Wayback Machine
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
Oct. 22: Haight Ashbury Free Clinics Inc. is naming a newly reopened medical office in honor of longtime benefactor Bill Graham, the music promoter killed nearly one year ago in a helicopter crash. The facility at 1696 Haight Street reopened last month, four years after it was damaged by a huge fire that apparently was set to destroy a nearby drugstore. The new building will be called the Bill Graham Center for Health and Recovery. Graham had been a benefactor of the clinic almost since its foundation. He sponsored a free rock concert at the Fillmore Auditorium in July 1967 that helped the struggling medical clinic clear its debt and expand its facilities. The facility on Haight Street was opened in 1970 with money from a Creedence Clearwater Revival benefit concert.
1967
Oct. 26: Governor Ronald Reagan said yesterday he thought the public was becoming upset with the government’s tolerance of anti-war demonstrators. “I don’t think the American people can continue to buy their sons being asked to die while that same government defends the right of the dissenter to take his dissent into actually aiding the enemy that’s trying to kill their sons.” Reagan said. It would be naïve, Reagan declared, to rule out the possibility that Communists had a hand in last week’s anti-draft demonstration in Oakland. “You just don’t have spontaneous demonstrations.” Reagan told reporters at a press conference at the start of a three-day five-state tour that he thought that Republicans would nominate a Presidential candidate next year determined to win victory in Vietnam. Speaking to an enthusiastic audience of more than 10,000 — including 1800 who paid $100 a person — at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, IA, “There’s a wind of change blowing across our land. Millions of Americans voted last November 8 against going deeper and deeper into debt. Let’s stop being our brother’s keeper and start being our brother’s brother. Let him start keeping himself.” Reagan also gave his customary disclaimer — that he is not a candidate for the presidency himself.
— Michael Harris
1942
Oct. 22: The idea of a human salvage drive — the rehabilitation of the wine-soaked men of the Coast’s skid row — which came to the front when a Los Angeles Judge began giving suspended sentences to such men on the condition they would go to work in Bay Area ship yards, met with cold reception here yesterday. Some San Francisco Judges, seeking to enlarge on the original program of releasing men from jail to work in agriculture, also began considering the possibilities of putting them in the shipyards. Health Director Dr. Geiger saw little possibility of such action giving any material aid to the manpower situation. “The proposal to send drunks to the shipyards,” he said, “is the answer to nothing. It doesn’t mean the rehabilitation of the men and very few would be able to do satisfactory work. In addition, when they are working around machinery in a shaky condition, possibly uncooperative, the accident rates certainly would jump.” The Associated Press in Los Angeles quoted Los Angeles officials saying that San Franciscans were “crying before they’re hurt.” The first group went to Marin Shipbuilding Company more than a week ago, Earl Jacobs, employment director said. “Their work was sufficiently satisfactory that a representative was in town looking for more men.” District Attorney Francis P. Healey said, “Uplift should start at home” and asked, “What’s the matter with their own shipyards and plane factories?” L.E. Jones, Richmond chief of police, said: “We have enough drunks of our own.” Oct. 24: As far as the outdoors goes, this Oct. 31 might just as well be Sept. 2 or next Feb. 19, for there will be no baleful goblins soaring about to scare the wits out of the citizenry. Stressing that all outdoor lights, including candle-lit pumpkins, lanterns, bonfires and the like are all taboo under military decree, Director Jack Helms of Civilian Defense here, urged all Halloween parties be confined to indoors, behind drawn curtains. He appealed to youngsters to keep off the dim-out streets that night and particularly to refrain from smashing street light globes as “the patriotic thing to do.”
1917
Oct. 27: Restaurant proprietors who are failing to observe the Food Administration’s recommendation for “beefless Tuesday” may find themselves forced to do so, according to John Tait, Food Administration representative among local restaurant men. The larger hotels, cafes and cafeterias are living up to the spirit of the law, says Tait, while some of the smaller establishments have not, and those that have done their patriotic duty say their patrons are complaining. “To meet this situation,” said Tait yesterday, “I have advised the Washington office to ask the San Francisco Supervisors to pass an ordinance forbidding the service of beef in any form on Tuesdays and have the police enforce it.”