Ranger’s Dictionary: Deadfall
Deadfall
- a trap so constructed that a weight (as a heavy log) falls on an animal and kills or disables it
- a tangled mass of fallen trees and branches
- a wine and beer den that, today, might be called a ‘dive’
The Barbary Coast was famous for a variety of places, of which deadfalls were arguably some of the worst. Typically there was a bar along one side of a long room and couches on the other. Upon the couches would be what Asbury so colorfully described as a few women who were “. . . invariably aged and infirm wrecks, attractive only to men of particularly myopic vision.”
The women were pretty much bait for men who’s drinks would be drugged to set them up for robbery but, for the more intrepid or just completely hammered of the clientèle, there might be a curtained off section at the rear that served as a Dante-esque precursor to the champagne room of today.
