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 • 21 episodes
FRISCO—The Secret History
Latest Episodes
The Lady In Red Part Two: Collateral Damage
In this episode, I continue the story of Dolly Fine as San Francisco’s long-standing system of tolerated vice begins to unravel in the wake of the Atherton Report of 1937. Police shakeups, grand jury investigations, and rising public pressure t...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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35:07
Dolly Fine—The Lady In Red & Frisco's Empire of Vice
Dolly Fine was one of San Francisco’s last great madams and a defining figure of the city’s wide-open 1930s nightlife. Tall, blonde, impeccably dressed, and deeply embedded in the city’s underworld, Dolly ran one of the most profitable and prof...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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35:13
La Cosa Nostra Gang War 1928-32 Bonus Episode Trailer
We pick up alongside Episode Nine on Bones Remmer, zooming out to look at what was happening in San Francisco in 1928 as the La Cosa Nostra gang war intensified in North Beach. Along the way, we pause on the culture of the moment: the movies pe...
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7:16
Ep. 11—A Very Frisco Christmas Special
This special holiday episode of Frisco — The Secret History explores how Christmas was celebrated in San Francisco from the Gold Rush through the 1940s. The episode opens with a reflection on Emperor Norton, the city’s most beloved ecc...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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27:36
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