The Wasp — 1890 — page 30: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

The main cartoon depicts "Society" as an exclusive bubble containing fashionable women, satirizing San Francisco's wealthy elite. The article "New York's California Colony" mocks how prominent New Yorkers—particularly someone called "McAllisters"—have migrated to San Francisco, dominating its social scene. The satire targets social pretension: the piece jokes that these Eastern transplants now rule San Francisco society, excluding local Californians from their gatherings. The text ridicules their snobbery while simultaneously mocking San Francisco's eagerness to adopt Eastern social hierarchies. The cartoon's bubble imagery suggests Society as both exclusive and fragile—a contained world isolated from ordinary people. The satire critiques both the arrogance of elite newcomers and provincial California's susceptibility to Eastern social authority.