Wake held for tavern’s parrot
Here’s a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1990
June 20: The subject of an impromptu wake last night was a parrot, Winston by name, who died in May. He was 38. The bird was a fixture at Edinburgh Castle, a bar at 950 Geary that is a home away from home to English, Scottish and Ulster Irish expatriates. “He was the last of the original employees,” said Read Gilmore, one of 11 owners who bought the bar from founders Douglas Kirk and Robert Johnson in 1987. Perhaps predictably for a bird whose diet included many martinis, Winston died of kidney trouble. Any secrets he had were taken with him to the grave — for the past eight years, the bird was silent. “He was Australian, and one day an Aussie came in here and spoke to him at length,” said Paul Toulmin, an insurance manager, amateur actor and one of the bar’s owners. “We don’t know what the fellow said, but Winston retired to the back of his cage for two days, and after that he was pretty quiet.”
The fare behind the bar undoubtedly contributed to the parrot’s early death. Winston liked the chips that go with the fish that was brought in, London-style, from a nearby shop. But he wasn’t much of an enthusiast of bagpiping, an entertainment in the pub. “When the piping began, he would sulk,” said Meg Stoll, a law student. “Otherwise he was the best conversationalist in here.” Years ago Winston became the subject of a brief controversy when the city passed a law forbidding animals in bars. Thanks to then-Supervisor Dianne Feinstein, a special exemption was granted to Winston, although he had to be caged. Prior to that he would fly around the bar stealing quarters. Winston was buried in an undisclosed place. A plaque to his memory will be placed in the bar. There were no survivors.
— Stephen Schwartz
1965
June 15: More than 200 new lawyers were sworn in here yesterday but while the Governor’s son was admitted to the bar, the son of attorney Vincent Hallinan was refused. Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. was among the 212 men and women sworn in before the California Supreme court in ceremonies at the Veterans Memorial Building. But missing from the list of new attorneys was Terence (Kayo) Hallinan, 28-year-old son of the controversial San Francisco attorney. The Committee of the Bar Examiners recommended that young Hallinan not be admitted to the practice of law, despite passing his examinations. Vincent Hallinan said he was told his son was denied admission to the bar because of his participation in San Francisco civil rights demonstrations, his association with the W.E.B. Du Bois Club and a juvenile record of several fistfights.
1940
June 14: With little public fanfare, defense preparations in the Bay Area are beginning to turn over with propeller speed. Monday several hundred young men will begin Civil Aeronautics training — 72 hours on the ground and in the air. These men, with thousands of others throughout the Nation, will become the backbone of air defense — they will man the thousand planes a day that high-speed production will bring. Registration of applicants brought out about 100 18 and 19-year-olds at Galileo High School yesterday. All are willing to fly in defense of the nation but only a few think there is any possibility of the United States entering the war. They have an “it can’t happen here” feeling. Training starts Monday in Samuel Gompers Trade School and at the University of California for accepted applicants who must pass a stiff physical examination. The CAA program allows 10 per cent of the total students to be women.
1915
June 15: Warden Johnston of San Quentin Penitentiary has discovered a new drink for which he is eagerly seeking a name. He has tried to class it as a cordial, a cocktail a frappe or whatnot but as the new drink contains something more than any of these established beverages, and he wants to do it justice, he has deferred the christening until some imaginative person steps forward to suggest a fitting designation. Johnston is also seeking the inventors of the drink. It is a combination of prune juice, barley and potato peelings, and 50 convicts are said to have imbibed the beverage. It seems that prunes are THE dessert at the prison. For two months the quantity of this dessert consumed by the prisoners has increased so considerably as to cause comment, but no suspicions were aroused until last week, when two 100pound sacks of this Santa Clara Valley fruit disappeared from the kitchen. The prunes were found yesterday in an abandoned manhole in the prison yard. The convicts had rigged an old-time moonshiners still and, with prune juice and stewed barley and potato peelings, had “San Quentin Spud Cocktail” — or whatever Warden Johnston will call the libation.