https://web.archive.org/web/20230425231937/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-02-29-mn-207-story.html
Shiva laser, Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_laser
nearby Shiva-Vishnu Temple photos:
https://tinyurl.com/hxfa9w2h
The spiritual and political geography of San Francisco's "Beast Bay."
Still the classic source on the historical and cultural origins of San Francisco:
The history of the Barbary Coast properly begins with the gold rush to California in 1849. If the precious yellow metal hadn't been discovered ... the development of San Francisco's underworld in all likelihood would have been indistinguishable from that of any other large American city. Instead, owing almost entirely to the influx of gold-seekers and the horde of gamblers, thieves, harlots, politicians, and other felonious parasites who battened upon them, there arose a unique criminal district that for almost seventy years was the scene of more viciousness and depravity, but which at the same time possessed more glamour, than any other area of vice and iniquity on the American continent. The Barbary Coast is Herbert Asbury's classic chronicle of the birth of San Francisco—a violent explosion from which the infant city emerged full-grown and raging wild. From all over the world practitioners of every vice stampeded for the blood and money of the gold fields. Gambling dens ran all day including Sundays. From noon to noon houses of prostitution offered girls of every age and race. (In the 1850s, San Francisco was home to only one woman for every thirty men. It was not until 1910 that the sexes achieved anything close to parity in their populations.) This is the story of the banditry, opium bouts, tong wars, and corruption, from the eureka at Sutter's Mill until the last bagnio closed its doors seventy years later.
The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld by Herbert Asbury
https://www.amazon.com/Barbary-Coast-Informal-Francisco-Underworld/dp/1560254084
borrow for free or search inside
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6293499M/The_Barbary_coast?mode=all
I had been invited to lecture in Stockton on the evening of April 10, and went up the night before, arriving that morning. I was well received, hospitably entertained, and had a good time generally—got tall puffs in the three daily papers for my lecture.The State Lunatic Asylum is there, and as the trustees were to have a meeting, I was invited to go up, which I did, and spent several hours visiting the institution while they were transacting their business. There are more insane in this state, by far, in proportion to the whole population, than in any 260 other state in the Union. I need not dilate on the reasons. High mental excitement, desperate characters, disappointed hopes of miners, the unnatural mode of life incident to mining, separation of families, and the indiscretions and infidelity to the marriage vows incident to these separations—these and other reasons have produced this frightful result.
The Gold Rush was kicked off and San Francisco was founded by Mormon pioneers and the Mormon Battalion (during the longest military march in U.S. history)
Places of Interest / cast of characters we will explore in future episodes (partial):
I will be pinning each one of these videos and their "show notes" to the corresponding locations on Google Earth:
Westpoint (Calaveras Co.) Crowley's successor, Karl Germer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Germer
Rumors Of The 'Hicks Road Colony' Have Kept Drivers Away From The Area For Years
https://www.ranker.com/list/san-jose-hicks-road-colony-legend/laura-allan
Decades-long persistent rumors of an "albino cannibal cult" in rural San Jose. This man takes you on a scenic drive to check out the rumors for himself. He suggests the possibility that perhaps the military started the rumors to prevent people from coming too close to their facility. I would tend to agree with that theory except for an experience that my second husband told myself and others about, an extremely similar experience in the Berkeley hills (near the national laboratory) about 70 miles north.
He told me that he was hiking in the hills one day and an albino man came up to him and said that he lived underground and asked my husband if he wanted to come and check it out (in addition to the lab with known underground facilities, there are also caves in the area) and my husband said, hell no and ran away.
I know he wasn't influenced by these urban legends because he wasn't born and raised in the Bay Area like myself and I had never heard about this urban legend until a couple of years ago because I am from the East Bay and not the South Bay.