Posted on 07/04/2016 11:36:03 AM PDT by thecodont
July 4, 1876 was the grandest day San Francisco had ever seen.
For weeks, the city prepared for the young nation's centennial. They draped American flags and bunting on every doorway and balcony in town. In glowing terms, the San Francisco Bulletin reported that huge paintings of Revolutionary War heroes were placed in "conspicuous places here, there and everywhere."
Businesses were on their third straight day of celebration closures. Reverends in the town's Protestant churches gave centennial-themed Sunday sermons. Catholic churches held a special High Mass. On the bay and on land, revolutionary battles were reenacted for thrilled crowds. Thousands of celebrants disembarked from ferries all day long, swelling San Francisco — which had an 1870 population of 149,473 — to over 400,000 people.
"Such patriotic enthusiasm and lavishness to decorative display has not been exhibited probably by any other city," declared the Bulletin.
But the most glorious moment of the celebration was still to come.
At sunset, shopkeepers and businessmen lit thousands of candles and Chinese lanterns. As San Francisco gleamed with candlelight, a nighttime parade of 10,000 politicians and military figures began down Market Street.
Above the procession on the roof of St. Ignatius Church, Father Joseph Neri pulled a lever. All along Market between Fourth and Fifth, "a stream of soft, mellow light" glowed from the lamps and reflectors strung from the church roof to the other side of the street.
The streets of San Francisco were lit with electricity for the first time — three years before Thomas Edison introduced his incandescent light to the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Good for you that you are optimistic. Maybe you do
understand then that there are millions of conservative
Californians who are still, unfortunately, outnumbered
by liberal voters. We are not all fruits and nuts just
as all of those on the East Coast are not liberals as
you pointed out to roadcat.
But it's fun to have a l'il rivalry on occasion. I know there are great folks in California just like everywhere else. But y'all do seem to come up with an inordinate amount of weird stuff. Hehehe. d;^)
And the roaches scattered and have not returned, replaced by the arrogant hollywood imbeciles, the dreamer illegal mexicans, and the gangbangers, lesbians and gays...........the roaches are better off
We already have a rivalry. You have a rivalry and we
have a rivalry. They are called liberals and they infect
the whole nation. If you want a different kind of
rivalry then I will take the SF Giants and you take any
other team.
To read some of the vicious, mean spirited posts about
ALL Californians is no where near fun. I can joke with
the best of them but too many Cali haters don’t come
to joke. And, I notice some of the worst will not
reveal their own state of residence.
Yah, lots of weird shit comes out of California but
what would you expect from a state with 40 million
people? And, what would you think if every state had
their own version of artichoke grower here at FR?
Artichoke grower is the poster who constantly posts
every off the wall thing he can find about California.
I’m guessing he is from California and doesn’t bother
reading responses to his threads or he is a masochist,
flip a coin. The point is that weird stuff is
everywhere and getting worse everywhere, too.
I thought this was a nice news item for our Independence Day. Good days were behind us. Better days lie ahead.
Amazing, huh? No one who loves God is afraid of real science and the scientific method.
For the most part, yes. However, I've run into my share of liberal jerks from the midwest and some from the south. People from Texas, the Carolinas, Kansas, Iowa, etc. flooding into San Francisco and not leaving. One well-known example is Willie Brown, from Texas. He pretty much took over SF politics, then went on to ruin California at the state level with his shenanigans. I've met the guy and worked around him; he's ruthless. But yeah, most of them are from the northeastern states. For instance, Nancy Pelosi from Baltimore. Her brothers (one a mayor of Baltimore, another an SF supervisor) set her up in politics her in SF where she did insane crap. I wish all the outsiders would just go home so we can clean out the mess they caused.
Seems every sub-group of humans has a "troublesome" subsection that looks like them, but isn't. They can be hard to identify w/o contact.
But we all will know them by their fruits.
Good luck out there, fellas. d:^)
The lights are on...but nobody’s home.
Reminds me of a Journey song: “Lights”
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