Remembering the Great Quake

If, as they say, God spanked the town
For being over frisky,
Why did He burn the churches down
And save Hotaling's whiskey?

So goes the poem by Charles Kellogg Field written shortly after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. According to the Anchor Brewing Company, which has produced a special whiskey to mark the occasion:

After the disaster, several clergymen asserted that the catastrophe had been divine retribution, visited upon the City by the Bay for its wicked ways. Thanks in no small part to the pluck, resolve, and ingenuity of its staff, however, A.P. Hotaling & Co.'s Jackson Street whiskey warehouse survived. And so, "while millions of dollars worth of normally non-inflammable material was reduced to ashes," as the Argonaut would later report, thousands of "barrels of highly inflammable whisky were preserved intact in the heart of the tremendous holocaust."

Yesterday marked 100 years since the San Francisco Earthquake.

I miss San Francisco. The mountains. The ocean. The bay. The nightlife. The history. The hills. The people. I could go on and on. There's so much to love about the city.

It's been fun reading and watching all the coverage of the 100-year anniversary of the quake. I wish I'd made plans to be there. I would have loved to be on Market Street at Lotta's Fountain at 5:12 a.m. yesterday.

To read some excellent and extensive coverage of the anniversary of the earthquake, go to the Great Quake page on SFGate.com.

(Aside to Mom and my sister: Can I add a bottle of the Hotaling's whiskey to my birthday list? It would look nice in the bar...)