Wild brawl put down at Playland
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
May 15: Embattled San Francisco Police Chief Richard Hongisto was fired early this morning in a unanimous vote by the Police Commission meeting in emergency session over his role in the seizure of gay newspapers from newsstands. After consulting with Mayor Frank Jordan, the commission appointed Deputy Chief Thomas Murphy as acting chief. The commission met to probe charges that Hongisto, appointed six weeks ago, instructed officers to take from news racks more than 2,000 copies of the San Francisco Bay Times. The copies, whose cover showed Hongisto wielding a police baton in a sexually suggestive manner, were confiscated Friday night. The illustration accompanied a story about Hongisto’s expansion of police powers to make mass arrests of demonstrators in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. District attorney Arlo Smith said his office was considering whether to pursue criminal prosecution. It was unclear why Hongisto would have ordered the copies off the streets. One theory circulating at City Hall and police headquarters was that Hongisto, who has strong connections to the gay community, wanted to distribute the issue to rank-and-file police officers to show his independence.
— Ken Hoover, Elaine Herscher, J.L. Pimsleur
1967
May 15: San Francisco police wielding nightsticks broke up a crowd of 500 youths after a fistfight turned into a wild brawl at Whitney’s Playland-at-the-Beach on Ocean Beach last night. Police were called after a melee in the Fascination Game room and when they tried to arrest one of the youths “all hell broke loose,” according to William Silia Jr., a Playland employee. “There were so many people milling around you couldn’t tell what was happening. But I did see one cop go down — the mob wouldn’t let them make that first arrest.” Police managed to get a squad car up an alley near the north arcade, and the three officers escaped.
By 7.30 p.m., 125 police armed with shotguns and tear gas, and aided by a detachment of dogs had arrived, after the initial contingent of three officers had been routed. Police, 20 abreast, waded into the crowd. Shortly before 8. p.m. a disturbance flared just north of the Fun House area and ten officers waded in, billyclubs flailing. A number of youths were piled into paddy wagons and hauled away from the scene. Seven police officers were treated for injuries suffered in the melee, and at least four passersby were injured in the hour-long disturbance. During the height of the disturbance, the mechanical clown at Playland continued its eerie laughing as chaos reigned.
1942
May 16: Overalled workmen are dismantling the miniature granite temples, crating the bronze statuary and carrying away the rare dwarf trees that have decorated the famous Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park for the last several decades. Movers said yesterday they have trucked away nearly 1,000 potted shrubs and plants worth many thousands of dollars. They are being taken to a nursery where they will be cared for by an expert on Japanese gardening, and the statuary and other Japanese art objects are being stored until the war is over and the Hagiwara family can put them in another garden “somewhere else.” Five surviving members of the family, which has taken care of the garden since its beginning 48 years ago, are being evacuated from their home in the park next Wednesday.
1917
May 20: Armed with a loaded revolver and two leather dog whips, Mrs. Rue Brown and Miss Marion A. Sheaks, a nurse, attacked Dr. William H. Harrison, assistant surgeon at the Central Emergency Hospital, in his office in the St. Paul building yesterday afternoon at 4.30 o’ clock. Dr. Harrison wrested the revolver from Miss Sheaks as she pointed it at his head. Then he took the whip from Mrs. Brown, whom he held before him to protect himself, and, as Miss Sheaks tried to beat him with her whip, forced the women out of his office. He made no effort to have them arrested. Mrs. Brown said she attacked Dr. Harrison because he took her sister, Miss Verne Simpkins, from the Hahnemann Hospital Friday night and caused her to become intoxicated in the Golden Gate Hotel. Miss Simpkins, who lives at the King George Hotel, was a patient in the hospital and Miss Sheaks her nurse.
“You dirty dog!” Mrs. Brown shouted, as she attempted to whip Dr. Harrison. “You ruined my sister’s life. You got her drunk and left her alone in that hotel.” “Why didn’t you shoot him? You said you would,” she said to Miss Sheaks as the two women left the office and walked into Geary Street. “You were too close to him,” said Miss Sheaks. “I was afraid to shoot.” A number of patients sat in Dr. Harrison’s reception room and heard, between the abusive words of the women, the crash of fallen glass as tables were overturned. They heard Miss Sheaks say: “Hold up your hands you coward, or I’ll shoot!” Dr. Harrison is married with three children.