“Up to Grant, make a right, should put you—” I stopped, wondering if Chinatown was in the same place. “Tell you what, I’ll show you.”
“Why’re you looking around so?” he asked me on the street.
“Lot of changes here.” I tried to hide my bewilderment at not recognizing anything.
We walked up Washington to Montgomery. The plank sidewalks were thronged with fashionably dressed people. Brass plaques identified the Merchants’ Exchange, Customs House, Post Office, Bank of California, Montgomery Block—all sandstone and marble and brick. Most of the city, I would find, was dull brown and fashioned of wood.
Farther up Washington we passed Maguire’s Opera House; it bore no resemblance to the opera house I had known, and was in the wrong location. We entered Portsmouth Square, in my memory the peaceful refuge of elderly Chinese, pigeons, and winos. Now it was lined with city offices and saloons, and jammed with hacks. Omnibuses rolled through on a line between North Beach and South Park. Behind a high iron fence stood city hall; some of its windows were boarded and in places the masonry had crumbled badly. At the top of the square a gang of workmen sprayed the street to prepare for paving; others were replacing redwood sewers with brick. Smelly work. I detoured around them and turned at the corner.
“You said Grant!” Johnny called, pointing at the street sign, which read Dupont.
I could see Chinese signs ahead and a painted temple roof. We’d come the right way. “It’s up there. You go ahead. I’ll walk around a bit and get my bearings.”
“You okay?”
“Sure.”
“I’m gonna look for work,” he said. “If something turns up, I’m thinking to stay on here. I’ll be at the Blue Anchor at least a couple more nights. And I’ll know how to find the nine.”
I nodded, realizing there was no longer a reason for us to stay together. He had offered a graceful transition. I felt reluctant to say good-bye.
“Don’t get shanghaied,” I told him. “Stay out of the Barbary Coast.”
He laughed. “That’s where I’m headed.”
I watched him walk up the street, a gutsy little man going against the odds.
I headed toward Telegraph Hill, surprised at the amount of open space. Irish shanties dotted only small portions of the hill. I made my way up slowly, my feet slipping on long grass. Coit Tower wasn’t there, of course, but at the top I did find Sweeny and Baugh’s signal station, a small wooden tower with a telescope and refreshment stand—not open this early—and thousands of initials carved on it.
I gazed at the bay. It looked larger than I remembered. Over the blue surface moved everything from tiny fishing craft to majestic windjammers. I checked familiar landmarks. The Golden Gate looked naked without the bridge. A small fort stood in the prison’s spot on Alcatraz. Directly below, a line of three-masted schooners swayed at their docks along a section of completed seawall—the Embarcadero was evidently just being built. Hearing the faint sounds of voices and ships’ bells and creaking masts and whistling lines, I felt a sudden exhilaration. The earthquake and terrible fires lay thirty-seven years in the future. This was how the city had been!
BOOM! I jumped as a blast of black smoke rose from the hillside below, where Montgomery met Broadway. I’d seen them quarrying there; they were carving Telegraph Hill into craggy terraces, using the soil blasted loose to fill the bayfront and build the seawall.
Trying to absorb everything, talking to people, I explored the waterfront, where lateen-rigged Italian feluccas and painted Chinese junks were moored, fishing nets spread to dry on railings, circular crab nets stacked on docks. Scow sloops were laden with cargo. Oceangoing vessels, their masts dense thickets overhead, discharged silks, teas, and rice from China, furs from Alaska, sugar from the Sandwich Islands, machinery and furniture from eastern factories.
In stretches where the seawall wasn’t begun, flimsy wharves perched on rotting piles over tarlike mud. During BART’s excavations I’d done a story on the discovery of skeletons and even an entire ship buried along the old seafront. At the time I’d wondered how they could have simply vanished beneath the wharves. Now I understood.
Ferries to Oakland, San Quentin, and “Saucelito” operated from separate wharves. I missed the old Ferry Building. As with the Golden Gate Bridge, the city would be improved by it. Which I couldn’t say for most of San Francisco’s future skyline.
In midmorning I walked up California, where men milled in front of brokerage houses advertising low commissions and high prices for silver and gold. The establishments were so crowded that I couldn’t see inside.
“What’s going on?” I asked a man on the outskirts.
“A bull run,” he said. “Gold’s shooting sky high!”
“Grant’s thrown in with ’em,” another said. “Greenbacks’re worthless.”
“What’s gold at now?” I asked.
“One fifty-five—and climbing.”
Jesus, I’d made 150 dollars on an investment of only 1,400. More than a month’s pay in scarcely two days.
“The bottom 11 drop out,” a third said. “Mark me.”
The first man laughed, “Sour asses like you’ll stand by and watch the rest of us get rich!”
A Wells Fargo office stood on the next corner. It too was jammed. I pushed inside far enough to verify the price—now up another dollar to 156 dollars.
“What’s the latest I can buy today?” I asked, and was informed that New York’s Gold Room closed at one o’clock local time.
“Better get in now, it’ll be over two hundred by then,” somebody said behind me.
I started to reach for my letter of credit, then stopped. It was only ten-thirty. I’d give it a while longer.
Over coffee I scanned my all-time favorite paper. The Stockings’ arrival was the Morning Chronicle’s page-one feature. The previous night a crowd of two thousand had met them at the Broadway wharf and escorted them to the Cosmopolitan Hotel. In the players’ bios I was amused to see that Mac had tacked two years to his age, making him twenty-one. Probably Champion’s idea. Hiring nineteen-year-old professionals might not look good. Tomorrow’s
