Informative Diversion

Chronicle columnist Kevin Fisher-Paulson composes an annual Holiday Quiz consisting of San Francisco-related questions. Obeying his admonition not to use the Internet, I got precisely none of the answers though the questions didn't seem so tough. Perhaps Undoubtedly you can do better, dear reader.

1. What is the foggiest place in the United States?

2. Who are Bummer and Lazarus?

3. What is the original site of the Castro Theatre?

(From opensfhistory)

4. What was Zane Grey’s first name?

5. Where is the Breon Gate?

6. What do Lesotho, San Marino and the Vatican have in common?

7. Originally called the Peacock Cafe, this restaurant reopened in 1963 and serves the best pizza in the city.

O Henry (Britannica)

8. Streets of San Francisco: Dore Alley, Cora Street, Jessie Street, Isis Street and Minna Street, all small corridors south of Market, have what in common?

9. How did O. Henry get his pen name?

10. Who was originally cast to play the role of Dirty Harry?

11. By what means of travel did Al Capone arrive at Alcatraz?

12. Streets of San Francisco, Part 2: What is the steepest street in San Francisco?

13. What is the Feynman Point?

14. Where is an exact replica of the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in San Francisco?

Alameda Naval Air Station (airphotona)

15. Dorcas Reilly passed away this year. What did she invent that affected the lives of 20 million people?

16. What is the fastest way to walk from the county of San Francisco to the county of Alameda without crossing a bridge?

17. You enter a dark house in the middle of the night. Inside are an oil lamp, a stove full of wood and a candle. You have only one match. Which do you light first?

18. Which state is farthest south? North? West? East?

19. Where is the tallest rotunda dome in the United States of America?

20. Name a word in which all the vowels appear in alphabetical order?

21. What do Doc Holliday, Casey Stengel and Zane Grey have in common?

22. Streets of San Francisco, Part 3: Another of my favorite Chronicle columnists, Armistead Maupin, made this street famous. Where in the city can you find Barbary Lane?

Answers below the fold:





(1) I thought I would start out with the quiz question that will cause the most argument. The foggiest place in the United States is not San Francisco, but our near neighbor to the north, Point Reyes. More than 100 days of fog a year.

(2) Bummer and Lazarus were not Emperor Norton’s dogs. They were, however, two of the most popular dogs to ever live on the Barbary Coast. The San Francisco Bulletin claimed in 1863 that they had killed 400 rodents in one hunt. Buddyboy and Bandit have no such aspirations, but they do envy the plaque dedicated to them in the Redwood Grove at the Transamerica Pyramid: “Two dogs with a single bark, two tails that wagged as one.”

(3) Cliff’s Hardware. It was also the first business in the Eureka Valley Neighborhood to hire openly gay and lesbian applicants. And yes, it is the place where the Terry Asten-Bennett works.

(4) Pearl.

(5) The Breon Gate are those two fancy columns at the 19th Avenue entrance to Golden Gate Park, a gift from Christine Breon to memorialize her late husband, Paul, and her deceased son, Charles.

(6) They are countries completely surrounded by other countries.

(7) Bravo’s Pizza. You can argue all the other facts in this column, but it is not only the best pizza in the city, but work site of the most well-educated pizza maker on Mission Street.

(8) They were all named after sex workers. It is for this reason that it is unlikely no one will ever name an alley in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior Fisher-Paulson Way.

(9) William Sydney Porter used the name of his favorite prison guard, while he was in jail for embezzlement.

(10) The original star cast to play Dirty Harry was none other than Frank Sinatra. Frank injured his hand, so they offered the role to John Wayne. Then Steve McQueen. Then Paul Newman. Then Clint Eastwood. The difference between “Go ahead. Make my day” and “I did it my way.”

(11) By train! A train to Alcatraz? The warden was so worried about security that he ordered an entire train car to be loaded onto a barge instead of moving the prisoners from the train to the boat.

(12) Bradford, with a 41 percent grade. Somewhere in Bernal Heights.

(13) The Feynman point is the first time a digit repeats six times in succession in pi. It is the 762nd position, where you can find six nines in a row.

(14) Miracles can happen! In 1904, Edward Joseph Le Breton vowed to give an exact replica of the grotto of our Lady of Lourdes if the Blessed Mother spared the life of a sister who was very ill. When she recovered, he kept his promise and re-built the grotto at St. Anne’s (at 300 Lake St.).

(15) Dorcas Reilly invented the Green Bean Casserole. Regular readers will know that Nurse Vivian insisted that no holiday dinner was complete without this tasty concoction of frozen green beans, cream of mushroom soup and French onion rings. More than 20 million people served it at Thanksgiving.

(16) The fastest way to walk from the County of San Francisco to the County of Alameda is to pick the right place in San Francisco. Technically, the far west end of the former Alameda Naval Station is part of San Francisco, and neither cartologists nor supervisors have ever changed that.

(17) The match.

(18) Hawaii. Alaska. Alaska. Alaska. Turns out that the Aleutian chain of Alaska goes so far west that it actually crosses the 180 degree of longitude (the opposite side of the prime meridian).

(19) San Francisco City Hall. As the city was being rebuilt from the quake, Mayor Sunny Jim Rolph sent a guy to D.C. to measure the Capitol Dome so that San Francisco would have the tallest rotunda in the world.

(20) Facetiously.

(21) They were all dentists.

(22) You cannot find Barbary Lane. It’s real name was Macondray Lane.