Friday, August 19, 2022

Cable Surfing and Kites - Fun and Games on the Streets of San Francisco - 1890s Style

 

Kids these days just don’t know how to have fun. What with the cell-phones, the video games and the social mediums, no one can find time to go outside and play anymore (or at least that’s one complaint I’ve heard going around). Some would blame climate change for keeping people inactive and inside, while others pin the blame on channel surfing or (in this age of cable television) cable surfing, if you will.

Ironically, however, about 130 years ago, in the Streets of San Francisco (and environs), cable surfing was one of the ways kids got out to play. They surfed cables running under the Streets of San Francisco that powered the city’s now-iconic cable cars.


The cable lines afford some odd amusements to the boys. A single roller-skate and a long bent wire were the equipment with which I some time ago saw a daring little scamp have a perfectly glorious time on Union street. The wire was bent in some way, so that when thrust through the slot it caught the cable, and, standing upon one foot, the other swinging free, the amateur gripman was sailing into paradise on an even keel, when a stony-hearted policeman saw and summarily ended his enjoyment.

Kids in Oakland enjoyed a similar, yet more elaborate, system of riding the cables, at least until they were replaced by regular old trolleys.

Before the trolley superseded the cable on the Mountain View road in Oakland the boys living along that line had a contrivance on a similar principle, but on a more elaborate scale, that for a long time was s source of endless joy to them and unbounded terror to passing horses. Their contrivance consisted of a rude platform on four very small truck wheel. Some mechanical genius among them had rigged up a very practicable sort of grip, and for a time it is probable that this primitive car made more trips in a day and carried more passengers than did the combined rolling stock of the road’s lawful owners.

These descriptions are both drawn from an article by Adeline Knapp, that appeared in the San Francisco Call on March 1, 1896 (page 16), entitled “Street Sports in San Francisco.”

 


Other local street sports included kite flying, “Duck,” land-toboggans and craps.

The popularity of kite-flying in San Francisco was uplifted by the weather patterns, the terrain and the presence of significant Chinese and Japanese populations, “with whom the pastime is almost national.” The writer waxed nostalgic, Mary Poppins’ Mr. Banks-wise, about the joys of flying kites for adults and children alike.

 

Just now, while Eastern children are still enjoying their winter coasting, sliding and skating, the boys of San Francisco are in the midst of the kite-flying season.

This is a diversion that, to the extent to which it is carried here, is almost peculiar to San Francisco of American cities. It is not that boys in all cities do not fly kites, but the kite season is a peculiarly interesting one in this particular City.

There are several reasons for this. The steady, pleasant winds that blow at this season; the unusual advantages offered by our blessed green hills and the example set by the many Chinese and Japanese in our midst, with whom the pastime is almost national, are some of these. It has sometimes, indeed, been a matter of surprise to me that our amusement-seekers have so long left this fascinating diversion to the boys of the City. we are not wise, we grown-up San Franciscans, or we should fare forth with the children to fly our kits against the brilliant February sky and to feel ourselves growing young again as we ran with them against the soft, strong, steady breeze. There is a certain joy in flying a kite, in feeling the life, bird-like thing tugging at the sustaining string, and to exult in its flight in which you are yourself an important factor.

But whether we join in the sport or are impelled by considerations of supposed dignity to refrain from it, it is well worth the while of a lover of the beautiful to pay a visit to Rincon or Telegraph or Russian Hill, or any of the highlands that lay parkward or toward North Beach, and there watch the boys send up their kites. Sometimes the air seems fairly alive with them. There will be great white sails spread out against the blue, side by side with the elaborate gilded and decorated creation of some Chinese kite-maker, while lower down flutter the quaint red and green and yellow birds affected by the Japanese. Dancing, pulling, swaying, sailing out over the City, they seem as really alive as are the gulls that circle and swirl above the waters of the bay. The sight, once beheld, is something ever after to remember with delight.

Coasting downhill was another popular sport. The style of coasting varied by neighborhood, on Russian, Telegraph and Rincon Hills, with a wheeled street luge, sled or roller skates as the preferred means of coasting.

The snow and ice bring many joys to Eastern children that our youngsters by the Golden Gate can know nothing of. Coasting, however, is not one of these. I have dared many a perilous descent in my childhood days, but never anything half so thrilling as a plunge I saw four boys take recently down the grade from Jones to Taylor streets on Broadway.

Their coaster was of a sort the most primitive, a long board on what had evidently once been the rollers of a pair of skates. The boy who sat at the rear end manipulated a sort of sweep attached to the board and which apparently served as brake and rudder. Down they swept, like a small whirlwind, with a yell and a whirring of wheels that would have struck terror to the heart of a tenderfoot. Seeing them one might have thought they were rushing headlong to destruction, but the watchful angel that seems to guard the destinies of boys was, as usual, close at hand, and the daring quartet made the descent safely, and running quietly around the corner into Taylor street just as I had closed my eyes to avoid seeing them dashed to atoms.

The boys who live about Telegraph and Russian hills have a perilous fashion of coasting on rough sleds down the sides of the cliffs, a descent sufficiently allied to danger to render it royal sport for a boy. In the raining season, when the ground is wet, slippery and treacherous, coasting over snowdrifts is not half so exciting. It is really a very pretty and nerve-tingling sight to see the little fellows scramble up the face of an almost perpendicular cliff and dash down again, a whole line of them, in single file, in their rudely built sleds. Were the sight not close at hand we might well deem it worth traveling far to witness as a picturesque exhibition of reckless daring.

It is only among the North Beach hills that this sort of thing is popular. The boys of that locality are of a more reckless nature, even in their play, than are their fellows south of Market street, for instance. This may be because they are of different nationality or because of the greater freedom of life on the high hills that overlook the water. Whatever may be the reason, it is certain that one sees no such life-and-limb-endangering sport among the dwellers on the south side. The boys about Rincon Hill have a pretty way of coasting on roller-skates, and is as interesting sight to see a string of them, hand in hand, come swinging down the steep grades of Harrison and Bryant streets.

I spent a pleasant half hour or more not long ago watching a sturdy lad of perhaps 15 treating half a dozen little chaps to rides on his feet. He was mounted on roller-skates himself, and upon his downward trips he would take a small boy on each foot. Clinging tightly to their friend’s legs, the small chaps wriggled and screamed with delight as the queer trio buzzed along down the hill. If appearances go for anything each member of the queer coasting party was about as uncomfortable as human beings could well be, but it would have been hard to tell which was the most supremely happy.

“Shooting craps” was popular among newsboys and “small girls in some of the lower districts of the City.

I have seen a painfully large number of groups of girls this winter engaged in this pastime, sitting on the sidewalks at the foot of flights of steps or against convenient area-rails. The sight is a curious if not particularly attractive one. The object of the game seems to be the increase of the collection of buttons which each girl makes on a long string. I have wondered a good deal as to how the game sprang into such wide popularity among them. The circumstance is certainly one to be noted with regret.

And finally, they played a game called “duck on a rock.”

Hop-scotch seems to be a favorite diversion among both boys and girls south of Market street, while on the north side “duck-on-a-rock” holds first place in juvenile esteem. Here again topography plays an important part in determining preference. There are stones to be had in plenty along the rocky cliffs and streets, and the cliffs themselves make jolly backgrounds against which to set up a “duck.”

Knapp’s article does not explain the game, but a description of the game from a decade later seems consistent with the accompanying picture.

Duck-on-a-rock is an old game, but for generation after generation it holds its place in the hearts of the boys who know how to play it. Here it is now for all of you, and girls may become really quite expert at “throwing straight,” if they will try to play the game, too.

A large stone with a smooth top is chosen for the rock, and each player is provided with a stone of the right size to be easily held in that hand. These are the ducks.

Draw a line twenty-five to thirty feet distant from the rock, according to the size of the field played in, and back of this line is “home.” The next step in the game is to “pink for duck,” which consists in each player’s throwing his stone from “home” to the rock. The one whose stone lies farthest from the rock, when all have thrown, is “It,” and must place his stone on the rock for the others to throw at, their object being to knock it off. He must stand near the rock.

If any player knocks the stone from the rock, there must instantly be a general stampede for “home.” The player who is “It” must quickly replace the stone on the rock, and when he has done so must try to touch any player who has not yet reached “home.” The one so touched becomes “It” and must place his “duck” on the rock to be thrown at, standing near by himself.

Cherokee Harmonizer (Centre, Alabama), July 19, 1906, page 3.

There are other complications and alternate procedures for determining who is it, that kick in in the event that no one knocks the duck from its perch on the first try.

Adeline Knapp saw in the game (at least as played on Powell Street in San Francisco) a vision of the potential strength of alloys being smelted in the American melting pot.

I watched a group of boys playing this game on Powell street, at the foot of the high bluff up which Vallejo street clambers and goes wandering heavenward. Quaint, foreign-looking little fellows they were, making a pretty picture bending back and forth in their muscle-developing sport, and I caught phrases from half a dozen different languages in their talk. French, Italian, German, Irish, Mexican, Spanish and one negro lad were among the group playing this Yankee game in this most interesting of cities. It is hard to forecast what is to be the outcome of all this mixing of races, but certainly if we are wise it should be something good and of ultimate value.

 



 San Francisco Call, March 1, 1896, page 16.

 

 

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