Snapshots of Life in the Golden State. : Dark Times and Poignant Moments for the Bay Area

Like people elsewhere, Bay Area residents adjusted their clocks last weekend.

Many, however, would have preferred turning back the hands of time a few years rather than a single hour.

Or moving them forward as quickly as possible.

The last thing anyone needed was an extra 60 minutes of grief, or potential calamity, after the devastating East Bay firestorm and the death of larger-than-life rock music impresario Bill Graham in a helicopter crash.

Wildfires, unlike earthquakes, lightning, bullets or midair collisions, usually give their victims a few frantic moments to decide what material possessions are important enough, and compact enough, to haul off to safety.

Some of the most poignant reports on the Oakland-Berkeley conflagration have centered on the things people carried. More than anything else, it appeared, survivors treasured recorded memories: Wedding albums. Family portraits. Videotapes of children.

Others took grandmother’s quilts. Children’s trophies. Family stories written by a young son. China. Dog food. Oil paintings. A saxophone.

And the ultimate in pragmatism: an architect’s plan to rebuild a house exactly as it had stood.

SAN FRANCISCO BAY BLUES

Leader of the bands: Bill Graham never played the guitar. And in the era of the counterculture, the tart-tongued Holocaust survivor made his living by carving out a business empire.

Yet in the end, Graham, always eager to throw a major-league benefit to aid a needy social cause, had come to epitomize an era of ferment in San Francisco as much as any of the leading musicians or activists of the late 1960s.

The rock promoter’s untimely death spurred an outpouring of emotion in the Bay Area. What other ticket seller’s demise would command a TV news special following a World Series game? Or a weekend-long radio musical tribute as disc jockeys spun golden selections by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company?

“He was our uncle,” Dead guitarist Bob Weir told the San Francisco Chronicle, “the guy who was respectable enough to talk to the rest of the world while we were out on the fringe.”

In the face of tragedy, Graham’s aides told reporters that the show must go on. And prerecorded ads for his promotions continued to play on the radio. The spookiest was one for an upcoming Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert.

“Bill Graham Presents. . . ,” the ad began, as bits of popular Petty tunes played in the background. The songs, in prophetic sequence, were “Learning to Fly,” “Free Fallin’,” and finally, “Breakdown.”

Major California Disasters

L ast week’s Berkeley Hills blaze, in which at least 25 people perished, calls to mind other major disasters in California history. Here is a look at some of the more devastating disasters.

APRIL 18, 1906: The Great San Francisco Quake, an estimated 8.3 magnitude, kills 700 people.

DEC. 14, 1963: A portion of the Baldwin Hills Dam breaks, dumping 290 million gallons of water and debris down a hillside on homes below, killing five people.

MAR. 27, 1964: Eleven people are killed when a tsunami (a giant sea wave) nearly wipes out Crescent City, in the aftermath of an 8.4 quake near Anchorage, Alaska.

JAN. 18-29, 1969: Three back-to-back storms deluge Southern California, causing floods and mudslides, killing 101 people.

SEPT. 25, 1978: A light plane and a PSA jetliner collide over San Diego, killing 144 people.

AUG. 31, 1986: An Aeromexico jetliner collides with a small, private plane over Cerritos, killing 82 people.

DEC. 7, 1987: A PSA jetliner crashes in San Luis Obispo County, killing 43 people, after gunman David Burke, in a revenge murder scheme, fires three shots at the pilot and co-pilot.

OCT. 17, 1989: A 7.1 quake in the Santa Cruz mountains rocks San Francisco and other cities in a 3,000-square-mile area, killing 63 people.

SOURCE: L.A. Times News File

Compiled by Times editorial researcher Tracy Thomas

POLITICAL INSIDER

Time to vote: For the better part of a year, San Francisco residents have listened to four major mayoral challengers try to out-criticize Mayor Art Agnos for allowing their city to deteriorate.

On Tuesday, the voters will finally have their say. Polls show that the embattled Agnos will win a spot in a December runoff, most likely facing either liberal Supervisor Angela Alioto or conservative former Police Chief Frank Jordan.

Political makeover?: State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, whom many consider a future candidate for governor, is planning to hire Michael Reese, press secretary for Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), to help beef up her public image.

Reese, a former 13-year Newsweek correspondent, has worked for Speaker Brown just over a year in a job that many consider one of the toughest in the Capitol--spokesman for the flamboyant, unpredictable, shoot-from-the-lip Speaker. As the first director of communications for Treasurer Brown, Reese will have to deal with a much different style. The Democratic treasurer, in her public comments, is as cool as the Speaker is hot.

EXIT LINE

“California is a tragic country--like Palestine, like every Promised Land.”

The late British author and dramatist Christopher Isherwood, a longtime resident of Santa Monica Canyon, in his 1966 collection “Exhumations.”