Today's Portals relates the rollicking tale of the first Cliff House - a clapboard structure built by real estate tycoon Charles Butler in 1863. Rough tripThat was the difficulty of the 6-mile ride from the developed part of town to the sea - a journey that took intrepid travelers through rolling sand dunes as they fought a constant westerly wind. [...] he and his partner - conveniently a state senator - built a toll road, Point Lobos Avenue, that ran from Bush Street and Masonic Avenue to Ocean Beach. When the well-heeled guests arrived, they enjoyed the superb ocean views from the veranda and looked at sea lions playing on the rocks, while feasting on such high-end provender as frog's legs, terrapin, fried oysters and crabs, washed down with Champagne and cocktails, which had recently become all the rage. Because only the well-to-do could afford the pricey toll road and the even pricier restaurant tabs, this stretch of the coast was in effect a private beach. A good decadeDespite Twain's blue-fingered condemnation of the drive, San Francisco's upper crust frequented the Cliff House in such numbers that Butler tripled the size of the building. After the city opened the first public road to the beach, ordinary people began flocking out to the Cliff House and its competitors. New business model Foster remade the Cliff House in the tryst-friendly tradition of San Francisco's numerous "French restaurants," many of whose claim to Frenchness was not so much their haute cuisine as the fact that they featured private dining rooms and waiters who would not enter unless summoned. O'Brien writes, "Even though the boys from the mining camps drank and scuffled with their doxies in the private dining rooms upstairs, a man could still take his family there in all propriety without fear of getting pushed around or hit on the head with a bottle."
Reported by SFGate 3 hours ago.
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