September 23, 2016

Beemer Memory 15: Taxicabs when medallions reigned ~ 1976

 
 official Cab Driver Permit ID photo
September 23, 1976
photographer unknown

I can't believe this photograph was taken exactly 40 years ago today, September 23, 1976. I look like I just got off the boat from somewhere. It's from the back of my cab driver permit issued annually by the city of San Francisco when I was a taxi driver for the Yellow Cab Company.   




Public Passenger Vehicle Driver permit 
photo by Styrous®


I had been doing odd jobs, basement cleaning, bartending, moving and hauling, waiting tables, etc., for several years when I got off my bike (link below) for a year or so and started to drive for the Yellow Cab Company.


Yellow Cab Company president W. L. Rothschild 
and driver Joseph Crowe, 1950
photographer unknown


When I drove for Yellow Cab, the "medallions" for each cab was owned by someone. The medallions were almost never available but when they did come up for sale, they sold for thousands of dollars. The Yellow Cab Company owned hundreds of medallions and cabs and hired men to drive them. Well, hire isn't exactly the right word; they didn't pay a wage (see links below).  

I had to "rent" the cab from the Company by the day. There was a $30 "Gate" and I had to pay for the gas I used. The cab's tank was full when it was released to me then measured when I returned it. A tank usually cost $10 or $15 to fill. Sometimes the total I'd owe the company at the end of the day was around 40 or 50 dollars depending on how busy I had been, which doesn't sound like a lot today, but back in the 70's it took a lot of fares to make the "Gate" 'n gas before I could even began to make a cent. The long-time drivers knew all the tricks for making the most fares. It wasn't a great system; some drivers made a fortune but most of us just scraped by.



 Yellow Cab ad (1964)
San Francisco Municipal Record 



Of course, I have dozens of stories about driving a cab. A lot of them funny, some a bit scary, all of them wacky but none of them boring.

I never got robbed of money but I did get my wrist watch stolen by a passenger who took it when he left my cab. With every passenger, the trip had to be logged in with the location of pick up, destination and the times of each; The watch bothered my wrist so I would hang it on the dashboard. It was there when I logged the start of his trip but it was gone when I went to log him out a few minutes after he left my cab. He was dressed in a business suit 'n everything. Go figure.    

The watch had been given to me by Ben, my step father (link below), when I graduated from high school in 1958. It was a beautiful Gruen, 17 Jewel, Swiss-made watch and I loved it. Originally based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Gruen went out of business later that year I graduated. I may have had one of the last watches they produced.   


Gruen watch
Precision Manual Wind 
17 Jewel, Swiss Made 
photographer unknown
 

Another incident involved a young man, a bible and a bunch of shady looking guys. The kid had a bible he said was going to be his salvation. I figured he was some sort of religious fanatic. He asked me to wait for his return while he went into his destination and left the bible as security that he would come back. The meter was running but after a half hour or so I went to the apartment to find out what was going on. There were five or six men there and the kid was or had been stripped out of his shirt with a lip that was beginning to swell and a bit of blood coming from his nose. I was accosted by the men there who threatened me if I didn't turn over the bible he'd left in my cab. I was scared but pissed (I hadn't made my gate for the day and my shift was almost over) and insisted I get my fare before I turned it over. They gave me the fare, a huge tip and a warning to forget the whole incident. When it was over I was shaking but I had my fare (and my gate). I often wondered if I should have called the police but the incident was too scary to take a chance on getting involved in some kind of gang affair.

The film, Taxi Driver, with Robert De Niro, had been released early that year but I totally refused to say, "You talkin' to me?"



I drove for the Yellow Cab Company until it went bankrupt late in 1976. After the bankruptcy, a sort of cooperative was formed. However, just about then my brother, Steve, said there was a job opening for a lighting man at one of the clubs, the hungry i, on Broadway. That was the beginning of my next career (Beemer link below).  
 




I still have the hat I wore . . . 

Yellow Cab hat
photo by Styrous®
. . .  can you believe it?




And I still have one of the sport coats I would wear occasionally while driving, as well; this one is by Michaels-Stern from Daniels & Fisher, a department store in Denver. The men's clothing company was liquidated in 1977, a year after the ID photo was taken.     

Michaels-Stern jacket detail
detail photo by Styrous®



Michaels-Stern jacket label
detail photo by Styrous®

In 1893, the Michaels-Stern company erected a seven-story factory building. Around 1984, while under bankruptcy protection, the  building was rented to tenants, including "artists, photographers, rock groups, dance studios, fencing and karate clubs". The Michaels-Stern Lofts, are currently rented as residential apartments.         




the Michaels-Stern building
photographer unknown



Net links:  
         
Bernard "Ben" Simonson, Jr.              
Beemer Memory 5 ~ Leatherneck bar, S. F., Pt. 2           
Taxi Driver Movie CLIP - You Talkin' to Me? on YouTube         
Yellow Cab Cooperative
Library.org ~ Taxis and San Francisco Labor History 
The Third Carriage Age - A History of San Francisco's Cab Industry ads            
Heritage Foundation ~ Taxicab Medallion Systems: Time for a Change        
KQED News Once-Treasured Medallions Now a Burden
USA Today ~ taxi medallions becoming unsellable                    
SF Examiner - Yellow Cab to file for bankruptcy           
reason.com ~ Why Taxi Medallion Owners Don't Deserve a Government Bailout   
       



You talkin' to me?

         
Styrous® ~ Friday, September 23, 2016












 

September 21, 2016

Sandra Sakata

 






 August 24, 1940 
~
September 21, 1997


  



photo by Jean Cacicedo






Sandra Sakata articles/mentions          



Styrous® ~ Wednesday, September 21, 2016       
          

September 19, 2016

20,000 Vinyl LPs 69: Don Buchla & Morton Subotnick ~ their Silver Apples of the Moon

   Cover Art – Anthony Martin
Cover, Design – William S. Harvey
photo of album cover by Styrous®


One of the pioneers of Electronic music died a few days ago. Don Buchla formed his electronic music equipment company, Buchla and Associates, in 1962 in Berkeley, California. Buchla was commissioned by composers Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender, both of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, to create an electronic instrument for live performance.      

Buchla began designing his first modules for the Tape Music Center in 1963. With partial funding from a Rockefeller Foundation grant made to the Tape Music Center, Buchla assembled his modules into the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System (later known as the Series 100), which he began selling commercially in 1966.     

Don Buchla ca 1960's 
photographer unknown


Buchla's synthesizers experimented in control interfaces, such as touch-sensitive plates. In 1969 the Series 100 was briefly sold to CBS Musical Instruments, who soon after dropped the line, not seeing the synthesizer market as a profitable area (silly wabbits).   

1970 saw the release of the Buchla 200 series Electric Music Box, which was manufactured until 1985 (link below to YouTube). Almost every parameter can be controlled from an external control voltage.  







Buchla created the Buchla Series 500, the first digitally controlled analog synthesizer, in 1971. It is possible there were only three ever in existence.   



Barry Schrader, Morton Subotnick and John Payne
in front of the Buchla 500
CalArts' sudio B-304
fall of 1976.







Shortly after, the Buchla Series 300 was released, which combined the Series 200 with microprocessors. The Music Easel, a small, portable, all-in-one synthesizer was released in 1972. The Buchla Music Easel, an instrument combining the 208 Stored Program Sound Source and 218 Touch Activated Voltage Source in an aluminum case with power supply.       

Buchla Series 300, The Music Easel




The Buchla 400, with a video display, was released in 1982. In 1987, Buchla released the fully MIDI enabled Buchla 700.         

In 2015, various websites, including FACT, reported that Don Buchla had taken the owners of BEMI to court, citing health problems due in part to unpaid consulting fees and asserting a claim to his original intellectual property.

In 2016, BEMI and Don Buchla settled all issues prior to any Court or Arbitration proceedings.

Don Buchla died on September 14, 2016; he was 79. His influence and contribution to the field of music has been profound and completely underrated. The entire genre of electronic music owes Buchla a great debt, but it goes even deeper and wider than that. The technological advancements made by Buchla & Associates is unparalleled in so many ways, and no one did it with as much style and grace as Buchla.   


Subotnick preforms the Buchla syntheziser on the Silver Apples of the Moon. The work is in two parts: the first is slow, sparse and spacey for over a quarter of an hour. What it really means to "trip out".    

The second half slowly develops a pulse then eventually "rocks" out and develops into an almost disco/jazz piece (disco was ten years in the future). I remember being on another planet far out in the universe and hearing the work for the first time. Oh, my goodness!    

The album's trippy title is perhaps a little less trippy than it appears: Subotnick took it from Yeats's poem The Song of Wandering Aengus: "The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun."  Subotnick said, "It doesn't really mean anything. I just liked the sound of it."    

Morton Subotnick was born on April 14, 1933, in Los Angeles, California). He is best known for the Silver Apples of the Moon, which was the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the founding members of the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught for many years. 

Album cover artist, William S. Harvey, was the art director at Elektra Records from 1953 to 1973. He was half of the Elektra brain trust that revolutionized the music industry’s concept of album packaging and created many of rock and roll’s iconic images — for example, the Doors’ logo and the Elektra butterfly.   





Morton Subotnick ‎– Silver Apples of the Moon    

Tracklist:

A     Silver Apples Of The Moon (Part One)     16:30
B     Silver Apples Of The Moon (Part Two)     15:00

Companies, etc.

    Copyright (c) – Nonesuch

Credits:

    Composed & produced by Morton Subotnick, Synthesizer [Buchla]
    Coordinator – Teresa Sterne
    Cover [Cover Art] – Anthony Martin*
    Cover, Design – William S. Harvey

Notes:              

© 1967 Nonesuch Records
Barcode and Other Identifiers

    Matrix / Runout: H-71174 A
    Matrix / Runout: H-71174 B

Label: Nonesuch ‎– H-71174
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Country: US
Released: 1967
Genre: Electronic
Style: Modern Classical, Experimental



Net links:  
              
Morton Subotnick website         
NY Times Buchla obit           
KQED Buchla obit          
The Guardian Buchla obit       
NPR Music ~ Buchla       
Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments             
          
Links to YouTube:    
           
Buchla 200 Modular Synth             
Morton Subotnick: Silver apples of the Moon               
Morton Subotnick: Silver apples of the Moon (complete album)                 
               
              
          
               
Styrous® ~ Monday, September 19, 2016              



September 18, 2016

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf @ the JABC's Oakland Creek to Bay Day cleanup ~ September 17, 2016







photos by Styrous®


Oakland Transportation Office Aide, left
Oakland Mayor, #Libby Schaaf, center 
Oakland Policy Director, Matt Nichols, right



































 




























































 







 


 

































 
















Styrous® ~ Sunday, September 18, 2016