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It started as a quest to make Bay Area highways more beautiful. Plus, three other bonus questions!
Reported by Jessica Placzek and Olivia Allen-Price. Bay Curious is Olivia Allen-Price, Jessica Placzek, Suzie Racho, Penny Nelson, Paul Lancour and Julia McEvoy. Theme music by Pat Mesiti-Miller.
Ask us a question at BayCurious.org. Follow Olivia Allen-Price on Twitter @oallenprice.
This week the Bay Curious podcast is celebrating our one-year anniversary with a lightning round of questions and answers!
Is it true that George Lucas was inspired to create the AT-AT because of the cranes at the Port of Oakland?
No. Sadly, this is not true.
George Lucas told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub, “That’s a myth. That is definitely a myth.”
Hartlaub also followed up with Phil Tippett, the stop-motion animator who oversaw production of the AT-AT sequence. Tippett allows for a small chance that somewhere in the process someone looked at the cranes, but added that the original vehicles actually looked nothing like container cranes, and more like garbage trucks.
Sidenote on Phil Tippett: He was credited as “Dinosaur Supervisor” at the end of “Jurassic Park” and has been the topic of several popular internet memes. Poor guy has spent years now explaining what the “supervision” element of his job actually was.
Question submitted by Bay Curious listener Matteen Mokalla.
How did the Tenderloin get its name?
In the mid-1800s the Tenderloin was a great spot to spend a night out on the town, but by the late 1800s, crime had crept into the neighborhood. It was around this time that people began calling the area the Tenderloin.
So how did it get the name? Was it a reference to the “tender loins” of prostitutes who did business there? Or maybe something to do with the shape of the neighborhood?
No. According to the Tenderloin Museum, the name came from a New York City police captain named Alexander Williams who supposedly called vice-heavy areas the “tenderloin”, in reference to all the bribes he would get for turning a blind eye to illegal activities. Williams was quoted as saying, “I’ve had nothing but chuck steak for a long time, and now I’m going to get a little of the tenderloin.”
He hoped to buy nicer meat with his bribe money.
Question submitted by Bay Curious listener Kevin Beach.
Is it true that the original voice of Popeye died in a San Jose trailer park?
Yes. The gruff voice of William Costello was the original voice of Popeye the Sailor Man.
But the show’s producers wanted a softer voice for Popeye, and Costello was becoming difficult to work with. One day, while the show was in the middle of production, Costello asked for a vacation and he was fired.
After that, Costello had a long career as a musician. According to his obituary, Costello worked with Ginger Rogers and Bing Crosby and went on to play in over 100 orchestras.
In the late 1950s, he retired to manage a trailer park in San Jose. He remained manager until he died in 1971 at the age of 73.
Question submitted by Bay Curious listener Peter Caravalho.
Why Are There Rainbows on the Tunnel Between S.F. and Marin?
We answered this question in a separate post. Check it out!
All the news you need to know for Thursday, November 9th, 2017!
Today: what President Trump said about China, new Cuba travel restrictions and how researchers grew new skin in a lab.
Plus: Kevin Spacey got kicked out of a movie and Harry Potter steps into augmented reality.
All that and more - in less than 10 minutes!
Award-winning broadcast journalist and former TV news reporter Erica Mandy breaks it all down for you.
Subscribe now to get new episodes each weekday! Visit https://www.theNewsWorthy.com for all the links to stories referenced in this episode.
Democrats are feeling triumphant after Tuesday’s state and local elections. But it’s not a referendum on the president until his name is on the ballot, so E.J. Dionne and Thomas Mann are here to explain remains unique about this moment in American history. Dionne, Mann, and Norman Ornstein are the authors of the book One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported.
In the Spiel, hating on the latest iOS update.
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Rachel Platten is a singer and songwriter who’s released four albums, including her 2016 album Wildfire, which went Gold. The lead single from that album, “Fight Song,” was used prominently by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. For a normally apolitical artist, the sudden proximity to the election had profound effects, both positive and negative. In this episode, Rachel breaks down her song “Broken Glass," which was inspired by that experience, and written just days before the 2016 election.
Between 1902 and 1934, hundreds of Native American men, women, and children were institutionalized at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians; only nine of them, however, were officially committed by court order. In Vanished in Hiawatha: The Story of the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians (University of Nebraska Press, 2016), independent scholar Carla Joinson examines the history of the only insane asylum in United States history dedicated solely to the institutionalization of Native Americans. Vanished in Hiawatha further connects the establishment of the Canton Asylum with efforts to assimilate Indigenous populations during the first three decades of the twentieth century, and considers how and why the institution remained open for three decades, given the ongoing mismanagement and mistreatment of Native patients at the facility.
Samantha M. Williams is a PhD candidate in History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is currently writing her dissertation, which examines the history of the Stewart Indian School in Carson City, Nevada through the lenses of settler colonialism and public history. She can be reached at swillia7@ucsc.edu.
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