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The Barbary Coast [1] has a wild story about this (now) nature sanctuary back in the Gold Rush era. There was a lot of money to be made feeding and housing the
by kaycebasques 2y ago
The Barbary Coast [1] has a wild story about this (now) nature sanctuary back in the Gold Rush era. There was a lot of money to be made feeding and housing the gold miners flooding into SF. That's literally where the whole "don't look for gold, sell pickaxes to the miners" business idea comes from. Some people found out that you could eat the huge eggs of some bird that lived on the islands. Maybe the murres. It was a pretty lucrative business selling the eggs in SF. There was a fight over rights to collect eggs on the island resulting in 2 deaths. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_War
[1] Can't find the reference now, maybe it was a different book
- roughly 2y agoSF history is fucking wild - my personal favorite story is that a number of the bars in the financial district got their land by basically buying and scuttling ships when the city announced the landfill project that created the current coastline to secure the rights to the filled in land: https://www.kqed.org/news/10981586/why-are-there-ships-buried-under-san-francisco https://www.kqed.org/news/10981586/why-are-there-ships-burie...
- kaycebasques 2y agoMy favorite is the guy who had a business shuttling people across the Golden Gate via row boat. Had a big Bowie knife hanging off his neck. Halfway across the water he would stop and basically say "so here's the deal. You give me everything you got or I throw you overboard here." Apparently he got away with it for quite a while but eventually tried it on the wrong dude. Said Wrong Dude killed the row boat guy, tossed him overboard, and rowed himself the rest of the way to SF.