There's a memorial at Beach and Mason that most tourists walk right past on their way to Fisherman's Wharf. 92 years ago this week, two men were shot dead there and San Francisco shut itself completely down.
I live at Pier 39 and I used the ATM at the Longshoremen's Hall on Beach and Mason for years before I noticed the memorial outside.
On July 5, 1934 — Bloody Thursday — the SFPD opened fire on striking longshoremen on the Embarcadero. Two men died: Howard Sperry, a longshoreman and veteran who was shot in the back while helping a wounded man, and Nick Bordoise, an IWW cook who was there running the strikers' soup kitchen.
They were killed for a hiring hall. The port was controlled by a cartel of shipping companies that made workers show up every morning and wait to be picked for work or not — designed to keep men desperate and non-union. The ILA wanted their own hiring hall. The companies said no. The governor called it an insurrection and sent in the National Guard.
They badly miscalculated what comes after you shoot people.
On July 9, the bodies were loaded onto flatbed trucks and driven down Market Street. 40,000 people lined the route. The city was completely silent. No one threw anything. No one shouted. 40,000 people stood at the curb and watched in total quiet.
Eleven days later, San Francisco held the only general strike an American city has ever seen. Everything stopped. Restaurants, retail, streetcars, gas stations. For four days the city didn't move.
There was no Communist revolution. There was a labor negotiation. The arbitrator ruled for the union. They got their hiring hall.
The hall at Beach and Mason was built in 1959 by the union that won. In 1965 the Family Dog started throwing dances there. The Grateful Dead played the Trips Festival in that building in January 1966.
The longshoremen who died for a hiring hall got a building. The building started the San Francisco acid rock scene.
The ATM still doesn't charge a fee. I wrote more about it here: https://tjcrowley.substack.com/p/bloody-thursday
u/Dependent_Run_6410 — 2 months ago