The Anne Frank Museum has uploaded the only existing film footage of Anne Frank to the new Anne Frank YouTube channel. The film was shot on July 22nd, 1941 outside her home in Amsterdam during a neighbor’s wedding.

July 22 1941. The girl next door is getting married. Anne Frank is leaning out of the window of her house in Amsterdam to get a good look at the bride and groom. It is the only time Anne Frank has ever been captured on film. At the time of her wedding, the bride lived on the second floor at Merwedeplein 39. The Frank family lived at number 37, also on the second floor.

via The Lede, New York Times

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LIFE has posted a gallery of 30 dumb inventions from the 1950’s & 1960’s, for example this cigarette pack holder from 1955.

via Stupid Inventions

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Letters of Note is a wonderful collection of fascinating correspondence throughout history, including letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes and emails. Above is Elvis Presley’s letter to President Nixon, which lead to their historic meeting.

via Joe Stump

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photo by Matt Sayles

Today is the 40th anniversary of the first packet switched computer network which was established between two Interface Message Processors (IMP) located at Leonard Kleinrock’s lab at UCLA and Douglas Engelbart’s lab at SRI, creating what is now known as the Internet.

Mario Armstrong and Xeni Jardin talk about the birth of the Internet on the NPR show “Tell Me More” and Xeni has posted a video on Boing Boing of Kleinrock explaining how it happened.

via Boing Boing

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guest post by Simone Davalos

The Wisconsin Historical Society has a great archive of vintage circus photos, a visit from the ghosts of circus past:

Trapeze artist Erma Ward by H. A. Atwell Studio

Vintage photos of jolly things like circuses always strike me as a little creepy. It could be the memento morii aspect, a philosophical meditation on time passing and the joys of today being subsumed by the ruins of tomorrow. Or perhaps it’s a call to a simpler time, nostalgia for the allure of the mysterious world that carnies and show people inhabited, the excitement of getting just a glimpse of that sordid existence, free from the mundane, signified by the sudden appearance of the circus parade on Main Street of small-town America.

Toto the Clown with children by Angus B. McVicar

Or it could be the clowns. Yeah, actually, I would have to say it’s definitely the clowns.

via Ephemera Assemblyman & the inestimable Adam Koford

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Hirsute History is a new line of t-shirts by t-shirt nerd Jeremy Kalgreen of Amorphia Apparel that celebrate the hair of famous people and historical figures.

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“Lords of the Revolution”, a 5 part series on VH1 beginning on August 10th.

via R. U. Sirius

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guest post by AreWeReally?

The Bus Further tripped around San Francisco Monday afternoon… did you see it?

Can you, did you, or would you even consider passing the Acid Test? It is a question posed over 45 years ago by the Intrepid Traveler and his Band of Merry Pranksters. Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs and their audaciously creative friends embarked on a mission to find the “Cool Place” in 1964. They loaded up a 1938 International Harvester school bus with audio and film gear. They painted the Bus in psychedelic swirls and wrote FURTHER on the front and WEIRD LOAD on the back. The Merry Pranksters riffed and raffed around the United States documented by Tom Wolfe’s book “The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test“.

photo by AreWeReally?

After that first long, strange trip, the Pranksters moved the fun to the great state of Oregon which has since been home base. The Merry Pranksters spawned dozens of kids and grand kids who grew up in the most creative, enthusiastic and positive environment imaginable. Neal Cassady, Jerry Garcia, and Ken Kesey may be gone… but we’re not! Ken Babbs is still in Oregon writing a new novel and cavorting online at the SkyPilotClub. Kesey’s son Zane manages the Bus Further Two and the original Bus Further that reside on the family farm. His son is a world class chess champion. The Kesey and Babbs families’ Merry Prankster offspring along with a bevy of other Prankster offspring are in San Francisco for The Dead Shows at Shoreline. The Offspring are conducting an “Acid Test” at the Mission Rock Cafe Tuesday, May 12 with The Everyone Orchestra, Steve Kimock and Melvin Seals and the Jerry Garcia Band. Are you a Merry Prankster? It’s Coming Around!

Further videos about the Bus from Oregon by Simon Babbs.

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guest post by mikl-em

There’s nothing really to say except follow this link and read the amazing history of this classic bit of comic strip headgear on the blog I’m Learning To Share!. It’s an exhaustive investigation of the facts, precedents, and myths of Archie’s buddy’s lid.

It turns out it’s not a crown, but a relative of the beanie, likely a modified hand-me-down fedora. These hats were very popular, especially with “the kids” in the first half of the 20th century.

The post includes numerous examples of variants of this style of hat including the one worn by Goober Pyle on the The Andy Griffith Show, and the aforementioned “kids” in the 1938 Cagney flick Angels with Dirty Faces, and in the illustration below from a 1945 print ad drawn by cartoonist William Steig (via Weird Universe).

Jeff Goldblum even sported one in his film debut the Chuck Bronson shoot-em-up Death Wish in 1974, so the style, though in decline, survived at least that long. Props to the blog that covered Death Wish for its moniker derived from a subtle reference to the classic 70’s flick The Warriors: He Shot Cyrus.

There’s also a followup thread on MetaFilter.

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Che Guevara is sent through the pop culture blender in “Cli-ché” by Victor Ortiz.

via Rocketboom

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Sean Percival posted great graphic on Manolith that illustrates The Story of Beer.

via The Ephemerist

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guest post by Burstein!

In light of the awesomtastic bike trick video of Danny MacAskil currently making the rounds on the internet, it is worth reflecting on the storied and great history of bike tricks. There is a video of archival film featuring bicycle tricks whose description identifies the rider as Thomas A. Edison, however in fact, there is evidence that this is not the case.

The Edison Cataglog of Rutgers University have been organizing and publishing the 5 million pages of documents left behind by Edison. Within these documents are a series of kinetoscope films made by Edison Motion Pictures, and some (if not all) are documented on IMDB. According to the Edison Catalog and IMDB, the rider is not Edison but rather a certain “Neidert.” This has some corroboration as Eugene A. Neidert has been documented in the December 26th, 1893, edition of the New York Times [PDF] giving a “clever exhibition of trick riding.”

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guest post by Burstein!

Although the tag line for Dork Yearbook is “the way we wish we weren’t,” I find these photos exceptionally sweet and endearing. They truly take me back to my excitement of going over to my friend’s house for a sleep over where we would dissemble his 486 and pretend we were adults on BBSes.

Joel Johnson began Dork Yearbook as a series of posts on Boing Boing Gadgets and they were so successful that he turned it into its own Tumbler blog.

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guest post by Al Ridenour

It wasn’t the Easter Bunny leaving little surprises all around Los Angeles’ historic Olvera Street Saturday.  It was the hundreds of pets turning out for the 79th annual Blessing of the Animals conducted by Archbishop Mahoney himself.  While the current shindig’s more civic celebration than religious, it does have a mixed ecclesiastic pedigree reaching beyond St. Francis’ chit-chatting with birds back to San Antonio de Abad’s special relationship with swine.  Antonio is also patron of amputees, butchers, gravediggers, eczema, epilepsy, scabies, and leprosy.  Happy Easter, kids!

photos by Al Ridenour

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guest post by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics)

Walking by the window of Galu Real Estate on 24th Street in the Mission this week, I noticed a series of vintage real estate posters on display in the windows. There was much to love about the ads — from the hand-painted lettering to those low, low prices. ($9250 for a 5-room Victorian with parking for two cars? Near 29th and Mission? Where do I sign??)

According to the staff at Galu, these old ads were tucked away in a dark corner of an office closet for years, and only recently rediscovered. They’re believed to be from the mid-1950s.

After making myself obsequious for a few minutes, one of the gentlemen offered to let me have one of the ads from the pile of them they’d found. I picked a nice property in the “Heart of the Warm Belt near 23rd and York” — a REAL BARGAIN at $12,500:

Naturally, I then set out to see what the house looks like today, and I quickly found it:

As I approached, the owner of the house happened to open the door to step outside. I introduced myself and showed her the ad. She laughed, then explained that her parents had purchased the house for $12,500 in 1953, and she still lives there. Apart from a new garage door and front staircase railing, the home is basically unchanged…

Except for the price!

photos by Todd Lappin/Telstar Logistics

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guest post by Simone Davalos

The National Museum of Health and Medicine (otherwise known as the Army Medical Museum) has a gorgeous Flickr stream filled with enough medical curiosities, technologies, and well-documented photographs to keep the most prurient of medical anomaly junkies awake at their keyboards late into the night.

Says Mike Rhode, comics researcher and contributor to the Museum’s blog, the delightfully named “A Repository for Bottled Monsters“:

I think I come off as a bit strident there, but we are creating a massive new resource and need to make it available in new ways. Most of these photographs were never described in any database (although there is a set of index cards that fills a wall) and we’re discovering and seeing them for the first time too.

Such is the beauty of wide open informational networks. Unfortunately the Army seems to disagree, as they have blocked the museum’s Flickr access. The maintainers of the archive are not to be thwarted, however; they are uploading pics from home!

Thanks to Nina Eleanor Alter for the link!

image via Museum of Health & Medicine

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guest post by Jackson West

While checking for new movies added to Hulu, I stumbled across the 1971 film The Organization. It stars Sidney Poitier reprising his role as Lt. Virgil Tibbs from In the Heat of the Night.  Except this time he’s on the trail of a bunch of heroin smugglin’ honkies with the help of some concerned Teamsters in San Francisco (including a very young Raul Julia).  It’s standard seventies caper flick fare, though with a  multi-culti cast, funky electro-jazz soundtrack and of course great views of The City.  The highlight is the final chase scene, which takes place underneath Market Street while the Muni and BART tunnels were still under construction. It’s the equivalent of a full-nude peep show for public transportation fetishists.

See Previously:

- John Law on The History Channel’s Cities of the Underworld

- The Times of Harvey Milk Documentary Now on Hulu

- 7th Annual No Pants! Subway Ride by Improv Everywhere

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guest post by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics)

As a fan of Southern-style BBQ, I’ve been very grateful for the arrival of Baby Blues BBQ in San Francisco on the corner of Mission Street and Precita Avenue, just south of Cesar Chavez Blvd.

Mmmmmmmmm.

As a neighbor of Baby Blues, I’m also grateful that they restored some of the neon signage from the former Rexall drug store that occupied the space until 1998. It’s so great to see the sign illuminated again, and the neon Drugs + BBQ combination suggested by the current facade reads like a recipe from the Ken Kesey Cookbook.

I also appreciate the fact that if you stand in just the right spot on Mission Street, two of the signs from the former drugstore form a crossword:

Lastly, as if all these mixed-up layers of history need additional seasoning, I like how this photo from the Online Archive of California shows the same building (visible on the far right) as it looked back in 1927, when Disernia’s Pharmacy first opened for business:

photos by Todd Lappin (Telstar Logistics) & Online Archive of California (OAC)

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guest post by mikl-em

Following up on my earlier post about the threat to The Tonga Room, San Francisco’s treasured tiki bar, Savetonga.com is now up and running with a petition that folks can sign to ask the city to preserve the bar.

The Save the Tonga Room! Facebook group now has 1700+ members, and plans an event this Friday to organize and show up en masse at the Nob Hill bar in full tiki regalia.

Meanwhile Curbed.com has a second post with a quote from the Fairmont folks saying the final outcome is being studied–though you only have to look at the image in the plans to see there’s no place for the Tonga Room where there used to be.

There’s still an active thread going on at Tikiroom.com, a good place to watch for updates. Sfist also weighed in, not to mention posts by Boing Boing and jwz (who remains hard at work saving The DNA Lounge).

While blogs & social media have continued to drive this story, a few major media outfits have weighed in (though often by reprinting blog coverage). The story did appear in a Matier & Ross column from the also possibly soon defunct San Francisco Chronicle. No mention of the online outcry or the fact that their paper’s reporting on the remodel failed to notice the threat to the landmark bar. There are 200+ reader comments on the article though, with more great stories and plenty of outrage about the situation.

In possibly unrelated news, the Tonga Room is now closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, not sure how long that’s been the case (it was open 7-days a week a year ago, which is the last entry in the Wayback Machine).

I mentioned in the previous post that Tonga Room is one of 8 remaining Tiki bars. That’s actually a little misleading. This number includes all the bars in San Francisco proper that could remotely be considered tiki (and note it doesn’t include the great classic Trader Vic’s or the precious and precocious newcomer in Alameda Forbidden Island, or other bars that are in the larger Bay Area).

Here is the list of the bars that remain in SF in order of their user feedback ranking on Critiki, a site that lists 650+ tiki bars across the country.

1. The Tonga Room — Rated 7.4 out of 10 on Critiki
2. Bamboo Hut — Rated 7.2 out of 10 on Critiki
3. Lingba — is a great place, an upscale lounge that has tropical drinks and decor, but not the classic tiki vibe exactly Rated 7.2 out of 10 on Critiki
4. Trad’r Sam — a true landmark of San Francisco bar culture, a great and fun dive to visit, but not a true tiki bar Rated 6.2 out of 10 on Critiki: actually pre-dates tiki, and is an extremely rare example of the bamboo bars that were in some cities in the ’20s and ’30s.
5. Hukilau– a small chain, including one located in Honolulu, that is expressly a Hawaiian restaurant. They don’t exactly do the vintage Tiki thing, they do have a lot of spam (the edible kind). Rated 5.7 out of 10 on Critiki
6. Jack’s Cannery Bar — this is apparently just the back bar within the larger tourist bar that is Jack’s, limited info here; Rated 3.5 out of 10 on Critiki
7. Hawaii West — not really a Tiki bar, though the decor represents a bit, it apparently has a 40-year history of same family Asian-American ownership which gets it some points Rated 2.9 out of 10 on Critiki
8. Lanai Motel — looks like it doesn’t exist anymore no rating on Critiki

So that’s 7 actually, a few of which could be considered only tiki-like. And, while you can quibble about the rankings, the main point is that the Tonga Room is unquestionably one of the best and eldest examples of a dying breed of classic and beloved bars. Critiki includes rankings for defunct tiki bars as well, including another 10 in San Francisco. San Francisco has a great history of tiki bars, but at this point there are more in history than in the present.

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guest post by mikl-em

An alarm is going up amongst tiki-lovers and all those who appreciate San Francisco’s eclectic (hic!) history! The Tonga Room, the much loved tacky tiki bar in the Fairmont Hotel’s basement (California @ Mason in Nob Hill), is at great risk due to its owner’s plan to convert a large portion of the hotel into condominiums.

The plan would replace the existing Fairmont Hotel Tower with a new Residential Tower and in the process convert 226 hotel rooms into 160 condos. The Tonga Room is at the base of the existing tower.

The PDF for the Notice of Preparation of an Environmental Impact Report for the project shows both the existing and proposed layouts for the Fairmont. The Tonga Room is clearly missing in the envisioned building, replaced by a new grand ballroom.

But who cares? It’s just a bar, right? Just a bar!!! Are you kidding!?! It’s the Grand Kahuna of San Francisco tiki bars (a dying breed). It has a Boat! With a band on it! And long straws and crazy drink bowls and would you believe it even RAINS indoors?!?

The Tonga Room is a unique San Francisco icon which has evolved over time with the city and the trends of popular culture. Its origins date to the 1920’s when what would become its centerpiece debuted as an indoor swimming pool called “The Plunge”, which by the 40’s was recast into the S.S. Tonga in the midst of a nautical and Asian-themed restaurant.

The next step in its history was actually getting its tiki on, here recounted courtesy of Cherry Capri’s blog:

In the 1950s with the popularity of places like Don the Beachcombers and Trader Vics at the Hilton Hotels, the nautical restaurant became tiki-fied. The S.S. Tonga was converted from boat theme to the Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar.

The Cantonese flavor and Hawaiian pupus remained, but thatched huts were added around the perimeter of the room. The pool became a shallow lagoon with seashells at the bottom. The ceiling was painted black and a floating band stand stage and a dance floor made from the deck of the S.S. Forester, one of the last tall ships which sailed between San Francisco and the South Seas was added.

A later remodel was done in 1967 with the help of the famous folks at Oceanic Arts. The stage has since become a thatch roofed hut on which a band plays.

Here’s the Tonga in its mid-centurty heyday:

The last decade has seen nearly $100 million invested in updates to the Fairmont hotel itself which included a $1 Million restoration of the Tonga Room completed in the last few years. So it’s strange that all that history and fairly recent money could soon be bulldozed.

There’s been no explicit statement that the Tonga Room is being destroyed, and no press account that mentions it (except a quizzical commenter on Curbed SF). But clearly the plans for the new condo-ized version of the Fairmont do not include the landmark bar.

Ironically last month’s SF Chronicle story on the project mentions the Tonga Room as if it would be a perk for people living in the condos–but that suggestion is simply erroneous.

The official period for comments on the Enviornmental Impact Review closed on Friday, Feb 20th. With the dearth of press coverage, it seems that the word is only belatedly starting to spread online about the Tonga Room’s potential demise. Blog posts, Twitter tweets and Flickr pages with contact info to voice concern about the plan seem to have only popped up on the day of the deadline.

With that in mind, contact info to voice your concern is below, should you still want to comment to the SF Planning Dept, via defenestr8r who seems to be the one who first raised the alarm on this:

Send an email TODAY (deadline is Feb 20) to: Devyani.Jain@sfgov.org urging the Planning Dept to not approve the project unless the historic Tonga Room is specifically included in the retention of the historic Hotel building. Also at 415-575-9051.

Written comments should be cc’d by mail to Bill Wycko, Environmental Review Officer, or SF Planning Dept, 16560 Mission St Suite 400, SF, CA 94103-2479. (Email bill.wycko@sfgov.org)

A bit more information is here.

The Tonga Room is one of the diminishing number of tiki bars in San Francisco–only 8 of the 18 tiki bars listed for this city on Critiki .com are still in business. In December 2007 the second incarnation of Trader Vic’s San Francisco closed its doors (the original Vic’s location is now Le Colonial restaurant).

Tiki Central Forums has a discussion that dates back to late last year on the Fairmont remodel. It includes an email from an historical architect who confirmed from the source that the Tonga room would not return in the condo redesign. For folks, like me, obsessing on this the whole thread is worth reading.

Although there is speculation dating back to the beginning of the thread, once again it seems that no one grasped the certainty of the threat until
late last week.

The thread also features a couple amazing pictures of the early days of the Tonga Room (including a poster from the Fairmont that shows “The Plunge”, the original pool):

More great pix of the current bar from Tiki Room’s Tiki Central Forums.

This detailed history of the Fairmont (including the origin of the hotel’s name, a prominent citizen named Fair) also includes another incredible historical aspect of the bar:

A gleaming dance floor provides space for guests to dance; little do they realize that it was originally the deck of the S.S. Forrester, one of the last of the tall ships that plied the route between San Francisco and the South Sea Islands.

The whole history is really worth a read!

Here are more current and classic pix of the Tonga Room from various Flickr folks….

Just look at that friggin’ riggin…

decorative flagons and drinks in colors that don’t appear in nature…

Hey look it’s San Francisco artist (and friend d’Squid) Joshua Ellingson with burlesque performer Dirty Martini…

More Coverage:

- Opiates on a Cracker

- Jamie Zawinski

- Boing Boing

- Curbed SF

- Cynical-C

- Eater SF

- The Retro Blog

UPDATE: Jesse McKinley wrote a New York Times article about the attempt to save The Tonga Room.

photos by Alamagordo, Mr. Bali Hai, sparkleneely, Tiki Central Forums, Ken Duffy, timnatl, elinar, cormac70, Joshua Ellingson, Charlie B Catt

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