New life for restored Potomac
1992
July 30: The $5 million restoration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s yacht, which was raised 12 years ago from a sunken grave, was celebrated yesterday with a nostalgic voyage from San Francisco to Oakland. The gleaming white Potomac was a rusted hulk when the Port of Oakland bought the yacht in 1980 for $15,000 and put up $400,000 in seed money to begin the restoration which ultimately cost more than $5 million in public and private funds, including contributions from labor unions and steamship and tugboat companies. The ship was brought to San Francisco’s Pier 35 earlier in the week for the state convention of the AFLCIO.
The yacht’s link to the Roosevelt era and the Great Depression was recalled as it passed under the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, a gigantic public works project of the 1930s that provided work for thousands of people. In 1941, the yacht carried Roosevelt to a secret rendezvous with Winston Churchill, who was aboard the British battleship Prince of Wales. To confuse the Germans, Roosevelt waved to crowds from the Potomac, and then was secretly transferred off Nantucket Island to a cruiser. However, a member of the Potomac’s crew dressed up like the president and reappeared on the deck of the yacht.
— Harre W. Demoro
1967
Aug. 4: There’s more chance of finding a hair in the soup in a Haight-Ashbury restaurant than anywhere else in the city, Health Director Ellis D. Sox charged yesterday. It’s all due, of course to the prevalence of long-haired hippie food handlers, Dr. Sox told a hearing on restaurant sanitation violations in the area. A case in point was the Garuda teahouse at 1724 Haight Street where, according to health inspectors, the violations have ranged from bacteria-laden dishes to hair in the yogurt. Obviously concerned with the hairy problem, Dr. Sox pointed out that the State’s restaurant code specifically requires female food handlers to wear nets, caps or headbands to confine their unruly hair.
The “intent of the law,” he told Robert Usatch, the Garuda’s mustachioed young owner, applies to longhaired hippies of “whatever sex.” There were a handful of other Haight-Ashbury establishments — ranging from The Drogstore, a favorite hippie eatery at 1938 and a number of non-hippie taverns such as Bradley’s Corner, Ornery Owens and Blarney Castle — which were admonished for dubious food and beverage handling practices. The Haight-Ashbury proprietors assured the hearing officers that they would do all they could to cooperate — everything short of haircuts.
1942
July 30: The last of California’s pre-war Japanese population will be evacuated to relocation centers by August 7, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt announced yesterday. This means the removal of Japanese from Tanforan to Manzanar. Approximately 6,000 Japanese from Fresno and Tulare counties will start their exodus Sunday to Arizona where they will spend the duration of the war. Military Area No. 1, comprising western portions of California, Oregon and Washington was completely evacuated by June 7. The Army with the completion of this final movement will have transferred a total of 109,000 Japanese. Meanwhile Colonel Karl R. Bendetsen of the Western Defense Command denied rumors that curfew regulation for enemy aliens had been relaxed. “There has been no change in the terms of the original proclamation,” he said.
“All alien Germans and alien Italians must be within their places of residence between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. and at all other times all such persons shall be only at their places of employment, or traveling between these places, or within a distance of not more than five miles from their place of residence.”
1917
July 31: The Chamber of Commerce will soon launch an advertising campaign showing the value of whale meat for food. Barton W. Evermann of the California Academy of Sciences said in a recent report on the subject: “It has been a matter of wonder to me that whale meat as an article of human food has not come into general use.”
“The whale is not a fish, but a mammal, as are sheep, cattle and hogs. Its flesh is meat not fish. It closely resembles high-grade beef, not only in appearance, but also in texture and flavor. One attractive feature is that there is no bone, gristle or fat in it.” The American Pacific Whaling Company has already established a refrigeration plant in British Columbia, and it is said Seattle is using eight tons of whale meat a week. Aug. 3: Charles E. Clarke yesterday purchased the pleasure yacht Wanderlust for $400 at an auction held on the steps of the Post Office building by Deputy United States Marshal J. W. Jessen. The auction of the boat, which cost $6,000 and which was once the property of Jack London, was the result of a libel action filed by the Federal District Court by the Anderson shipyards for repairs made. The owner of the craft is unknown, no answer ever having been filed to the action.