Crazy Connections: San Francisco, Gaslight Square, the Mooses and Me

Who knew? A casual question led to hours (and hours) of enjoyable research that ultimately ties together people and places from days gone by — fun! Read on. 

“Did you know Ed Moose when you worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch?” The question comes from John Ferguson, my Pilates Reformer instructor, as I slip my feet into loops for the next exercise. I thought for a bit, and said I did not. 

John then told me that Moose, who’d worked for a time as a sports writer, had moved some years ago from his native St. Louis to San Francisco, where he and his wife, Mary Etta, had owned two restaurants. 

I, too, am a native St. Louisan who ran off to San Francisco. I'm also a former food writer and restaurant critic at the Post-Dispatch and I’ve written a book packed full of insider foodie lore. I was intrigued.

My Search for All Things Moose

Back home, I looked online for information about the couple, both of whom are gone now. An obituary for Ed Moose ran in the San Francisco Chronicle after he died in 2010 at 81. In the piece, Carl Nolte — a veteran columnist and a graceful and insightful writer — described Moose as “the genial host who for 32 years was the presiding genius behind the Washington Square Bar & Grill and Moose's.”

Both places were popular, Nolte noted, attracting “mayors, senators, sports stars, musicians, writers, celebrities, artists and a smattering of tourists and ordinary San Franciscans.” 

Two books have been written about the Washington Square Bar & Grill.  “The Square: The  Story of a Saloon” is by Ron Fimrite, a sports writer who worked for  Sports Illustrated and then the San Francisco Chronicle. Judy Berkley, who worked at the restaurant for a decade, wrote “WSB&G: A San Francisco Memoir.” 

Fimrite described Moose as “complex,” but the author clearly was a friend, noting, “He’s what this town used to be all about: color, character, wildness.” Berkley, who had a somewhat fractious relationship with Moose, tells delicious tales about the restaurant business.

From completely different points of view, both authors hold forth on Les Lapins Sauvages (The Savage/Wild Rabbits), the restaurant’s softball team that played on fields in Paris, Moscow and Hong Kong and in ballparks across the U.S. (In regard to the big leagues, Moose reportedly divided his loyalty between the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Francisco Giants, as do I.)

The St. Louis Beacon, an online publication from 2008 to 2013, also published a fascinating obituary for Moose that included a profile penned by Judith Robinson in 2002, based on oral history interviews. Guess what that profile revealed? 

Ed Moose in Gaslight Square 

Robinson wrote that Moose learned his restaurateur skills in St. Louis’ storied Gaslight Square; the same skills he later used to develop his restaurants in San Francisco. In its heyday — from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s — Gaslight was home to jazz clubs, taverns, cabarets, delis, restaurants, theaters, sidewalk cafes and antique shops.

Robinson wrote that three brothers — Fred, Jay and Eugene Landesman — were among “the innovative entrepreneurs who built [Gaslight Square] into a popular night club attraction,” and many viewed the Crystal Palace and Golden Eagle as the centerpieces. Eventually, both were owned and operated by the Landesmans and Jay’s brother-in-law, Sam Deitsch. 

In his book, Fimrite describes Moose as “a fixture” at the Golden Eagle, and some reports indicate he may have been an investor as well, noting he was “attracted to the area for the jazz and camaraderie.” (I highly recommend Thomas Crone's book on Gaslight, filled with wonderful stories from those in the know.)

The lively entertainment district drew such future luminaries as the Smothers Brothers, Miles Davis, Phyllis Diller, Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Alan Arkin, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, Barbra Streisand, Odetta, Woody Allen and Josh White.

Gaslight Square attracted the literati as well. One cold night in February in the early 1960s, Allen Ginsberg came into O’Connell’s Pub, which was located there at the time. Owner Jack Parker later told me that Ginsberg sat down in the lotus position in front of the fireplace, took out finger cymbals and recited from “Howl.” And to think I missed that!

During Gaslight’s glory days, I was too young to be a regular denizen, but in the mid-1960s, as the storied district was fading, I was lucky enough to have dinner at the posh Three Fountains restaurant and later attend a theater performance. (Related street cred: From the early 1970s on, I was a frequent customer at O’Connell’s, Jack Carl's 2¢ Plain and Moskus in Exile, three former hot spots in Gaslight that had relocated elsewhere in St. Louis.) 

Robinson wrote that while Moose was renting a fourth-floor walk-up once inhabited by playwright Tennessee Williams (okay, I’m name dropping), the Landesman brothers sent Mary Etta Presti, their “Girl Friday,” to show him a different place, one they owned. Moose turned down that apartment, but apparently was taken with Presti. 

Ed Moose in San Francisco 

In 1961, while working for St. Louis University, Moose traveled to San Francisco, which he described as “paradise —  flowers everywhere." Soon after, he headed west permanently. He invited Presti to join him, and they married in 1964. Two years later, Deitsch moved to the City by the Bay. In 1973, the three friends bought Rose Pistola’s restaurant, a former Prohibition speakeasy in North Beach. 

They named the place the Washington Square Bar & Grill, and it is said to have had a bit of a New York bar vibe. Patrons enjoyed cold drinks, live jazz, original art on the walls and a varied menu from the kitchen that Mary Etta co-managed, which often featured Italian food. (With wine aficionado Brian St. Pierre, she later wrote "The Flavor of North Beach," which included some of her recipes.) Michael McCourt tended bar there for a time, telling the kind of stories from his childhood that so enchanted readers of his brother Frank's book “Angela's Ashes.” I missed that too. 

The Mooses and Deitsch sold the restaurant in 1989. Three years later, they opened Moose’s on Stockton near Filbert St. Robinson described Moose's time there as “the consummate publican who greeted his guests effusively, peripatetic, in constant motion, eyes darting around the room, nattily dressed in galluses, colorful ties and tailored suits until 2005, when the Mooses sold the restaurant.” 

(“Galluses” are suspenders; I had to look it up.) 

I moved to San Francisco in June 2010, eight years after Deitsch’s death and two months before Ed Moose died. Mary Etta lived until December 2023. Inspired by  that casual question I recounted at the top of this piece (and enamored with San Francisco history), I’ve spent two weeks discovering what the Mooses and I have in common — including assorted Landesmans.

Our Connections to the Landesmans

In the late 1950s, Jay Landesman and Theodore J. Flicker wrote “The Nervous Set,” a play inspired by Landesman’s unpublished novel about his experiences as part of the Beat Generation. Jay’s wife, Fran Deitsch Landesman, wrote lyrics for the musical numbers in the show, which premiered in Gaslight Square in March 1959, and then in May moved to Broadway for a short run.  

In 1985, my editor at the Post-Dispatch assigned me to write a feature story about a revival of “The Nervous Set” by the Theatre Factory, a local company. I learned that Joseph Pulitzer, the grandson of the paper’s legendary founder and my boss, had backed the show on Broadway. He had a copy of Landesman’s novel, which he lent me as background for my article.

(Previously, Mr. Pulitzer and I had spoken only briefly when encountering one another in the stairwell at the paper.)

Two years later, The Muny — America’s oldest and largest outdoor theater, located in Forest Park in St. Louis — presented “Big River,” a musical that had premiered on Broadway two seasons earlier at one of the theaters owned by Jay and Fran’s nephew, Rocco Landesman,  the longtime Broadway producer and then president of Jujamcyn Theatres. (https://www.jujamcyn.com/) 

My editor sent me to interview Rocco for a feature story. We met at The Muny, and we hit it off right away, though I did tell him his elephant-skin boots looked better on the original owner.  We’re about the same age, and we determined that as kids, we’d likely waved to one another across the one busy street neither of us was allowed to cross while riding bikes in our adjacent city neighborhoods. 

A Twist at Pilates Reformer Class

Exhilarated with my research on All Things Moose, I called Charlie Davis, a St. Louis native who used to drive a taxi in San Francisco. I asked him if he’d ever heard of Ed Moose. “I have,” Charlie said. “He was in my taxi one evening, and I thought about telling him that my mother had been to his restaurant in St. Louis — but I didn’t say anything.” An extra dollop of irony: Charlie was my date those few times I was in Gaslight Square. 

Turns out the Mooses and I have one more thing in common. Ten days or so after John first asked if I had known Ed Moose, during a break in Pilates class I told him about the many Moose-related rabbit holes I'd been down since then, and I asked how he knew the couple. 

John grinned and said, “I was their Pilates instructor.”