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#TBT: San Francisco's Legendary Fights and Feuds

31 August 2017

V. Alexandra de F. Szoenyi

Everyone loves a good feud, and San Francisco, with its rowdy history, has been riddled with them. For this week's #TBT, we're showcasing some of the SF's most scandalous disagreements.

When undertaker Nicholas Yung refused to sell his lot to railroad tycoon Charles Crocker,—who wanted to buy up the entire block to build a megamansion—Crocker sought revenge. He constructed a 40-foot-tall "spite fence" in 1876 to obstruct any light or view Yung would have from his windows. The wall stayed up until 1904—that's 28 years!—when Nicholas Yung's descendants sold his property to Crocker's descendants.
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Charles de Young fires the first shot in his feud with the Revered Isaac Smith.

In 1879, Charles de Young, co-founder of the San Francisco Chronicle, went after mayoral candidate Isaac Smith Kalloch, accusing him of having an affair. Kalloch responded by saying de Young's mother ran a brothel. Infuriated, de Young shot Kalloch, who survived and was elected mayor. Isaac's son, Isaac M. Kalloch, enacted revenge in defense of his father in 1880 by shooting and killing de Young.
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Bruce Lee is a legend, however not everyone was a fan. Fellow martial artist and teacher Wong Jack Man was upset that Lee was teaching martial arts to white people. After hearing Lee's challenge, in 1964, that he could fight anyone in San Francisco, Wong Jack Man accepted the challenge. The two fought in Oakland, and there is plenty of debate on who actually won the match. We all know, however, who went on to become the most famous martial artist in history.
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Friends can became foes. Such was the case of writers Mark Twain and Bret Harte. As they were coming up in the writing world, they supported and helped each other, but once their careers bloomed, jealousy and competition entered the picture. Twain called Harte "a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, a sot, a sponge, a coward, a Jeremy Diddler."
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We're pretty sure you'd never thought you'd be reading about an egg war, but it happened on the Farallon Islands in the 1800s. The population of San Francisco was exploding at the time, and chicken eggs were rare and expensive. The Egg Company (also known as the Pacific Egg Company and the Farallon Egg Company) decided to lay claim to the island in 1851 and sold its speckled murre eggs. On June 4, 1863, a rival egger group arrived armed to the island wanting to collect eggs themselves, and a gunfight ensued, leaving at least one person dead.
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When San Francisco scion Sean Wilsey wrote his book Oh the Glory of it All, he took more than one swipe at his new stepmother, socialite and philanthropist Dede Wilsey, basically calling her a manipulative, evil, gold digger. Dede, in turn, claimed Sean was a liar, looked into suing her former stepson, and told the New York Times that she was saving newspapers with coverage of the book to use for her dog to urinate on. Sean Wilsey also dished the dirt on his mother, Pat Montandon, who in turn, wrote her own book, Oh the Hell of it All.
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Belle and Charles Cora vs. William H. Richardson

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