FRISCO—The Secret History
Join us on a cinematic journey through the last wild years when San Francisco was still wide-open. The cops ran the town in the Thirties and Bones Remmer ran the town in the Forties.
Battles raged between the factions of dark and light in the hidden realms of San Francisco’s power elite, behind the headlines, from the celestial dominions of Nob Hill eateries and private clubs down to the nether depths of the dive bars in the heart of the Tenderloin, up to the Barbary Coast and jazz joints of North Beach and over to the banks and brokerages in the Financial District …
FRISCO will bring alive that wild and bygone era of the Cool Grey City of Love that seduced the world.
Podcasting since 2025 • 17 episodes
FRISCO—The Secret History
Latest Episodes
Call It Frisco Part 3: Emperor Norton and Herb Caen Myths Debunked!
In this episode of The Secret History of Frisco, Knox Bronson returns—hopefully for the last time—to San Francisco’s most emotionally charged semantic battlefield: the word “Frisco.”Building on the earlier episodes Ca...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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24:08
Ep. 9 Bones Remmer Pt. 1—Tenderloin Gambling King, Jack Ruby, & A Short History of Frisco's La Cosa Nostra
In this episode, we step back into San Francisco at the end of the roaring twenties, when bootleggers, blackhanders, and quiet Mafia bosses carved out invisible empires in North Beach. It was a time when the city’s underworld tried to keep its ...
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Episode 9
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29:03
Ep. 8—Rachel Walther Discusses "The Lady from Shanghai" Orson Welles’ Fractured Dreamscape of San Francisco Noir
This installment is all about the wild 1947 film noir The Lady From Shanghai, and guest Rachel Walther, a film historian with a book coming out soon called Born To Lose, The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon, breaks down...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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44:20
Ep. 7—"WOMEN IN SALOONS—The Shame of My Sex" (1944) Part Two
Welcome back, Frisco fans! You're tuning into Part Two and the conclusion of our deep dive into the San Francisco Examiner's 1944 sensation: "WOMEN IN SALOONS—The Shame of My Sex," by the legendary, if controversial, auth...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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32:51
Ep. 7—The Examiner's 1944 Moral Crusade Against Barfly Women—"WOMEN IN SALOONS—The Shame of My Sex" Part 1
In this episode of The Secret History of Frisco, we're diving into the San Francisco Examiner's sensational 1944 moral crusade against Barfly Women and the threat they posed to the social fabric of San Francisco. The paper hired the renowned 86...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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50:12