Portal:San Francisco Bay Area

The Black Cat Bar or Black Cat Café was a bar in San Francisco. It originally opened in 1906 and closed in 1921. The Black Cat re-opened in 1933 and operated for another 30 years. During its second run of operation, it was a hangout for Beats and bohemians but over time began attracting more and more of a gay clientele.

Because it catered to gays, the bar became a flashpoint for the nascent homophile movement. The Black Cat was at the center of a legal fight that was one of the earliest court cases to establish legal protections for gay people in the United States. Despite this victory, continued pressure from law enforcement agencies eventually forced the bar's closure in 1964.

The Black Cat opened in 1906, shortly after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. When entrepreneur Charles Ridley acquired the bar in 1911, he turned it into a showplace for vaudeville-style acts. Over the next several years, Ridley and the Black Cat came under increased police scrutiny as a possible center of prostitution. In 1921, the bar lost its dance permit and closed down. (more...)

Edmund "Ed" Jew (simplified Chinese: 赵悦明; traditional Chinese: 趙悦明; pinyin: Zhào Yuèmíng; Jyutping: ziu6 jyut6 ming4, born 1960 in San Francisco, California) is an incarcerated former Chinese American politician based in San Francisco. He graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in economics and later earned a masters degree in business administration at Golden Gate University. After spending several years as a businessman managing his family enterprises, he entered politics in 1980s and went on to serve in various community organizations. In 1996, he was the volunteer liaison for then District 4 supervisor Leland Yee. In 2002, Yee successfully ran for a seat in the California Assembly, and Jew ran for Yee's seat on the Board of Supervisors in the 2002 election, but was defeated. When Yee's successor Fiona Ma in 2006 ran for state assembly, Jew again ran for supervisor in District 4, which comprises most of the Sunset District. After winning a highly competitive election decided by instant-runoff voting, he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Six months after he took office, the FBI raided his office and homes for allegedly extorting money from small business owners in his district. Shortly after the raid, the city attorney began investigating Jew for violating residency requirements necessary to hold his supervisor position. In September 2007, he was suspended by Mayor Gavin Newsom and later resigned in the face of extortion and perjury charges. In late 2008, he pled guilty to both charges. He was sentenced to 64 months in federal prison for extortion, and a year in county jail for perjury. (more...)

Livermore (formerly Livermores, Livermore Ranch, and Nottingham) is a city in Alameda County. The estimated population as of 2011 was 82,039. Livermore is located on the eastern edge of California's San Francisco Bay Area.

Livermore was founded by William Mendenhall and named after Robert Livermore, his friend and a local rancher who settled in the area in the 1840s. Livermore is the home of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, for which the chemical element livermorium is named (and thus, placing the city's name in the periodic table). Livermore is also the California site of Sandia National Laboratories, which is headquartered in Alburquerque, NM. Its south side is home to local vineyards. The city has also redeveloped its downtown district. The city is considered part of the Tri-Valley area, including Amador, Livermore and San Ramon Valleys. (more...)

 • The first Portola Road Race (pictured, left) is run through Melrose in Oakland, San Leandro and Hayward, with at least 250,000 attending
 • Albany (Albany Hill pictured, right) is incorporated in Alameda County
 • Fort Ross State Historic Park is established in Sonoma County to protect Fort Ross, founded in 1812 as the southernmost point in the Russian colonization of the Americas
 • The C. H. Brown Theater opens in the Mission District, San Francisco
 • Samuel Merritt College is founded in Oakland as a hospital school of nursing
 • San Francisco Law School is founded
 • The neighborhood of Thousand Oaks, a refugee camp from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake adjacent to Albany and Berkeley, is first subdivided

• ... that the vivid colors of the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds (pictured), ranging from magenta to blue-green, come from the brine shrimp and microorganisms that thrive in the water?
• ... that the Laguna Creek watershed debouches into the San Francisco Bay near the site of the ghost town of Drawbridge?
• ... that the chase scene from the 1968 Steve McQueen film Bullitt starts on Cesar Chavez Street (then Army Street) before continuing through San Francisco?
• ... that the title of There There, a 2018 novel about urban Indians in Oakland, California, mirrors Gertrude Stein's quip about the city that "There is no there there"?

• ... that the graffiti that has been removed from San Francisco's Vaillancourt Fountain includes slogans painted on it by its sculptor (pictured)?
• ... that Douce noir, which is known as Charbono (pictured) in California and Bonarda in Argentina, has been called both a "cult wine" and "the Rodney Dangerfield of wine"?
• ... that When the Game Stands Tall is an upcoming film about the De La Salle High School 151-game high school football winning streak?
• ... that in August 1975, almost the entire San Francisco Police Department staged a strike as the city refused a pay increase for them?
• ... that Gavin Arthur, grandson of United States President Chester A. Arthur, worked as an astrologer and sexologist in San Francisco in the 1960s?

May/June 2013

CAAMFest, known prior to 2013 as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is presented every March in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the nation’s largest showcase for new Asian American and Asian films. It annually presents approximately 130 works in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose. The festival is organized by the Center for Asian American Media.

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