The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931)
Saturday 6 November 1909

RESTLESS CITIES,

Cities may be divided into three classes (writes Stanley Portal Hyatt in "Cassell's Saturday Journal")
 - those which keep proper recognised hours; those which never wake up; and those which never go to 
sleep. London belongs to the first class; it's people are too tired with their day's work and its 
police too vigilant for its life to go on with any vigor after the cry of "Time, gentlemen, please," 
has sounded in its licensed houses. That intimation marks the end of London's day definitely, and only 
the homeless remain out. Many English country towns belong to the second class; their idea of bustle 
is a yawn, and even the close of a market day finds them still rubbing their eyes. But the last class 
is only to be found abroad, usually in parts where the population is mixed and constantly drifting.  

The 'Frisco Night.

San Francisco is a splendid example of the town which never goes to sleep. It is above everything the 
Restless City, cosmopolitan and utterly careless, taking no heed for the morrow, or rather, running 
the day and the morrow into one. They say that when a Chinaman obtains a liquor license in San Francisco 
he immediately throws away the key of the outer door. Certainly he seldom, if ever, closes, day or 
night, week day or Sunday.

San Francisco always seems to dine out. There is an infinite variety of good restaurants, and these are 
always full, not only at the recognised dinner hour, but for many hours afterwards. It rejoices in 
strange names for its eating-houses - "The Old Poodle Dog," "The New Poodle Dog," 'The Pup," and so on; 
and they give you strange dishes - hot things, made according to old recipes handed down from the original 
Spanish settlers; queer things, such as frogs and sea-slugs, all washed down by, or rather preceded by, 
cocktails mixed by highly-paid specialists.

When you have dined you can go to a free concert, where you pay nothing for admission or for your stay, 
though the barman is apt to grow truculent if you tell him you are not thirsty. The management expects 
you to bring a thirst with you and charges you on a rather lavish scale for quenching it. 

The entertainment will probably be of an order which would shock a county councillor; possibly it will 
shock you, although you will find that something in the air of the city tends to make you take a lenient 
view of things. When you are tired of the concert, say about midnight, you can wander down to Chinatown 
and play fantan, in which case you will probably be swindled at the table or robbed as you leave.

Opium and Dancing.

You can smoke opium and get a disgusting headache, or eat high-smelling dishes of unmentionable origin. 
A polite Jap will sell you some fiery liquor of his own manufacture, in the hope that your pockets are 
worth picking; and a little girl of his own race, with a flower behind her ear, will play to you on a 
one-stringed fiddle and give you golden-tinted tea out of the tiniest of cups.

If you do not happen to fancy Chinatown you can go to a dance hall. There, too, you will pay nothing 
for admission. Nor will you need introductions. There is little shyness about the ladies you will meet, 
or rather, who will meet you and the pace of the dance will probably be fast enough to give you that 
thirst which the management desires you should have. You can stay there till daybreak if you like, the 
place will be open, and there will be a barman on duty; and when you do go out into the streets again 
you will not find them deserted.  

Port Said, the sink of the East, is another city which never sleeps; but the conditions there are different. 
There the cosmopolitan wickedness of Port Said, the scum of Asia, Europe, and Northern Africa, prefers 
night to day; but in addition to this element, there is the far more important, if less interesting, 
business community, whose work goes on steadily throughout the twenty-four hours. Steamers on their 
way through the Suez Canal cannot wait for daylight. They come alongside the quays wanting coal, and 
coal they must have without delay. So there are always clerks in the offices, always coolies going up 
and down planks in seemingly endless procession, always the rattle of winches, and the gritty taste of 
coal dust in one's mouth. The world's main artery runs through Port Said and the business of the world, 
the circulation of its blood, cannot be held up because the sun is shining on the other hemisphere.

On the East Coast of Africa.

There is yet another class of town which seems never to rest and the reason is different again. In places 
like Beira, that sweltering little Gehenna on the east coast of Africa, white men are trying to live where 
Nature never intended the white man should be, and they are paying the price for it in the form of a 
wearing restlessness, which ends by leaving them physical wrecks. The mosquitoes are appalling, the heat a
bsolutely ghastly. You know that if you do turn in you will be awake, dozing with perspiration inside your
 mosquito curtains, grumbling at the climate and the luck which brought you to such a forsaken spot; 
whilst you know, too, that if you remain up you will always find some fellow sufferer to talk to, with 
no officious policeman to disturb you with the local equivalent of "Time, gentlemen, please."

Regulations have to be made to square with local conditions, not to mould local habits.