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Downtown politics helped build the Parkside
Parkside and the Graft Trials
By Woody LaBounty
(Originally published in the WNP Member Newsletter, Spring 2002)
The well-chronicled postscript to San Francisco s devastation in the 1906 Earthquake and Fire is the revealed municipal graft, and the resulting legal prosecution of the city s administration. Coinciding with the physical rebuilding of a great metropolis came the downfall of the city s boss, Abraham Ruef. Using the Union Labor Party as his vehicle, Ruef orchestrated the election of Eugene Schmitz as mayor in 1901, and not only won Schmitz reelection in 1905, but control of the board of supervisors as well.
Rachel Zarrow February 28, 2021Updated: March 2, 2021, 8:42 pm
“Vera” by Carol Edgarian Photo: Scribner
Living in San Francisco in 1906, the eponymous Vera of Carol Edgarian’s latest novel is a headstrong and fiercely independent teenager.
Born to Rose, the madam of one of the city’s most notorious bordellos, and placed in the care of Morie, a woman with alcohol and gambling addictions, Vera lives between two worlds and two families. Save for what she gleans from the occasional visit to Rose’s mansion on Lafayette Square, “which sat like a fat queen on the throne of Pacific Heights,” Vera knows little about Rose, and what she does know Rose’s occupation she keeps to herself, while maintaining the charade that Morie is her mother.