While in San Francisco, I noted down a number of odd items, some of them unimportant, which, when added together, have much to do with the flavor of the town. Having used the word "flavor," I may as well begin with drinks.
Drinks cut an important figure in San Francisco life, as is natural in a wine-producing country. The merit of the best California wines is not appreciated in the East. Some of them are very good—much better, indeed, than a great deal of the imported wine brought from Europe. I have even tasted a California champagne which compares creditably with the ordinary run of French champagne, though when it comes to special vintages, California has not attained the French level.
It is a general custom, in public bars and clubs to shake dice for drinks, instead of clamoring to "treat," according to the silly eastern custom, which as every one knows, often causes men to drink more than they wish to, just to be "good fellows." The free lunch, in connection with bars, is developed more highly in San Francisco than in any other city that I know of; also, Easterners will be surprised to find small onions, or nuts, in their cocktails, instead of olives. A popular cocktail on the Coast is the "Honolulu," which is like the familiar "Bronx," excepting that pineapple juice is used in place of orange juice.
When my companion and I were in San Francisco a prohibition wave was threatening. Such a movement in a wine-producing country engenders very strong feeling, and I found, attached to the bills-of-fare in various restaurants, earnest pleas, addressed to voters, to turn out and cast their ballots against the temperance menace.
Of prohibition the town had already had a taste—if one may use the expression. The reform movement had struck the Barbary Coast, the rule, at the time of our visit, being that there should be no dancing where alcoholic drinks were served, and no drinks where there was dancing. This law was enforced and it made the former region of festivity a sad place. Even the sailors and marines sitting about the dance-halls, consuming beer-substitutes, at a dollar a bottle, were melancholy figures, appearing altogether unresponsive to the sirens who surrounded them.
Ordinary drinks at most bars in San Francisco are fifteen cents each, or two for a quarter, as in most other cities. That is to say, two drinks for "two bits."
Like the American mill, or the English Guinea, the "bit," familiar on the Pacific Slope, is not a coin. The Californian will ask for change for a "quarter," or a "half," as we do in the East, but in making small purchases he will ask for two, or four, or six "bits' worth," a "bit" representing twelve-and-a-half cents. In the old days there were also "short bits" and "long bits," meaning, respectively ten cents, and fifteen cents, but these terms with their implied scorn of the copper cent, have died out.
The humble penny is, however, still regarded contemptuously in San Francisco. Until quite recently all newspapers published there sold at five cents each, and that is still true of the morning papers, the "Chronicle" and the "Examiner." Lately the "Call" and the "Bulletin," evening papers, have dropped in price to one cent each, but when the princely Son of the Golden West buys them, he will frequently pay the newsboy with a nickel, ignoring the change. Nor is the newsboy to be outdone in magnificence: when a five-cent customer asks for one paper the boy will very likely hand him both. They understand each other, these two, and meet on terms of a noble mutual liberality.
As to Chinatown, those who knew it before the fire declare that its charm is gone, but my companion and I found interest in its shops, its printing offices and, most of all, in its telephone exchange.