Our aging process is now accelerating as we approach the 70's. It is therefore mandatory to monitor risk factors to predict a long life. Studies have shown men who later went on to live the longest, and the healthiest, were not overweight, had low blood pressure, low blood sugar, low bad cholesterol, drank moderate amounts of alcohol, didn’t smoke, had high hand grip strength, had higher education levels, and were married...Amor Patriae
Friday, July 28, 2023
The Sexual Decadence of Weimar Germany
Berlin was a liberal hotbed of homosexuality and a mecca for cross dressers and transsexuals where the first male-to-female surgery was performed - until the Nazis came to power, new book reveals
An uninhibited urban gay sexual scene flourished in Berlin, Germany in the wake of World War One
The science of ‘transsexuality’ was founded at the Institute of Sexual Science where the first male-to-female surgery was performed
German scientists concluded that same-sex love was a natural, inborn characteristic and not merely the perversion of a ‘normal’ sexual tendency
There were 30 separate homosexual periodicals
Cross-dressers found dressmakers who tailored for large sizes and singles searching for gay love could place ads
Think Liza Minnelli and Joel Gray in Carberet. Think West Hollywood, Greenwich Village and Provincetown and the Castro, known as hotbeds of homosexuality.
But they are nothing like the uninhibited urban gay sexual scene and vast homosexual subculture that flourished in Berliin under Germany's Weimar Republic.
Sexual experimentation between the same sexes and medical advances of helping genders ‘trapped within the wrong body’ in Germany more than one hundred years ago shaped our understanding of gay identity today.
The city's liberal years - before the rise of Hitler - are detailed in a new book, Gay Berlin.
The science of ‘transsexuality’ was founded in Berlin at the Institute of Sexual Science where the first male-to-female surgery was performed. The words ‘homosexual’ or ‘transvestite’ were German innovations.
Police mugshots of Berlin prostitute Johann Scheff, arrested in July 1932. Youths dressed in women's clothing who successfully passed for women, descended on department stores en masse stealing large quantities of merchandise.
Wiehe provides the following useful facts and statistics:
In 1931, over 60 percent of German films were produced by Jews and 82 percent of the film scripts were written by Jewish writers, though Jews made up less than 1 percent of the German population (0.90%). A quick look at the names of directors, producers, stage managers, actors, script writers and critics, “revealed everywhere an overwhelming preponderance of Jews.”
Alexander Szekely, German brothel in Ghent
A cursory survey of the film titles, Wiehe tells us, shows us that the Jews had only one thing on the brain: sex. Here are some typical titles: “Moral und Sinnlichkeit” (Morals and Sensuality); “Was kostet Liebe?” (What is the Price of Love); “Wenn ein Weib den Weg verliert” (When a Woman loses her Way);“Prostitution” (Prostitution); “Sündige Mutter” (Sinful Mama); “Das Buch des Lasters” (The Book of Vices).
“The sensational titles correspond to the sleazy contents,” Wiehe complains. “All wallow in filth and display with cynical frankness the vilest scenes of sexual perversion.” [3]
Light entertainment (revue/burlesque) was a Jewish innovation. The revue theaters, all concentrated within great cities such as Berlin, were owned and run almost exclusively by Jews. Shows consisted of little more than excuses for sexual titillation involving the display of the female form in lascivious dances that were to degenerate later into striptease and scenes of public masturbation. “In these revues,” Wiehe notes indignantly, “the uninhibited sex drive surrendered itself to disgusting orgies. All life was reduced to a common denominator of lust and its satisfaction. Chastity and self-discipline were mocked as old-fashioned prejudices.”
The Jews had managed, in the space of a mere fourteen years, to bring about a major “transvaluation of values” [4] in Weimar Germany. The vices of the past were now its virtues. The only vice that remained was chastity.
A glance at the revue titles is again sufficient: “Zieh dich aus” (Get Undressed); “Tausend nackte Frauen” (One Thousand Naked Women); “Die Sünden der Welt” (The Sins of the World); “Häuser der Liebe” (The Houses of Love); “Streng Verboten!” (Strictly Forbidden!); “Sündig und Süss” (Sweet and Sinful). [5]
Finally, there was the rich field of sexology: a new science consisting largely of dubious “case histories” purporting to reveal the depraved sexual habits of various anonymous patients. In order to give an air of academic respectability and erudition to these masturbatory fantasies—thrilling adventure stories involving necrophilia, bestiality and handkerchief fetishism—the more exciting details were often given in vulgar Latin “in order to exclude the lay reader.” [6]
Otto Dix, The Salon, 1921 Berlin prostitutes awaiting the pleasures of the evening
However, it was not long before the Latin was diligently translated into the vernacular for the benefit of the unlatined lay reader, thus defeating the purpose of the prim “schoolmaster’s Latin”.
Wiehe reels off a long list of Jewish sexologistswho he claims were in the forefront of writing such salacious treatises that were no more than pornography masquerading as science. Drs Magnus Hirschfeld [7] and Ivan Bloch [8] were the star writers in this field, their books still read avidly today by a gullible public hungry for details of the bizarre, the kinky and the perverse. Drs Ludwig Lewy-Lenz, Leo Schidrowitz, Franz Rabinowitsch, Georg Cohen, and Albert Eulenburg are some of the names Wiehe mentions.
Here are some of their depressing titles: “Sittengeschichte des Lasters” (The History of Perversions); “Sittengeschichte des Schamlosigkeit” (The History of Shamelessness); “Bilderlexikon der Erotic” (Picture Lexicon of Eroticism); “Sittengischichte des Geheime und Verbotene” (The History of the Secret and the Forbidden). And here are some of the titles published by Dr Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin [9]: Aphrodisiacs, Prostitution, Sexual Catastrophes, Sexual Pathology, The Perverted. Wiehe describes all these books as “the filthy publications of these pseudo-scientists”, all of them written by Jewish authors and published by Jewish publishers. He continues in the same acerbic vein:
These books were allegedly supposed to be scientific treatises, their ostensible purpose being to “educate” the broad masses about the dangers of sexual excesses. Under the guise of science, however, they speculated in the lust and lower instincts of their audience. Criminals, prostitutes and homosexuals took center stage in their repertoire. One looks in vain for any known non-Jewish “sexual scientist”! [10]
It was in Weimar Germany, long before Hannibal Lecter, that the serial killer was to become an iconic figure — a source of secret fantasies and frissons.
Wiehe points out that masturbation, hitherto a hole-in-corner vice, began to be shamelessly promoted for the first time in Weimar Germany by Jewish-run organizations. He mentions Dr Max Hodan, Jewish medical officer for Berlin, and ticks him off for circulating a booklet recommending regular masturbation for the working classes.
It is worth noting that one of the world’s worst serial killers, Peter Kürten, committed all his crimes in Germany during the 1925-1930 period.
This was of course the heyday of the Weimar Republic when the German people lay completely under Jewish domination and when the first dress rehearsal for the later Sexual Revolution of the 1960s was arguably being run.
Significantly, when asked what his primary motive for murder was, Kürten replied: “to strike back at an oppressive society.” [11]
This was a society in which the serial killer was to become a popular icon, enough to create a whole genre of sensational sex crime literature. (See book title on left). [12]
2. THE DESCENT INTO SEXUAL DEPRAVITY
British historian Sir Arthur Bryant describes throngs of child prostitutesoutside the doors of the great Berlin hotels and restaurants. He adds: “Most of them—the night clubs and vice resorts—were owned and managed by Jews. And it was the Jews among the promoters of this trade who were remembered in after years.” [13]
Arriving in Berlin during the hyperinflation crisis (1923), Klaus Mann—son the great German novelist Thomas Mann—remembered walking past a group of dominatrices:
Some of them looked like fierce Amazons, strutting in high boots made of green, glossy leather. One of them brandished a supple cane and leered at me as I passed by. ‘Good evening, madam,’ I said. She whispered in my ear, ‘Want to be my slave? Costs only six billions and a cigarette.’ [14]
Georg Grosz, Before Sunrise. Prostitutes and their clients in the red-light district… this is how they actually dressed and paraded themselves in the garish, lamp-lit streets.
10-year-old children turned tricks in the railway stations. A group of 14-year-old Russian girls, refugees from the Red Terror in Stalin’s Communist slaughter house, managed to make a lucrative living in Berlin as dominatrices. Little girls were freely available for sex not only in child brothels and pharmacies but could be ordered by telephone and delivered to clients by taxi, like takeaway meals.
Particularly bizarre were mother-and-daughter teams offering their services to the same client simultaneously. Mel Gordon writes: “One French journalist, Jean Galtier-Boissière, described, in sickly pornographic detail, the creeping horror of feeling a nine-year-old girl’s tiny, but proficient, fingers stroking his upper thigh while the broken-toothed mother covered his face with hot sucking kisses.” [15]
In Mel Gordon’s Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, we enter a depressingly sordid milieu akin to the subterranean world of the sewer rat: a world which owed its existence in large part to German Jewry. Without Jewish money and influence, such a world would never have come into being. Nor was there anything the Germans could do to extricate themselves from this artificially created hothouse of erotomania and sexual deviance in which they now found themselves ensnared.
There were no fewer than 17 different prostitute types in this Jew-created brothel city: eight outdoor types and nine indoor ones, each with their specialities and slang terminology.
Outdoor prostitutes: (1) Kontroll Girls: legal prostitutes checked for venereal disease. (2) Half-Silks: part-time amateurs with day jobs as office workers, secretaries and shopgirls; evening and weekend workers. (3)Grasshoppers: lowly streetwalkers who gave handjobs and standup sex in dark alleys. (4) Nuttes: Boyish teenage girls who worked for “pocket money” after school without their parents’ knowledge. (5) Boot-girls: dominas (or dominatrices) in shiny patent leather boots who offered to stamp all over their clients. (6)Tauentzien girls: Chic mother-and-daughter teams, fashionably dressed, who offered their services to men who wanted threesomes. (7) Münzis: Heavily pregnant women who waited under lampposts (very expensive, since they offered an erotic speciality). (8) Gravelstones: hideous hags with missing limbs, hunchbacks, midgets, and women with various deformities. “The most common German word for them was Kies. In other accounts, they were referred to as Steinhuren.” [16]
Otto Dix, Three Wenches.These prostitutes were willing to work individually or in a team.
Indoor prostitutes: (1) Chontes: Low-grade Jewish prostitutes, mostly Polish, who picked up their clients in railway stations. (2) Fohses (French argot for “vaginas”): Elegant females who discreetly advertised in magazines and newspapers as private masseuses and manicurists. (3) Demi-castors(or “half-beavers”): Young women from good families who worked in high-class houses in the late afternoons and early evenings. (4) Table-ladies: Ravishingly beautiful escorts of exotic appearance who came with the reserved table in an exclusive nightclub. Clients had to be fabulously rich in order to afford the cultured conversation of these high-class call girls who accompanied the caviar and champagne and who later unveiled their charms in a sumptuously furnished chamber of delights.
(5) Dominas: Leather-clad women, athletic and Amazonian, who specialized in whipping and erotic humiliation. They were often found in lesbian nightclubs which also catered for kinky males. (6) Minettes (French for “female cats”): Exclusive call girls who offered S&M fantasy scenes, foot worship, bondage, and enforced transvestism. They worked in top class hotels. (7) Race-horses: Masochistic prostitutes who let themselves be whipped in “schoolrooms” or “dungeons” liberally supplied with instruments of torture. Clients were carefully screened to make sure they didn’t go too far. (8) ‘Medicine’: Child prostitutes (age 12-16), so called because they were prescribed as “medicine” in pharmacies. All the client needed to do was tell the pharmacist how many years he had suffered from his ailment (e.g., 12), without mentioning what ailment it was, and request the color of the pill he preferred (e.g., red). He was then escorted to a cubicle where his “medicine” awaited him: a 12-year-old redhead. (9) Telephone-girls (often billed as “virgins”): expensive child prostitutes (ages 12-17) ordered by telephone like a takeaway meal; the nymphettes were delivered by limousine or taxi. [17]
Luigi Barzini, in his social memoir The Europeans, describes the saturnalian scene in the Tingel-Tangels or sleazy bordellos of sex-crazed Berlin in the 1920s, the Golden Age of the Jews:
I saw pimps offering anything to anybody: little boys, little girls, robust young men, libidinous women, animals. The story went the rounds that a male goose whose neck you cut at just the right ecstatic moment would give you the most delicious frisson of all—as it allowed you to enjoy sodomy, bestiality, homosexuality, necrophilia and sadism at one stroke. Gastronomy too, as one could eat the goose afterwards. [18]
In October 1923, when one US dollar could buy 4.2 billion marks and six wheelbarrows of banknotes could barely buy a loaf of bread, it was said that “the most exquisite blow job to be had in Berlin never cost an American tourist more than 30 cents.”
“The numerous copies in multiple editions of [Psychopathia Sexualisand Sexual Aberrations] revealed an unintended secondary readership: other perverts. The salacious case histories of sadists, fetishists, Algolagnists, flagellants, and the like, formed a novel province in Weimar pornography.
“Under the guise of psychological research, graphic photographs and illustrations were added to still other strange biographical confessions and fantasies. Berliners seeking stronger erotic sensations and instruction for weird sex scenarios merely had to peruse Galante journals for the current ‘scientific’ offerings. Virtually every deviant practice had a layman’s society and private publishing arm.
“One ‘physician,’ Ernst Schertel, headed a hypnotic ‘Dream theater’ and several book clubs devoted to whipping and buttock fetishism.
“Schertel’s serialized periodicals explored the dark fantasy games and dramatics of animal lovers, worshippers of obese Dominas, sadistic teachers, bare-hand flagellants, incestuous necklas fetishists, urine drinkers, bondage freaks, high-heel stompers…
“German authorities attempted to shut down his Parthenon-Verlag in 1931 and Wilhelm Reich publicly opposed the perverse Dream Theater. But Schertel, working under foreign pseudonyms like Dr. F. Grandpierre, outwitted them all.”
Of course Gordon plays down the participation of Jews in the business, saying that while the Jews
“dominated certain cultural fields in pre-Nazi Berlin, especially publishing, law, medicine, theatre, graphic art, cinema, music, architecture, and popular entertainment, relatively few Jews were still involved in common prostitution with the exception of two picturesque types: Kupplerinnen (procuresses) and Chontes—zaftig whores from southern Poland.”
It is understandable that Gordon is trying to dismiss a body of scholarship, since that would eventually lead to a reevaluation of at least one reason why Nazi Germany was completely against Jewish revolutionary activity.
Gordon tells us that Wilhelm Reich, another Jewish sexual revolutionary whose work we have repeatedly examined in the past, believed that Hirschfeld’s work would advance the cause of fascism.[59] Gordon also tells us that as soon as Hitler came to power in 1933, “the Institute of Sexology was one of his first targets.”
Nazi Germany quickly placed the graphic paintings of George Grosz, Jankel Adler, Rudolf Bauer, Cesar Klein, Max Pechstein, Ludwig Meidner, Otto Dix, Rudolf Schlichter, among dozens of others, under the heading of “degenerate art” because of their pornographic imageries.
Candid photos of 1930s burlesque dancers included in exhibition of pioneering female photographer
Margaret Bourke-White, known for her work during conflict, photographed scantily-clad dancers Photographer was the first American female war photojournalist and first female photographer for Life magazine
Lesser-known photographs feature in vast retrospective show at the Daniel Blau gallery in London till 20 December
A selection of candid images reveals what went on backstage at the original burlesque shows of the 1930s. Shot by renowned photographer Margaret Bourke-White, who is better known for her work during conflict, the photos show scantily-clad dancers waiting to go on stage. The late Bourke-White went behind the scenes with chorus girls in 1936 and pictured them setting their hair in neat waves and perfecting their pout in rustic Hollywood mirrors.
+12 +12 Behind the scenes: So-called Burlesque Strip-Steppers wear ladylike hats and fur shawls with string knickers and little else, left, and draped in Grecian robes, right +12 +12 Their public awaits: Burlesque chorus girls wait their turn to get on stage, left, as one dancer sits patiently in an elaborate costume Pioneering Bourke-White from The Bronx, New York, was the first female photographer for Life magazine. She once said: 'The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand.' These previously unseen and lesser known photographs of burlesque and ballet dancers backstage are just some of her work on show at a new exhibition in her honour. Held in the Daniel Blau gallery in London until 20 December, the presentation features contrasting facets of the photographer's work. A selection of more than 60 vintage photographs includes incredible images of the Second World War in North Africa and Italy, which embody Bourke-White's courage and determination. +12 Works of art: A star of the show called Miss Minsky bares all, left, and a scene is set at a French Casino, right +12 The show must go on: Chorus girls are pictured setting their hair in neat waves in rustic Hollywood mirrors +12 Finishing touches: The burlesque girls adjust their costumes and ensure their hair is in place She became the first woman photographer to accompany the U.S. armed forces. While crossing the Atlantic to North Africa, her transport ship was torpedoed and destroyed. Bourke-White survived the attack and continued on her travels to Europe to cover the bitter daily struggle of the Allied infantrymen in the Italian campaign. In the male-dominated world of early twentieth century photojournalism, Bourke-White was a pioneer. In her extensive and diverse career, she photographed many historic moments. +12 This 1936 picture is entitled: Backstage In a Degas Setting the Ballerinas of the Ballet Russe Pause Bourke-White's intuition and dedication gave her the knack of being at the right place at the right time. She was the first Western photographer permitted to document Soviet Industry after the revolution, the first female war correspondent, the first woman permitted to work in combat zones and the first woman to fly on a bombing mission during the Second World War. Bourke-White shot the first cover of what was to become the iconic LIFE magazine in 1936, the publication that would later send her to cover the Second World War. The exhibition will be on at gallery Daniel Blau, London from October 31 - December 20, Tuesday - Friday, 11am - 6pm. Also Monday and Saturday by appointment. +12 Action on the water: This 1934 sailboat picture is called America's Cup, Putting Away Topsail at End of Cruise of Rainbow +12 Sail away: A peaceful scene shows boat with an elegant long sail making its way +12 Water world: Another picture from the 1934 series America's Cup, Rainbow shows a glossy sea and stormy sky
Historic desk: Various ornaments on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Desk in the White House, Christmas Eve, 1934 Throughout his own work, Gordon tells us how the Weimar Republic sought to refashion Germany through sexual revolution. He argues,
“Prostitution lost its exact meaning when tens of thousands were involved in complex sex attachments, all of a commercial nature. The vaguely Wilhelmian underpinning of middle-class Berlin slowly cracked and, over time, collapsed. “Venereal disease, not flesh-peddling, threatened the immediate well-being of the capital. Syphilis and gonorrhea spread at an alarming rate. The city fathers, once proud watchdogs of the moral code, turned to Berlin’s public officials and social workers for help… “Public and habitual masturbation, manifestations of shell-shock, grew to epic proportions, shaking morals as well as becoming an embarrassing disciplinary problem. In the countryside, the brutal corralling and rape of foreign women, usually peasant girls, by German recruits was reported with some frequency in the early dispatches…
“Roman-style orgies became synonymous with Etappe life…Sex, the historical lubricant for rallying a nation to armed conflict, was destroying the Kaiser’s war. “A dizzying panic overtook Berlin in October 1919. Not since Paris in the 1860s had a European city experienced the Edenic flush of total erotic freedom.
“With prostitution and all-night dancing already accepted features of contemporary Berlin life, what else could be added. Drugs and over-the-counter pornography appeared first…
“The most sought-after pornographic postcards and films had been imported from Paris and Budapest before the war. Now Berlin was patriotically producing its own brands in oversized graphic portfolios, ‘bachelor’ Galante magazines, photo-sheets, and smokers…
“The sweet qualities of Gallic porno were supplanted in Berlin studios by the psychopathic scenarios from Krafft-Ebing. Forced, intergenerational, scatological, and obsessive fetish sex prevailed…The distinct erotica of Berlin was sold in specialized bookstores and here and there on the street… “Wild sex and all-night antics could be made anywhere. In private flats, hotel rooms, and rented halls, drug parties and nude ‘Beauty Evenings’ were constantly announced and held. “A gala atmosphere enveloped 1919 and 1920…In postwar Paris, a traveler could engage the services of a streetwalker for five or six dollars; but during the inflation in Berlin, five dollars could buy a month’s worth of carnal delights…Sex was everywhere and obtainable on the cheap… “Child prostitution was a searing social issue long before and after the inflation era. It involved both female and male children, sex-workers’ progeny, runaways, and troublesome adolescents. There seemed to be almost no bottom age for those seeking physical companionship with children. And virtually no end to willing girls and boys.” What was even more troublesome during the Weimar era was that sexual magic was used as a form of revival; it was viewed as a form of religion and prayer.[62] Gordon states that sex magic was used as a “bodily manifestation of lost esoteric wisdom, techniques of Gnostic faith, flipped transmogrifications of flesh, even divine rungs for ultimate human salvation…Sexuality was the fuse and hidden spring of Weimar Germany’s newest dogmas.”[63] The early part of Europe in the twentieth century was affected by the revival of occultism, with many occult groups and fringe movements springing up in order to revive old sexual practices and rituals. Occult groups seeking sexual magic were ubiquitous.[64] A year before Hitler came to power, “Berlin alone supported the flashy productions, seances, and publications of 20,000 itinerant telepathists, wonder-working healers, palm readers, storefront clairvoyants, Hollow-Earth adherents, alchemists, stage mesmerists, doomsday prophets, Gypsy-clad fortunetellers, and trans-performers.”[65] It must also remembered that it was a time where black magicians such as Aleister Crowley roamed Europe with their sexual rituals in order to gain entrance into what Crowley would later refer to as the New Aeon.[66] It has been argued by some that Crowley was widely involved in the sex industry in the Weimar Republic.[67] All of these satanic sex ceremonies were done as a form of blasphemy in Berlin, where some of the participants also took drugs in order to enhance their sexual magic.[68] In Gordon’s words, there were “dionysian-like festivities,” where hymns to Pan were chanted and a goat was sacrificed to begin the sexual ceremony.[69] Scholar John Alexander Williams tells us that “By 1930 an estimated one hundred thousand people took part in organizations that were either dedicated wholeheartedly to nudism or practiced it regularly. The movement of some eighty thousand hard-core nudists also became more ideologically diverse, splitting into bourgeois and socialist sectors. An umbrella organization for bourgeois nudists, the Reich Federation for Free Body Culture, was founded in Leipzig in 1924.”[70] Yet by 1932, the power of sexual eroticism began to decline during the rise of Nazi Germany—most pornographic publications were banned and nudist clinics such as Koch’s were shut down. By 1933, Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology was ransacked and vandalized by SA-men and students. Archival files were destroyed, and thousands of books and manuscripts were burned. In Gordon’s own words: “Berlin’s sex industry contracted and nearly disappeared throughout the summer months of 1933.”
Kate Beckinsale is a timeless beauty. She was born in on July 26, 1973 in Finsbury Park, London. The English actress is known best for her roles in Pearl Harbor, Underworld, Van Helsing, and The Aviator. Here is a collection of her most stunning shots.
A snapshot of Berlin between the world wars includes nudist magazines devoted entirely to children; glittering cabaret shows parading acres of sweaty, perfumed female flesh; and an endless supply of cafes, bars and private clubs catering to gay men, transvestites, lesbians and sadomasochists. Inflation is so rampant that the local paper currency is good only for toilet paper. Cocaine, morphine and opium are peddled on every street corner. And more than 120,000 desperate women and girls of every age and stripe sell their bodies for a pittance, including mother-daughter prostitution teams and brazen streetwalkers well into the third trimester of pregnancy. Such was the glory that was Weimar Berlin, a burg American writer Ben Hecht called the “prime breeding ground of evil.” Most are familiar with its reputation as a crime-ridden sewer of frenetic debauchery through period classics such as Fritz Lang’s “M” and Josef von Sternberg’s “The Blue Angel,” stage productions of Brecht’s “The Three penny Opera” or screenings of Bob Fosse’s lurid, leggy movie musical, “Cabaret.” However, very few of our assumptions about that decadent interwar wonderland are based on actual documentation of Berlin’s whorish past. And most of it has been filtered through the arid prose of academia. Now with Mel Gordon’s new tome, “Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin,” connoisseurs of carnal excess have the next best thing to a time machine with which to visit that era of blissfully morbid hedonism. Drawing from his vast collection of pre-Nazi Berlin memorabilia, Gordon, a professor of theater at UC-Berkeley, has assembled an Encyclopedia Britannica of Weimar smut. This 267-page omnibus of Babylon-on-the-Spree’s demimonde is full of antique pornography, guidebooks, magazine illustrations, board games, photos of Rube Goldberg-like masturbation devices and priceless ephemera from bygone restaurants and pubs. Gordon says his massive, wallet-busting collection began as part of a job assignment from the Goethe Institute, a program supported by the German government to promote German language and culture. “Back in 1994, I got a grant from them to do a cabaret extravaganza in San Francisco starring Nina Hagen,” recalls Gordon. “I decided to do a real, three-ring Weimar production based on the life of Anita Berber, the great sex goddess/flapper of the age. We had a lot to go on, research-wise, except the visuals. I went to the library, and I was amazed to find nothing except old George Grosz and Otto Dix paintings and some rather tame photos which had been reprinted endlessly.”
“Berlin nightlife, my word, the world hasn’t seen anything like it!” Klaus Mann, son of the great German author Thomas Mann, enthused sardonically. “We used to have a first-class army. Now we have first class perversions.” [20]
German author Erich Kästner, writing of Weimar Berlin, was to reflect on the topography of the soul sickness that had now taken possession of the once proud city: “In the east there is crime; in the center the con men hold sway; in the north resides misery, in the west lechery; and everywhere—the decline.” [21]
German Jewish author Stephan Zweig has much to say about homosexuality, pointing out that even in Ancient Rome—where fourteen of the first fifteen Roman emperors were gay—the degree of drunken depravity and public shamelessness (“pervert balls”) was far less shocking than in Weimar Berlin:
Bars, amusement parks, honky-tonks sprang up like mushrooms. Along the entire Kurfürstendamm powdered and rouged men sauntered and they were not all professionals; every high school boy wanted to earn some money and in the dimly lit bars one might see government officials and men of the world of finance tenderly courting drunken sailors without any shame. Even the Rome of Suetonius had never known such orgies as the pervert balls of Berlin, where hundreds of men costumed as women and hundreds of women as men danced under the benevolent eyes of the police. In the collapse of all values a kind of madness gained hold. Young girls bragged proudly of their perversion; to be sixteen and still under suspicion of virginity would have been a disgrace.” [22]
THE CITY OF DREADFUL JOY Weimar Berlin, 1928
3. CONCLUSION: WEIMAR GERMANY AS A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE SUBSEQUENT SEXUAL REVOLUTION OF THE 1960s
My own impression, though I could well be mistaken here, is that Weimar Germany can be seen as a trial run or dress rehearsal for the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, a revolution in attitudes and behavior that was to convulse America and then spread like a moral virus to Europe and the rest of the world.
Recollect that it was in Germany during the Weimar period—in 1923 to be exact—that the Institut für Sozialforschung was set up at the University of Frankfurt. Financed by the Argentian Jew Felix Weil, this was later to become the infamous Frankfurt School. [23]
It is my own hypothesis that the Germans were to be the initial guinea pigs of these Cultural Marxists [24], all of them initially Jewish apart from Habermas. These were revolutionaries intent on complete social control by the imposition of their Marxist worldview on the rest of society. It is self-evident that there is no other way to get control of a society with strong moral values than to weaken those values. The formula is simple: destroy the belief system on which that society is founded, especially its religion and its traditional codes of honor and decency. Promote godlessness and a philosophy of despair. To put it in even plainer language: reduce men to beasts if you wish to control them.
It was George Lukács [25], one of the founding fathers of the Frankfurt School, who had called for “a culture of pessimism and a world abandoned by God.” [26] And it was one of their most fanatical ideologues, Willi Munzenberg [27], who had said he wanted to turn the world upside down and make life a hell on earth. His exact words:
We must organize the intellectuals and use them TO MAKE WESTERN CIVILIZATION STINK! Only then, after they have CORRUPTED ALL ITS VALUES AND MADE LIFE IMPOSSIBLE, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat. [28, emphasis added]
With Jewish intellectuals like this at the helm, doing their utmost to promote moral anarchy and create an Orwellian dystopia, is it any wonder that the Germans went helter-skelter down the slippery slope and ended up where they did?
In America the Cultural Marxists were to apply a variation of their Weimar techniques, but refined and honed to a high degree. This time, they would use multiculturalism as a weapon of mass destruction in addition to moral corruption. They would flood the country with immigrants, legal as well as illegal. They would turn race against race (engineered ethnic conflict), parent against child (attack on authority), and man against woman (radical feminism). Above all, they would teach the non-White races to regard the White race as the ultimate evil: “the cancer of human history”, to quote Jewish feminist Susan Sontag. [29]
The above comments are admittedly controversial and will elicit anger in many quarters. For this I apologize. My purpose is simply to give voice to an urgent and widespread perception. Not to be able to say what many people increasingly believe is clearly undesirable.
What did the cultural Marxists learn from Weimar Germany?
They learned that the Sexual Revolution, in order to succeed, had to be a slow and gradual process. “Modern forms of subjection,” the Frankfurt School had learned, “are marked by mildness.” [30] Weimar had failed because the pace had been too frenetic. People were aware they were being corrupted. That was fatal.
To corrupt a nation effectively one must make sure that the descent into degradation is an infinitely slow and imperceptible process, one miniscule step at a time—just as those who wish to cook frogs alive in a saucepan, reducing them to a state of comatose stupor, are advised to place them in cold water and boil them to death as slowly as possible. [31]
Lest I be accused of antisemitism by this portrayal of the systematic sexual corruption of the German people at the hands of their Jewish masters—a classic instance of social engineering practiced on an entire population—let me allow a well-known and respected Jewish authority on the Weimar era to have the final word. He is Dr Manfred Reifer, and he is writing in a prestigious Jewish publication:
Whilst large sections of the German nation were struggling for the preservation of their race, we Jews filled the streets of Germany with our vociferations. We supplied the press with articles on the subject of its Christmas and Easter and administered to its religious beliefs in the manner we considered suitable. We ridiculed the highest ideals of the German nation and profaned the matters which it holds sacred.” — Dr Manfred Reifer, in the German Jewish magazine Czernowitzer Allegemeine Zeitung,September 1933
In the same month those words were written, September 1933, Adolf Hitler removed every single Jew from positions of influence in the mass media: from the fields of literature, art, music, journalism, the cinema, and popular entertainment in general [32]. The influence that the Jews had exerted on the German psyche was to be regarded henceforth, rightly or wrongly, as pernicious. And Kulturbolschewismus, or “Bolshevik culture”, a derogatory term for Jewish culture itself, became synonymous with moral anarchy and sexual decadence.
* * *
ENDNOTES
Dr Friedrich Karl Wiehe, Germany and the Jewish Question. Published in 1938 in Berlin by the Institute for Studies of the Jewish Question, this eight-part booklet runs to approximately 23,500 words in the English translation. As I have quoted this important work extensively both here and in my forthcoming 4-part essay How the Jews Rose to World Power, I felt it would be advisable to paraphrase/translate the defective Germanic English of the English version completely, quoting the original translation only when the English was free from grammatical and orthographical errors. Readers who know German are invited to consult the original German essay here: Deutschland und die Judenfrage.
[7] Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). The first advocate for homosexual and transgender rights and himself a homosexual, Hirschfeld figured out that there were 64 different types of male, ranging from the extremely masculine heterosexual male to the extremely feminine homosexual male. Whether there are also 64 different types of females, ranging from the extremely feminine heterosexual female to the extremely masculine butch lesbian, is not clear. Described as the “the Einstein of Sex”, Hirschfeld thought abortion was a good thing and approved of miscegenation and the mongrelization of the White race.
[8] Ivan Bloch (1872-1922). Like Hirschfeld, Bloch was a Jewish homosexual whose main interest in life was sexual perversion. Author of the 3-volume Handbuch der gesamten Sexualwissenschaft in Einzeldarstellungen (“Handbook of Sexology in its Entirety Presented in Separate Studies”), Bloch was an expert on sadism and helped to popularize the work of the Marquis de Sade. He apparently discovered the manuscript of de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom and published it under a pseudonym in 1904, presumably pocketing the royalties.
[9] The Institute for Sexual Science (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft). Founded in 1919 in Berlin, the Institute was housed in a villa purchased by Hirschfeld not far from the Reichstag building. It housed his immense library of sex books, most of them pornographic, and offered the public advice on their sex problems (“medical consultations”). People from around Europe visited the Institute, including the homosexual duo Auden and Isherwood, “to gain a clearer understanding of their sexuality.” (Wikipedia). The Institute, which encouraged “educational” visits from school children, included a Museum of Sex full of pornographic pictures, dildos, “masturbation machines”, and other curiosities of a similar nature. In May 1933, after the Nazis had come to power, the Institute was attacked and thousands of its pornographic books and erotic artifacts destroyed in a “bonfire of the vanities” — this event later being portrayed by Jewish interests as a tragic loss to civilization, comparable only to the burning of the Great Library at Alexandria in 645 AD
[19] Stephen Lemons, Ibid. If 30 cents for a blowjob was considered a bargain for the American tourist in Weimar Germany, it is of interest to note that the blowjob rate for sex tourists in Moldova today is considerably lower—only 20 cents a pop. We learn this from a book originally published in Hebrew in Israel (In Foreign Parts: Trafficking in Women in Israel, by Ilana Hammerman. Am Oved. 199pp). “The local rate for sex services at the Chisinau train station,” we are told, “is about NIS 0.70 for a blowjob.” (Quoted in “Land of Filth and Honey”, by Eli Shai, Jerusalem Post, November 5, 2004). 0.70 New Israeli shekels works out to 20 cents. Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, where the average income is US $300 per month and 20 percent of the population live in abject poverty on $3 per day, is a favorite destination for European and Israeli sex tourists, especially for pedophiles. Chisinau is the capital of Moldova, and it is at its railway station that gaunt, hollow-eyed children—some of them as young as 7—line up to offer their services to the incoming sex tourists. (Seehere).
[24] Readers who wish to know more about the philosophical milieu of modernity—i.e., the cultural swamp of sexual bolshevism in which the benighted masses are forced to flounder today—are advised to make a careful study of the following eight core articles:
[27] Willi Munzenberg, Wikipedia. See also Sean McMeekin’s The Red Millionaire: A political biography of Willi Münzenberg, where Münzenberg is described as “the perpetrator of some of the most colossal lies of the modern age…. He helped to unleash a plague of moral blindness upon the world from which we have still not recovered.”
[29] “The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean Algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Ballanchine ballets don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.” — Susan Sontag, Partisan Review, Winter 1967, p. 57. This infamous quote, once cited in the Wikipedia article on Sontag, has recently been removed.
"If you're going to San Francisco,be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...If you're going to San Francisco, Summertime will be a love-in there" I remember my first walk/day here in the US. I came over to San Francisco in the late sixties, and was somewhat aware of the scenes, mostly was involved in search of a job. Funny, when we look back, we think, we squandered the times of our life when our hormones were in tune with our desires. I was single then, going to school in San Francisco and also at the California State University in Sacramento, during those days really experienced the happening, although a little bit subdued due to work in the day time. That song forever imprinted in my mind "San Francisco" it became an instant hit and quickly transcended its original purpose by popularizing an idealized image of San Francisco. As the memories flicker down the memory lane, I wish to live back in the sixties with the images of the hills over the bay frozen in time....ASC
1
The Grande Dame of San Francisco Union Square Hotels
At the turn of the century, the guardians of the Charles Crocker family announced plans to build The Westin St. Francis. Their vision was to make San Francisco the "Paris of the West," and their stunning Union Square San Francisco hotel would be their flagship. After studying all of Europe's grand hotels - from those in Berlin, Vienna, and Monaco to Claridge's in London and The Ritz in Paris - construction on the original St. Francis began. Two years and $2.5 million later, on March 21, 1904, the doors of The St. Francis opened. By seven o'clock that evening, a line of carriages and automobiles stretching three blocks waited to approach her brightly lit towers. The hotel became so popular that within six months, the owners announced plans to add a third wing, two floors of apartments, and a ballroom. The St. Francis had become the center of the city's social, literary, and artistic life. After the Great Earthquake of 1906, the square was dubbed "Little St. Francis" because of the temporary shelter erected for residents of The St. Francis. Documented records of the opening were lost in the fire that destroyed the interior of the hotel's original 250 rooms following the earthquake. Within 40 days of the inferno, a temporary hotel of 110 rooms was erected in a court around the Dewey Monument in Union Square, and The St. Francis continued as a focal point of the city.
The hotel refurbished its interior and re-opened late in 1907, with 450 guest rooms. A third wing opened in 1908, and further additions followed on Post Street - making The St. Francis the largest hotel on the Pacific Coast. Construction of the 32-story Pacific Tower began early in 1969 - opened in 1971 - adding a vast new complex of guest rooms, suites, and venues and banquet facilities.
The spirit of the 'whole generation with a new explanation', as McKenzie and Phillips put it, was centred on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, a low-rent district next to Golden Gate Park. It was a laboratory for alternative lifestyles, and during 1967 an estimated 100,000 young people headed there in the hopes of enlightenment, freedom and a cheap place to crash.
Despite McKenzie's unease,'The Summer of Love' was not a journalistic invention. The phrase was coined by a local activist group, The Council for a Summer of Love. In April 1967 it announced: 'This summer, the youth of the world are making a holy pilgrimage to our city, to affirm and celebrate a new spiritual dawn --the activity of the youth of the nation which has given birth to Haight-Ashbury is a small part of a worldwide spiritual awakening.'
Haight-Ashbury today is more psychedelic supermarket than holy city, the hippy vibe kept alive by souvenir stores that sell postcards reading Having A Groovy Time In Haight-Ashbury and tobacconists who stock exotic glass pipes next to warning signs that say Intended For Legal Use Only. The change is hardly surprising. We are now as far away from the events of the Summer of Love as the original hippies were from the release of Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer, the first movie to use speech.
The Grateful Dead are to Haight-Ashbury what The Beatles are to Liverpool. True to themselves, egalitarian, exploratory, they exemplified the spirit of the time and place. Jerry Garcia is still the most prevalent poster image in the stores on Haight Street. Even local fire trucks carry Grateful Dead stickers.
Other bands lived in the area. Jefferson Airplane bought a colonial-style mansion in 1968 across the road from Golden Gate Park at 2400 Fulton Street and Big Brother and the Holding Company got together with Janis Joplin at 1090 Page Street. Izu said that Jimi Hendrix briefly lived in an apartment over 1524 Haight Street (now The Tobacco Centre) which was a haven for draft-dodgers.
Almost all the Haight Street stores from 1967 have gone. The Psychedelic Shop, the original drug paraphernalia store, has been replaced by Fat Slice Pizza. The premises of the multicoloured underground newspaper The Oracle have become Recycled Records. The Drogstore Cafe, a favourite hippy hangout, is now the Magnolia Pub and Brewery.
The more overtly political counterpart to Haight Street is Telegraph Avenue, over the Bay Bridge in Berkeley. The story of this strip in the Sixties is currently being told in a black-and-white photo display in the window of Rasputin Music (2403 Telegraph). It shows police firing tear gas, students putting flowers down the barrels of National Guard rifles, sit-ins and Martin Luther King preaching Civil Rights.
Today things are tranquil. The steps of Sproul Plaza, where the Free Speech Movement started in 1964, are deserted and, judging by the nearby notice boards, today's students are more interested in clubbing than being clubbed. Telegraph Avenue, like Haight Street,has become a haven for collectors of tie-dye T-shirts and small scales for weighing smoking materials.
Houses in Haight-Ashbury now sell for upwards of $1,500,000
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the early 1960s and spread around the world. The word hippie derives from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. These people inherited the countercultural values of the Beat Generation, created their own communities, listened to psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution, and used drugs such as cannabis and LSD to explore alternative states of consciousness. In January 1967, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco popularized hippie culture, leading to the legendary Summer of Love on the West Coast of the United States, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast.
I left my heart in San Francisco: Touring the vibrant city that inspired a song
I came to San Francisco in search of a new life. Well, not the song itself - that was already on my plans- but the cityscape that inspired me and the sweet flower people in their new awakening.
Released almost half a century ago by Tony Bennett, I Left My Heart In San Francisco is one of the most evocative city anthems ever recorded.
In 1964, it was picked up by the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau to add a musical punch to its campaigns. Five years later, it became one of two official city songs (the other being San Francisco from the 1936 film of the same name).
Ablaze with newness and vitality: San Francisco's bright skyline framed by the Oakland Bay Bridge
To immerse myself in the song, there was only one place I could stay - the Fairmont Hotel, where Bennett first performed it during a concert series in December 1961. It was also conveniently 'high on a hill' and very close to the cable cars.
A San Francisco landmark for over a century, the five-star Fairmont has no shortage of claims to fame. It was the HQ for those reconstructing the city after the 1906 earthquake, which struck on the day the hotel was due to open, and is where the United Nations Charter was drafted in 1945. Its list of celebrity guests reads like a Who's Who of the 20th Century.
Yet in its Heritage Hall - a long corridor decked with framed hotel memorabilia - the sheet music to I Left My Heart In San Francisco and a black-and-white photo of Tony Bennett playing in its Venetian Room hang alongside images of princesses and presidents. The Fairmont is justly proud of its unique association with the song.
City song: I left my Heart in San Francisco was a huge hit for Tony Bennett and the city itself
Affixed to the base of the low but wide stage where Bennett once stood is a brass plaque that reads: 'Tony Bennett Time Capsule. To commemorate the restoration of The Fairmont San Francisco, Mr Bennett placed a time capsule containing personal mementos in the stage of the Venetian Room where he first sang I Left My Heart In San Francisco in 1962 [sic].'
It is dated October 19, 1999. One of the items in the capsule is a red Baccarat heart from Tiffany & Co given to the singer by Liza Minnelli.
'It was pure nostalgia. We missed the warmth and openness of the people and the beauty. We never really took to New York.'
'New York is a hard, ruthless city. It lives on the edge of terror and catastrophe. New York is tired. San Francisco has newness and vitality.'
High on a hill: The Fairmont Hotel where Bennett first sang his hit
The song was recorded at CBS Studios on 30th Street on January 23, 1962, and released as the B side of Once Upon A Time. DJs, however, preferred I Left My Heart In San Francisco and it became a hit. An album with the same title followed. 'That song helped make me a world citizen,' said Bennett. 'It allowed me to live, work and sing in any city on the globe. It changed my whole life.'
I had decided to explore San Francisco using the song as my guidebook. The Fairmont was a good place to start. From my 17th-floor window I could see the city laid out like a menu of tourist attractions, from Golden Gate Bridge to Alcatraz Island.
Yet, as everybody knows, San Francisco isn't really a city 'high on a hill' as the song suggests. It is a city on many hills, ranging from the 100ft Rincon Hill to the 925ft Mount Davidson.
Surprisingly the exact number of hills is still a matter of dispute - if there is a hill on top of a hill, does that make one big hill or two small ones? The official count is 43 (44 if you consult Wikipedia), but San Francisco hill-lover Tom Graham, currently attempting to walk every street in the city, claims to have found hitherto unrecognised hills that would bring the total to more than 50.
The most accessible hill for looking over the city is Twin Peaks (922ft), charmingly known as Los Pechos de la Choca (The Breasts of the Indian Maiden) by early Spanish settlers.
There is only a viewing terrace and a telecommunications mast on top but the view across the city and over the water to Oakland and Berkeley is unparalleled, as is the tranquillity.
Heady heights: A cable car scrambles up one of San Francisco's many steep streets with Alcatraz Island in the background
Next on the song's tick list were the little cable cars that 'climb halfway to the stars'. No matter how many times you've ridden them, these cars, with their sounds of bells and grinding Victorian machinery, always provide a kick. And the route that runs closest to The Fairmont, the Hyde Street line, happens to be the one that will get you closest to the stars. Its steepest gradient, 21 per cent, is the sharpest on the system.
Another first for me was visiting the Cable Car Barn Museum at 1201 Mason. This building, which houses some examples of cars from the early days, is still the powerhouse of the system. From the mezzanine you can see the engines and wheels that wind the cables through the subterranean channels and pulleys.
Although the song doesn't introduce the most obvious San Franciscan image - the Golden Gate Bridge - it does mention the 'morning fog', which best displays its dramatic power as it rolls under and over the familiar rust-coloured structure. Indeed, it was a photo of a fog-wreathed bridge that graced the cover of Bennett's I Left My Heart In San Francisco album in 1962.
The ideal place to see the bridge in all its glory is from Crissy Field, a recently restored waterfront recreation area that begins not too far from Fisherman's Wharf and ends at Fort Point. And the best way to explore Crissy Field is by bike (hire from Blazing Saddles outside Pier 41).
It's a beautiful ride through a peaceful area of promenade, sand dunes and reclaimed marsh. On my way out, the fog was but a wisp. By the time I was halfway back, only the tops of the bridge's towers were visible. It can happen that quickly.
The one remaining image from the song was the 'blue and windy sea'. To experience this, I went on an hour-long cruise of the bay that took me from Pier 39, where sea lions bask in the sun on floating platforms, down to Golden Gate Bridge and back again via Alcatraz. It was all I needed to confirm that the sea is indeed blue and the wind is windy.
In for a chill: The city's fog, seen engulfing the Golden Gate Bridge, is infamous
Golden Gate Bridge from Marshall Beach
350 miles north of Los Angeles, the iconic Golden Gate Bridge welcomes you to San Francisco.
Introduction
Possibly the most mythologized part of the most mythologized country in the world, California is where Americans go to live the American dream.The third largest and most populous state in the Union lies on the sun-drenched Pacific coast, with thousands of years of history and wave after wave of arrivals shaping its present.Its size is equal to an entire nation, as is its wealth, with the entertainment, wine and tourism industries all adding to its financial muscle and all-round desirability.
Life might not be quite as easy as the myth for some, but its usually as sunny as you imagine, and California does try its best to live up to its own hype.
Most accounts say the "summer" actually began Jan. 14, 1967, with the "Human Be-In," billed as "a Renaissance of compassion, awareness and love" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, which drew up to 20,000 people. The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane performed, and among the speakers were poet Allen Ginsberg and LSD guru Timothy Leary, who for the first time used the phrase he would make famous: "Turn on, tune in, drop out." The event established San Francisco as the center of the emerging counterculture of hippies and flower children, and Scott McKenzie's hit song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" promised that "summertime will be a love-in there." Several San Francisco activists soon formed the Council for the Summer of Love to help prepare the city for the influx of young people from across the country that was expected after schools and colleges let out for summer.
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Cable Car in the Intersection, San Francisco, California
The San Francisco cable car system is the world's last permanently operational manually-operated cable car system, and is now an icon of the city of San Francisco in California. The cable car system forms part of the intermodal urban transport network operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway, or Muni as it is better known. Cable cars operate on two routes from downtown near Union Square to Fisherman's Wharf, and a third route along California Street. While the cable cars are used to a certain extent by commuters, their low speed, small service area, and premium fares for single rides make them primarily a tourist attraction.
The first successful cable-operated street railway was the Clay Street Hill Railroad, which opened on August 2, 1873. The promoter of the line was Andrew Smith Hallidie, and the engineer was William Eppelsheimer. The line involved the use of grip cars, which carried the grip that engaged with the cable, towing trailer cars. The design was the first to use grips.
The line started regular service on September 1, 1873, and it was such a success that it became the model for other cable car transit systems in San Francisco and elsewhere. It was a financial success, and Hallidie's patents were enforced on other cable car promoters, making him a rich man.
The current cable car network consists of three lines:
The Powell-Hyde line runs north and steeply uphill from a terminal at Powell and Market Streets, before crossing the California Street line at the crest of the hill. Downhill from this crest it turns left and uphill again along Jackson Street (as this is one-way, cable cars in the opposite direction use the parallel Washington Street), to a crest at Hyde Street. Here it turns right and steeply downhill along Hyde Street to the Hyde and Beach terminal, which is adjacent to the waterfront at the San Francisco Maritime Museum.
The Powell-Mason line shares the tracks of the Powell-Hyde line as far as Mason Street, where it crosses Washington and Jackson streets. Here the line turns right and downhill along Mason Street, briefly half left along Columbus Avenue, and then down Taylor Street to a terminal at Taylor and Bay. This terminus is near to, but several blocks back from, the waterfront at Fisherman's Wharf.
The California Street line runs due west from a terminal at California and Market Streets, close to the junction of Market with the waterfront Embarcadero. The whole of the line lies on California Street, running at first uphill to the summit of Nob Hill, then more gently downhill to a terminus at Van Ness Avenue.
California Street is one of the longest and most important streets in San Francisco.
Because of its unique geography—making beltways somewhat impractical—and the results of the freeway revolts of the late 1950s,[171] San Francisco is one of the few American cities that has opted for European-style arterial thoroughfares instead of a large network of freeways. This trend continued following the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, when city leaders decided to demolish the Embarcadero Freeway, and voters approved demolition of a portion of the Central Freeway, converting them into street-level boulevards.[171]
Interstate 80 begins at the approach to the Bay Bridge and is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. US 101 extends Interstate 80 to the south along the San Francisco Bay toward Silicon Valley. Northbound, 101 uses arterial streets Van Ness Avenue and Lombard Street to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct road access from San Francisco to Marin County and points north. Highway 1 also enters San Francisco at the Golden Gate Bridge, but diverts away from 101, bisecting the west side of the city as the 19th Avenue arterial thoroughfare, and joining with Interstate 280 at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues this route along the central portion of the Peninsula south to San Jose. Northbound, 280 turns north and east and terminates in the South of Market area. State Route 35, which traverses the majority of the Peninsula along the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains, enters the city from the south as Skyline Boulevard, following city streets until it terminates at its intersection with Highway 1. State Route 82 enters San Francisco from the south as Mission Street, following the path of the historic El Camino Real and terminating shortly thereafter at its junction with 280. The cross-country Lincoln Highway's western terminus is in Lincoln Park. Major east–west thoroughfares include Geary Boulevard, the Lincoln Way/Fell Street corridor, and Market Street/Portola Drive.
Cycling is a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco, with about 40,000 residents commuting to work regularly by bicycle.
Pedestrian traffic is a major mode of transport. In 2011, Walk Score ranked San Francisco the second most walkable city in the United States.[
A third of commuters in San Francisco used public transportation in 2005. Public transit solely within the city of San Francisco is provided predominantly by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni). The city-owned system operates both a combined light rail and subway system (the Muni Metro) and a bus network that includes trolleybuses, standard diesel motorcoaches and diesel hybrid buses. The Metro streetcars run on surface streets in outlying neighborhoods but underground in the downtown area.Additionally, Muni runs the highly visible F Market historic streetcar line, which runs on surface streets from Castro Street to Fisherman's Wharf (through Market Street), and the iconic San Francisco cable car system, which has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.
There is also commuter bus and special train service to the 49ers and Giant's games from Tri Delta Transit, Caltrain and other private operators as well.
San Francisco International Airport (SFO), though located 13 miles (21 km) south of the city in San Mateo County, is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is primarily near the cities of Millbrae and San Bruno, but also borders the most southern part of the city of South San Francisco. SFO is a hub for United Airlines, its largest tenant,[180] and the decision by Virgin America to base its operations out of SFO[181] reversed the trend of low-cost carriers opting to bypass SFO for Oakland and San Jose. SFO is an international gateway, with the largest international terminal in North America.[182] The airport is built on a landfill extension into the San Francisco Bay. During the economic boom of the late 1990s, when traffic saturation led to frequent delays, it became difficult to respond to calls to relieve the pressure by constructing an additional runway as that would have required additional landfill. Such calls subsided in the early 2000s as traffic declined, and, in 2006, SFO was the 14th busiest airport in the U.S. and 26th busiest in the world, handling 33.5 million passengers.
The Port of San Francisco was once the largest and busiest seaport on the West Coast. It featured rows of piers perpendicular to the shore, where cargo from the moored ships was handled by cranes and manual labor and transported to nearby warehouses. The port handled cargo to and from trans-Pacific and Atlantic destinations, and was the West Coast center of the lumber trade. The 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike, an important episode in the history of the American labor movement, brought most ports to a standstill. The advent of container shipping made pier-based ports obsolete, and most commercial berths moved to the Port of Oakland and Port of Richmond. A few active berths specializing in break bulk cargo remain alongside the Islais Creek Channel.
Many piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building, while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as a gourmet marketplace. The port's other activities now focus on developing waterside assets to support recreation and tourism.
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That summer was ripe for change. It was only two years after the Watts riots in Los Angeles, 3 1/2 years after the Kennedy assassination, and more and more American troops were being sent to fight in the Vietnam War. Against the backdrop of an ever widening chasm between the nation's youth and their parents that would eventually be dubbed "the generation gap," young people all over the country headed toward San Francisco. \Almost half a century ago. Looking up Powell St. from Market St. The canteen at Woolworth on your right, served me well at lunch. During my job search, the hills of San Francisco was a hindrance. I think my overdeveloped legs were the outcome of the constant walking in SF. The Filipino community has grown remarkably since World War II and has spread to all areas of the city, especially the South of Market area. The affluent Castro district (technically Eureka Valley near Twin Peaks) has attracted gays and lesbians from throughout the country, becoming perhaps the most famous gay neighbourhood in the world. Its streets are adorned with elegantly restored Victorian homes and landmarks highlighting significant dates in the struggle for gay rights. It is said that no local politician can win an election without the gay community's vote.
Dropping down California St. Fabled hills, were the scourge of the handicap, nowhere in any city but San Francisco, where wheel chairs are absent...my own observation. I remember there were so many people coming in for the Peace March, we wondered around listening to the sounds of the bands warming up at the Union Square. The guitars faded in and out like the morning fog that drifted in and out on the breeze off the bay. Again, there was the thick smell of incense and marijuana, but there was something else in the atmosphere as well: the air was glowing electric with excitement and anticipation. Everyone felt that we were about to be part of something really big.
1966 Fox Plaza, it stands on the site of the former Fox Theatre, demolished in 1963. I remember walking thru Van Ness and Market St. the strong winds of San Francisco magnified like a wind tunnel. It Acts like a sail, that many times my hat blew away. My recollection about this building were all positive, all the five years of my stay in Highway design and Urban Planning. The first twelve floors contain office space. Unlike many buildings, Fox Plaza has a 13th floor actually labeled "13", although this floor is the service floor and is not rented out. The 14th floor contains a gymnasium and laundry facilities as well as apartments, while floors 15 through 29 are exclusively rental apartments. The main attraction during coffee break was the fashion show atmosphere of beautiful young ladies well chosen by private companies at Fox Plaza to the delight of bachelors like us.
San Francisco was undeniably one of the most important epicenters of change. The city's history with the Renaissance poets, the Beats, and a vibrant folk scene left it in a good position to serve as a cultural engine, and the ignition of the San Francisco Sound came from dozens of sources, from Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, and the British Invasion to UC-Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement, the evolution of freeform FM radio, and the proliferation of hallucinogenic drugs. By 1967, San Francisco was the most psychedelic city in America, if not the world
A few customers stand beneath the doomed marquee on the night of February 10, 1963. The building was demolished and in its place the "Fox Plaza" was constructed a combination office and apartment building. Fox Plaza 5th floor was the site of my office in Urban Planning, Dept. of Transportation, State of California in the late 60's. The last film's were shown on February 15, 1963. The following night an event called "Farewell to the Fox" tookplace. After a week or so of selling off artifacts from the theater the wreaking ball took over
The 1906 Great Earthquake of San Francisco in colour: never-before-seen photos uncovered a century later in the Smithsonian
The snaps were unearthed in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History of what is considered the worst natural disaster in US history .
Thought to be the first colour photos from the devastating earthquake were taken by pioneer photographer Frederick Eugene Ives
The first colour images of what is considered the worst natural disaster in U.S. history have emerged, showing in beautiful and horrific detail the deadly force of the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
The subsequent fire that engulfed the city left more than 3,000 dead and thousands more injured. Images of the devastation left behind were captured by pioneering photographer Frederick Eugene Ives.
The never before seen snaps of the city's downtown area were taken from the roof of the Hotel Majestic, where Ives stayed on an October 1906 visit, and were unearthed by a volunteer at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Skyline: These images look South East from the Hotel Majestic roof, towards what appears to be the dome of City Hall on the horizon (centre right)
His shots show the devastation in the North East of the city, near San Francisco Bay. They were stowed amid other items donated by Ives' son, Herbert, and discovered in 2009 by volunteer Anthony Brooks while he was cataloguing the collection.
Hand-colored photographs of the quake's destruction have surfaced before, but Ives' work is probably the only true color documentary evidence, Shannon Perich, associate curator of the Smithsonian's photography history collection believes.
Previous images: The subsequent fires tore through the city leaving nearly two-thirds of the population homeless
The pictures are street-level shots of San Francisco's shattered downtown and rooftop views overlooking miles of ruins.
They depict buildings damaged by fire and broken by the shaking ground. Some of the buildings still exist.
The process he used to produce colour images, creating separate slides for each primary colour in the light spectrum, required a long exposure and therefore was not conducive to capturing people and objects in motion.
Ives is well-known for inventing the half-tone reproduction process still used to print photographs in newspapers.
The Great Earthquake measured 7.9 on the Richter Scale as was felt as far away as Orgeon, Los Angeles and Nevada.
Around 227,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless out of a population of about 410,000 and lead to refugee camps set up along the coast, which were still operational two years after the quake.
The cost of the damage from the earthquake was estimated at the time to be around $400million, which is around $9.5 billion in today’s money.
She said Ives was one of only a few photographers experimenting with colour photography in the early 20th century and that his San Francisco images were meant to be viewed through a 3D device he invented but which never became a commercial success.
Perich told the San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Can you imagine how shocking these were?’
The Hotel Majestic, Ives base for these photographs, was built in 1902 - four years before the earthquake struck - and still stands on Sutter Street today. It claims to be 'San Francisco's oldest continuously operating hotel'.
The history section of its website, relating to the time of the disaster, states: 'The terrible fires that ravaged the city were halted at Van Ness Avenue, two blocks from The Majestic.'
San Francisco hill
San Francisco view today from the Coit tower.
Downtown San Francisco Bay View from Kite Hill in San Francisco
This map of San Francisco shows the hotel where Ives stayed and from its roof he pointed his camera East to Union Square and South to City Hall to photograph the destruction in color .
The quake caused around $9billion-worth of damage in today's money, and the extent of it can be seen in this shot of Union Square, with the Victory statue in the distance
Vibrant: Downtown San Francisco before the1906 earthquake
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San Francisco City Hall, 1906
The 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco largely gutted City Hall. Source: U.S. Geological Survey
This area of the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco has been built up in a Holland theme, beginning with the windmill and the large patches of beautiful tulips.
This windmill was a gift to the park from Queen
These spectacular images of the San Francisco skyline were taken by a fearless photographer - who dangled his camera and even himself out of a helicopter to capture the perfect shots.
Michael Shainblum, 23, took to the aircraft in a bid to photograph a series of unique views of the Californian city - from the Golden Gate Bridge to towering, brightly-lit skyscrapers.
He dangled his legs and arms out of the helicopter at dizzying heights - before snapping the sights below with a camera attached to a tripod.
Mr Shainblum, who flew with two friends, said he had spent years practicing the daring photography technique, which has recently become popular with urban explorers.
'The reason I went up was to capture unique images of San Francisco from a perspective most people don't get to see,' he said.
'I wanted the pictures to make people feel like they are in there with me. I have had people tell me that some of the shots looking down have made them feel sick.'
He added that despite suffering from a 'slight fear of heights', once he was in the helicopter he was 'too excited to be scared'.
Breathtaking: This image of San Francisco was taken by a fearless photographer - who dangled his camera and even himself out of a helicopter to capture the ideal shot
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Beautiful: Michael Shainblum, 23, took to the aircraft in a bid to photograph a series of unique views of the Californian city, including this shot of San Francisco at night
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Famous landmark: He dangled his legs and arms out of the helicopter at dizzying heights - before snapping the sights below with a camera. Above, Golden Gate Bridge
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Different perspectives: The Golden Gate Bridge, a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, is pictured, left and right, above a sea of green-and-blue water
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Bright lights of the city: Mr Shainblum said he had spent years practicing the daring photography technique, which has recently become popular with urban explorers
Stomach-churning: The photographer, who flew with two friends, dangles his legs out of the helicopter while capturing this incredible photo of San Francisco at night
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Flying high: 'Including my feet in the shots was my idea as I like having a human element in the shots,' he said. Left, Golden Gate Bridge and, right, San Francisco at night
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View from above: Mr Shainblum said that despite suffering from a 'slight fear of heights', once he was in the helicopter he became 'too excited to be scared'
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Busy city: 'I have had people tell me that some of the shots looking down have made them feel sick,' he added. Left, brightly-lit skyscrapers and, right, a major bypass
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Captivating: Mr Shainblum said he had taken precautions during the photography session - but added: 'I did take risks also'. Above, the bright lights of San Francisco
1966 Fox Plaza, it stands on the site of the former Fox Theatre, demolished in 1963. I remember walking thru Van Ness and Market St. the strong winds of San Francisco magnified like a wind tunnel. It Acts like a sail, that many times my hat blew away. My recollection about this building were all positive, all the five years of my stay in Highway design and Urban Planning. The first twelve floors contain office space. Unlike many buildings, Fox Plaza has a 13th floor actually labeled "13", although this floor is the service floor and is not rented out. The 14th floor contains a gymnasium and laundry facilities as well as apartments, while floors 15 through 29 are exclusively rental apartments. The main attraction during coffee break was the fashion show atmosphere of beautiful young ladies well chosen by private companies at Fox Plaza to the delight of bachelors like us.
This map of San Francisco shows the hotel where Ives stayed and from its roof he pointed his camera East to Union Square and South to City Hall to photograph the destruction in color .
