Mission San Francisco de Asís

This is followed by a golden June and a brown July and August.

the hills are burned and dry the fog comes in heavily too and normally this is the most disagreeable season of the year september brings a day or two of gentle rain and then a change as sweet and mysterious as the breaking of spring in the east passes over the hills the green grows through the brown and the flowers begin to come out as a matter of fact the unpleasantness of summer is modified by the certainty that one can go anywhere without fear of rain and in all the coast mountains especially the seaward slopes the dews and the shelter of the giant underbrush hold the water so that these areas are green and pleasant all summer in a normal year the rains begin to fall heavily in november there will be three or four days of steady downpour and then a clear and green week december is also likely to be rainy and in this month people enjoy the sensation of gathering for christmas the mistletoe which grows profusely on the live oaks while the poppies are beginning to blossom at their feet by the end of january the gentle rains come lighter in the long spaces between these winter storms there is a temperature and a feeling in the air much like that of indian summer in the east january is the month when the roses are at their brightest so much for the strange climate which invites out of doors and which has played its part in making the character of the people the externals of the city are or were for they are no more just as curious one usually entered san francisco by way of the bay across its yellow flood covered with the fleets from the strange seas of the pacific san francisco presented itself in a hill panorama probably no other city of the world excepting perhaps naples could be so viewed at first sight it rose above the passenger as he reached dockage in a succession of hill terraces at one side was telegraph hill the end of the peninsula a height so abrupt that it had a one hundred and fifty foot sheer cliff on its seaward frontage further along lay knob hill crowned with the mark hopkins mansion which had the effect of a citadel and in later years by the great white fairmont further along was russian hill the highest point below was the business district whose low site caused all the trouble except for the modern buildings the fruit of the last ten years the town presented at first sight a disreputable appearance most of the buildings were low and of wood in the middle period of the seventies when a great part of san francisco was building the newly rich perpetrated some atrocious architecture in that time too every one put bow windows on his house to catch all of the morning sunlight that was coming through the fog and those little houses with bow windows and fancy work all down their fronts were characteristic of the middle-class residents districts then the italians who tumbled over telegraph hill had built as they listed and with little regard for streets and their houses hung crazily on a side hill which was little less than a precipice the chinese although they occupied an abandoned business district had remade their dwellings chinese fashion and the mexicans and spaniards had added to their houses those little balconies without which life is not life to a spaniard yet the most characteristic thing after all was the coloring the sea fog had a trick of painting every exposed object a sea gray which had a tinge of dull green in it this under the leaden sky of a san francisco morning had a depressing effect on first sight and afterward became a delight to the eye for the color was soft gentle and infinitely attractive in mass the hills are steep beyond conception where vallejo street ran up russian hill it progressed for four blocks by regular steps like a flight of stairs it is unnecessary to say that no teams ever came up this street or any other like it and grass grew long among the paving-stones until the italians who lived thereabouts took advantage of this herbage to pasture a cow or two at the end of four blocks the pavers had given it up and the last stage to the summit was a winding path on the very top a colony of artists lived in little villas of houses whose windows got the whole panorama of the bay luckily for these people a cable car scaled the hill on the other side so that it was not much of a climb to home with these hills with the strangeness of the architecture and with the green-gray tinge over everything the city fell always into vistas and pictures a setting for the romance which hung over everything which has always hung over life in san francisco since the padres came and gathered the indians about mission dolores and it was a city of romance and a gateway to adventure it opened out on the mysterious pacific the untamed ocean and through the golden gate entered china japan the south sea islands lower california the west coast of central america australia there was a sprinkling too of alaska and siberia from his windows on russian hill one saw always something strange and suggestive creeping through the mists of the bay it would be a south sea island brig bringing in copra to take out cottons and idols a chinese junk after sharks livers an old whaler which seemed to drip oil home from a year of cruising in the arctic even the tramp windjammers were deep-chested craft capable of rounding the horn or of circumnavigating the globe and they came in streaked and picturesque from their long voyaging in the orange-colored dawn which always comes through the mists of that bay the fishing fleet would crawl in under triangular lateen sails for the fishermen of san francisco bay are all neapolitans who have brought their customs and sail with lateen rigs stained an orange-brown and shaped when the wind fills them like the ear of a horse along the water-front the people of these craft met the smelting-pot of the races stevenson called it and this was always the city of his soul there were black gilbert islanders almost indistinguishable from negroes lighter kanakas from hawaii or samoa lascars in turbans thick-set russian sailors wild chinese with unbraided hair italian fishermen in tam-o'-chanters loud shirts and blue sashes greeks alaska indians little bay spanish americans together with men of all the european races these came in and out from among the queer craft to lose themselves in the disreputable tumble-down but always mysterious shanties and small saloons in the back rooms of these saloons south sea island traders and captains fresh from the lands of romance whaling masters people who were trying to get up treasure expeditions filibusters alaskan miners used to meet and trade adventures there was another element less picturesque and equally characteristic along the water front san francisco was the back eddy of european civilization one end of the world the drifters came there and stopped lingered awhile to live by their wits in a country where living after a fashion has always been marvellously cheap these people haunted the water-front and the barbary coast by night and lay by day on the grass in portsmouth square the square the old plaza about which the city was built spanish fashion had seen many things there in the first burst of the early days the vigilance committee used to hold its hangings there in the time of the sandlot troubles dennis kearney who nearly pulled the town down about his ears used to make his orations which set the unruly to rioting in later years chinatown lay on one side of it and the latin quarter and the barbary coast on the other on this square the drifters lay all day long and told strange yarns stevenson lounged there with them in his time and learned the things which he wove into the wrecker and his south sea stories and now in the centre of the square there stands the beautiful stevenson monument in later years the authorities put up a municipal building on one side of this square and prevented the loungers for decency's sake from lying on the grass since then some of the peculiar character of the old plaza has gone the barbary coast was a loud bit of hell no one knows who coined the name the place was simply three blocks of solid dance halls there for the delight of the sailors of the world on a fine busy night every door blared loud dance music from orchestras steam pianos and gramophones and the cumulative effect of the sound which reached the street was chaos and pandemonium almost anything might be happening behind the swinging doors for a fine and picturesque bundle of names characteristic of the place a police story of three or four years ago is typical Hell broke out in the I-Wink Dance Hall.

The trouble was started by a sailor known as Kanaka Pete, who lived in the Huat Cheer House over a woman known as Ayadaform Kate.

Kanaka Pete chased the man he had marked to the little silver dollar where he halted and punctured him the by-product of his gun made some holes in the front of the eye wink which were proudly kept as souvenirs and were probably there until it went out in the fire this was low life the lowest of the low until the last decade almost anything except the commonplace and the expected might happen to a man on the water front the cheerful industry of shang haing was reduced to a science a citizen taking a drink in one of the saloons which hung out over the water might be dropped through the floor into a boat or he might drink with a stranger and wake up in the forecastle of a whaler bound for the arctic such an incident is the basis of frank norris's novel muran of the lady leddy and although the novel draws it pretty strong it is not exaggerated ten years ago the police the sailors union and the foreign consuls working together stopped all this kearney street a wilder and stranger bowery was the main thoroughfare of these people an exiled californian mourning over the city of his heart has said in a half hour of kearney street i could raise a dozen men for any wild adventure from pulling down a statue to searching for the cocos island treasure this is hardly an exaggeration it was the rialto of the desperate street of the adventurers these are a few of the elements which made the city strange and gave it the glamour of romance which has so strongly attracted such men as stevenson frank norris and kipling this life of the floating population lay apart from the regular life of the city which was distinctive in itself Happy birthday,

end of the story.

Today we're talking about Mission Dolores and Mission Dolores Cemetery, one of the only remaining visible cemeteries in San Francisco.

Hell yeah.

So we're going to start out by going way back in time.

your pick.

So she was buried on March 4th, 1777, before the mission was even completed.

The Mission Dolores Cemetery as it looks today is only about a third of the size that it once was.

It's this sort of like... weird Idaho-shaped plot now, but it used to extend out from the front where Dolores Street is now and probably across the street.

The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches by Bret Hart.

Chapter thirteen, Mission Dolores.

The Mission Dolores is destined to be the last sigh of the native Californian.

When the last greaser shall indolently give way to the bustling Yankee, I can imagine he will, like the Moorish king, ascend one of the mission hills to take his last lingering look at the hilled city.

For a long time he will cling tenaciously to Pacific Street.

Within, the barbaric gilt and crimson look cold and cheap in this searching air.

By this light the church certainly is old and ugly.

I cannot help wondering whether the old fathers, if they ever revisit the scene of their former labors in their larger comprehensions, view with regret the impending change or mourn over the day when the Mission Dolores shall appropriately come to grief.

He sees her goes to these various locations around San Francisco.

She goes to Mission Dolores, which famously very close to...

Both of our movies are in the same spot in San Francisco.

They're literally like...

Adjoined neighborhoods.

She also goes into this flower shop.

She goes into the Legion of Honor Art Museum where she looks at this large painting of Carlotta Valdez, who is this woman that Scotty realizes she's being supposedly possessed by when she goes to Mission Dolores.

that's where Carlotta's gravestone is.

The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches by Bret Hart.

Chapter thirteen, Mission Dolores.

The Mission Dolores is destined to be the last sigh of the native Californian.

When the last greaser shall indolently give way to the bustling Yankee, I can imagine he will, like the Moorish king, ascend one of the Mission hills to take his last lingering look at the hilled city.

For a long time he will cling tenaciously to Pacific Street.

Within, the barbaric gilt and crimson look cold and cheap in this searching air.

By this light the church certainly is old and ugly.

I cannot help wondering whether the old fathers, if they ever revisit the scene of their former labors in their larger comprehensions, view with regret the impending change or mourn over the day when the Mission Dolores shall appropriately come to grief.

Founded as a mission outpost by far-journeying Franciscan friars in 1776, it grew but slowly until 1849.

Clustered around the Mission Dolores and the Presidio, or around the sheltered cove of Yerba Buena under the brow of Telegraph Hill, where an occasional ship dropped anchor to trade for hides, the people had little to do but amuse themselves with their loves and foibles, to go to horse races and bullfights, fiestas and fandangos.

They were as carefree as the fat herds that roamed the rich valleys of their nearby ranchos.

In 1849 came the awakening with the rush of thousands of adventurous argonauts in quest of the wealth that lay in the Californian mountainsides and valleys.

Various business interests allied themselves with its destiny.

In 1853 the population had grown to be 36,000.

The road to the Mission Dolores had become Mission Street, planked throughout its length.

California Street for a distance of three blocks was a thriving thoroughfare.

The man who founded it was a 35-year-old Franciscan monk named Father José Altamira.

On July 4, 1823, Altamira led a small group north from Mission Dolores in San Francisco and built a small wooden chapel right on top of the Hoochie Village on Sonoma Creek.

On April 4, 1824, the chapel was officially dedicated and 24 Milwaukee children were baptized.

What followed for Sonoma's indigenous peoples was, frankly, devastation, disease, forced labor, cultural erasure, a reckoning that California is still working through and a common story across the globe.