec. 11, 2010-Mar. 20, 2011
San Francisco Eats showcases the culinary delights that can be found in the San Francisco Public Library's collections dating back to the mid 19th century and will serve as a visual feast for visitors of all ages. From the Gold Rush to Slow Food, San Francisco has never stopped being a beacon of gastronomic delight.

This exhibition includes menus, historical photographs, an array of food writers, cookbooks and culinary history, ephemera such as coasters and matchbooks, and San Francisco food inventions, including gadgets and signature dishes.

Exhibition is on view in both the Jewett Gallery, Lower Level and Skylight Gallery, Sixth Floor.