When the ancient Polynesians invented surfing, they often used a paddle to help them navigate. Fast-forward a few millennia, and Stand-Up Paddleboarding, or SUP, finds itself trendy again. Part of its increasing popularity is that standing upright allows surfers to spot waves more easily and thus catch more of them, multiplying the fun factor. Paddling back to the wave becomes less of a strain as well. The ability to cruise along on flat inland water, surveying the sights, is another advantage. Finally, it’s a good core workout. If you’re sold on the idea, schedule an intro SUP lesson, free with board and paddle rental, and you may find yourself riding the waves like a Polynesian king.More
Many of us remember coming home from our elementary schools with freshly glazed pinchpots, cups, or whatever else our young imaginations could conjure up. Saturday mornings at the Randall Museum can bring that memory back, or create a new one for the youngsters. Ceramics make great gifts — especially on Mothers' and Fathers' Day. Hop on board for the Randall's once-weekly class, and for $6 and two weeks to have your work fired and glazed, you'll have all the materials you need.More
December is almost over - the New Year is coming up and everyone is busy drying off from the rain or holiday shopping. Let's take a look at what's happened this month.
So you went out last Saturday night and wore those new dark-wash, skinny leg jeans that you just bought despite the fact that it's the end of the month and you should be saving that money for your rent check.
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 8:00 AM
Beth Bagby
A melee broke out on Dec. 6, 1969 in front of the hastily constructed stage at the Altamont Speedway as the Rolling Stones played "Sympathy for the Devil." Several Hells Angels jumped into the crowd. Sawed-off pool cues came down on skulls and boots broke bones. Somewhere in all the dust and tangled humanity was the glint of a gun followed by the flash of a blade.
Mick Jagger in a two-tone satin blouse resembled a frightened harlequin as he struggled to calm a crowd of 300,000 people, many of them hard tripping on acid, mescaline and Lord knows what else.
"Everybody be cool now," he said after getting Keith Richards to stop riffing on a slightly out-of-tune guitar.
"People! Who's fighting and what for?" he pleaded.
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Thu, Aug 4, 2016 at 11:30 AM
Wikimedia
Wiliam J. Biggy, San Francisco Chief of Police from 1907-1908.
There's been a high rate of turnover among police chiefs on both sides of the Bay lately, but there was a time when a San Francisco chief of police disappeared into the briny depths of the bay itself.
William J. Biggy was maybe the only honest man in a thoroughly corrupt city when he was appointed chief of police in September 1907. Mayor Eugene "Handsome Gene" Schmitz had been found guilty of extortion only three months earlier in June. Biggy's predecessor, Chief Jeremiah Dinan, was forced to resign while facing perjury charges.
Political boss Abe Ruef, the head crook who installed all these other crooks in office, was on trial in a massive corruption case where every member of the Board of Supervisors confessed to receiving bribes from Ruef and his bagmen. Biggy himself rose to prominence when he was appointed as to guard Ruef at the St. Francis Hotel because nobody who worked in the jails could be trusted with the job.
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 8:00 AM
Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum
Shots ring out as President Gerald Ford emerges from the St. Francis Hotel.
Manson acolyte Lynne "Squeaky" Fromme pulled a gun on President Gerald Ford on Sept. 5, 1975, but Ford was undeterred as he headed into an election year. He had been elected neither president nor vice president, ascending to both offices through Watergate. The 1976 presidential campaign held his one chance for electoral legitimacy, so he went on with his schedule of "contacting the American people as I travel from one state to another" as if nothing had happened.
Ford was back in California days later on Sept. 22, 1975 for a meeting with a labor organization at the St. Francis Hotel at Union Square. After the meeting, Ford emerged from the hotel's Post Street entrance, and paused to wave at the crowd of potential voters.
Oliver "Billy" Sipple had been waiting for three hours that day in the hopes of seeing the president. When Ford waved at the crowd, Sipple, an ex-Marine and Vietnam vet, saw a woman pointing a chrome-plated .38 right at the president.
"I screamed 'gun' as loud as I could, and grabbed her arm," Sipple told the Associated Press. "I seen a gun and dived for it. I don't even know what I felt."
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 10:34 AM
Democracy in Action," Hearst Metrotone News, Inc. via Archive.org
The 1964 Republican National Convention was nearly a mirror image of what’s going on in Cleveland this week, but in some ways, it was so much worse.
It was nearly 10 p.m. on July 14 when Nelson Rockefeller took the podium at the Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace on the suburban edge of San Francisco. The New York governor and scion of one of America’s richest families represented the now entirely extinct liberal wing of the GOP, and the dying-off started that year, if not that very night.
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 8:00 AM
Randy Heinitz/Flickr
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. became vice president when then-VP Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace on Oct. 10, 1973 following a bribery scandal. Ford became president less than a year later when Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace following a number of scandals on Aug. 9, 1974.
Ford's unlikely presidency is best remembered for the time he fell down the Air Force One stairs during a diplomatic visit to Austria. In the early days of Saturday Night Live, Chevy's Chase's impression of Ford consisted of nothing more than a series of pratfalls before emerging from the stage floor with the familiar, "Live from New York..."
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 4:14 PM
The Reverend Ray Broshears, an ordained minister and gay rights activist with a mustache to die for, was beaten senseless on July 4, 1973. He had called the police earlier on "some young toughs" who were lighting fireworks outside of his Helping Hands Gay Community Service Center.
The police showed up and didn't do much except tell the toughs who had called them. Once the cops took off, the toughs went to work on the reverend in what turned out to be an origin story worthy of a superhero movie.
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 8:00 AM
Randy Heinitz/Flickr
Something wasn't right in the Anderson house just outside of Yuba City in Northern California on Sept. 13, 1946.
"We found fragments of flesh and bone and blood scattered about the bedroom and part of a charge fired from a shotgun in the wall," Sutter County District Attorney Lloyd Hewitt told the San Francisco Examiner. "A crude attempt had been made to clean up the room and to burn the bedsheets and other things. An analysis has shown the blood was human blood."
"There can be no doubt that someone was murdered in the Anderson home," Hewitt added.
W.H. "Dick" Anderson, a 50-year-old ranch hand, and his young wife, Donnie, 26, were missing. The family's two cars were also gone.
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Thu, Jun 2, 2016 at 9:53 AM
Randy Heinitz/Flickr
The four boys were horsing around on Market Street past a row of grand movie palaces on Sunday, Sept. 8, 1946. They ran past the Esquire, the Warfield and the Regal. When they got to the Paramount, they smelled something really bad.
They followed their noses to the alleyway on the side of the theater at Jones Street where they found a pair of large, cardboard egg crates.
The boys kicked the crates. Rancid human remains spilled out onto the ground.
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Thu, May 26, 2016 at 12:19 PM
Randy Heinitz/Flickr
The only thing worse than waking up in an East San Jose carport on New Year's Day is being found dead in one. That's what happened to Ines Sailer, an attractive 23-year-old German kindergarten teacher on Jan. 1, 1981.
Sailer was last seen leaving a New Year's Eve party in the Richmond District. When she was found nearly 60 miles south the next day, she had been sodomized and shot five times in the body and the brain with a small-caliber handgun. Police believed that she was murdered somewhere else and then dumped in San Jose.
PostedByBob Calhoun
on Thu, May 19, 2016 at 8:15 AM
This is the third installment in a three-part series on the disappearance of Valerie McDonald from her North Beach apartment on Nov. 9, 1980. Here are the links to parts one and two.
It took over 20 years to identify the human skull and pieces of torso found on the floodplain of the Kettle River just outside of Danville, Wash. near the U.S.-Canadian border.
J.R. Sharp was just a volunteer deputy with the Ferry County Sheriff's Office when the bones were first examined and stored in the basement evidence room, but he stayed with the case even after they failed to match a nearby missing persons case.
Sub Pop recording artists 'clipping.' brought their brand of noise-driven experimental hip hop to the closing night of 2016's San Francisco Electronic Music Fest this past Sunday. The packed Brava Theater hosted an initially seated crowd that ended the night jumping and dancing against the front of the stage. The trio performed a set focused on their recently released Sci-Fi Horror concept album, 'Splendor & Misery', then delved into their dancier and more aggressive back catalogue, and recent single 'Wriggle'.
Opening performances included local experimental electronic duo 'Tujurikkuja' and computer music artist 'Madalyn Merkey.'"
