I am now going to put forth a proposal for a film titled
From Fairmont to Belmont
It will be about the history of Bohemianism in Oregon, California, and NewYork. The movie ‘The Barbary Coast’ is from The Bozone. It is the model for my life. It is Victor Hugo Presco marrying Melba Charlotte Broderick the granddaughter of Augustus Janke of Belmont whose father built Belmont, and helped rebuild this famous Bohemian Capitol after the 1906 earthquake. My father’s mother is name after Charlottenburg Palace. The Stuttmeister lived on a street they made, at No.1 Berlin Way. They developed about fifty homes in the town of Fruit Vale, that like Fairmont, was swallowed up. Berlin Way is on my birth certificate. But, what is still blowing my mind, is where Wensel Anton Braskewitz-Prescowitz came from. He was born in Bohemia.
This is why I was anxious to find a backer to buy the old telephone exchange in Crockett. I wanted to live in a gallery-museum. Rosemary told me Victor Hugo gambled in the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. I found an address on Mission Street. Victor Hugo (named after the famous author) worked on Eddy Street. This Raymond Chandler and Norbert Davis. You can’t get any sleazier than this.
There was a sign over a street in San Francisco called ‘The International Settlement’. What went on there far surpasses the Tell-all permission given to Stacey Pierrot and her bevvy of ghost writers (by Robert Buck) one who says Ron Schwary “optioned” the story of our “Rosamond”. Is this true? How do I find out? Maybe Belmont will swing wide their golden gates for Julie Lynch who invented the testimony of Christine’s kindergarten teacher. Does this constitute stalking – and child abuse?
The International Settlement must rise again from the ashes of the plague, or, we are dead! I inherited the Bohemian Blueprint. That no one will fund me – spells DOOM!
“Rosebud!”
Rose Mont
John Presco
Copyright 2021
Victor Hugo Presco a Bohemian | Rosamond Press
The Royal Crockett Gallery | Rosamond Press
La Belle de San Francisco | Rosamond Press
Julie is a writer, producer and director, obsessed with movies that matter.
As a screenwriter, Julie has been commissioned and optioned several times.
Her biopic on the artist Rosamond was optioned by Oscar-winner Ron Schwary (Ordinary People).
Julie’s legal thriller, 27, placed second out of three thousand scripts in the IndieProducer Screenplay Contest. Julie and Vicki Light are producing.
Julie’s romantic thriller, Dark Desire, starring Kelly Lynch (Drugstore Cowboy) and Michael Nouri (Flashdance), was bought by LIFETIME and garnered excellent ratings.
Down For The Count On Eddy Street
Posted on October 2, 2016 by Royal Rosamond Press
My grandfather worked for Max Silver at 186 Eddy Street. He lived at the infamous Thomas Hotel that caught fire and killed 20 people. At 891 Mission Street, elderly folks were jumping out windows on to piles of mattresses the fireman had made in order to save their lives. How many millions of us had visualized doing this – as kids? To do so as abandoned seniors your brats don’t care about, is the height of existentialism.
“To jump, or, not to jump? Is it better to be consumed in the fires of hell, or, survive to suffer the indignation of your daughter and son-in-law not coming to visit you in the hospital, which tells you they wanted you to perish so they can be free of you – alas!”
Victor Hugo Presco jumped from the Roof of Life, and made sure he landed at the Very Bottom of Life. He quit! He was once a house painter, but, knocked that shit off. If he was an artist or a poet, then he would have owned A Life Excuse.
I have been drawn to this man I met, once. That was enough for him. Hugo was not a family man. Had he found the Buddha? Did he get a secret teaching from the owner of a Chinese Laundry on Mission Street? Was he an opium addict? He was a professional gambler. Did Max run a secret card room? There is a movement afoot to rename Eddy Street, that is farcical. One father sends out a warring to stay away from Eddy Street.
Victor Hugo of the Barbary Coast
Posted on May 26, 2016 by Royal Rosamond Press
My brother, Mark Presco, described Melba as a ‘Control Freak’. Coming from a master control freak, this is quite an honor. Mark stopped seeing our grandmother, because she put him to work every time he did. That was my experience. Vic was the same way. This is why I almost conclude the Stuttmeisters were Prussian Royalty. Vic and Melba have the look and baring. Hugo could not hang!
Rosemary Rosamond made porno movies for Big Bones Bremmer. Later, she was a high class hooker working out of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Hollywood Stars has seen he infamous movies. Our mother was hardly ever home. I was the family cook. Christine watched me render large canvases in the little studio I built in the back of our home on Glendon.
https://rosamondpress.com/2012/06/07/elmer-big-bones-remmer/
There are blue-eyed Austrian Jews. I was befriended by one. Hugo had amazing blue eyes. After getting away from the ‘Control Freak’ he moved to the Barbary Coast in San Francisco. When he discovered he was a great poker player, we will never know. He made a living sitting at a table with gamblers. Victor Hugo Presco, was a professional gambler of the Barbary Coast. You can’t get any more Bohemian than this. Did he have a room above the Hippodrome? I would. When evening falls, I would put on my best duds and head for a card room. Who wants to get stuck with a bossy bitch and her spoiled brat – who demand all your attention? Victor Hugo – is my main man! I’m going to hang with his memory – till I die! We would have made great pals. Screw the Hansons!
1849: Badly drawn paintings of nude women adorn the walls of the best cafes in the city. Prostitutes begin to arrive from the east. They are frequently auctioned off from the decks of the arriving ships. Cafe owners often hire them to pose nude in displays in the dining halls. Gambling houses were everywhere. At the El Dorado it was reported that $80,000 once changed hands on the turn of a single card. Liquor and female companionship were often provided free of charge by the house as an incentive to frequent patrons.
This place was the Sin City of the world. It had an international reputation. It made the Capitol of Bohemianism, great. If we were told the truth, then we would know from where the dilemma came that ruined out lives. Melba’s father ran the California Barrel Company and delivered wood barrels to Bootleggers all over America. Rosemary made porno movies for Big Bones Remmer, the only Mafia boss working the West Coast out of Emeryville. Hugo and Rosemary would have gotten along great. Did they ever meet?
Men wanted to get drunk, see naked women, and get laid. There is nothing new under the sun. They also wanted to be bedazzled and entertained. I love the pic of the Bella Union Dance Hall. Looks like an exotic dancer sitting on a crescent moon. Human beings also love to dance. Here is the rebirth of Ancient Rome. Here is the new Hippodrome. Then came Bill Graham and the………..
THE HIPPIEDROME
Then there was the Red Mill, later called ‘The Moulin Rouge’. We Prescos got it covered. The Faux Caretakers have destroyed us. I will sell our True Story to HBO! We will be reborn. We will dance naked again, in the woods with the Woodminster and the Faun. Did Hugo meet any artists?
Captain Gregory
Copyright 2016
http://hoodline.com/2015/04/art-supply-store-artist-craftsman-has-storied-barbary-coast-past
Interior of the Moulin Rouge nightclub in the Barbary Coast, 1911
555 Pacific was such a place, going through multiple iterations of clubs and dance halls. The existing building is pretty much a reconstruction of a saloon that was there before the earthquake, but was known as the Red Mill, later renamed in French to Moulin Rouge in attempts to class up the joint. The exterior was covered in plaster reliefs of satyrs chasing naked wood nymphs. By the late 1930s, the Hippodrome moved into the spot.
http://sf.curbed.com/2013/5/24/10239866/have-a-good-time-at-the-hippodrome-on-terrific-street
BARBARY COAST
Historical Essay
Barbary Coast, 1909.
The Hippodrome by day, c. 1900-1920.
Photos: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
1849: Badly drawn paintings of nude women adorn the walls of the best cafes in the city. Prostitutes begin to arrive from the east. They are frequently auctioned off from the decks of the arriving ships. Cafe owners often hire them to pose nude in displays in the dining halls. Gambling houses were everywhere. At the El Dorado it was reported that $80,000 once changed hands on the turn of a single card. Liquor and female companionship were often provided free of charge by the house as an incentive to frequent patrons.
1860-1880: It was in the mid-1860s that the term “Barbary Coast” came into being. It derived its name from its similarity to the notorious Barbary Coast in Africa, and stretched from Montgomery to Stockton along Pacific Street, with branches off into Kearny and Grant Ave. The area had already been cleaned out twice before by the Vigilantes, but once again it began to grow with dives gambling halls, and houses of prostitution. One particularly dangerous block on Pacific between Kearny and Montgomery was known as Terrific Street. A writer in 1876 described the area:
The Barbary Coast is the haunt of the low and the vile of every kind. The petty thief, the house burglar, the tramp, the whore monger, lewd women, cut-throats, murderers, are all found here. Dance halls and concert-saloons, where blear-eyed men and faded women drink vile liquor, smoke offensive tobacco, engage in vulgar conduct, sing obscene songs and say and do everything to heap upon themselves more degradation, are numerous. Low gambling houses, thronged with riot-loving rowdies, in all stages of intoxication, are there. Opium dens, where heathen Chinese and God-forsaken men and women are sprawled in miscellaneous confusion, disgustingly drowsy or completely overcome, are there. Licentiousness, debauchery, pollution, loathsome disease, insanity from dissipation, misery, poverty, wealth, profanity, blasphemy, and death, are there. And Hell, yawning to receive the putrid mass, is there also.
–from Lights and Shades of San Francisco by Benjamin Estelle Lloyd, 1876.
One of the more colorful and memorable characters of the Barbary Coast was a one-time actor whose only name was Oofty Goofty. Oofty Goofty’s great claim to fame was his insensitivity to pain. For many years he made his living along the Barbary Coast by being the willing victim of physical abuse. For ten cents a man might kick Oofty Goofty as hard as he pleased; for a quarter he would let himself be hit with a walking stick; and for fifty cents he would take a blow from a baseball bat.
The Old Hippodrome and Bella Union Dance Halls at 557 Pacific Street between Kearny and Montgomery. Jesse B. Cook on sidewalk, February 1925.
Photo: Jesse Brown Cook collection, online archive of California I0050526A
Hippodrome, early 1930s.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
Those who escaped the clutches of the crimps and runners trying to shanghaithem frequented the dance halls of the Barbary Coast, where “dancing” with a woman could take any form or degree the patron wished. Those who desired serious drinking could choose from a variety of establishments, the most dangerous of which was The Whale–as tough a bar-room as San Francisco ever boasted. The most famous criminals of the time could frequently be found there, as for the most part, even the police were afraid to enter. Another famous drinking establishment was the Cobweb Palace, run by Abe Warner, a lover of spiders, who let them spin their webs without interference. The webs hung were festooned across the ceiling and down the walls. Liquor was especially cheap at Martin and Horton’s, where one of its most infamous patrons was a shy little man who tended to sit unobtrusively at the back of the room. He was in fact, Black Bart, the highway bandit who held up stages with an unloaded gun and always left behind a bit of poetry signed “Black Bart the PO8.”
The primary industry of the Barbary Coast was prostitution. Three particular types of brothels were to be found: the cow-yard, which served as both apartment building and brothel; the crib, the lowest and most disreputable of the houses; and the parlor house, whose employees were considered the “aristocracy” of San Francisco’s red-light district.
The women who worked in the dives, regardless of their age, were called “pretty waiter girls.” They were usually paid $15 to $25 a week to serve as waitresses, entertainers and prostitutes. For a small fee a man could view any pretty waiter girl free of her clothing. During the 1870s one Mexican fandango den dressed its girls in no more than red jackets, black stockings, garters and slippers. This dress code was abandoned in a few weeks due to overwhelming and uncontrollable crowds.
More often than not the owners of these brothels, regardless of what kind of house they operated, came away with great fortunes. The more frequented parlor houses seemed each to have its own speciality. Madame Bertha, who ran a parlor house located in Sacramento Street, in addition to the usual activities of such an establishment, gave organ recitals on Sunday afternoons to specially invited guests. The prostitutes sang popular songs while Madame Bertha accompanied.
Madame Johanna employed three French girls who gave erotic exhibitions and were known as the Three Lively Fleas. She was also the originator of “direct mail advertising” for brothels, sending pictures of the naked girls to specially procured mailing lists.
Little Egypt on the Barbary Coast, 1890
The bagnio owned by Madame Gabrielle at Geary and Stockton featured a weekly show in which the participants were black men and white women. Frequently a parlor house had its own particular motto which could be found framed in every room. The motto of a California street house was What is Home Without Mother?Each of the parlor houses in Commercial Street boasted a chamber called the “Virgin Room,” where a gullible customer could be accommodated at double or triple the usual price. Usually the room was staffed with a girl young enough, and enough of an actress to simulate fright and bewilderment. She was usually paid slightly more than the other prostitutes.
The Hippodrome in 1890; Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
A frequent patron of these house was San Francisco’s most notorious murderer of the time, Theodore Durrant. When not frequenting prostitutes or murdering them, Durrant spent his time as a medical student and an assistant superintendent of Sunday school, prominent in the work of the Christian Endeavor Society. His modus operandi was to bring a small bird to the parlor house and at some time during the evening slit its throat and let the blood drip over his body.In the cribs and cow-yards, customers were not permitted to remove their shoes, or often any garments at all–except for their hats. Only a specific kind of crib, called a “creep joint” permitted the removal of clothing, and the reason for that was in order that an accomplice could steal all his money and valuables. It was, however, customary to leave a shiny new dime in the customer’s pocket. The origin of the custom is unknown–perhaps it was left as car-fare.
Cribs were located throughout the Barbary Coast, but black and Hispanic establishments were concentrated on Broadway between Grant and Stockton. The French houses could be found primarily in Commercial Street.
1900: Three blocks of dance halls with the loudest possible music blasting forth from orchestras, steam pianos and gramophones in such establishments as The Living Flea, The Sign of the Red Rooster, Ye Olde Whore Shop. Extended from the foot of Telegraph Hill to the shoreline, largely along Pacific Street and Broadway. The Dew Drop Inn, Canterbury Hall and Opera Comique all specialize in erotica of a high order. Dead Man’s Alley, Murder Point and Bull Run form a secret network of tunnels through which people as well as booty were smuggled. The area takes in Chinatown, and Asians are often blamed for this blight on the city.
The San Francisco Examiner, the newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst, is nicknamed The Whore’s Daily Guide and Handy Compendium due to the thinly disguised ads for prostitutes in the classified section.
Dancers at Spider Kelly’s on the Barbary Coast, 1911.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
The worst of cribs were to be found on Morton Street (now ironically enough called Maiden Lane). The most notorious was the Nymphia on Pacific Street, the Marsicania on Dupont Street (Grant Ave.), and the Municipal Brothel on Jackson Street near Kearny. On a slow night the pimps might sell the privilege of touching a prostitute’s breasts for the fee of ten cents. On a good night a prostitute might service as many as a hundred men.
The Nymphia, a three-story building with about a hundred and fifty cubicles on each floor, was erected in 1899. The intention of the owners was to name the place the Hotel Nymphomania and to stock it with women suffering from that condition. When the police refused to permit that name, the owners compromised, calling it the Nymphia. Each female resident was required to remain naked at all times and was obliged to entertain any man who called. For a dime a customer would view the activities in any room through a narrow slit in the door. The place was first raided by police in 1900 and after several legal battles, finally closed down in 1903.
The San Francisco Call described the Marsicania as “one of the vilest dens ever operated in San Francisco.” Its population was about 100 prostitutes, each of whom paid $5 a night rental cost. It was opened in 1902 and enjoyed a period of prosperity when the police were legally restrained from blockading or entering the premises except under extreme emergencies. This decision was overturned in 1905 and the Marsicania was forced to close.
On Jackson Street the Municipal Brothel or the Municipal Crib was called so due to the fact that most of its profits went into the pockets of city officials and prominent politicians. It was build in 1904 on the site of the underground Chinese tenement known as the Devil’s Kitchen, or (with great sarcasm) the Palace Hotel. The women were graded by floors with the Mexican prostitutes in the basement, and the black women on the fourth floor. In between a variety of nationalities were represented. The Municipal Crib was protected from police raids until the prosecution of formerMayor Eugene Schmitz and Abe Ruef, who had received regular payments from the profits.
When it was at last closed in 1907, the Municipal Crib was the last significant cow-yard to operate in San Francisco. For all intents and purposes the flesh-pits that were the Barbary Coast were wiped off the face of the map by the great earthquake and fire of 1906.
The opium dives, slave-dens, cowyards, parlorhouses, cribs, deadfalls, dance-halls, bar-rooms, melodeons and concert saloons were all turned to ash. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, it was called by the clergymen. The day following the great fire, men lined up for blocks in order to patronize the brothels of Oakland. The slave-trade of Chinatown came to an end and the opium dens were never rebuilt. But the entrepeneurs of the Barbary Coast were determined to rebuild the quarter upon the ruins of the old. By 1907 it was once again in full operation.
While the city of San Francisco officially disdained the goings-on of the Barbary Coast, it took a secret pride in this area widely proclaimed as the wickedest town in the U.S.A. After the great earthquake and fire, the Barbary Coast became more of a tourist attraction than its predecessor. Such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt and ballet dancer Anna Pavlova were known to frequent the area. British poet John Masefield is to have said immediately after disembarking, “Take me to see the Barbary Coast.” Dance-floors and variety shows designed to shock the tourists replaced prostitution as the chief business. Indeed, many of the dance crazes that swept America during this period were originated in this section of San Francisco: the turkey trot; the bunny hug; the chicken glide; the Texas Tommy, the pony prance, the grizzly bear, and other varieties of semi-acrobatic dancing. Among the many dance halls on the Barbary Coast, the Thalia, on Pacific between Kearny and Montgomery, remained the most popular. It usually featured a “Salome dancer” or strip-tease artist.
The number of women working on the Barbary Coast during this period ranged from 800 to 3,000. They were paid from $12 to $20 a week to dance and drink with the customers and to appear on stage in ensemble choruses. Many engaged in prostitution but usually in their after hours. Their dress was described as “of the cheapest fabric, many of them torn and stained, none reaching below the knees, and here and there hooks missing and bodices yawning in the back, but always the silk stocking as the inevitable mark of caste.” [San Francisco Call, 1911] Often the girls were barely in their teens, and the dance-halls frequently served as recruiting agents for the brothels.
Barbary Coast after the ’06 quake
The first dive to open after the earthquake, and perhaps the most notorious establishment on the Barbary Coast of the post-earthquake period, was the Seattle Saloon and Dance Hall, in Pacific St. near Kearny. The women employed there were paid from $15 to $20 a week, and following the custom of an earlier deadfall, they were forbidden from wearing underwear. Advertisements of this feature were discretely passed around the saloons of the city. The women were also paid a slight percentage of the drinks they sold and entitled to half of whatever they might pick from the pockets of their dance partners. (The proprietors often complained that the girls were dishonest in reporting the true amounts they had stolen.) But the women of the Seattle soon developed another source of income by supposedly selling their house keys to drunken patrons who would pay from $1 to $5 each for a key. The keys of course were bogus, and the police soon put an end to this practice after receiving numerous complaints from homeowners about drunken men searching hopelessly in the middle of the night for locks their keys might open.
When the Seattle was sold in 1908, its name was changed to the Dash. The waitresses were replaced by male cross-dressers who for $1 would perform whatever sex act was requested. It was soon revealed that the new managers were two officers of the Superior Court under Judge Carroll Cook. The place was closed six months after it had opened.
1910-1920: In 1911 the Board of Health established a Municipal Clinic which compelled every prostitute to submit to examination and necessary treatment for disease. Prostitutes were required to carry a booklet listing her record of medical examinations, and no woman was permitted inside a brothel without a medical certificate. The Clinic existed for only two years, but in that time reduced venereal disease in the red-light district by 66 percent. The Clinic was fought bitterly by nearly every clergyman in the city. Mayor James Rolph, Jr., who had gone on record as supporting the work of the clinic, eventually succumbed to the political pressure brought to bear by the clergymen and ordered police protection withdrawn from the clinic. Soon afterward the Clinic closed its doors and diseases once again raged unhindered throughout the red-light district.
The defeat of the Union Labor Party in 1911 marked the beginning of the end of the Barbary Coast. Gone was the general feeling of Gold Rush days that San Francisco must remain a “wide-open” city. In 1912 the new Police Commissioner Jesse B. Cook launched a direct attack on the Barbary Coast publishing his plans in the newspapers:
1) All dance-halls and resorts patronized by women in Montgomery Avenue (now Columbus) west of Kearny Street and on both sides of Kearny Street to be abolished.
2) Barkers in front of the dance-halls in Pacific Street to be done away with and glaring electric signs forbidden.
3) No new saloon licenses to be issued until the number had been reduced to 1500 which was to be the limit in future.
4) Raids to be made against the blind pigs.
In February of 1913 another resolution was adopted:
Resolved, That no female shall be employed to sell or solicit the sale of liquor in any premises where liquor is sold at retail to which female visitors or patrons are allowed admittance. The enforcement of this resolution proved completely futile, but it did send out the message that the Barbary Coast of old was not to be tolerated.
But it was the San Francisco Examiner under the leadership of William Randolph Hearst which led the crusade that eventually brought down the Coast. Many churches and welfare organizations promptly jumped on the Examiner’s bandwagon, and on September 22, 1913, the Police Commission adopted the following resolution:
Resolved, That after September 30, 1913, no dancing shall be permitted in any cafe, restaurant, or saloon where liquor is sold within the district bounded on the north and east by the Bay, on the south by Clay street, and on the west by Stockton Street. Further Resolved, That no women patrons or women employees shall be permitted in any saloon in the said district. Further Resolved, That no license shall hereafter be renewed upon Pacific Street between Kearny and Sansome Streets, excepting for a straight saloon.
In September of 1913 the Thalia displayed the following sign:
THIS IS A CLEAN PLACE FOR CLEAN PEOPLE — NO MINORS ALLOWED.
This sign perhaps more than any other signalled the end of the Barbary Coast. Even the most notorious of the dance halls now had trouble attracting enough customers to stay in business.
The Thalia Dance Hall at 732 Pacific Street, with Jesse B. Cook on sidewalk, February 1925.
Photo: Jesse Brown Cook collection, online archive of California I0050528A
In 1914 the Red-Light Abatement Act gave the city authorities the right to impose civil court actions against any property used for purposes of prostitution. Also during this same time a young Methodist clergyman, Reverend Paul Smith, took it upon himself to launch a tireless campaign against whatever sin and vice yet remained on the Barbary Coast. (It was reported that his sermons were so provocative that prostitutes flocked to the vicinity of his church after the services, where they found eagerly aroused customers). Rev. Smith’s campaign against immorality came to a head on a January morning when more than 300 prostitutes dressed and perfumed in their finest marched to the Central Methodist Church to confront the minister. When admitted to the church they posed the question, “How are we to make a living when all the brothels have closed?” The Rev. is said to have replied that he would work tirelessly to establish a minimum-wage law and would assist the women in finding new employment. He claimed that a virtuous woman with children could live on $10 a week. “That’s why there’s prostitution!” came the reply, at which point the ensemble left the church in disgust.
January 25, 1917, three hundred prostitutes march to Central Methodist Church to protest anti-prostitution campaigning by Rev. Paul Smith.
In 1917 the Supreme Court rendered its final decision on the Red-Light Abatement Act. Dancing was now prohibited in all cafes and restaurants anywhere in the vicinity bordered by Larkin, O’Farrell, Mason and Market; all private booths were removed in establishments where liquor was sold; and unescorted women were to be ejected from such premises. These regulations effectively closed down such notorious Barbary Coast establishments as the Black Cat, the Panama, the Pup, Stack’s, Maxim’s, the Portola, the Louvre, the Odeon and the Bucket of Blood.
1920s: In one final gasp at life, the Barbary Coast recalling its former glory as the most notorious section of San Francisco, once again attempted to resurrect itself in 1921. The Neptune, Palace, Elko and Olympia again opened their doors, selling near beer and featuring a few dancing girls. But the watchful eye of Mrs. W. B. Hamilton, Chairman of the Clubwomen’s Vigilante Committee, soon saw to it these newly opened dens of iniquity were not to be endured. She reported to the newspapers, “I have visited dancing places in Honolulu, Tahiti and various islands of the South Pacific, but I saw nothing in those places more obscene and morally degrading than I saw in the Neptune Palace.” The police took immediate action and the Barbary Coast was at last closed down for all time.
Patrons in the Hippodrome, 1934.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
1940s: U.S. military insists on shutting down brothels and bars around the city as tens of thousands of soldiers pour through San Francisco en route to and from the Pacific Theatre of War.
1950s: Mayor George Christopher appoints a beat cop as police chief and Chief Ahern instigates a crackdown on police corruption and vice tolerance.
Pacific Avenue looking west between Montgomery and Kearny, November, 1953.
Photo: Charles Ruiz collection
The Old “International Settlement” sign at Kearny and Pacific just before its final removal, June 6, 1957.
Photo: Bancroft Library
1960s: Carol Doda takes off her top at the Condor Club at Broadway and Columbus. She becomes a big celebrity and contributes mightily to San Francisco’s now-restored reputation as a town where anything goes.
1970s: Pornography industry gets a big boost by the entry of two Bay Area brothers, the infamous Mitchell Brothers. Their first feature porn film, Behind the Green Door, brings hardcore pornography into wide circulation. Their club on O’Farrellendures hundreds of raids by SFPD Vice officers, but is never shut down. “Lap Dancing” and other forms of nude entertainment are accepted in the City.
Living At The Moose Club
Posted on February 23, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
The Moose Club
At the end of my first session with my woman therapist, I almost asked;
“Have you seen ‘The Sopranos’? They are fictional characters. The Prescos are-were, for real. I’m the last man standing.
Alas with the discovery of ‘The Artist’s Tea Room’ scow, I got my McGuffin. Everything I write, everything I do, is going to come out of there.
When Rosemary stabbed Vic between the eyes, and drove him from our home, he moved into a crash pad on Ashby and Telegraph with his best friend, Pat Burns. Captain Vic took us there. Everyone was hung over. Someone had done a painting on the window shade. There were poker chips on a table. We picked up the deck of cards, and looked at The Nudies. I am sure Vic and his Bohemian Brotherhood, were smoking weed. This is 1959. Instead of our father helping us with our pubescence, our coming of age, we are drafted in the struggle to give Vic a second chance, another childhood. Maybe this time he will get it right. When he did not pay a dime of childhood, our mother cut him off. She forbad him to see his children again. That ban, is legend!
When Pops came to visit me at Peter Shapiro’s house, he spotted a piano and sat down.
“Can you teach me to play the piano? I always want to play?”
There was a set of drums that Big Kid got behind, and he picked up the sticks. Peter and I lived together with The Loading Zone in a large Victorian in downtown Oakland. Vic got himself a crash-pad on Alice Street with Dirty-DeeDee who was the craziest woman I ever met – after Laurie Landis. On Alice, I got a Royal Flush in Spades while playing with bad dudes connected to the Mexican Mafia. Vic loved this place. Everyone got it, what this place was: This was the home of Wolf Larsen. Go down Alice street seven blocks and you are in the heart of Jack London Square. Directly across the bay is Dogpatch, where the California Barrel Company was located. Vic’s grandfather was an executor at this company.
The Moose Club is next door to Captain Larsen’s pad. I lived at the Moose when I had to get away from bad-ass Laurie, who one morning, early, climbed the fir escape six floors…to take me out for a drink. It was 5:00 A.M.
I made a point to keep Vic and Laurie, apart. I wish I had taken Rena to meet my Old Man of the Sea, and then, walked out of his life – forever…..A Man?
Six months ago I talked with an attorney about a guy connected to Meg Whitman using my copyrighted name California Barrell Company that is now associated with Crocket’s floating bordellos. This company is real Bay Area History that needs to be preserved. We got chase out of San Francisco by a famous Earthquake and Fire. We co-founded Fruit Vale, that was consumed by the City of Oakland.
John Presco
Copyright 2020
https://rosamondpress.com/2020/02/22/victor-hugo-last-bohemian/
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/01/02/writing-a-recovery-book/
https://rosamondpress.com/2019/03/28/the-california-barrel-company-lives-2/
https://rosamondpress.com/2019/02/16/our-california-barrel-company/
My father, Vic Presco, told me Garth Benton’s father served time in the Fed lock-up for making a False Deed of Trust. Two weeks after Christine drowned, Stacey Pierrot told me on the phone Garth’s father was coming into the Rosamond gallery, and, making her nervous. Before the funeral, Vicki Presco told me Garth was in a lot of trouble. Garth and his buddy, Lawrence Chazen, tried to become the Executor of my sister’s estate. The Benton divorce was just finalized. Chazen got his antique furniture back after he filed a lein. Christine filed Bankruptcy. The Benton’s were on file as the owner of Vic’s house in Lafayette that he claimed he owned. He built a large addition to house his fiancé and her six kids that was going to smuggle across the border in a marijaha shipment.
I told this guy that met Chazen at an foreclosure auction, that my father met him at the Copper Penny bar&grill where all the Realtor’s hangout. If you have a California Real Estate license, you can make Home Loans. How are the recorded? Can you stay under the radar? You could keep track of home owners in trouble, right there in the bar! Chazen and his Team makes high interest loans, then, wait for the new owner to default, and run the scam again, and again. Then, you bundle these loans up and sell them overseas to big European banks. MELTDOWN!
Oakland, Fairmont, and Harris
Posted on August 14, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
Kamala Harris is for Oregon and we are for Kamala.
I was born and raised in Oakland and took part in this cities redevelopment.
https://rosamondpress.com/2014/12/09/rosalie-ritz-and-upstairs-art-association/
The Promoter of Fairmont
Posted on February 4, 2019by Royal Rosamond Press
The Lost Promoter of Fairmount
March 17, 2014
George Melvin Miller was titled ‘The Prophet of Lane County’. Lane County was named after Joseph Lane who ran with John Breckenridge for the White House. John is my kindred via John Preston who is kin to Jessie Benton Fremont who authored her husband’s journal about his expedition into the Oregon Territory.
Joseph wrote a letter to Rose O’Neal, a Confederate spy. It is alleged Joseph helped Joaquin Miller become the editor of the Eugene City Democratic Register, a pro-slavery newspaper. However, there is no proof of this, or, Miller was for the Confederacy. Quite the contrary. Joaquin Miller worshipped the ‘Pathfinder’ who was the first Presidential candidate nominated by the Republican Abolitionist Party. Miller made a folly to Fremont on his property in the Oakland Hills above where my great grandfather, William Stuttmeister, had a farm. William built about forty homes in Fruit Vale, a city that was later incorporated into Oakland. This rock monument supposedly marks the spot where Fremont first got a glimpse of the Golden Gate.
Joaquin wrote a book called ‘City Beautiful’ and appears to be part of that movement. I suspect his brother George was also, because he lay out the plan for two town, Florence, and Fairmount. Fairmount was in the hills above Eugene between 27th. Ave, and the Willamette. The Mathew Knight Arena is built upon land that once belonged to George. Was George inspired by his visits to ‘The Hights’ as Joaquin called his Mecca for California Artists and Poets?
The testimony on George’s nameless tombstone, reads
“Promoter Fairmount & Winnemucca to the sea, by Oregon, Lewis & Clark, D.A.R”
What does this mean “Winnemucca to the sea”? In my novel I write about my 1950 Dodge breaking down in this desert town located on Route 66. When I got home and on my computer, I read about the building of a from the desert to the sea. But, instead of going to Florence as George Miller intended, this road ended up in Crescent City. The Promoter’s dream, had missed the mark. He died not knowing – they almost got it right!
Folks who believed in George’s dream tried to get a marker honoring him on the Siuslaw River Bridge that Miller also promoted – while he was alive! Miller objected, and I assume left instructions to not include his name on his marker – just his two dreams! If you don’t know a man’s dream, then, you don’t know the man! Later, someone placed a marker at George’s feet.
I planted two Petunias by the Miller markers. I had traded some items at Isabella’s Garden in Brownsville for seven plants. I saluted George’s Dream that I compared to Fremont’s. Here lie the unsung ‘Pathfinder’ who likened himself to Lewis and Clark.
I had meant to declare myself a Newspaper Man, but, remembered when I came upon a fire in the town of Coburg. It was deliberately set by the fire department. I was in shock to see this beautiful Victorian going up in smoke. I talked to two fire fighters about why the town did not save it. They told me they tried, but, no one wanted it. I am going to investigate, because, I am a reporter for Royal Rosamond Press, a newspaper registered in Lane County.
I then walked into a antique store and asked the proprietor if she had a spindle for sale. She took me into the back room and showed me three spinning wheels that were once owned by an old woman who recently suffered from three strokes. I tried to get information about this woman, but, was not given her name. After seeing a incredible photo of her ancient mother, spinning, the Legend of Sleeping Beauty overcame me!
Alas, I had found her, she not able to communicate after her strokes! In a comatose state, her dream is taken to an antique store, it all in pieces. I am upset, because her history is about to be lost! Did she live in that house that was being burned down? Did she know the Millers, and the Dreamer of Fairmount, the Lost City that is no more, it swallowed up in that ongoing disaster – Eugene City Planning?
Sleeping Beauty was named, Rosamond, my mother’s maiden name. There is Fair Rosamond, and a Floral City by the sea. There is Belmont, a city cofounded by my great grandfather in California. The Cogswell-Miller home in Eugene is surrounded by Rose Trees, Rhodadendrons!
The next day I went to East face of Skinner Butte and looked at the two homes that are associated with John Cogswell and his family. John is the unsung Founding Father.
For two weeks I have been taking on the housing system and have talked with Eugene City Manager, Jon Reus, about plans for the University of Oregon to tear down houses in a historic neighborhood. I will meet with a agent for a large real estate company about Homeless Vets and a way to get poor folks into homes. This includes Students.
http://247wallst.com/economy/2014/03/29/how-student-loans-are-a-big-drag-on-the-economy/
Colleges and Banks work together to Front-run your children’s dreams. They pool young folks together with the promise of a education, a good job, and a nice home. Then the money lender swoop in and put them in debt for life! We have to turn this around. Get our children in their own home – and then they go to college with a reverse loan!
You don’t have to fatten up the bankers to send your kids to college. Just send them to me! I will give them the bottom line on ‘The Dream’ I will lead them like Gandalf against the Orcs. I will be talking with this real estate agent about creating a virtual reality real real estate land, a real Farmville, called ‘Brownsville’ and ‘Fairmount’ founded by George Miller, the brother of Joaquin Miller who read his poems before royaty and was invited to have dinner with the Pre-Raphaelites. I am not just authoring the next Ring Legend, and I living it!
Radical plans to stop rich overseas residents who live outside the EU buying British houses – as well as tight restrictions on them acquiring “newbuild” properties as investments – will be published in a report by a leading rightwing thinktank on Monday.
After finding the neglected tombstone of George Melvin Miller, a story ran on the news about cottages and possible barracks being torn down on Columbia Terrace in Eugene to make way for a large building that will process food for the University of Oregon. I am certain these residences sit upon land that was once owned by George Miller, and his partner, University of Oregon Professor, John Straub. This might constitute the first partnership between the UofO and residential land development which in itself is historic and should be preserved because this relationship has been controversial and needs to be studied. If this study is conducted after the homes are torn down, then there will forever be a gaping wound for the future to see.
George Miller platted Florence, and was the promoter of this fair city by the sea. George was the promoter of the Winnemucca to the Sea highway which is connected to the famous Route 66. But, more stunning than this, there is much evidence George was inspired by his brother who had a home in the Oakland Hills he called ‘The Hights’. Here was an outdoor salon for poets and artists who came from all over the world. Joaquin Miller planted thousands of three in the bare hills from where you could see the city lights of San Francisco. There were cable cars on rails, like the rails you can still see making their way up the hills of Fairmount to Hendrick’s Park and the Rhododendron gardens.
Miller and Joaquin promoted the Rhododendron Festival in Florence. Joaquin co-founded the Bohemian Club that met in the redwood groves near the Russian River. Here famous authors and artist met once a year. Jack London and George Sterling were promoters of the Bohemian Life. They made Carmel by the Sea what it is today. My famous sister, Christine Rosamond, has a gallery here. My late sister married into the historic Benton family who fought to keep the Oregon Territory out of British hands. My grandfathers founded the city of Belmont south of San Francisco.
The Stuttmeisters had an orchard just below the Hights. Joaquin would carry my father in his lap when he went with my grandmother to SF on the trolley. My kindred built forty new homes on new streets they named after trees. Did George meet these developers we see having a picnic in the redwood groves in the Oakland Hills.
When we were young the Presco children would call Juanita Miller on the phone and pretend we had a broken heart. George’s niece was known as the ‘White Witch’ and gave advice to the sick at heart. I lived at the Stoneridge apartment on 19th. and Harris for twelve years. I would take walks in the nearby hills and feel right at home. I now wonder if George borrowed the architecture of Oakland, and transplanted them to Fairmount. If so, then we are looking at a historic link between the Bay Area and Eugene that needs to broadcast rather than diminished.
The Monkey Block and Queen Calafia
Posted on June 4, 2015 by Royal Rosamond Press
This morning I awoke with the realization I am the Caretaker of the Creative Stackpole Family History, because they have passed away, along with a good friend of the family, Michael Harkins. Michael told me stories about Ralph Stackpole. He told me how his grandson, Peter Stackpole died. He was camping on the American River when he spotted an eagle feather floating by. He dove in for it, and never came to surface. Peter’s father is the son of the LIFE photographer who took the photos of Joan and Christina Crawford. Peter took the pic of Joan chatting with the infamous artist, Salvadore Dali.
My group of Bohemians have exchanged precious bodily fluids. I got on the computer and tried to find Brian Purvis, who took Pip’s virginity when she was thirteen. Brian was also Rosemary’s lover. He kidnapped Rena on Pismo Beach. I want his photographs before he kicks the bucket, and these images get tossed in the ash can. Does he have dirty pictures of my mother?
Michael went with me to Christine’s funeral. In the car with my mother and family friends, he addressed my mother as “Mother” because he heard this from others in the car. Pip took offence – because she always wanted my child – and asked my best friend she never met;
“Who the hell are you!?”
I gave Vicki’s childhood friend Michael’s – Friends of Family Tree Chart – wherein were many of Pips lovers, that she had to have, because she was the Family Groupie. Now, she had to have Wanda’s second born. Wanda was my second mother. You could see her plotting all the way the church. People get seriously laid at funerals. Pip was lining Cindy up for me, she staying the night at the Benton home of Pacific Grove. Cindy’s husband did not attend. If I had a way to invite Rena, she and her husband, the Admiral, might have made a grand entrance. Here comes her muse!
Here is Christine looking at the photos I took of the painting I did of Rena I did in 1971 – who sent me pics of her profile I asked for, they taken in a pay-booth. She had sunglasses sitting on her head. This is when Rosamond decided to take up art.
In recounting the day Rena put on make-up for us, and in making a plea to her to let me work with the photos of her, I got angry. If I had contacted her as co-owner of the Rosamond Gallery in Carmel, then I would own credentials and credibility. Any innate fears Rena may have entertained ( because she is mentally ill) would be assuaged by my stature in the Art community of Carmel.
As a rule, serial killers and stalkers to not give a creep-by-creep account of their dark agendas on their blog, because they don’t want the cops to discover their Den of Evil, and take their captured sex-objects away. However, my Victim-Muse may have read Stacey Pierrots ‘Rosamond’ webpage where she advertises the lies of her second ghost writer that employs the brochure Christine allowed to be printed and displayed in her gallery, where I found it. I was flabberglasted! I knew right away the Insane Rosamond’s Caretakers had ripped off ‘Mommie Dearest’ that had come out months earlier. Rosemary was now Bad Mommie ‘The Torturer’ who is being ruthlessly exploited to bolster waning sales.
When I got home I called Christine and complained.
“Oh, that! You should not take is so seriously. It was written to sell my art. Besides, I was not aiming at you. It was aimed at our mother.”
“Oh! So you shoot a hole thru me to get at Rosemary!”
What Julie Lynch claims is she owns testimony from Christine’s kindergarten teacher about how skilled of an artist this five-year old artist, was. What is this teacher’s name? Where did she teach? How old was she when she testified? If she was thirty when Christine was five, and Julie talked to her in 2012, she would have been ninety-two years old. The brochure said Christine was four when I caught her drawing in the closet with a flashlight, and went and got my Mommie who whipped Rosamond with a wire hanger – but good. Did Rena read this and believe I was coming to Montana to give her a good whipping – after chaining her in a dark closet? Rosemary owned a great fear my sister would steal my spotlight that I owned at five years of age. Why this fear? What would happen – if Rosamond succeeded – which she did? The Association of Truth in Art had two attorneys amongst its founders.
http://rosamond.fineartstudioonline.com/about
“If Christine’s parents had embraced her talent, there might be existing works from her childhood, but this was not to be. Fearing that Christine would steal her brother’s spotlight as the family artist, Christine’s mother, Rosemary, forbade Christine to draw at home. The only time she could express herself was at school or in her closet, by flashlight, when everyone else was asleep. Though we don’t have images to prove it, Christine’s kindergarten teacher has said that, by age five, Christine was already drawing with adult skill. She can remember Christine’s pictures of animals having near perfect detail and perspective.”
This morning I discovered that Ralph Stackpole was a good friend the artist, Maynard Dixon who was married to Dorothea Lange, the famous photographer, who the Weston family knew about. Ralph hung with Maynard and other artist, writers, and photographer at the Montgomery Block in San Francisco that was torn down to build the TransAmerica Title Pyramid, where sat my father’s Oakland High School chums wh invited him aboard. Vic turned them down because he had other lenders, one being Larry Chazen, a Gordon Getty man.
Here is a court document that Sydney Morris filed telling the Art World why he sold our creative family legacy to the outsider, Stacey Pierrot, in order to pay off the No.1 Creditor – Chazen! As an exra added bonus we hear from Shannon Rosamond’s attorney who tried to meet with Garth Benton’s attorney, Robin Beare, but – SHE FEARED FOR HER LIFE! Perhaps Rena would like to consult her.
Stacey Pierrot was the manager of the gallery – before Christine died. Her best friend and Christine’s, was the Vice President, Jacci Belford – who tried to buy everything after Rosamond was dead. I wrote Morris a letter asking him why he was blessing the Bad Business People, giving them a second chance to Bankrupt the Rosamond legacy!
“They are doing this upon the assumption that waning sales will soar, because Rosamond is now a famous – DEAD ARTIST! This will not be the case! I want to see a market research!”
Dixon was a famous Western Artist who painted the murals of Queen Califa, the Black Amazon Queen who California is named after. Califa come from Caliph. Consider my ancestors battle with the Caliph of the Barbary Coast. Consider that I recently crowned Rena – Queen of the Amazons! I am going to have to find a younger Rena to star in my movie.
“Julie is a writer, producer and director, obsessed with movies that matter. As a screenwriter, Julie has been commissioned and optioned several times. Her biopic on the artist Rosamond was optioned by Oscar-winner Ron Schwary (Ordinary People).”
Joaquin Miller used to hang out at the Monkey Block, and in my old blog I posted a story where Miller and Bret Harte swap tales at the bar. Miller went with my grandmother on the trolley to San Francisco where she visited her husband, a well-known gambler in the Barbary Coast. Garth Benton was a well-know muralist and was the cousin of the famous artist and muralist, Thomas Hart Benton – who did many Western scenes.
Ralph is connected with the California College of Arts and Crafts, where Michael went, and where he met the famous Beat Poet Michael McClure. they became good friends, and I was introduced to McClure after seeing his play ‘Beard’.
This morning I called the Oakland Museum to find out the fate of the Western murals on the walls of the Golden West Saloon, where I drank, and where the beginning of my novel ‘The Gideon Computer’ takes place. The watercolor I did of Rena’s photograph, hung over the bar that was condemned after the big earthquake of 1989. I found these murals in an auction held in 1990.The sign for this bar may be on the outside of the Last Chance Saloon that I called an hour ago, but, they were not open.
Ralph did a giant stature of Pacifica, a goddess of the Pacific Coast where the Lone Cyprus has been take hostage. I told you I put the Shekinah on Santa Rosa Island for safe keeping. Today, her glory walks across the water. .
“Shekinah” in Hebrew is a a feminine noun, It is interesting that Isaiah refers to the Shekinah using feminine pronouns.”
Solomon is connected with the Shekinah that was introduced when his temple was built. This kin of David and Jesus married the Daughter of a Pharoah. She was a Princess – with no name. On this day, I give her the name – Calafia!
Last night I was watching the movie Flash Dance, and beheld the art director posing Jennifer Beals. OMG! She’s doing Christine’s ‘Summer Mood’ that was rendered in 1974. She is in a factory. Rena is a great dancer. I want to see proof of this. I want your photographs Rena.
“Sculptor Ruth Cravath described the scene as she found it in the 1930s, “the Montgomery Block had four floors. The first floor was offices. Artists had nothing to do with that… The Montgomery Block was a beautiful building. It had these sculptured heads around the outside… There was a big, open court… It was very good light for working… Every studio had two windows and some of [the studios] had running water and some didn’t… We had a luxurious one. We had running water and…a little two-burner gas plate that we cooked on…”
Maynard and Dorothea got looks when they walked the streets of San Francisco, they both wearing capes, he a Flamingo hat, and she, an artist’s Barret. Here are the parents of the Hippies. Consider the factory I lived in Boston. I became the Bohemian Historian my friend Nancy suggested I become. I once owned the cane-sword Victor Hugo Presco owned, and two boat lanterns that were on the sailboat Royal Rosamond owned when he sailed to the Anacapa Islands with his friend, Dashell Hammett.
Dorothea is seen sitting atop her very cool Woodie. Here is here famous photo of the Good Mommie.
I stayed a couple of weeks at the Will Rogers Hotel in downtown Oakland where the indigent hero of the Gideon Computer gets arrested after typing out a confession into the computer by his bed that beckoned to him “Talk to us, Pilgrim. Tell us your story!”
Your lonely tale.
http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/769844.html
I foresaw the coming of Facebook. Here is a story written by a tenant of fourteen years who is now a historian. Morris shamed my family for being poor and broke. We were rendered powerless.
When Christine and I were fifteen and fourteen Rosemary gathered her three eldest children, and crying, told us she was making porno movies for the Mob in order to support us. Big Bones Bremmer had her hooking influential folks who saw her movie, and had to have her. When the movie ‘East of Eden’ was on T.V. we gathered in reverence. Rosemary was the real Queen of the Amazons. She rescued us from our brutal father who raped my niece Shannon Rosamond in 1990. I do get so tired of the bullshit
Julie Lynch produced sexploitation movies. Getting Off is about a artist, Josie Ray, who becomes a sex fiend. Here is that woman artist theme again. “Ay! Rosie!” After getting arrested in Oakland, the Mob moved Rosemary into the Beverley Hills Hotel. For six months we had no mother. That sexy Julie ends up insulting ‘The Momster’, is amusing. If John Steinbeck was around, he would have written our Family Story.
Jon Presco
Copyright 2015
https://rosamondpress.com/2013/08/16/artists-writers-and-prostitutes/
http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/hdwyer/i-have-risen/
“Hidden in a downtown Oakland alleyway is the Will Rogers Hotel. Mice, rats, roaches, bacteria, and downtrodden people have colonized the Will Rogers. Its prison-cell-sized rooms house whole families. Human feces are smeared on the shower walls of its communal bathrooms. An aggregate stench of rot, urine, alcohol, and vomit permeates the hallways. There are crying beeps from smoke detectors with dying batteries, shouting crack addicts, louder-shouting crack dealers, cigarette burns on the carpets, peeling paint, barred windows, a malfunctioning elevator, and creaking stairs.”
FEMALE QUARTERFINALISTS
http://broadmindent.com/id22.html
The Cynosure Screenwriting Awards seek to expand the scope of mainstream
cinema by recognizing and rewarding feature-length scripts in two distinct categories: screenplays which feature compelling female protagonists; and screenplays that showcase diversity (ethnicity, race, sexuality, disability, etc.). In 2011, we are proud to offer two (2) $3000 cash prizes to the top entrant in each category. Also, each winner will be granted a Cynosure Mentorship.
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/01/06/julie-lynch-sexpot/
http://www.maynarddixon.org/Maynard_Dixon_photos.php
http://heinolds.com/hew/history.html
https://rosamondpress.com/2014/07/28/marilyn-at-moonfire-ranch/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifica_(statue)
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/03/25/attack-upon-the-bardo-museum/
Pacifica was a statue created by Ralph Stackpole for the 1939–1940 Golden Gate International Exposition held on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay. Stackpole’s largest sculpture, it towered 81 feet (25 m) over the entrance to the Cavalcade of the Golden West in the Court of Pacifica. The Court of Pacifica was dedicated to the heroic explorers of Pacific Ocean territories. Pacifica was the theme statue for the exposition, representing world peace, neighborliness, and the power of a unified Pacific coast.[1][2][3]
Pharaoh’s daughter who was the wife of Solomon is a figure in Hebrew scriptures who married the king of the United Monarchy of Israel to cement a political alliance with Egypt. Out of his vast harem, she is the only wife singled out, although she is not given a name in the texts. Her influence on Solomon is seen as the downfall of his greatness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaoh’s_daughter_(wife_of_Solomon)
| The Shekinah Glory7 Now when Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the house. 2 The priests could not enter into the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house. 3 All the sons of Israel, seeing the fire come down and the glory of the Lord upon the house, bowed down on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave praise to the Lord, saying, “Truly He is good, truly His lovingkindness is everlasting.” |
http://www.ao.net/~fmoeller/shekinah.htm
“Shekinah” in Hebrew is a a feminine noun, It is interesting that Isaiah refers to the Shekinah using feminine pronouns. Especially in Isaiah 51. Particularly in Isaiah 51:9and 10 and its context the pronouns are feminine. In verse 10 the KJV uses thou and it to refer to the Shekinah. Both pronouns are feminine in Hebrew. The Qumran text makes the feminine form certain by adding a yod to 2fs.
Literally feminine “you she” translated in KJV “thou it.” Without doubt this is why the inter-testament Rabbis coined the word Shekinah to describe the events where the physical presence performed miracles to guide and protect Israel. In the same passage (Isa 51:9) there is a phrase “arm of YHWH” that is used exclusively for the Messiah. This means Jesus was the Shekinah presence in the Old Testament events. That is why the coming of the Messiah and the return of the Shekinah to the second temple are intermixed in the extraordinarily mystically mixed passage of Zechariah 2:8-11.
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/01/06/julie-lynch-sexpot/
https://rosamondpress.com/2013/06/30/boston-art-colony/
http://www.maynarddixon.org/Maynard_Dixon_photos.php
When Oscar-winning movie icon Joan Crawford died in 1977, she couldn’t have known that just a year later, her adopted daughter Christina would publish Mommie Dearest, a memoir that recounted her abusive, militaristic, perfectionist tendencies as a mother. Because of the timing of the book’s publication, some people doubted the veracity of Christina’s claims — especially since Joan had taken great pains to appear publicly as the model parent. Furthering the distrust over Christina’s claims was that she and her brother Christopher had been taken out of Joan’s will, for reasons “well known to them” — giving Christina what seemed to be a perfect motivation to malign her mother’s name. There were others in the Hollywood community, though, who supported Christina’s account, saying they had witnessed Joan’s abusiveness. When the film version was released in 1981, starring Faye Dunaway as Joan, it was poorly received, proving that although Joan had been dead for nearly five years, she still had friends in high places. Nevertheless, audiences still remember one of most recited movie lines in history: “No wire hangers — ever!”
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/25/biography.film
https://rosamondpress.com/2012/06/11/the-destruction-of-pacifica/
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/01/28/the-atlantean-grail-rising/
I am done with this frog pond, these mean little town blues for homeless loons that has no room for real ideas, especially, BIG IDEAS! There will be no Godzilla Festival competing with the Eugene Celebration that has been presented by the kindred of Ken Kesey. I am moving Ken back to the Bay Area where he lived for awhile so that he may be part of the Raising of Atlantis and the presenting of the Atlantean Grail to the world. For this move I bring out my BIG GUN, my kindred Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, who was the Muse for Hollywood Royalty that the Christian-right, and Osama Bin Laden, declared cultural warfare on.
Watch this video. Isn’t it clear the Republican-Church wants our nation to fail, wants to see our great cities to go down for the sake of country bumpkins who are bored out of their wits? What is this loon talking about? Who is her audience?
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/01/19/grail-newspaper/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Stackpole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Stackpole
Stackpole worked as a laborer early in life to support himself and his mother following the death of his father in a lumber mill circular saw accident.[3] At sixteen, he came to San Francisco to study at the California School of Design beginning in 1903; he was influenced strongly by Arthur Frank Mathews, muralist and painter at the school. He met painter Helen Arnstein (later Helen Salz) while both were teenagers, and she became his first girlfriend. Arnstein, the daughter of wealthy Jewish art lovers and one year Stackpole’s senior, described him as “a remarkable draftsman” who painted and sketched constantly.[4] She was less impressed with his sense of color than with his precision in line. Stackpole polished his craft by working with artists at the Montgomery Block, playfully called “Monkey Block”, a bohemian hangout which included studios for painting and sculpture.
The Montgomery Block was San Francisco‘s first fireproof and earthquake resistant building, which came to be known as a Bohemian centre from the late 19th to the middle of the 20th century. It was located at 628 Montgomery Street, on the south-east corner of its intersection with Washington Street, today the location of the Transamerica Pyramid.
The four-story building was erected in 1853 by Henry Wager Halleck, later general in chief of the Union Army in the Civil War, in the “Barbary Coast” red-light district.[2] As locals endearingly refer to it, the Monkey Block was for a hundred years headquarters for many outstanding lawyers, financiers, writers, actors, and artists. Its tenants included artists and writers of all kind and it also hosted many illustrious visitors, among them Jack London, George Sterling, Lola Montez, Lotta Crabtree, Gelett Burgess, Maynard Dixon, Frank Norris, Ambrose Bierce, Bret Harte, the Booths and Mark Twain. The site of Montgomery Block is now registered as a California Historical Landmark.[1]
In the 1860s Mark Twain met a San Francisco fireman named Tom Sawyer in the Montgomery Block sauna. It was home in 1911 to exiled Dr. Sun Yat-sen who, working with Wong Sam Ark, wrote the Chinese constitution that was later installed after the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti mentioned “the classic old Montgomery Block building, the most famous literary and artistic structure in the West” in his 1998 inaugural speech as Poet Laureate of San Francisco.[2]
The Montgomery Block was demolished in 1959, even though a preservation movement had begun to emerge in San Francisco. It is remembered for its historic importance as a bohemian center of the city. The Montgomery Block was replaced by a parking lot and later, the Transamerica Pyramid.
http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Monkey_Block
Sculptor Ruth Cravath described the scene as she found it in the 1930s, “the Montgomery Block had four floors. The first floor was offices. Artists had nothing to do with that… The Montgomery Block was a beautiful building. It had these sculptured heads around the outside… There was a big, open court… It was very good light for working… Every studio had two windows and some of [the studios] had running water and some didn’t… We had a luxurious one. We had running water and…a little two-burner gas plate that we cooked on…”19
Its compactness was, in part, what galvanized this unique community of artists in contrast with the art scene in New York City. Artists in San Francisco were concentrated in an area of a few blocks and others lived in close proximity — living, working, eating, drinking and talking on a daily basis, both collaborating and influencing one another’s work. According to WPA artist Gertrude Goodrich who is still painting in New Jersey, during the 1930s and 1940s, most New York City artists lived in Greenwich Village lofts.20 WPA sculptor Milton Hebald, who lives and works near Los Angeles, described how other New Deal artists were spread out over the large metropolitan area of New York City, perhaps meeting weekly at the Artists’ Union.21
http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Monkey_Block
From 1935 to 1939, Dorothea Lange’s work for the RA and FSA brought the plight of the poor and forgotten – particularly sharecroppers, displaced farm families, and migrant workers – to public attention. Distributed free to newspapers across the country, her poignant images became icons of the era.
Lange’s best-known picture is titled “Migrant Mother.”[7] The woman in the photo is Florence Owens Thompson. The original photo featured Florence’s thumb and index finger on the tent pole, but the image was later retouched to hide Florence’s thumb. Her index finger was left untouched (lower right in photo).[citation needed]
Maynard Dixon (January 24, 1875 – November 11, 1946) was a 20th-century American artist whose body of work focused on the American West. He was married for a time to American photographer Dorothea Lange.
Dixon was born in Fresno, California, into a family of aristocratic Virginia Confederates who had found a new home there after the American Civil War. His mother, a well-educated daughter of a Navy officer from San Francisco, shared her love of classic literature with the young boy and encouraged him in his writing and drawing. Dixon later studied briefly with the tonalist painter Arthur Mathews at the California School of Design where he became close friends with Xavier Martinez and others of the Bohemian Club. To support himself he accepted numerous illustration jobs. Great illustrators were plentiful around the turn of the century, yet Dixon obtained work from the Overland Monthly and several San Francisco newspapers.
In 1900 Dixon visited Arizona and New Mexico. This was the start of his lifelong passion for roaming the West. The next year he accompanied artist Edward Borein on a horseback trip through several Western states. In California, he illustrated books and magazines with Western themes. Some of his most memorable work from these early years appeared in Clarence Mulford’s books about Hopalong Cassidy. For a time he lived in New York with his young wife and baby daughter Constance, but soon returned to the western United States where he said he could create “honest art of the west” instead of the romanticized versions he was being paid to create. Shortly after he began a new life in San Francisco, his first marriage ended.[citation needed]
Dixon continued to create simple but powerful compositions in which non-essential elements were distilled or eliminated. In 1946, Maynard died at his winter home in Tucson. In the spring of 1947, his widow Edith brought his ashes to Mount Carmel where she buried them on a high bluff above the art studio being built on the property. This had been at his request and she felt it a fitting tribute where friends could come to pay respects and view the land that he loved.
In addition to painting, he also wrote poetry. An article in the California Historical Quarterly describe his poetry as “very competent and sometimes superb”.[1]
Calafia is a fictional warrior caliphess who ruled over a kingdom of Black women living on the mythical Island of California. The character of Queen Calafia was created by Spanish writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo who first introduced her in his popular novel entitled Las sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), written around 1500.[1]
In the novel, Calafia is a pagan who is convinced to raise an army of women warriors and sail away from California with a large flock of trained griffins so that she can join a Muslim battle against Christians who are defending Constantinople. In the siege, the griffins harm enemy and friendly forces, so they are withdrawn. Calafia and her ally Radiaro fight in single combat against the Christian leaders, a king and his son the knight Esplandián. Calafia is bested and taken prisoner, and she converts to Christianity. She marries a cousin of Esplandián and returns with her army to California for further adventures.[2]
The name of Calafia was likely formed from the Arabic word khalifa (religious state leader) which is known as caliph in English and califa in Spanish. Similarly, the name of Calafia’s monarchy, California, likely originated from the same root, fabricated by the author to remind the 16th-century Spanish reader of the reconquista, a centuries-long fight between Christians and Muslims which had recently concluded in Spain. The character of Calafia is used by Rodríguez de Montalvo to portray the superiority of chivalry in which the attractive virgin queen is conquered, converted to Christian beliefs and married off. The book was very popular for many decades—Hernán Cortés read it—and it was selected by author Miguel de Cervantes as the first of many popular and assumed harmful books to be burnt by characters in his famous novel Don Quixote.[2]
Dixon developed his style during this early period, and Western themes became a trademark for him. In San Francisco, Dixon was considered a colorful character with a good sense of humor.[citation needed] He often dressed like a cowboy and seemed determined to impart a Western style, most often in the form of a black Stetson, boots and a bolo tie.
In the book The Adventures of Esplandián, after many pages of battles and adventures, the story of Calafia is introduced as a curiosity, an interlude in the narrative.[4] Calafia is introduced as a regal black woman, courageous, strong of limb and large of person, full in the bloom of womanhood, the most beautiful of a long line of queens who ruled over the mythical realm of California. She is said to be “desirous of achieving great things”; she wanted to see the world and plunder a portion of it with superior fighting ability, using her army of women warriors. She commanded a fleet of ships with which she demanded tribute from surrounding lands, and she kept an aerial defense force of griffins, fabulous animals which were native to California, trained to kill any man they found.[5]
Calafia meets Radiaro, a Moslem warrior who convinces her that she should join him in retaking Constantinople from the Christian armies holding it. Calafia, in turn, convinces her people to take their ships, weapons, armor, riding beasts, and 500 griffins, and sail with her to Turkey to fight the Christians, though she has no concept of what it means to be Moslem or Christian.[5] Her subjects arm themselves with weapons and armor made of gold, as there is no other metal in California. They fill their ships with supplies and hasten to sea.[5]
Landing near Constantinople, Calafia meets with other Moslem warrior leaders who were unable to remove King Amadis and his Christian allies from the city, and she tells them all to hold back and watch her manner of combat—she says they will be amazed. The next morning, she and her women warriors mount their “fierce beasts” wearing gold armor “adorned with the most precious stones”, advancing to invest the city.[5] Calafia orders the griffins forward and they, hungry from the long sea voyage, fly out and maul the city’s defenders.[6] Sating their hunger, the griffins continue to snatch Christian men in their claws and carry them high in air only to drop them to their deaths. The city’s defenders cower and hide from the griffins. Seeing this, Calafia passes word to her Moslem allies that they are free to advance and take the city. The griffins, however, cannot tell Moslem from Christian; they can only tell man from woman. The griffins begin snatching Moslem soldiers and carrying them aloft, dropping and killing them. Calafia questions her pagan faith, saying, “O ye idols in whom I believe and worship, what is this which has happened as favorably to my enemies as to my friends?”[5] She orders her woman warriors to take the city’s battlements and they fight well, taking many injuries from arrows and quarrels piercing the soft gold metal of their armor. Calafia orders her allies forward to assist the Californians in battle, but the griffins pounce again, killing Moslem men. She directs the griffin trainers to call them off, and the griffins return to roost in the ships.[5]
http://heinolds.com/hew/history.html
https://rosamondpress.com/2015/01/06/julie-lynch-sexpot/
https://rosamondpress.com/2012/12/20/big-bones-of-scowtown/
https://rosamondpress.com/2012/06/07/elmer-big-bones-remmer/
Julie is a writer, producer and director, obsessed with movies that matter.
As a screenwriter, Julie has been commissioned and optioned several times.
Her biopic on the artist Rosamond was optioned by Oscar-winner Ron Schwary (Ordinary People).
Julie’s legal thriller, 27, placed second out of three thousand scripts in the IndieProducer Screenplay Contest. Julie and Vicki Light are producing.
Julie’s romantic thriller, Dark Desire, starring Kelly Lynch (Drugstore Cowboy) and Michael Nouri (Flashdance), was bought by LIFETIME and garnered excellent ratings.
Emmy-winner Armand Assante (Gotti) commissioned Julie to write a drama about Iraq veterans.
Julie A. Lynch made her directorial debut with this low-budget indie, an AIDS drama set in 1992 NYC, where three women — promiscuous artist Josie Ray (Christine Harnos),
