Within its walls the possession of dollars was a bar
rather than an “open sesame,” the master
key to its circles being the knack of telling a good
story or the possession of quick and telling wit.
Fun-making was the rule there, and the only way to
escape being made its victim was the power to deliver
a ready and witty retort. In this home of good
fellowship all the artists, actors, wits, literati,
fiddlers, pianists and bon vivants were members.
Here an impoverished painter could square his grill
and buffet account by giving the club a daub to hang
on its walls. Here in days of old the Sheriff
used to camp regularly once a month until the members
rustled up the money to replevin the furniture.
But these days of poverty passed away, and in later
years the club came to know prosperity beyond the
dreams of the good fellows who founded it.
The Bohemian is gone, but the spirit that founded
and made it still exists, and we may look to see it
rise, like the phoenix, from its ashes.
San Francisco was often called the wickedest city
in America. It was hardly that, it was simply
the gayest. It was not the home of purity; neither
is any other city. What other cities do behind
closed doors San Francisco did not hesitate to do
in the open.
In Eastern cities the police have driven vice into
tenements, lodging houses and apartments. San
Francisco did not do that. She had certain quarters
where, according to unwritten law, vice was allowed
to abide, and she did not try to hide the fact that
it could be found there. She was not secretly
immoral; she was frankly unmoral.
She did not believe in driving her vice from the open
where it could be recognized and controlled—prevented
from doing any more harm than it was possible to stop—into
districts of the city where good people dwell and
purity would feel its contaminating influence.
There were regions in which the respectable never
set foot, haunts of acknowledged vice which for virtue
to enter would be to lose caste.
As for its gayety, San Francisco was proud of the
reputation of being the Paris of America. Its
women were beautiful, and they knew it. They
liked to adorn their beauty with fine clothes and peacock
along the streets on matinee days. If you asked
a San Francisco girl why she wore such expensive clothes,
she would say, frankly, “Because I like to have
the men admire me,” and she would see no harm
in saying it. There was very little sham about
the San Francisco women. Their men understood
them and worshiped them. They bore themselves
with the freedom that was theirs by right of their
heritage of open-air living, the Bohemian atmosphere
they breathed, the unconventional character of their
surroundings. Their figures were strong and well
moulded, their faces bloomed with health like the
roses in their gardens. They drew the wine of
laughter from their balmy California air. Sorrow
and trouble sat lightly on their shoulders.
