Supes move to ban animal sacrifice
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
Aug. 19: A San Francisco Board of Supervisors committee yesterday approved a proposed ordinance that would ban animal sacrifice under almost any circumstance. The proposed ordinance no longer contains references to types of worship that lead to animal sacrifice. It instead defines such sacrifice as intentionally killing or maiming any animal except if the meat is primarily to be consumed as food. The approval of compromise language followed four hours of testimony concerning the conflict between animal rights and freedom of religion. Supervisor Carole Migden, the author of the proposed ordinance, said she sought to ban animal sacrifice after hearing reports of an attempt to burn a dog at a stake at Baker Beach and other incidents, including health officials’ discovery of disemboweled chickens and decapitated songbirds. In the past year the city’s Department of Animal Care and Control has reported finding 1,000 bodies of animals that have been ritually slaughtered. Supervisor Tom Hsieh worried that the language threatened the Chinese American ritual of killing chickens for certain feasts. Michael Oshoosi, a follower of the Santeria religion, which has origins in Africa, agreed. “This legislation is so overbroad that it actually outlaws Thanksgiving.” Oshoosi said. “We have lots of problems with the constitutionality of this ordinance.”
— Elaine Herscher
1967
Aug. 15: The price of a haircut in San Francisco goes up 25 cents today to $2.75. The barber’s union announced the same increase also effective today in Daly City, South San Francisco, San Bruno and Millbrae. A union spokesman explained yesterday that, unlike competing business firms that might be prosecuted on anti-trust violations for price-fixing, the barbers provide a service and prices are set indirectly by the union wage scale — which is based on 70 percent of the barber shop’s gross receipts.
1942
Aug. 17: A derelict Navy patrol blimp, its crew of two missing, its empty gondola doors swinging open and one of its depth bombs gone from its rack, crashed yesterday into the street in a Daly City residential section. No trace of the missing flyers has been found. Reports that the crew of the blimp had bailed out were ruled out when the navy disclosed that the ship’s complement of three parachutes were found in the gondola. The abandoned blimp wandered derelict over the Lakeside and Lake Merced golf courses to crash in the 400 block of Bellevue Street, Daly City, at 11 a.m., five hours after takeoff. The big blimp scraped rooftops and struck telephone lines, sending great arcs flashing along its gasoline soaked sides before it settled to the pavement, draping its deflated body over two parked automobiles. The gasoline sprayed over the sides of the craft indicated the flyers had attempted to jettison their fuel before abandoning ship. It is believed the blimp touched down at least once in its wanderings. The starboard motor of the blimp was packed with earth as though it had gouged soil somewhere in its course. The missing depth bomb was found on the Olympic Club’s Lakeside Golf Course. Naval officers said the depth bomb could not have exploded without undersea pressure. The search for the missing flyers continues.
1917
Aug. 15: Filipinos may be enlisted in all branches of the military as white troops, provided it is established that applicants have no Negro blood, according to a ruling of the War Department received from Adjutant-General McCain yesterday by Lieutenant-Colonel J.H. Gardner. Up to the present time no Filipinos have been taken by recruiting officers. Aug. 17: Six United Railroads substitute platform men, riding in an automobile supplied with revolvers, clubs and black jacks, were arrested yesterday at Sixteenth and Mission Streets after they had driven in and out of the parade of striking carmen several times, jeering at the strikers, according to labor leaders. Two other machines, each containing seven men, escaped. The six men and the chauffeur of the car were booked at the City Prison for vagrancy and carrying concealed weapons. The six men said, according to the police, that they were recruited in Los Angeles and brought to San Francisco. Of the six only one said he had experience in running streetcars. In the machine were found five loaded revolvers, stowed in the side pockets and under the chauffeur’s coat, four black jacks under the chauffeurs seat and four clubs on the floor. Questioned by police the men denied any knowledge that the weapons were in the machine. They said they were at the Twenty-Fourth and Utah car barn when someone told them to jump into the machine and follow the car ahead. According to John O’Connell, three United Railroads automobiles, containing in all, twenty-one men, zigzagged through the parade, harassing the marchers and shouting to them “You are licked. Go back to work. Why don’t you stay with the Company?”