There were black Gilbert Islanders, almost indistinguishable from
negroes; lighter Kanakas from Hawaii or Samoa; Lascars in turbans;
thickset Russian sailors, wild Chinese with unbraided hair; Italian
fishermen in tam o' shanters, 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 waterfront. San Francisco was the back eddy of European
civilization - one end of the world. The drifters came there and
stopped, lingered a while to live by their wits in a country where
living after a fashion has always been marvellously cheap. These people
haunted the waterfront 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 sand lot 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 yams.
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 gramaphones,
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 Eye Wink Dance Hall.
