Hippies’ ‘mill-in’ ties up traffic
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1992
March 31: In a move that stunned many of his closest advisers, Mayor Frank Jordan fired Police Chief Willis Casey yesterday and replaced him with longtime friend and onetime political rival Richard Hongisto. Casey, a 31-year veteran of the department, was dismissed in a hastily arranged meeting at City Hall just two hours before Hongisto, a maverick liberal who was elected the city’s assessor in 1990, was presented to reporters as Jordan’s selection. Many City Hall insiders expected the firing of Casey, who had angered Jordan by defending his department against Jordan’s attacks during last fall’s mayoral campaign.
But there was widespread disbelief at the appointment of Hongisto, whose left-wing politics seem at odds with Jordan’s vow to get tougher on the homeless and protesters — along with Jordan’s general emphasis on law and order. “I’m a cardcarrying member of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union),” Hongisto said yesterday. “And I expect I always will be. I’m a humanitarian Democrat.”
— Marc Sandalow
1967
March 27: Hundreds of San Francisco’s hippies rose up yesterday and staged an Easter Sunday “millin” around the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets. Chanting “Streets are for people ... streets are for people,” they milled around and about the intersection for hours. Some sat down on the street and swarms of others played a new hippie version of “tie up the traffic” by continuously circling the intersection’s crosswalks. Squads of police converged on the chaotic scene when it erupted at 5 p.m. and tried to untangle it with a minimum of fuss. They moved with restraint at first, onlookers said, but the hippie crowd — and the police — grew more hostile as the mill-in stretched on. Before three hours had gone by, an estimated dozen persons had been hauled off to waiting paddy wagons by police.
At one point, the hippies unleashed a psychedelic weapon — a barrage of worn out banana peels. The banana peels struck a police three-wheeler motorcycle without damage, onlookers reported, and without turning it on. Observers said the mill-in developed after two hippies began tossing a large plastic bottle back and forth across the street. This game slowed the flow of curious tourists through the intersection and hippies began stopping autos and telling tourists to “get out and turn on.” Hundreds of hippies quickly jammed the HaightAshbury intersection and hundreds of tourists pressed behind them. But a sort of cool and semicool hippie peace evolved around 8 p.m. “It was just hippies,” said Lieutenant Eugene Caldwell. “Just hippies acting like hippies.”
1942
April 1: Northern and western areas of San Francisco were forbidden to all Japanese, whether alien or non-aliens, as of 8 a.m. today, in an order issued last night by Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, commanding General of the Western Defense Command and the Fourth Army. The areas prohibited to Japanese include all west of a line running north and south along Worcester Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard and Nineteenth Avenue — and all north of an east-west line running along California Street to the intersection of Market Street, thence on Market Street to the bay.
The Japanese quarter, located in the Webster-Fillmore area below California Street is untouched by the latest exclusion order. The wholesale district, mecca of daily truckloads of garden and field food products, is out of bounds to Japanese. Residential zones forbidden to the Japanese include all of the Marina and Seacliff districts and virtually all of Parkside, Sunset and Richmond. The order further prescribes that a representative of every Japanese family in the forbidden area shall report to the Civil Control Station at 1701 Van Ness Avenue, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. today or tomorrow to receive further instructions.
1917
March 30: Refurbished and as spick and span as ballplayers in their new uniforms, The Chronicle’s electric scoreboard, the piece of machinery that tells you what is happening at the ball grounds — will greet the opening of the Pacific Coast League season next Tuesday afternoon. In the new Valencia Street park, the Seals and the Tigers of Vernon will be battling for the honor of winning that first game of 1917. Well up on The Chronicle Building, placed as old on the Market Street side, The Chronicle electric board will blink out to thousands of other fans every move made out at Recreation Park. This year The Chronicle board, with the same system of electric lights to portray the work of pitchers and the movements of men on the bases, has been repainted a dull finish bottle green. Experts in colors say this will be a decided improvement in facilitating the moves on the diamond; that it will be less strenuous on the eyes when the sun is shining and a change the fans will appreciate. The same speed that gives you the result but a fraction later than the play is made will be continued this year. The electric board is an institution, a part of San Francisco and the sporting life of the people.