The Legendary San Francisco Snake Races
Herb Caen, the beloved columnist at the SF Chronicle, adored this city. However, there were some things about the city that he loathed. He was not a fan of the long gone Fox Theater, built during the golden age of Hollywood Films. He supported efforts made to tear it down. I never understood why he was in support of that beautiful old business being wiped away from the landscape of San Francisco. I do understand; however, understand why he was not in support of one of San Francisco’s strangest mid-20th Century St. Patrick’s Day traditions, know as the snake races. Yes, you read that correctly. San Francisco once held annual Saint Patrick’s Day snake races. Heavy drinking and snakes don’t seem like a great pairing to me either.
Between 1964 and 1988, KABL, a bay area radio station, hosted snake races on March 17th. Why snakes? It was derived from Irish lore. Saint Patrick was said to have driven the snakes out of Ireland. Ireland is not the natural habitat of any type of snake however. For some unknown reason, this is part of the legend of Saint Patrick, although snake sightings are extremely rare in Ireland. When a snake makes its’ way into Ireland, it becomes international news. I stumbled across a small article in the New York Times archives, dated May 13, 1925. It was about a snake found in Dublin. How the snake made its way to Ireland is unknown. The presence of this snake was quite newsworthy, as finding a snake in Ireland is a very rare thing. The snake was put into the national museum.
Since both Ireland and San Francisco are without any indigenous snakes, the obvious thing for the good people of San Francisco to do, was import snakes for an “only in SF” Saint Patty’s Day celebration! It had a good run too, 25 years. Eventually, the race was shut down by the SPCA, on grounds of animal cruelty. Herb Caen happily reported the end of this weird San Francisco tradition.
Check out photos from the days of snake racing in the SF Gate Article
Apparently snake racing was not the strangest animal race that took place in San Francisco in the mid 20th Century. In Herb Caen’s 1960 Book, “Only in San Francisco”, he tells the tale of a “madly San Francisco day”. This tale, starting on page 41, includes the story of a “snail derby” at a popular French Restaurant, called, “La Trianon”, which was located on O’Farrell Street. Apparently the owners of La Trianon imported live escargot snails to San Francisco. Celebrity and socialite guests, dressed to the nines, gathered around a box with wooden strips for the snails to race on. They were all numbered and wearing plastic chariots. The various snail owners needed to get their snails to move the fastest. They poured a trail of Champagne to get the snails to move quickly, as the crowd cheered. Some of the snails got drunk and one fell over. Another died. This outlandish tale, told by Mr. Caen, is amongst my favorites. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall that day. San Francisco has always been a day drinking town. Who knew that even the snails were in on it?
Today, we don’t really run across any activities that involve drinking and animals, except for the occasional service dog at your local bar. The closest thing might be the Find the Gnome Contest at the St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl, since gnomes are kind of magical creatures. Either way, the snake races may be gone, but San Francisco has plenty of fun ways to celebrate the fist big party holiday of the year.
