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For a little while, San Francisco had visions of its own Mardi Gras.
San Francisco author and Chronicle contributor Gary Kamiya writes his Portals of the Past columns on Bay Area history, and finding photos to accompany the stories can be difficult, especially when the focus is an event from before The Chronicle’s 1865 founding.
Illustrating a recent Portals of the Past column by San Francisco author and Chronicle contributor Gary Kamiya on the city honoring the discovery of San Francisco Bay by Don Gaspar de Portola was easier than anticipated, thanks to my discovery a week earlier of a folder full of Portola Festival photos.
I dug up illustrations for the 1909 festival, but the photos and a half-dozen negative envelopes for the grand Portola Festival and Parade of 1948 were the real find.
In 1946, a civic club, the Golden Gate Aerie of Eagles, sent Mayor Roger Lapham a resolution to revive the Portola Festival, a colorful pageant that had been held in San Francisco from 1909-13. It seems Lapham thought this was a splendid idea; he appointed a committee, led by Cyril Magnin, to put together a celebration similar to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The committee’s purpose was “to encourage trade, commerce and industry through the revival of the Portola Festival.”
Calling it “San Francisco’s Mardi Gras” might have been a more enticing sell.
纪事报报道,1948年8月15日,市长榆树er Robinson had designated Oct. 17-25 as Portola Festival week, the climax of a four-week celebration. Huge parades would open and close the week, with the closing parade happening in the evening, with spectacularly lit floats. The Chronicle also ran stories reporting on the dispute between San Carlos and Millbrae over the exact location Portola’s party.
The opening parade was seen by 750,000 spectators, a record for San Francisco. It was reported to be the longest parade in the city’s history, with 218 units taking more than four hours to finish the route from the Ferry Building to the Civic Center.
虽然最初的想法被波尔图Festival to be an annual event, planning for the next celebration was delayed for two years to focus attention on San Francisco’s Centennial. The Chronicle ran a story on Magnin’s critique of the festival, and while he said the festival could endure and be an annual event, he did concede financial headaches. If Magnin, “Mr. San Francisco,” couldn’t breathe life into another Portola Festival, no one could.
Another Portola Festival of that scale was never attempted again.
Bill Van Niekerken is the library director of The San Francisco Chronicle, where he has worked since 1985. In his weekly column, From the Archive, he explores the depths of The Chronicle’s vast photography archive in search of interesting historical tales related to the city by the bay.
