Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, June 1922 · page 49 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #34 — page 49: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Whiz Bang piece satirizes Prohibition's enforcement in San Francisco. The poem laments Ellis Street's transformation from a glamorous bar district serving champagne ("Cliquot") and cocktails into a mundane waffle shop—suggesting Prohibition has stripped the city of its sophisticated vice. The prose mocks San Francisco's previous lax enforcement, where residents avoided the medical pretense other Americans used to drink legally (fake "tonsilitis prescriptions"). It ridicules the new strict Prohibition director ("Uncle Samuel"—the federal government) through absurdist examples of newfound enforcement absurdity: eating raisins on a Ferris wheel or toasting with a "cross-eyed girl" are now technically violations. The satire targets both Prohibition's puritanical overreach and San Francisco's lost libertarian drinking culture. The humor hinges on comparing serious alcohol prohibition to trivial, invented "misdemeanors," exposing the law's excessive reach.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 47 City of Health, Wealth, Fashion In San Francisco. Heave ho, and a bottle of rum, Ellis street's gone on the bum. Where once we watched the Cliquot fizz Is now filled up with waffle biz. Where once we walked and drank a stein, A sloe gin fizz or a jug of wine, The waffle has come and come to stay— And poor J. B. has had his day. Song of Ellis street. UNTIL very recently San Franciscans have been beating the barrier on this liquor business. While the rest of the country has been struggling along every tenth day with a tonsilitis prescription, this old burg has stepped along in its old-time metropolitan, care- free way. It has not been necessary to buy one of those wheel chair things with a limousine body and rattle off to the doc to stick your tongue out or to pull it in. But recently Uncle Samuel made a change in prohibition directors. Now it is a misde- meanor to eat raisins on a Ferris wheel or to ask a cross-eyed girl to drink to you with her