here you go, i found this over at CT....actually Toby has some good info i will add to this
copied from CT from a post by Toby
I also acquired 300 of The Silk’s hot stamp 25c chips. They were described by the seller as “as new” Hat and Cane (H&C) “Paul-son” chips from an Emeryville CA club. He said that the club had been closed for over 20 years and that he had purchased “a batch” of these when they closed. He also said that there had been “no legal gambling there on record” even though he had seen ”more than 8,000 chips” there at one time. Curiosity peeked, I googled and came up with
Richard Edward Staeffler Memorial California Card Room Reference -- Edition 2
Silk’s, The
San Pablo Ave
Emeryville, CA
Card room never opened, Circa 1980
The chips were listed there as H&C (CJ). So, not really being a true collector, I needed more info about the CJ part and found some at Robert Eisenstadt’s great web site,
HERE and
HERE .
and more from same post of Toby at CT
Since Tosh posted that (
separate thread), I can no longer find the reference to these chips in that guide (could well be I'm looking in the wrong place, knowing me!).
Being a new owner of some of these, I was keen to try and find out some more about 'em...
The internetz yielded little of use, apart from redirecting me back to CT and this thread(!), so I thought I'd get in touch with the district library, see if they had any info.
A hearty "Thank You!" to the good folk at the Oakland Public Library and Emeryville Historical Society for this info.
Here's what came back...
They were able to find "The Silks" listed in the Oakland telephone directory from 1978 through 1988. It was not located on San Pablo Avenue, though. Throughout its existence the club was at 5800 Shellmound in Emeryville, now the site of the Woodfin Suites Hotel.
My query was also run by Don Hausler and Larry Odoms of the Emeryville Historical Society (EHS) earlier this week. EHS has done considerable research into Emeryville's card rooms and Larry, in particular, has researched poker chips exhaustively. Here's what they had to say:
Silks was named for jockey's silks, probably in reference to the nearby but long-gone Oakland Trotting Park. It never functioned as a card room, but was a nightclub/discotheque.
The owner of Silks was Ken Bukowski, currently mayor of Emeryville.
It is unlikely that Silks ever applied for a card room permit: an Emeryville ordinance limits card rooms to San Pablo Avenue or have a side-street entrance within a few feet of San Pablo and Shellmound Street is several blocks away.
Silks did issue poker chips, though. They were either a promotional item or, as Larry has suggested, chips for drink tips.
These chips circulate among collectors, which misleads people to think that it was a card room.
With regard to the last points re. "chips for drink tips" <-- is/was that common..?
Why not just tip money..? Seems spurious but I don't know Jack about CA nightclub/bar law circa 1978-1988!!!
