history

Thank God for Schlock: Exploitation Films with Christian Financiers
by Xan Holbrook One recurring treat (among many) for the Bill Hicks fan is his theatrical disdain and revulsion for drug prohibition. Such a passionate hatred proved an excellent vehicle to showcase his near mastery of prose and rhetoric. In one of my favorite bits, he inverted the stifled, crusty

America Ruined the Temperance Movement
by Xan Holbrook The Mafia are a disgrace to our species. The true stories of the Mafia – of people too inept to handle laundry, too mediocre to hold someone’s hand or kiss a cheek, yet so brutal as to pull the richest nation’s strings – are at once horrifying,

How Booze Helped Britain Conquer a Quarter of the World
by Xan Holbrook As a people, we Britons are stereotyped according to our drinking habits. This usually falls into the twee joshing about tea, as Americans love to remind us with teeth-grinding regularity. However, it is no exaggeration to say that the British love of alcohol is fabric-of-the-nation stuff. But,

The Strange Economy of Fake Urine
by Hannah Harkness One day, when I was relaying my usual drug-testing rant to a fellow stand-up comic, they responded “Oh yeah, and you can just jump those tests with fake piss anyway. I got a job at a children’s hospital doing that.” Before this point, I’d only ever heard

There’s a Festival of Old Archival Footage of San Francisco
The people at the Long Now Foundation have been putting this on for 13 years and it keeps getting bigger each time. This year it’s happening over two nights at the Castro Theatre. The info below is from the Eventbrite page, which is where you can also buy tickets. The Long

Why the Monument in Union Square Should be Taken Down
Guest post by Max Silver Disclaimer: The author of this article is not Filipino. He is a white man from San Francisco. While this story focuses on the acts of Admiral George Dewey of the U.S. Navy, figures such as Emilio Aguinaldo and Apolinario Mabini are also mentioned. Their perspectives are

Hidden East Bay Wonders: Ruins of the Belgum Sanitarium
Hidden East Bay Wonders brings you everything weird, whimsical and wonderful in the East Bay. This week: the ruins of the Belgum Sanitarium in Richmond. Imagine a time when people rode their horses through the East Bay hills– when the avenues weren’t paved and rich tycoons looked out over the