San Francisco is a colourful city, exemplified by the rainbow streets of the Castro, the multi-coloured wooden Victorian houses, the dayglo green Parrots of Telegraph Hill.
The colour of the Castro was recently added to in the form of another bronze plaque in the rainbow honour walk.
Roger Casement, Irish rebel, diplomat and human rights activist is now immortalised in the pavement alongside such LGBTQ+ heroic figures as Alan Turing, Oscar Wilde, Josephine Baker and Tennessee Williams.
The great, the good, the politicians and the gays were all there for the unveiling of the plaque.
RM Block
Irish government minister Neale Richmond just happened to be in town and was clearly delighted to attend in blazing autumn sunshine, beaming to all assembled.
Drag queen and president of the San Francisco Rainbow Honour Walk, Donna Sachet, hobnobbed with the politicians and the crowd, including Father Aidan, the Irish priest in the Ray Bans, who had popped over from Saint Columba’s church in Oakland.
Scott Weiner, San Francisco state senator already running for DC Congress next year politely ignored the rainbow jester hatted protestor perched on his shoulder and made his speech. (Well, it wouldn’t be a San Francisco event without a colourful protester.)
Daniel Lurie, the mayor of San Francisco, took his turn to verbally joust with the jester and made an impassioned speech, praising Roger Casement’s legacy and declaring his ongoing strong support for human rights in The City. Mayor Lurie looked ten foot tall and proud having just apparently faced down those who had threatened to unleash the National Guard onto the streets of San Francisco.
“Well, we are good for now anyway,” remarked a bystander.
[ Roger Casement told own defence team ‘black diaries’ were a forgeryOpens in new window ]
Matthew Rothschild is the man who wove all the rainbow threads together. The retired lawyer and Democrat activist’s office sits opposite the famous North Beach book shop City Lights. There you enter an Aladdin’s cave of political memorabilia. Obama posters, books on the Beatles, the Irish language, Kamala Harris bobble head dolls. And on the wall, a full front page from The New York Journal dated 1916, with the headline “Casement Executed”.
To say that Matthew is a fan of Roger Casement is something of an understatement. Unusually for a third generation Californian Rothschild, Matthew avidly attends Irish language classes.
“Tá sé an deachair”, he notes.
“Cinnte”, says I.
It was these classes that he first heard of the exploits of Casement, along with Hilda Kissane, president of the Irish United Services. Together, they dreamt up the plan to immortalise Roger Casement in bronze in San Francisco.
Hilda presides on the umbrella committee of a motley crew of Irish organisations, the GAA, the cultural centre, the pastoral centre and even the ancient order of Hibernians.
All of whom remarkably came together to hatch the plan a mere eight or so years ago.
Matthew went along to speak to Hilda’s committee, made an impassioned speech, and his audience agreed on the spot to help fund the Castro plaque.
Casements Bar on nearby Mission Street played their part with a rousing fundraiser. Co-owner Gillian Fitzgerald indicates the murals on the walls of the pub; Sinead O’Connor, Panti Bliss, Delores O’Riordan, and now Roger Casement.
“We’d be a bit different to your average cookie cutter Irish American bar and we are total history nerds so that’s why we named the bar after Roger Casement” she explains.
“On any night we might have the lads from the construction site and a few drag queens hanging out on the patio.”
The final helping Irish hand came from Laois hurler and builder Mark Gorman whose construction company laid the plaque in the concrete pavement outside the Bank of America on Castro Street.
“It was the site of the first Hibernian bank in San Francisco” explained Hilda.
“It was then an Irish working-class area, called Eureka Valley, we are talking the nineteenth century my family would and the Irish community would have all banked there”.
The pavement area in front of the bank was known in the day as Hibernian Beach as Irish customers gathered to socialise there. It has since evolved as a centre of the Castro area, the site of the annual Christmas tree and an aids memorial.
The Delancey Street theater was recently packed for another Irish legend.
An emotional Kate Gunning introduced Manchán Magan’s RTÉ documentary Listen To The Land Speak. She explained that that Manchán had wanted to come to San Francisco to show the film. European and American friends watched, hushed, visibly moved by Manchan’s passion, and the stunning visuals of Irish archaeology and landscape.
When Manchán passed away, I received a text from Matthew Rothschild.
“Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam. Ní bheidh duine eile cosúil leis ann choíche. Manchan Magán.”
One colourful San Francisco free spirit recognising another.
