This morning at Coit Tower the tribe got schooled by two different beings. The first, a giant set of brick and wooden steps that takes even the strongest to a hands to knees position at some point. The second, a theatrical performance on the history of Coit Tower by Rebecca Daniels. Rebecca rehearsed her presentation for hours last night, and the practice paid off. The jokes landed, the dramatic pauses kept us wanting more, and the students actually shut the fuck up and listened for 2 minutes. The Friday education lesson will continue next week in the (b)East Bay when Charles teaches us the history behind the spooky cemetery we will all be running through.
Monday: Wear Grassroots gear please! Photos on photos on photos. Fort Mason, 6:25 AM.
Rebecca’s Notes for those who missed the show:
Telegraph hill
All the way back In the 1850’s the city installed a semaphore atop the hill that served to signal when ships would arrive. It was also home to the local criminal community that was eventually run out.
The gold rush saw many communities Chilean Peruvian Irish and finally the Italians.
Legend has it that during the 1906 fire the local Italian community doused the flames with blankets & burlap sacks soaked in 500 barrels of red wine, typical Italians.
1920 the park commission wanted to preserve the area and the road to the to top was paved.
There was a booming artist community here from the 20’s to the 30’s and like most other artist communities discovered by a group of wannabes and it became very trendy. The artists who couldn’t afford the new higher rents were driven out, typical San Francisco.
That brings us to Lillie Hitchcock Coit who was originally from the great state of Maryland, along with your fave NP-ers myself and Zip. Lillie lost some of her childhood friends in a fire which had a lasting effect. When she was a teenager she happen to pass engine no 5 off to fight a fire and dropped her schools books to help pull the towrope to get the engine up Telegraph Hill. After that she was the engine 5 mascot and rode the truck in parades. Eventhough she married very well she still loved playing poker, smoking, and drinking with her buddies at the fire house, typical Lillie.
When Lillie died she left the city $125,000 equivalent today to a trip to Whole Foods. She wanted the money “to be expended in an appropriate manner for the purpose of adding to the beauty of the city which I have always loved” so a memorial tower was built using the cheapest materials of the time, concrete.
General consensus was, plans for the tower were “hella ugly” and 464 people signed a petition fighting it. Even friends of Lillie criticized the tower, which was shady as shit, but alas it was completed in 1933 standing 212 feet tall.
There are some murals just inside that were commissioned as part of the PWAP, Public Works of Art Project, under the new deal programs. Some of the artists were students of Diego Rivera a very very well known artist from Mexico who was married to Frieda Kahlo.
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