SAN FRANCISCO, ITALY

sanfranciscoitaly:

(Mayor Alioto at the Opening of BART)

Mayor Joseph Alioto, predecessor of lionhearted Mayor George Moscone, was born of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. No, he wasn’t born in 1906, but a little backstory will shed light on this curious connection.

Joseph’s father, Giuseppe Alioto, had sailed from Palermo at the age of nine to the United States and ended up working on the fishing boats of San Francisco Bay. In the Bay, he met and married Domenica Lazio, the daughter of Sicilian immigrants. (In fact, Giuseppe was one of three Alioto brothers who married three Lazio sisters and all lived in the same apartment building!) Anyhow, Giuseppe met Domenica on a fishing boat while escaping the carnage of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Had the rumble never tumbled the city, Joseph Alioto, 36th Mayor of San Francisco, would have likely never graced our planet.

(Panorama of the 1906 Earthquake’s Aftermath. Click to enlarge.)

Before politics, Alioto worked for the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department and eventually started his own antitrust practice representing big names like Walt Disney and Samuel Goldwyn. His sharp, shrewd and charismatic personality led him to great success in the field of antitrust. In fact, from 1964 to 1966 he won more than $61 million dollars in damages for his clients. Indeed, Alioto’s vigorous defense of American society from monopolistic price fixing, changed the legal paradigm in the United States: up to that point, antitrust cases were generally only brought by the government. Energetic Alioto changed all that.

As San Francisco Mayor, Alito presided over a time of political and social unrest in the Bay. Serving from 1968 to 1976, Mayor Alioto served during the height of the hippy movement, anti-Vietnam protests, Black Panther marches and high profile homicide sprees in the Bay. Nonetheless, Mayor Alioto made lasting and beneficial contributions to the city of San Francisco. Perhaps more notable, he willed BART into existence, as well as pushed through the development of the Embarcadero Center and the Transamerica Pyramid, both iconic and economically significant to the city.

(Embarcadero Center)

Though his years of politics and legal work, Alioto never lost sight of his connection to Italy. Indeed, to this day, his daughter, Angela Alioto, is heavily involved in the San Francisco Italian community. She’s also served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and has had remarkable career practicing civil rights law in the Bay. Angela’s family would spend eight weeks every summer in Italy, learning Italian language and culture. In the Italian tradition of San Francisco, Mayor Joseph Alioto is bedrock and his family continues today to bring Italian charisma and flavor to the Bay.