How the Barbary Coast and the Gold Rush Changed Fashion

by David Farley on
About a month ago, a building in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood was torn down, revealing on an adjacent structure an advertisement painted on the wall. The ad, from 1921, was for Boss of the Road overalls and work shirts. Boss of the Road, which went out of business around World War II, was a main competitor of Levi Strauss & Co.

Long before the world obsession with blue jeans (and before people were paying hundreds–or, in some cases, thousands) of dollars for a pair of denim, Levi Strauss was the outfitter of Gold Rush minors. And in (accidentally) doing so, he changed fashion forever.


And it happened more or less by accident. Levi Strauss had come to San Francisco with rolls of canvas and bolts he hoped to sell on the Barbary Coast to miners to cover their wagons as they headed out to gold country. But, as Daniel Bacon writes in his book “Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail,” “[w]hen he found sturdy trousers in demand, Strauss cut a few bolts into pants and sold them to miners.”

When Strauss ran out of tan canvas, he began using a blue cloth imported from France called “serge de Nimes,” later called “denim.” Once fashioned into pants, the denim looked a lot the trousers worn by sailors from Genoa, which the French called “genes.” You can see where this is going.
And with that, a new fashion was born. Interestingly, as C.W. Nevius wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle recently, it was the Japanese that made these jeans into the uber-popular fashion we know and love today.

Quoting Levi’s historian Lynn Downey, he writes:


“‘Young Japanese men with lots of discretionary income went through World War II seeing American servicemen with jeans, bomber jackets and Zippo lighters,’ she said. ‘They wanted those for themselves.’ Speculators from Japan came to the United States and bought up jeans in bulk, driving up demand. That coincided with a youth boom in jeans, which eventually made them so mainstream that versions now sell for hundreds of dollars.”

To see the most expensive pair of jeans in the world, stop by the Levi Strauss & Co. museum. The jeans date from 1873-1890 and are valued at $150,000.

The most outrageous state fair foods

by Melanie Renzulli on



Nothing says America like a wholesome state fair. And what’s more wholesome – or American – than filling your gullet with mounds of fried, sticky, salty, and/or sweet junk foods?

Beyond the carnival rides and the livestock judging contests, state fairs have always served as quasi-laboratories for American-style street food. In fact, the now-ubiquitous corn dog was first introduced to the public in the early 1940s at a state fair, though which one is still up for debate. The Texas State Fair, aka the “Fried Food Capital of Texas®”, and the Minnesota State Fair both lay claim to this distinctly American treat.

Each year, state fair food vendors try to outdo each other – and intrigue the crowds – with new belly-busting concoctions, usually inspired by local fare. For instance, dairy state Iowa features a deep-fried stick of butter at the Iowa State Fair, while the Texas State Fair has served up fried cookie dough and fried beer. The bigger and more artery-clogging the better when it comes to state fair foods. Here is just a sampling of some of the state fair foods Gadling found to be truly outrageous.

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National Park Service envisions visitor center of tomorrow

by Kraig Becker on

The U.S. National Park Service, working in conjunction with the Van Alen Institute, has opened a unique architectural design competition in which they are inviting colleges of architecture across the country to re-envision the visitor center of the future. The NPS recognizes that times are changing, and that its approach for serving the needs of visitor in the past, may not be best well suited for the future. The challenge it faces is to integrate new technologies and design ideas, while remaining faithful to the traditional national park experience that travelers have come to know and love.

NPS Director Jonathan B. Jarvis recognizes that the concept of the modern park visitor center traces its origins back to the 1950’s, when it was seen as the gateway to the park that it served. He also points out that many travelers are now researching our park visits online and through a variety of mobile devices, which has changed the way we explore the national parks as well. Jarvis is quick to add “There is no question that people should be able to talk to a real park ranger but is the visitor center in its current form the best way to achieve this?”

The competition will officially get underway this fall, with teams from universities across the U.S. proposing new visitor centers that address design elements, as well as facility management and operations, for one of seven national parks. These parks were specifically chosen because they offer a variety of experiences to visitors, allowing architects to flex their creative muscles.

The parks that are included in the competition include: Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, Pennsylvania; Civil War Defenses of Washington, D.C.; Biscayne National Park, Florida; Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, Georgia; Nicodemus National Historic Site, Kansas; Valles Caldera National Preserve, New Mexico; San Juan Island Historical Park, Washington.

A national design advisory committee is being assembled to review the projects based on six criteria. Those criteria include: a reverence for place; engagement of all people; expansion beyond traditional boundaries; sustainability; informed decision-making; and an integrated research, planning, design, and review process. In December, the committee will narrow the selection down to seven teams who will be encouraged to continue working on their projects, with winners being announced, and shared online, next summer.

This is an opportunity for bright young minds to have a direct impact on the future of America’s national parks and how we interact with them. It should be interesting to see what develops from this.

Barbary Coast Booze: the Pisco Punch

by David Farley on
The discovery of gold in the hills of San Francisco in 1849 inspired one of the biggest population movements in human history. And today’s San Francisco is a fascinating reminder of that, both in terms of its demographic and architectural diversity. One such people that came in droves were Peruvians. And they brought with them a drink that would change cocktails culture forever: pisco. If you have a mouth and hands to pick up a glass and occasionally drink alcohol, you’ve most certainly heard of one pisco-based drink: The pisco sour, which is currently enjoying a revival among cocktail quaffers.

But in mid and late 19th century San Francisco, particularly at one Barbary Coast saloon, a new, rather potent pisco-laced drink was enjoying its own heyday. Pisco Punch. Which is, like interest in the Barbary Coast itself, enjoying a bit of a resurgence in San Francisco.


The invention of the drink is attributed to Duncan Nicol, who combined pisco, pineapple gum, lime juice and distilled water, while he was the owner of the Bank Exchange saloon where the ’70s-flavored skyscraper, the TransAmerica Building, sits today.

The problem, though, was that when Nicol went to the grave, he took the recipe with him.
But according to Jonny Raglin of Comstock Saloon (who makes a mean pisco punch, by the way), someone figured out the recipe during the last decade and in the last five years the drink has been popping up on cocktail bar menus around the city.

“The revival of pisco punch,” Raglin told me, “is really a classic example of the entire resurgence of the Barbary Coast as a whole.”


One other note of historical importance. According to Daniel Bacon, whose book “Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail,” is a bible for this stuff, one frequent pisco punch-drinking regular at the Bank Exchange saloon was Mark Twain. One night over glasses of pisco punch he got to talking to a fire fighter and they became friends. That fireman’s name? Tom Sawyer.

The 5 ugliest states in the country

by Meg Nesterov on

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. San Francisco Examiner writer and occasional Gadling contributor Bob Ecker doesn’t behold much, at least for a few unlucky states. Ecker previously named the prettiest US states including coastal California, exotic Hawaii, diverse New York, historic Virginia, and verdant Washington. He’s now determined the unfortunate ugliest states, measured by landscape, not people:

  • Connecticut: the Constitution State is called a “suburban hell”
  • Delaware: small and boring
  • Kansas: land-locked and a “throwback,” in a bad way
  • Nevada: outside of Las Vegas, it’s a “desolate and forbidding wasteland” (what about Lake Tahoe, Bob?)
  • Oklahoma: another flat, hot, and boring state (don’t tell Lonely Planet’s Robert Reid, an OK native)

Obviously the article is tongue in cheek — there are beautiful corners in every great state in this country — but Ecker’s skewering provides a good starting point for thinking about vacation destinations. Do these places deserve to be called ugly? What do you think the ugliest states are?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Gage Skidmore