Art Deco Society of California [CA]
The Art Deco Society of California (ADSC) is dedicated to honoring the aesthetic and architectural achievements of the first half of the 20th century, especially the decades of the 1920's, 30's and 40's that is now known as the Art Deco period. The ADSC was founded in 1981 by an architectural historian in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a member of the International Coalition of Art Deco Societies. The ADSC "endeavors to increase public awareness of the Art Deco era, to preserve and promote its art, architecture, music, fashions, transportation, and other forms of its popular culture." The ADSC researches and documents buildings and other artifacts worthy of preservation and also awards certificates of merit for noteworthy preservation and restoration efforts in California.
The site offers a calendar of events, a listing of notable Art Deco structures in the San Francisco Bay Area, past ADSC award winners, photo galleries for all past events held by the ADSC, and an archive of all issues of the ADSC magazine, "The Sophisticate," which are available for purchase.
Oysters became a high-demand source of protein and nutrition following the Civil War. With the rise of industry and of shipping by rail, canneries and corporate oyster farming operations sprang up on both coasts, eager to supply the working class, and anyone else who wanted the tasty shellfish, with oysters shipped live or canned. In San Francisco, a center of oyster piracy, the boom years of the oyster industry corresponded, unsurprisingly, with those of the oyster industry—both took off in 1870, as the state began allowing major oyster farming operations to purchase the rights to underwater bay "land" (traditionally common property), and petered off in the 1920s, as silt and pollution disrupted the bay's ecosystem.
At 15, Jack London bought a boat, the Razzle Dazzle, and joined the oyster pirates of San Francisco Bay to escape work as a child laborer. London wrote about his experiences in his semi-fictional autobiography, John Barleycorn, and used them in his early work, The Cruise of the Dazzler, and in his Tales of the Fish Patrol. The latter tells the story of oyster pirates from law enforcement's perspective—after sailing as an oyster pirate, London switched sides himself, to hunt his former compatriots.
The working class romanticized oyster pirates as Robin-Hood-like heroes, fighting back against the new big businesses' private control of what had once been common land. Traditionally, underwater "real estate" was commonly owned—anyone with a boat or oyster tongs could fish or dredge without fear of trespassing. Following the Civil War, states began leasing maritime "land" out to private owners; and the public protested, by engaging in oyster piracy, supporting oyster pirates, scavenging in tidal flats and along the boundaries of maritime property, and, occasionally, engaging in armed uprisings. 
The opera satirized Governor William Evelyn Cameron's second raid against oyster pirates in the Chesapeake Bay, on February 27, 1883. Cameron had conducted a very successful raid the previous February, capturing seven boats and 46 dredgers, later pardoning most of them to appease public opinion—which saw the pirates as remorseful, hard-working family men. His second raid, in 1883, went poorly. Almost all of the ships he and his crews chased escaped into Maryland waters, including the Dancing Molly, a sloop manned only by its captain's wife and two daughters (the men had been ashore when the governor started pursuit). The public hailed the pirates as heroes and ridiculed the governor in the popular media—the Lynchberg Advance, for instance, ran a 
Oyster piracy highlights the class tensions that sprang up during post-Civil War industrialization. Big business and private ownership began to drive the economy, shaping the lives of the working class and changing long-established institutions and daily patterns. Young people such as Jack London turned to oyster piracy as an escape from the new factory work—and the working class chaffed against the loss of traditional maritime common lands to business owners.
