Candidate chased out of Castro
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1991
Oct. 2: For weeks, mayoral candidate Frank Jordan has been trying to soften his image as an ultraconservative cop. But his tactics may have backfired Monday night when he was chased from the Castro by a mob of angry gays and lesbians after joining a rally to protest Governor Wilson’s veto of gay-rights legislation. In an incident that more closely resembled electoral politics in Haiti than in San Francisco, a bleeding Jordan fled the scene with just one shoe, fearing for his life and leaving behind his campaign manager, who was on the ground exchanging blows with at least one leatherclad protester. Pictures of the white-faced, former chief fleeing from the crowd were broadcast on national television. “I kept thinking ‘I have to keep moving,’ ” Jordan said yesterday, nursing several bruises. “I knew if I went down I’d be trampled.”
The fracas began about 7:15 p.m. when Jordan — who had written Wilson weeks ago encouraging him to support the gay rights bill — alerted the media and marched to the rally with two of his sons and about 15 supporters. The crowd quickly began heckling Jordan, apparently still angered by police behavior in demonstrations during Jordan’s tenure as Chief. The crowd swelled to hundreds of people, at one point pinning him against a plate-glass window. “I was pummeled and pushed and kicked and almost thrown through a window,” he said. “I can’t say they were members of Queer Nation or Bad Cop/No Donut,” Jordan said, referring to organizations he had had troubles with in the past. “But they were active agitators.”
“I saw them eyeball-to-eyeball,” said Jack Davis, Jordan’s 225-pound campaign manager. “They weren’t people I see at AIDS benefits … or in my gay bowling league. They were leather-clad, shorthaired, ring-through-the-nose people who were hell-bent on creating a violent demonstration. The first guy who hit Frank was about six-foot-four with a leather jacket,” Davis said. “I hit him with a Ronnie Lott flying hit across the neck and took him down on the street. There I was kicked in the head and ribs.”
In political circles, there was speculation that Davis had put his candidate into the hostile crowd as a publicity stunt. “Bull—t,” said Davis, still sore from the incident. Protesters who did not want to be identified said that Jordan’s sizeten shoe, a black loafer, would be fitted with a high heel and used in a voodoo ritual.
— Marc Sandalow
1966
Oct. 5: San Francisco retains its standing as the cirrhosis capital of America, according to figures released yesterday by the City’s Department of Public Health. The death rate for cirrhosis of the liver here last year was nearly five times the rate for California as a whole, and nearly six times the rate for the entire United States. Here in San Francisco, cirrhosis was the fourth leading cause of death in 1965. Throughout California it ranks seventh and in the U.S. it is ninth. There are many causes of cirrhosis, but most common is bad diet combined with alcoholism. San Francisco’s record as one of the most hard-drinking cities in the Nation is a major factor in the cirrhosis death toll here.
1941
Oct. 7: The House of Representatives yesterday passed and sent to the Senate a bill ordering the Attorney General to deport longshoremen’s leader Harry Bridges, the United Press reported. The bill was approved without debate and with less than 50 Congressmen on the floor. When informed of the passage of the bill Bridges attacked it as illegal and charged that it was brought to the floor unexpectedly, and few representatives were present in “an effort to sneak it through.” “They were obliged to resort to this kind of underhanded method,” he said, “because one dissenting vote would have prevented consideration of the bill.”
1916
Oct. 12: Two hundred jobless men loafed yesterday at the State Free Employment Bureau, 933 Mission Street, waiting for jobs as lumberjacks, deep sea men, railroads and what not. What turned up for them was one job at sleeping and nine jobs at bleeding. The sleeping job was a one-day job and paid $5. The bleeding jobs were half-hour jobs, but they paid $10. Fifty men made a rush for the nine bleeding jobs and a dozen applied for the sleeping. All the bleeding jobs required was this: To lie down in a nice white bed with a large rubber anesthetic apparatus over your face and your left arm wrapped to the right arm of a hospital patient, who may die unless he gets new blood. Then the main artery in your left arm is tapped and your blood flows into the patient’s right arm. That’s all. Ten dollars, please. It was St. Luke’s Hospital, which applied for the bleeders. The sleeper was sent to a Dr. J. A. Spellman, Hotel Baldwin, 74 Sixth Street, a student of hypnotism, who wanted to put someone to sleep for twenty-four hours as part of a hypnotic experiment.