Growing Up in San Francisco's Chinatown: Boomer Memories from Noodle Rolls to Apple Pie


Book Description

Chinese American baby boomers who grew up within the twenty-nine square blocks of San Francisco's Chinatown lived in two worlds. Elders implored the younger generation to retain ties with old China even as the youth felt the pull of a future sheathed in red, white and blue. The family-owned shops, favorite siu-yeh (snack) joints and the gai-chongs where mothers labored as low-wage seamstresses contrasted with the allure of Disney, new cars and football. It was a childhood immersed in two vibrant cultures and languages, shaped by both. Author Edmund S. Wong brings to life Chinatown's heart and soul from its golden age.




The Children of Chinatown


Book Description

Revealing the untold stories of a pioneer generation of young Chinese Americans, this book places the children and families of early Chinatown in the middle of efforts to combat American policies of exclusion and segregation. Wendy Jorae challenges long-held notions of early Chinatown as a bachelor community by showing that families--and particularly children--played important roles in its daily life. She explores the wide-ranging images of Chinatown's youth created by competing interests with their own agendas--from anti-immigrant depictions of Chinese children as filthy and culturally inferior to exotic and Orientalized images that catered to the tourist's ideal of Chinatown. All of these representations, Jorae notes, tended to further isolate Chinatown at a time when American-born Chinese children were attempting to define themselves as Chinese American. Facing barriers of immigration exclusion, cultural dislocation, child labor, segregated schooling, crime, and violence, Chinese American children attempted to build a world for themselves on the margins of two cultures. Their story is part of the larger American story of the struggle to overcome racism and realize the ideal of equality.




Home Baked


Book Description

A blazingly funny, heartfelt memoir from the daughter of the larger-than-life woman who ran Sticky Fingers Brownies, an underground bakery that distributed thousands of marijuana brownies per month and helped provide medical marijuana to AIDS patients in San Francisco--for fans of Armistead Maupin and Patricia Lockwood During the '70s in San Francisco, Alia's mother ran the underground Sticky Fingers Brownies, delivering upwards of 10,000 illegal marijuana edibles per month throughout the circus-like atmosphere of a city in the throes of major change. She exchanged psychic readings with Alia's future father, and thereafter had a partner in business and life. Decades before cannabusiness went mainstream, when marijuana was as illicit as heroin, they ingeniously hid themselves in plain sight, parading through town--and through the scenes and upheavals of the day, from Gay Liberation to the tragedy of the Peoples Temple--in bright and elaborate outfits, the goods wrapped in hand-designed packaging and tucked into Alia's stroller. But the stars were not aligned forever and, after leaving the city and a shoulda-seen-it-coming divorce, Alia and her mom returned to San Francisco in the mid-80s, this time using Sticky Fingers' distribution channels to provide medical marijuana to friends and former customers now suffering the depredations of AIDS. Exhilarating, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartbreaking,Home Bakedcelebrates an eccentric and remarkable extended family, taking us through love, loss, and finding home.




Growing Up in Fairfield, California


Book Description

Life in Fairfield in the decades after World War II was an unparalleled experience. From cruising down Texas Street on weekends to catching a carnival in the Wonder World parking lot, fond memories of long-lost times haven't been forgotten. People flocked to vintage eateries like Joe's Buffet and Smorga Bob's and played on the rocket ship slide at Allan Witt Park. Roller rinks like the M&M Skateway hosted not only skaters but also dances featuring Fats Domino and Roy Orbison. Commuters hopped aboard the FART bus to save on gas, and frequenting Dave's Giant Hamburgers was a rite of passage. Longtime Daily Republic columnist and accidental historian Tony Wade takes a deep dive into the Fairfield of yesteryear.




Growing Up Belvedere-Tiburon


Book Description

You can leave Belvedere and Tiburon, but Belvedere-Tiburon never leaves you. Paige Peterson discovered that when she moved to New York City. For many years now, she has visited Belvedere, where she stays with her mother in the house her grandfather built on the Belvedere Lagoon.Paige and her sister packed sandwiches in paper bags and rode off on their bikes to explore the Tiburon Peninsula. Swimming, sailing, hiking, clamming, daredevil bike riding-their day was a long, unsupervised adventure. There was no interaction with parents until the Tiburon Fire Department blew the 4:30 whistle, signaling that it was time to head home. Her family's photographs confirm the story of fit, sun-kissed kids enjoying a charmed, idyllic childhood.Dave Gotz, the Archivist for the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society, deepens that personal story with archival photographs. His captions reveal his extensive knowledge of Tiburon Peninsula history: Mexican Ranchos, Portuguese dairymen, the many changes on Beach Road, Main Street, the Lagoon and the Cove, the importance of the railroad.Along the way, Paige and Dave showcase some of the area's remarkable characters. Tiburon's "Goat Lady," who so loved nature that she donated her land for open space. Blackie the horse. The artists who lived on West Shore and created a bohemian colony. And the residents of Belvedere and Tiburon who, again and again, rallied to protect open land and the special charm of their towns.Taken together, Paige's cinematic stories and Paige and Dave's curated images and capsule histories deliver an authoritative portrait of a historically diverse community.




Growing Up in San Francisco's Western Neighborhoods


Book Description

From football games at Kezar Stadium to a perfectly broiled Zim burger, San Franciscans have fond memories of the decades after World War II. Dressing up for a movie at the Fox Theatre on Market Street, catching the train at the old S.P. Station on Third and Townsend, taking the streetcar downtown to see magnificent displays in the Emporium's windows or spending a day at Golden Gate Park, the "outside lands" of San Francisco were teeming with youngsters and the young-at-heart alike. Western Neighborhoods Project columnist and San Francisco native Frank Dunnigan offers a charming collection of nostalgic vignettes about the thriving Western communities of unforgettable people and places that defined generations.




Growing Up in San Francisco's Chinatown


Book Description

Chinese American baby boomers who grew up within the twenty-nine square blocks of San Francisco's Chinatown lived in two worlds. Elders implored the younger generation to retain ties with old China even as the youth felt the pull of a future sheathed in red, white and blue. The family-owned shops, favorite siu-yeh (snack) joints and the gai-chongs where mothers labored as low-wage seamstresses contrasted with the allure of Disney, new cars and football. It was a childhood immersed in two vibrant cultures and languages, shaped by both. Author Edmund S. Wong brings to life Chinatown's heart and soul from its golden age.




Growing Up in San Francisco


Book Description

Newcomers and visitors can still enjoy iconic San Francisco with activities like riding a cable car or taking in the view from Twin Peaks. But San Franciscans cherish memories of a place quite different. They reminisce about seafood dinners at A. Sabella's on Fisherman's Wharf, the enormous Christmas tree in Union Square's City of Paris department store and taking a handful of dimes to Playland-at-the-Beach for arcade games and cotton candy. In his second volume of these unforgettable stories, local author and historian Frank Dunnigan vividly recalls the many details that made life special in the City by the Bay for generations.




The Hard Crowd


Book Description

A career-spanning anthology of essays on politics and culture by the best-selling author of The Flamethrowers includes entries discussing a Palestinian refugee camp, an illegal Baja Peninsula motorcycle race, and the 1970s Fiat factory wildcat strikes.




Growing Up in San Francisco and Other Stories


Book Description

As a young boy growing up in California, Claude Boyd rode precariously down the famous San Francisco hills on homemade coasters made of doors and old roller skate wheels. As a teenager, he chased purse snatchers in his father's 1939 Graham Paige automobile. With such an adventurous beginning to his life, it's no surprise that Claude Boyd's autobiography is filled with many more lively anecdotes, one of which involves a fake turkey made from a brown paper bag and two turkey legs, placed in the street for some unsuspecting soul to discover on Thanksgiving. He describes his enlistment in the Army and his subsequent year spent in peacetime Korea, where his first assignment is to set up a prison library. After he earns his college degree, he eventually moves to Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland, where he begins a new experience in the arctic tundra. Boyd concludes with the story of his transcontinental courtship and subsequent marriage that has lasted over fifty years. Combined with photographs, Claude Boyd's humorous true story captures the essence of what life was really all about before, during, and after World War II.