Presidential Candidates in San Francisco: The Republicans!
. This is Part I of my Presidential Candidates in San Francisco series. Click “Show Captions” on the lower right corner of the gallery to see the dates, context and commentary. First, a request:...
View ArticlePresidential Candidates in San Francisco: The Democrats!
. President Barack Obama will appear in San Francisco today. Based on history, the chances are good that he’ll get his photo taken with 1. Willie Brown; or 2. A cable car. How do I know this? Because I...
View Article“The missiles are flying”: Worst movie presidents of all time
. Updated! Feb. 21, 2:56 p.m. Excellent work with your Worst Movie Presidents of All Time picks. Generally when I tally up readers results for the Today’s Special feature, they end up looking a lot...
View ArticleThe Greatest Bald Man of the Bay Area is …
. When I started an NCAA-style tournament bracket made up entirely of Bay Area bald men last month, I knew it could end a lot of ways. A stunning upset by Too $hort over Rev. Cecil Williams? A shadowy...
View ArticleArchive Showdown! Nixon on BART or experimental vehicles?
Little-known Let’s Go to the Morgue! fact: For the first six months of the series, I was only able to reproduce images from photo prints in the Chronicle archives. A few months ago, the paper invested...
View ArticleQ&A: The two girls from the 1972 Richard Nixon photo
When I started scanning the Richard Nixon 1972 BART photos featured in last week’s Let’s Go to the Morgue!, these two girls were prime candidates for a modern day Q&A. The negatives work like a...
View ArticleMitt Romney as a teen at the ’64 GOP Convention (photos)
I was never a fan of the Where’s Waldo children’s book series. Searching for someone in a crowd always seemed more stressful than fun. But I was recently faced with a real-life version of the game, and...
View ArticleRose Pak, the early years …
Behold our new spinoff to the Let’s Go to the Morgue! series, which is still in beta but I’m tentatively naming First Contact. It comes from my fascination with the very early San Francisco Chronicle...
View ArticlePauline Phillips, and her “Dear Abby” gay-positive legacy
I interviewed current “Dear Abby” writer Jeanne Phillips a few years ago in San Francisco, and the subject turned to articles written about her recent support of gay marriage. She seemed stunned about...
View ArticleGavin Newsom photos from the early years …
This is First Contact, a series where we choose local newsmakers, and find their earliest photos and articles that appeared in the Chronicle. This week’s profile: Gavin Newsom. For the best effect, we...
View ArticleDo you know someone who marched on Washington in 1963?
I’ve been taxing The Big Event readers with requests to help me find subjects for stories lately (fantasy football, telephone booths, Taco Bells …), but this is a special occasion. Aug. 28, 2013, marks...
View ArticleJerry Brown’s 1-800 presidential hotline still works! UPDATED!
UPDATED! 11:11 a.m.: I received a response from Jerry Brown’s office answering my questions about the 1-800 line. It’s included below. I’m compiling a gallery from the Chronicle archives, out...
View ArticleDifferent drum: Seven decades of Jerry Brown photos
Jerry Brown is the horror movie villain of American politics, and I mean that as a compliment. Every time you think he’s dead and buried, he pops up three years later seemingly unscathed. You remember...
View ArticleQ&A: Jerry Brown answers our baldness questions
Is there ever a good time to ask the bald governor of your state whether he considered a hairpiece? Probably not. But we saw an opportunity, and went for it. The result is the most unusual Q&A in...
View ArticleNegotiation update! I will never forgive BART for any of this
I had this crazy fever dream early this morning. It happened after waking up at 5:23 a.m., as I grabbed blindly at my iPhone to learn how the hell I’d be getting to work this week. In my dream, all...
View ArticleMan writes dog: Breaking governor’s office news from Sutter Brown
So you study hard, go to a good journalism college, become editor of the school paper, then find an internship at a small local newspaper that includes shoplifting offenses in the crime blotter. You...
View ArticleMartin Luther King Jr. at U.C. Berkeley … are you in these photos?
Martin Luther King Jr.’s May 17, 1967, speech at U.C. Berkeley wasn’t announced beforehand in the Chronicle. The day-after coverage was buried on Page 8 of the newspaper, with more attention given to...
View ArticleSeven ironic post-arrest Leland Yee press releases
There’s a point after reading the 1,100th Leland Yee press release that the words start to run together, in a blur of bragging award acceptance, sanctimonious video game manufacturer shaming and C-list...
View ArticleMartin Luther King Jr’s 1967 U.C. Berkeley speech, revisited in today’s...
I started rummaging through the San Francisco Chronicle archives about five years ago, to find visual proof that it snowed in the Bay Area in 1976. It quickly became apparent that I could spend the...
View ArticleIn 1964, a Confederate flag flew in front of SF City Hall
As I spend the year writing about 150 years of history in San Francisco, there are two things that seem to be most shocking to younger residents and transplants: 1) Not that long ago, there used to be...
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