Trocadero (San Francisco)
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In San Francisco, California, at the turn of the 20th century, the Trocadero was a lively roadhouse, offering gambling at the roulette tables and dancing, as well as the best trout pond in California. It was opened in 1892, in a wooden building that had been brought round the Horn and was by reputation the first house built in San Francisco west of Twin Peaks, the "rancho" of the Greene family. The first seeds of Australian Eucalyptus had been sown here, about 1871. Appropriately, at the Trocadero Abe Ruef was found hiding, after his indictment in notorious municipal graft trials of 1907. In the 1930s Bernard Maybeck recast the Trocadero Inn into a children's playground, renamed the Sigmund Stern Grove.
The stylish connotations of the name "Trocadero" derive from the Battle of Trocadero in southern Spain, a citadel held by liberal Spanish forces that was taken by the French troops sent by Charles X, in 1823. The battle was commemorated in the Place du Trocadéro, Paris, and the monumental glamour of the Parisian site has given rise to a variety of locales bearing its name.
In London the Trocadero Restaurant of J. Lyons and Co. opened in 1896 in Shaftesbury Avenue, near the theatres of the West End. It offered magnificent in an Opera Baroque style, and the various Trocaderos of the English-speaking world have derived their names from this original, the epitome of grand Edwardian catering.
Consequently, Trocadero is the name of several restaurants and clubs throughout the world: see Trocadero.
"Trocadero" continued to have a connotation for San Franciscans of stylish nighttime fun. In its heyday, the late 70's and early 80's, Trocadero Transfer was regarded as the best hard-core— and largely gay— disco on the West Coast. It was among the half-dozen musical style-setters in the country.
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