A message from the Underworld

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Under the Rockridge Bart station there can be seen a number of written messages responding to the Oakland Hills Fire, also known as the Great Oakland Firestorm of 1991.

The following inscription suggests the presence of a portal to the Underworld in this area. A team of specialists has been sent to investigate further.

thanks: resinoptes

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An Entrance to Hell Found in Golden Gate Park

Entrance to Hell in San Francisco #874

A definitive solution to one of the most persistent questions facing humanity is soon likely to be resolved as a result of exhaustive investigations currently being conducted in Golden Gate Park.

For generations researchers have debated whether Hell is exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat). Proposed solutions have been formulated in reference to Boyle’s Law, which describes the inversely proportional relationship existing between the absolute pressure and the volume of a gas, assuming the temperature is kept constant within a closed system.

In other words, if gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed, what would be the pressure required to either maintain the burning temperatures or to steadily increase them?

It would be most useful in this respect to determine if the total mass of Hell is increasing or decreasing, and to estimate the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they could be leaving. But we may assume thereby that souls having once entered Hell are not destined to leave it, and also that an exponential increase of souls entering Hell exists in relation to the population increase on Earth.

We might therefore conclude that the temperature of Hell is increasing, because Boyle’s Law requires that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell would have to expand proportionately as souls are added, unless there is a corresponding release of the existing quantity of gas.

Empirical research now confirms the latter theory to be the case, as evidenced by empirical observation following the discovery of a sizeable vent hole exiting Hell shown as in the photograph above, exposed by accident near Lindley Meadow in Golden Gate Park at last year's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.

Sensor-activated video cameras now surround the grassy vacuity, and scientists eagerly await forthcoming photographic evidence depicting fugitive clouds of noxious gas erupting and escaping from the Fiery Pit beneath.

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Entrances to Hell in Berkeley: The Golden Toad

     Wisps of fog lingered over the fast stream, the gurgle mixed with a few bird voices through the very damp air. Silently the golden toad jumped from a rock to a patch of grass near the flowing water. Bufo periglenes—it was the last time a human eye saw the golden leap, the bright wonder, above Monteverde in Costa Rica mid-spring of 1989. Some say a fungal amphibian virus the cause, some say the warming earth, but disease is not in doubt.

      Despite the more than twenty years since that quiet landing at creekside in Costa Rica’s high forest, during which the species is spoken of as extinct, equally is it clear that this and no other, though vastly grown in size, basked in the slated shadow of the gate, throat rippling with panting breath. The spirit leaped, even while the heavy scent of death surrounded both creature and the few leaves blowing nearby. Unblinking eyes stared from its face; parted lips issued a wee noise, a rattling, gasping, scraping, and gradually words were clear, first in Spanish, then in English, “I have come, yes, to end all suffering. Mine is gone, washed into a distant landscape, but now no other shall be. Dis-ease has turned to mercy. The lives that bathe in suffering shall join me in gold.”

                                    -- by Lew Ellingham

The headprints of Cerberus

Novelist F.S. Rosa, San Francisco Labor Council member and political activist, reports the lamentable discovery of yet another entrance to Hell in our beloved city.

The three large indentations in the middle of this launching pad to Hell at 10th & Market Streets once held the cushions where Cerberus rested his various heads when off-shift. If you look closely, you will see the actual portal to Hell disguised as a porta potty over near the wall.

The site previously featured an ill-ventilated office building which housed several non-profit agencies. The poorly paid workers on at least one occasion stormed onto the 10th St. sidewalk everyday until they were forced to make the usual Deal with the Devil and end their three-week strike.

Cerberus, while vast in size in comparison to most visitors from Hell, is a non-union worker, and as we all know, non-union workers spend a lot of time in the Hell realm. Cerberus banged his head a lot, thus the dents in the pavement. The storage unit and trailer next to the porta potty house the site's non-profit paper work, since funding cuts have precluded the construction of a permanent building.

The five large pegs on the wall above the parking lot site are convenient for hanging the corpses of recalcitrant non-profit employees as a warning and example to all. Ignore the vehicles in the rear, they are the usual harbingers of our fossil-fueled slide into the burning depths of Tartarus. The path of descent is blocked only by a conveniently flimsy chain link fence, easily breached during the appropriate phase of the moon.

The West Portal Tunnel Calamity

Entrances to Hell in San Francisco #866

As indicated earlier in this series, those unfortunate riders who are condemned to surrender themselves daily to the foul grasp of the San Francisco Muni have ample reason to project it as a particularly truculent manifestation of hellishness. Who amongst us has not experienced the manifold perils and indignities suffered on board the J-Lurch, or died of boredom on the N-Judas as it treacherously and glacially makes its lonesome way to Ocean Beach, or paused to observe one’s fingernails grow while waiting for the 19-Polk-a-long bus line to show up? And which of us can restrain feelings of sincerest sympathy with those compelled to place their physical economies at risk while riding the 22-Feel More?

But the quiet scene pictured above at Market and Collingwood bears silent witness to a far more sinister history. One week in 1971 the police were deluged with reports of missing persons who, expected home for dinner by their spouses, disappeared without notice during the evening rush hour. The police were called in and quickly established that the missing commuters were daily patrons of the same three Muni underground lines: the L-Terrible, the M-Motionsick and the K-Homicide.

It soon became obvious that the passengers had disappeared somewhere inside the West Portal Tunnel. A team of sewer inspectors and experts from the UC Berkeley School of Mining were quickly dispatched to investigate. Alas, despite extensive investigation, no trace of the railway cars with their cargo of vanished riders was discovered. It was suggested later that the their true destiny may have been suppressed by the authorities, since traces of sulfurous fumes hovering over human skeletal remains were detected in the tunnel for months afterwards.

Today we know that the same authorities had indeed conspired to cover up the true fate of the doomed passengers. Moving quickly to shut down the tunnel, a new one was constructed with doubly reinforced fire-proof walls, its length now extended down Market Street to the Ferry Building.

Nothing is left today to remind us of this horrible episode except a peaceful image of grass-covered rails and a barricaded corridor leading into the bowels of Hell beneath our beloved city.


[Thanks Lew Ellingham and F.S. Rosa.] 

La Strada Combustabile

Entrance to Hell in San Francisco #789

An empty car garage on Clarion Alley here in the heart of the Mission District, you’re asking? And how much might the monthly rent be to get your brand new Ducati Multistrada 1200cc off the streets at night, you’re wondering?

Think again, my friend. The wiles of the Horned One are infinite in their variety and exigent in their terrible consequences. What might appear conventionally as a possible accommodation for your overpriced imported Italian motorcycle is in fact a cleverly disguised portal to La Strada Combustabile, a six-lane highway to Hell. Marauding gangs of demons burn rubber in and out of here after midnight, so I suggest you get back on your machine and ride it right back to Bernal Heights. 

Plokk

Entrance to Hell in San Francisco #641

This tunnel to the subterranean region of Hell known to cognoscenti as Plokk has been indecorously concealed behind copious gobs of cement, which look like a pile of diarrhea. Located in an alley called Larch Street near the AMC Theater on Van Ness Avenue, it is meant to protect movie-goers from the fate of a number of small children who disappeared on the way home after a matinee showing of an early Harry Potter film some years ago.
A sign near the tunnel entrance showed an arrow next to the words "Chamber of Secrets" and enticed them to enter. Lamentably, no waving of wands or casting of spells or invisible cloaks could save the little ones from their horrible fate. Nor was any Dumbledore present to hear their screams as they were impaled and roasted upon glowing red spits in the loathsome barbecue grills of Plokk.

Maledetto

Entrance to Hell in San Francisco #507

This deserted homeless camp at Florida and Treat Streets bears silent witness to the terrible tragedy that occurred on a bitterly cold night shortly before New Years' Eve. It appears from the painted graffitti that Maledetto, a minor demon of the Fourteenth Circle assigned as a consultant to the CIA on torture research, emerged from Hell on a short break from his duties and headed to the local 711 for a takeout of hot coffee, a couple Krispy Kreme donuts, and a carton of Marlboros.

Attracted to the heat emanating from the tunnel, which is now boarded over with heavy plywood as indicated in the picture above, a group of residentially-challenged persons crawled into the passageway to get warm. Needless to say they have not been seen since, having fallen the unwilling victims to Maledetto's unrelenting savagery and mercilessly sadistic proclivities.

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WARNING! Although it may seem superfluous to state the obvious, entrances to Hell in San Francisco are extremely dangerous and should be approached only with the greatest caution. Obvious signs include a horrible stench, escaping clouds or wisps of smoke, and lit cinders glowing before a sealed entrance or gateway.

If you suspect an entrance to Hell in your neighborhood, we urgently recommend that you report it to us for our immediate inspection and professional evaluation. Please report your discovery to Grimpleswine@gmail.com, if possible with an accompanying jpeg, and we will dispatch a team of experts to initiate any actions that may be required.

Entrances to Hell in San Francisco #499 The S.F. Muni

Frequent riders of the San Francisco Municipal Railway have often had opportunity to reflect upon the perfected hellishness of this desperately inadequate public transit system. Few may still recall, however, that calamitous New Year’s Eve in 1972 when disaster overtook a 47-Potrero electric overhead bus at the bus stop at 20th and Potrero, directly adjacent to San Francisco General Hospital. Filled with drunken revelers singing obscene lyrics to Motown songs, the bus suddenly disintegrated in a blinding flash of light. Its twisted, smoking ruins were subsequently hauled to the storage hall pictured above, where they remain deposited to this day.

Police inquiries quickly established the calamitous course of events. The bus stop in question was located directly under the hospital’s Psych Ward, in which Mustafa Pancho “Hotfingers” O’Rourke, a recently returned Vietnam veteran, had been placed for observation after having threatened Mayor Joe Alioto with a chef’s pastry gun loaded with gorgonzola at an Italian-American wedding celebration in North Beach.

Further investigation revealed that O’Rourke had managed to construct a home-made bomb out of polyester resin, carbon rods pulled from cheap batteries, a Piezo electric ignitor taken from a Scripto electronic lighter, paraffin, a 9-volt battery clip and insulated copper wire (about 20 to 22 gauge), and a half-eaten plate of chicharrones con queso which he found in a hospital janitor’s closet. These elements he then fashioned into a projectile and dropped out the window upon the doomed electric overhead bus as it pulled into the stop three stories below.

The catastrophe led to the ultimate dissolution of the 47-Potrero line and its conversion into the present 47-Van Ness. As a further consequence the windows of the Psych Ward at General Hospital, whose operations in many areas remain as vigorously ineffective as ever, have been permanently sealed with cement.

The Call of Cthulu

Entrances to Hell in San Francisco #321

Befouled by an acrid and blinding pool of green slime, this horrible scene of desolation found in an empty lot at the base of Potrero Hill is all that remains after an unanticipated and devastating visit by Cthulhu, the Ancient One.

On a moonless night in November 1969 a crowd of supplicants had gathered for their monthly worship of the Old Ones and their spawn. The priest stood before the green onyx altar, bowing to the Emerald Kingdom of Great Cthulhu and summoning the Ancient Ones forth from their black abyss.

As the celebrants chanted the terrible words, Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, ("In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming,") insane shouts and harrowing screams broke out as a pulpy, tentacled head surmounting a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings emerged from a foul drain pipe running from the basement of the building into the Bay of San Francisco.

The monster emerged from its from its aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sky as it opened its flapping membraneous wings, then squeezed its sickening, gelatinous green immensity into the ceremonial chamber. The odour rising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and the assembled congregation fell down dead, their strangulated bodies dripping with green ooze, their faces paralyzed in mortal terror.

The room was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud as the venomous creature, seething with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, squeezed its disgusting mass back into the drain from which it had emerged and slithered back into the Bay.

"What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men."

(H.P. Lovecraft, 1926)

Entrances to Hell in San Francisco #266

This forgotten gateway to the underworld is located in a vacant lot off Grove Street just opposite City Hall. It was sealed off after a particularly truculent meeting of the Board of Supervisors in 1915, during the course of which a motion of censure had been introduced condemning Mayor "Sunny Jim" Rolph for appearing naked in a motion picture film with Fatty Arbuckle and aspiring actress Bambina Delmonte. After sixteen hours of continuous debate, some shadowy figures wearing fireproof trench-coats arose from the spectators' gallery and attacked two of the supervisors who were opposing the measure, and flew off with them into the night skies far above City Hall.

Ashtaroth

Entrances to Hell in San Francisco, #176.



This fabled entrance to the Kingdom of Ashtaroth is found at the corner of Eddy and Gough Streets. The double-strength reinforcement and the use of iron columns indicates the critical importance of preventing a re-emergence of Prince Ashtaroth from his unholy domain. The foul demon of the First Hierarchy was last seen entering our city in 1995, and his appearance resulted in the immediate destruction by fire of a Lutheran church that had stood on the present site for almost a century.
At nights the acrid smell of sulphur is clearly remarked, and glowing embers of orange fire can be seen flickering faintly through the cracks of the protection walls.


[With thanks to J.H. Irvine, E2Hell U.K.]