Turn another corner after leaving Fiorini's and look down into a basement. You do not have to go to the country to see wine making. Here is one of the prim- itive wine presses of Italy, and if you want to know why some irreverent people call the red wine of the Italians "Chateau la Feet," you have but to watch the process of its making in these Telegraph Hill wine houses. The grapes are poured into a big tub and a burly man takes off his shoes and socks and emulates the oxen of Biblical times when it treaded out the grain. Of course he washes his feet before he gets into the wine tui). But, at that, it is not a pleasant thing to contemplate. Now you look around with wider and more comprehensive eyes, and now you begin to uuder- 72 SAN FRANCISCO stand something about these strange foreign quarters in San Francisco. As you look around you note another thing. Italian fecundity is apparent everywhere, and the farther up the AROUND steep slope of the Hill you go the LITTLE more children you see. They are ITALY everywhere, and of all sizes and ages, in such reckless profusion that you no longer wonder if the world is to be depopulated through the coming of the fad of Eugenics. The Italian mother has but two thoughts — her God and her children, and it is to care for her children that she has brought from her native land the knowledge of cookery, and of those things that help to put life and strength in their bodies. An Italian girl said to us one day: "Mama knows nothing but cooking and going to church. She cooks from daylight until dark, and stops cooking only when she is at church." It was evident that her domestic and religious duties dominated her life, and she knew but two things — to please her God and to care for her family, and without question if occasion demanded the pleasure of her fam- ily took precedence. San Francisco's Latin quarter is appealing, enticing and hypnotizing. Go there and you will learn why San Francisco is a Bohemian city. \ou will find out that so many things you have thought important are really not at all worth while. Go there and you will lind the root of Bohemian restaurants. These people have studied gastronomy as a science, and they have imparted their knowledge to San Francisco, with the result that the Bo- hemian spirit enters into our very lives, and our minds are broadened, and our views of life and our ideas have a wider scope. It is because of this condition, born on the slopes of Telegraph Hill, that we are drawn out of depressing influences, out of the spirit of self-conscious- ness, and lind a world of pleasure, innocent and educa- 73 BOHEMIAN tional, the inspiration for which has been handed down through generations of Latins since the days of early Roman empire, wliich inspiration is AROUND still a power for good because it LITTLE takes people out of themselves and ITALY places them where they can look

AI-modernized reading of the original text

Turn another corner after leaving Fiorini's and look down into a basement. You do not have to go to the country to see wine making. Here is one of the primitive wine presses of Italy, and if you want to know why some irreverent people call the red wine of the Italians "Chateau la Feet," you have but to watch the process of its making in these Telegraph Hill wine houses. The grapes are poured into a big tub and a burly man takes off his shoes and socks and emulates the oxen of Biblical times when it treaded out the grain. Of course he washes his feet before he gets into the wine tui). But, at that, it is not a pleasant thing to contemplate. Now you look around with wider and more comprehensive eyes, and now you begin to under- stand something about these strange foreign quarters in San Francisco. As you look around you note another thing. Italian fecundity is apparent everywhere, and the farther up the AROUND steep slope of the Hill you go the LITTLE more children you see. They are ITALY everywhere, and of all sizes and ages, in such reckless profusion that you no longer wonder if the world is to be depopulated through the coming of the fad of Eugenics. The Italian mother has but two thoughts — her God and her children, and it is to care for her children that she has brought from her native land the knowledge of cookery, and of those things that help to put life and strength in their bodies. An Italian girl said to us one day: "Mama knows nothing but cooking and going to church. She cooks from daylight until dark, and stops cooking only when she is at church." It was evident that her domestic and religious duties dominated her life, and she knew but two things — to please her God and to care for her family, and without question if occasion demanded the pleasure of her family took precedence. San Francisco's Latin quarter is appealing, enticing and hypnotizing. Go there and you will learn why San Francisco is a Bohemian city. \ou will find out that so many things you have thought important are really not at all worth while. Go there and you will lind the root of Bohemian restaurants. These people have studied gastronomy as a science, and they have imparted their knowledge to San Francisco, with the result that the Bohemian spirit enters into our very lives, and our minds are broadened, and our views of life and our ideas have a wider scope. It is because of this condition, born on the slopes of Telegraph Hill, that we are drawn out of depressing influences, out of the spirit of self-consciousness, and find a world of pleasure, innocent and educa- tional, the inspiration for which has been handed down through generations of Latins since the days of early Roman empire, which inspiration is AROUND still a power for good because it LITTLE takes people out of themselves and ITALY places them where they can look

Bohemian San Francisco