South of Market, San Francisco Concepts

San Francisco

by Lonely Planet

& Noe Valley The Haight & Hayes Valley Golden Gate Park & the Avenues Day Trips from San Francisco Sleeping Understand San Francisco San Francisco Today History Local Cuisine & Drinks Literary San Francisco Visual Arts San Francisco Music San Francisco Architecture Hills & Fog Survival Guide Transportation Directory A–Z Welcome to San Francisco Grab your coat and a handful of glitter, and enter the land of fog

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and fabulousness. So long, inhibitions; hello, San Francisco. Outlandish Notions Consider permission permanently granted to step

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FOSTER / LONELY PLANET IMAGES © Neighborhood Boutiques ( Click here ) 10Terrariums, desert-island message bottles, necklaces made of shattered windshields: shopping looks strangely like installation art in San Francisco’s indie boutiques. Although SF has spawned mega-retailers – Levi Strauss, Pottery Barn and the Gap are all headquartered downtown – zoning restrictions limit chain retailers

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Environment (www.gardenfortheenvironment.org). Old-timey Saloons The Barbary Coast is roaring back to life with historically researched whiskey cocktails and staggering absinthe concoctions in San Francisco’s great Western saloon revival ( Click here ). SFMOMA Expansion SF is more artistically gifted than ever, thanks to a donation of 1100 modern masterworks

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Go Summer brings fog and chilly 55°F weather to SF; early fall is best for warm weather, street fairs and harvest cuisine. Arriving in San Francisco San Francisco Airport (SFO) Fast rides to downtown SF on BART cost $8.10; door-to-door shuttle vans cost $17; express bus fare to Temporary Transbay

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here ) » Shopping ( Click here ) » Sports & Activities ( Click here ) » Cable Cars ( Click here ) Month by Month Top Events Pride Parade , June Lunar New Year Parade , February San Francisco International Film Festival , April Bay to Breakers , May Green Festival , November February Lion dancing, warm days and alt-rock shows provide sudden relief from February

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mingle shyly over lattes and minicupcakes at Ritual Coffee Roasters ( Click here ). Need to Know » Change facilities Best public facilities are at Westfield San Francisco Centre (Click here ) and San Francisco Main Library ( Click here ). » Emergency care San Francisco General Hospital (Click here ). » Babysitting Available at high-end hotels or American Child Care (www.americanchildcare.com

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and substance in balance, with muscular, meaningful original choreography. Best Free Entertainment Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival ( Click here ) Stern Grove Festival ( Click here ) San Francisco Mime Troupe ( Click here ) San Francisco Shakespeare Festival ( Click here ) Mission Dolores Park Movie Night ( Click here ) Best for Laughs Cobb’s Comedy Club ( Click here ) Punch Line ( Click

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-out Room ( Click here ) Amnesia ( Click here ) Best for Dance Yerba Buena Center for the Arts ( Click here ) San Francisco Ballet ( Click here ) San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival ( Click here ) Carnaval ( Click here ) Best for Movies San Francisco International Film Festival ( Click here ) Sundance Kabuki Cinema ( Click here ) Roxie Cinema ( Click here ) Bridge Theater ( Click

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favorite sport. The intersection of 18th and Castro Sts is the heart of the gay men’s casual cruising scene, but dancing queens head to South of Market (SoMa), the location of most thump-thump clubs and sex venues. Back in the 1950s, Sundays were gay old times in SF bars at events

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, along John F Kennedy Dr (car-free on Sundays) to Ocean Beach (best when it’s not too windy). City biking maps San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (www.sfbike.org) produces San Francisco Biking/Walking Guide, which shows how to avoid traffic and hills – find it at local bike shops, Rainbow Grocery (Click here )

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5 miles back to Aquatic Park. Entry costs $175; reservations and information available through Envirosports (www.envirosports.com). Indoor Activities Art Workshops When (not if) San Francisco leaves you with excess artistic inspiration, pursue your vision with hands-on classes. Transform industrial scraps into mosaics at SCRAP ( Click here ), silkscreen protest posters

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( Click here ) Planet Granite ( Click here ) Yerba Buena Center Ice Skating & Bowling ( Click here ) Best Low-impact Challenges Lawn Bowling Club ( Click here ) San Francisco Croquet Club ( Click here ) San Francisco Disc Golf ( Click here ) Golden Gate Municipal Golf Course ( Click here ) AIDS Walk ( Click here ) Cable Cars A creaking hand brake seems to

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Alta Plaza Park and Lafayette Parks, which are both ringed by stately Victorians. From here, brave the gauntlet of Fillmore St boutiques to Japantown. Explore San Francisco Neighborhoods at a Glance The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers Top Sights Sights Drinking & Nightlife Entertainment Shopping Downtown & Civic Center Top Sights Sights

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Sights Eating Drinking & Nightlife Entertainment Shopping Sports & Activities Golden Gate Park & the Avenues Top Sights Sights Drinking & Nightlife Entertainment Shopping Sports & Activities Day Trips from San Francisco Berkeley Oakland Napa Valley Sonoma Valley Healdsburg & Dry Creek Valley Muir Woods & Muir Beach Sausalito & Tiburon Point Reyes National Seashore Hwy 1 to Santa Cruz

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Sleeping San Francisco's Top Sights Alcatraz Fisherman’s Wharf Golden Gate Bridge & the Marina Ferry Building & Justin Herman Plaza Asian Art Museum Chinatown Alleyways Coit Tower Lombard

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Southeast Asians, lesbians and dandies. Silicon Valley refugees take to Potrero Hill, while barflies and artists lurk in the valley below. Some are drawn to South of Market (SoMa) for high technology, others for high art, but everyone gets down and dirty on the dance floor. The Castro & Noe Valley (Click here) Rainbow

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Wine Merchant ( Click here ) For reviews, Click here Best for Waterfront Vistas ➡ Golden Gate Bridge ( Click here ) ➡ Warming Hut ( Click here ) ➡ Crissy Field ( Click here ) ➡ San Francisco Municipal pier at Aquatic Park ( Click here ) ➡ Sea lions at Pier 39 ( Click here ) RICK GERHARTER / LONELY PLANET IMAGES © TOP SIGHTS Alcatraz Alcatraz: for almost

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of the Bay D2 2 Beniamino Bufano's St Francis StatueC2 3 Ghirardelli Square A3 4 Musée Mécanique C2 5 Pier 39 D1 6 San Francisco CarouselD1 7 San Francisco Maritime National Historical ParkA2 8 SS Jeremiah O'Brien B1 9 USS Pampanito B1 Eating 10 Boudin Bakery C2 11 Eagle Café D2 12

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Perfect C5 29 PlumpJack Wines C5 30San Francisco Surf CompanyC5 31 Uko D5 Sports & Activities 32Oceanic Society Expeditions boat departureB2 Sleeping 33Coventry Motor InnD4 34HI San Francisco Fisherman's WharfE2 35Hotel del SolD4 36Marina InnE4 37Marina MotelA5 The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers Eating | Drinking & Nightlife | Entertainment | Shopping | Sports & Activities

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, remember that even- numbered piers lie south of the Ferry Building and odd-numbered piers north of the Ferry Building. All even-numbered piers are south of Market St. The Presidio Marina Landmark The Marina includes the following sights: Baker Beach ( Click here ), Crissy Field ( Click here ), Presidio Base ( Click here ) and Fort

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here ) ➡ Barrique ( Click here ) ➡ Edinburgh Castle ( Click here ) ➡ Cantina ( Click here ) ➡ Bix ( Click here ) For reviews, Click here Best Places for Live Performances ➡ San Francisco Symphony (Click here ) ➡ San Francisco Opera (Click here ) ➡ Rrazz Room ( Click here ) ➡ Café Royale ( Click here ) ➡ Biscuits & Blues ( Click here ) For reviews, Click here TOP SIGHTS Ferry Building & Justin

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Hall B3 29 Hemlock Tavern A2 30 Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater B3 31New Conservatory TheaterB6 San Francisco Ballet (see 32) 32 San Francisco Opera A5 33 San Francisco Symphony A5 Shopping 34 Kayo Books C2 35 Magazine B2 Sleeping 36HI San Francisco City CenterB3 37Hotel VertigoC1 38Phoenix HotelB3 39Steinhart Hotel & ApartmentsC1 Financial District Top Sights Ferry Building

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6pm Mon & Sat, 9am-8pm Tue-Thu, noon-5pm Fri & Sun; ; & Civic Center) The vast skylight dome sheds plenty of light through San Francisco’s Main Library. And this being San Francisco, the library actively appeals to broad audiences – to wit the African American Center, Chinese Center, the James C Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center

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( 415-541-0312, 415-820-3550; www.yerbabuenagardens.com; 3rd & Mission Sts; sunrise-10pm; & Montgomery St) A spot of green in the swath of concrete South of Market. With Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and SFMOMA on one side and the Metreon cinema on the other, this is a prime spot for

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47 Golden Gate Park Bike & Skate G3 48 Lawn Bowling Club H4 49 Lincoln Park Golf Course C2 50 Lindy in the ParkG4 51 San Francisco Disc GolfD4 52 San Francisco Model Yacht ClubC4 53 Wheel Fun Rentals F4 Sleeping 54Seal Rock InnA3 Golden Gate Park & the Avenues Eating | Drinking & Nightlife | Entertainment | Shopping |

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Weekend Phoenix Hotel ( Click here ) Crescent Hotel ( Click here ) Hotel Diva ( Click here ) W Hotel ( Click here ) Hotel Triton ( Click here ) Best B&Bs Inn San Francisco ( Click here ) Parsonnage ( Click here ) Belvedere House ( Click here ) Chateau Tivoli ( Click here ) Washington Square Inn ( Click here ) Parker Guest House ( Click here ) Best

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3rd-floor fireplace rooms. A heated pool (summer only) and ping-pong keep the kids from getting antsy. Understand San Francisco San Francisco Today History Local Cuisine & Drinks Literary San Francisco Visual Arts San Francisco Music San Francisco Architecture Hills & Fog San Francisco Today Small as it is, this seven-by-seven-mile peninsula looms large in the imagination. The greenest city

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gave a free performance at Lotta’s Fountain for an audience of 250,000 – virtually every last living man, woman and child in San Francisco. But San Francisco’s greatest comeback performance was the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, held in celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal. Earthquake rubble was used

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his westward journey, the motley crowd of writers, artists, dreamers and unclassifiable characters Kerouac called ‘the mad ones’ had found their way to like-minded San Francisco. San Francisco didn’t always take kindly to the nonconformists derisively referred to in the press as ‘beatniks,’ and police and poets were increasingly at odds on

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homes in the out-and-proud Castro, and the sexual revolution was in full swing at gay clubs and bathhouses on Polk St and South of Market (SoMa). Gay San Francisco had arrived; now all it needed was an elected representative. The Castro was triumphant when Castro camera-store owner Harvey Milk was elected city

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until there’s a cure at AIDS fundraising boutique Under One Roof Come out and play in the Mission, Castro and SoMa San Francisco 3.0 Industry dwindled steadily in San Francisco after WWII, as Oakland’s port accommodated container ships and the Presidio’s military presence tapered off. But onetime military tech contractors

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, and Amy Tan’s American-born daughters explaining slang to Chinese-speaking moms. Key titles: ➡ Tales of the City (Armistead Maupin) The 1976 San Francisco Chronicle serial follows true San Francisco characters: pot-growing landladies of mystery, ever-hopeful Castro club-goers and wide-eyed Midwestern arrivals. ➡ The Man in the High Castle (Philip

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sob disconsolately, until you pick it up and pat its posterior. Forget admiring Old Masters from afar: in San Francisco, you’re invited to burp the art. San Francisco Music You’ll have to excuse San Francisco DJs if they seem schizophrenic: only an extremely eclectic set can cover SF’s varied musical tastes. Classical,

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Renée Fleming, whose dulcet tones you may recognize from a dozen CDs and The Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack. Best for Classical & Opera San Francisco Symphony (Civic Center) San Francisco Opera (Civic Center) Stern Grove Festival (Golden Gate Park) Zellerbach Hall (Berkeley) Rock Fire up those lighters, but don’t go calling for

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Market St as it climbs steeply uphill (it becomes Portola Ave) and then turn right on Twin Peaks Blvd. Survival Guide Transportation Getting to San Francisco Getting Around San Francisco San Francisco International Airport Oakland International Airport Norman y Mineta San Jose International Airport Bus Train Bus, Streetcar & Cable Car BART Taxi Car & Motorcycle Boat Caltrain

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-minute ride to/from downtown San Francisco. The SFO BART station is connected to the International Terminal; tickets can be purchased from machines inside the station entrance. BusSamTrans (www.samtrans.com; one-way $5) Express bus KX takes about 30 minutes to reach Temporary Transbay Terminal in the South of Market (SoMa) area. Airport Shuttles

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(one-way $14-17) Depart from baggage-claim areas, taking 45 minutes to most SF locations. For service to the airport, call to reserve a pickup from any San Francisco location at least 4 hours in advance of departure

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Thanksgiving Fourth Thursday in November Christmas Day December 25 Safe Travel Keep your city smarts and wits about you, especially at night at the Tenderloin, South of Market (SoMa) and the Mission. The Bayview- Hunters Point neighborhood south of Potrero Hill along the water is plagued by a high crime rate and frequent

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credentials she regularly undermines with opinionated culture commentary for radio, newspapers, foodie magazines and books, including Lonely Planet’s California, USA, Coastal California, California Trips, San Francisco and San Francisco Encounter guides. Alison also wrote the Planning, Understand and Survival Guide chapters. John A Vlahides The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers, Downtown & Civic

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luxury-hotel concierge and member of Les Clefs d’Or , the international union of the world’s elite concierges. He lives in San Francisco, where he sings tenor with the San Francisco Symphony, and spends free time skiing the Sierra Nevada. For more, see www.johnvlahides.com and twitter.com/johnvlahides. John also wrote

San Francisco

by Lonely Planet

& Noe Valley The Haight & Hayes Valley Golden Gate Park & the Avenues Day Trips from San Francisco Sleeping Understand San Francisco San Francisco Today History Local Cuisine & Drinks Literary San Francisco Visual Arts San Francisco Music San Francisco Architecture Hills & Fog Survival Guide Transportation Directory A–Z Welcome to San Francisco Grab your coat and a handful of glitter, and enter the land of fog

…

and fabulousness. So long, inhibitions; hello, San Francisco. Outlandish Notions Consider permission permanently granted to step

…

FOSTER / LONELY PLANET IMAGES © Neighborhood Boutiques ( Click here ) 10Terrariums, desert-island message bottles, necklaces made of shattered windshields: shopping looks strangely like installation art in San Francisco’s indie boutiques. Although SF has spawned mega-retailers – Levi Strauss, Pottery Barn and the Gap are all headquartered downtown – zoning restrictions limit chain retailers

…

Environment (www.gardenfortheenvironment.org). Old-timey Saloons The Barbary Coast is roaring back to life with historically researched whiskey cocktails and staggering absinthe concoctions in San Francisco’s great Western saloon revival ( Click here ). SFMOMA Expansion SF is more artistically gifted than ever, thanks to a donation of 1100 modern masterworks

…

Go Summer brings fog and chilly 55°F weather to SF; early fall is best for warm weather, street fairs and harvest cuisine. Arriving in San Francisco San Francisco Airport (SFO) Fast rides to downtown SF on BART cost $8.10; door-to-door shuttle vans cost $17; express bus fare to Temporary Transbay

…

here ) » Shopping ( Click here ) » Sports & Activities ( Click here ) » Cable Cars ( Click here ) Month by Month Top Events Pride Parade , June Lunar New Year Parade , February San Francisco International Film Festival , April Bay to Breakers , May Green Festival , November February Lion dancing, warm days and alt-rock shows provide sudden relief from February

…

mingle shyly over lattes and minicupcakes at Ritual Coffee Roasters ( Click here ). Need to Know » Change facilities Best public facilities are at Westfield San Francisco Centre (Click here ) and San Francisco Main Library ( Click here ). » Emergency care San Francisco General Hospital (Click here ). » Babysitting Available at high-end hotels or American Child Care (www.americanchildcare.com

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and substance in balance, with muscular, meaningful original choreography. Best Free Entertainment Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival ( Click here ) Stern Grove Festival ( Click here ) San Francisco Mime Troupe ( Click here ) San Francisco Shakespeare Festival ( Click here ) Mission Dolores Park Movie Night ( Click here ) Best for Laughs Cobb’s Comedy Club ( Click here ) Punch Line ( Click

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-out Room ( Click here ) Amnesia ( Click here ) Best for Dance Yerba Buena Center for the Arts ( Click here ) San Francisco Ballet ( Click here ) San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival ( Click here ) Carnaval ( Click here ) Best for Movies San Francisco International Film Festival ( Click here ) Sundance Kabuki Cinema ( Click here ) Roxie Cinema ( Click here ) Bridge Theater ( Click

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favorite sport. The intersection of 18th and Castro Sts is the heart of the gay men’s casual cruising scene, but dancing queens head to South of Market (SoMa), the location of most thump-thump clubs and sex venues. Back in the 1950s, Sundays were gay old times in SF bars at events

…

, along John F Kennedy Dr (car-free on Sundays) to Ocean Beach (best when it’s not too windy). City biking maps San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (www.sfbike.org) produces San Francisco Biking/Walking Guide, which shows how to avoid traffic and hills – find it at local bike shops, Rainbow Grocery (Click here )

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5 miles back to Aquatic Park. Entry costs $175; reservations and information available through Envirosports (www.envirosports.com). Indoor Activities Art Workshops When (not if) San Francisco leaves you with excess artistic inspiration, pursue your vision with hands-on classes. Transform industrial scraps into mosaics at SCRAP ( Click here ), silkscreen protest posters

…

( Click here ) Planet Granite ( Click here ) Yerba Buena Center Ice Skating & Bowling ( Click here ) Best Low-impact Challenges Lawn Bowling Club ( Click here ) San Francisco Croquet Club ( Click here ) San Francisco Disc Golf ( Click here ) Golden Gate Municipal Golf Course ( Click here ) AIDS Walk ( Click here ) Cable Cars A creaking hand brake seems to

…

Alta Plaza Park and Lafayette Parks, which are both ringed by stately Victorians. From here, brave the gauntlet of Fillmore St boutiques to Japantown. Explore San Francisco Neighborhoods at a Glance The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers Top Sights Sights Drinking & Nightlife Entertainment Shopping Downtown & Civic Center Top Sights Sights

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Sights Eating Drinking & Nightlife Entertainment Shopping Sports & Activities Golden Gate Park & the Avenues Top Sights Sights Drinking & Nightlife Entertainment Shopping Sports & Activities Day Trips from San Francisco Berkeley Oakland Napa Valley Sonoma Valley Healdsburg & Dry Creek Valley Muir Woods & Muir Beach Sausalito & Tiburon Point Reyes National Seashore Hwy 1 to Santa Cruz

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Sleeping San Francisco's Top Sights Alcatraz Fisherman’s Wharf Golden Gate Bridge & the Marina Ferry Building & Justin Herman Plaza Asian Art Museum Chinatown Alleyways Coit Tower Lombard

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Southeast Asians, lesbians and dandies. Silicon Valley refugees take to Potrero Hill, while barflies and artists lurk in the valley below. Some are drawn to South of Market (SoMa) for high technology, others for high art, but everyone gets down and dirty on the dance floor. The Castro & Noe Valley (Click here) Rainbow

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Wine Merchant ( Click here ) For reviews, Click here Best for Waterfront Vistas ➡ Golden Gate Bridge ( Click here ) ➡ Warming Hut ( Click here ) ➡ Crissy Field ( Click here ) ➡ San Francisco Municipal pier at Aquatic Park ( Click here ) ➡ Sea lions at Pier 39 ( Click here ) RICK GERHARTER / LONELY PLANET IMAGES © TOP SIGHTS Alcatraz Alcatraz: for almost

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of the Bay D2 2 Beniamino Bufano's St Francis StatueC2 3 Ghirardelli Square A3 4 Musée Mécanique C2 5 Pier 39 D1 6 San Francisco CarouselD1 7 San Francisco Maritime National Historical ParkA2 8 SS Jeremiah O'Brien B1 9 USS Pampanito B1 Eating 10 Boudin Bakery C2 11 Eagle Café D2 12

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Perfect C5 29 PlumpJack Wines C5 30San Francisco Surf CompanyC5 31 Uko D5 Sports & Activities 32Oceanic Society Expeditions boat departureB2 Sleeping 33Coventry Motor InnD4 34HI San Francisco Fisherman's WharfE2 35Hotel del SolD4 36Marina InnE4 37Marina MotelA5 The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers Eating | Drinking & Nightlife | Entertainment | Shopping | Sports & Activities

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, remember that even- numbered piers lie south of the Ferry Building and odd-numbered piers north of the Ferry Building. All even-numbered piers are south of Market St. The Presidio Marina Landmark The Marina includes the following sights: Baker Beach ( Click here ), Crissy Field ( Click here ), Presidio Base ( Click here ) and Fort

…

here ) ➡ Barrique ( Click here ) ➡ Edinburgh Castle ( Click here ) ➡ Cantina ( Click here ) ➡ Bix ( Click here ) For reviews, Click here Best Places for Live Performances ➡ San Francisco Symphony (Click here ) ➡ San Francisco Opera (Click here ) ➡ Rrazz Room ( Click here ) ➡ Café Royale ( Click here ) ➡ Biscuits & Blues ( Click here ) For reviews, Click here TOP SIGHTS Ferry Building & Justin

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Hall B3 29 Hemlock Tavern A2 30 Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater B3 31New Conservatory TheaterB6 San Francisco Ballet (see 32) 32 San Francisco Opera A5 33 San Francisco Symphony A5 Shopping 34 Kayo Books C2 35 Magazine B2 Sleeping 36HI San Francisco City CenterB3 37Hotel VertigoC1 38Phoenix HotelB3 39Steinhart Hotel & ApartmentsC1 Financial District Top Sights Ferry Building

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6pm Mon & Sat, 9am-8pm Tue-Thu, noon-5pm Fri & Sun; ; & Civic Center) The vast skylight dome sheds plenty of light through San Francisco’s Main Library. And this being San Francisco, the library actively appeals to broad audiences – to wit the African American Center, Chinese Center, the James C Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center

…

( 415-541-0312, 415-820-3550; www.yerbabuenagardens.com; 3rd & Mission Sts; sunrise-10pm; & Montgomery St) A spot of green in the swath of concrete South of Market. With Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and SFMOMA on one side and the Metreon cinema on the other, this is a prime spot for

…

47 Golden Gate Park Bike & Skate G3 48 Lawn Bowling Club H4 49 Lincoln Park Golf Course C2 50 Lindy in the ParkG4 51 San Francisco Disc GolfD4 52 San Francisco Model Yacht ClubC4 53 Wheel Fun Rentals F4 Sleeping 54Seal Rock InnA3 Golden Gate Park & the Avenues Eating | Drinking & Nightlife | Entertainment | Shopping |

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Weekend Phoenix Hotel ( Click here ) Crescent Hotel ( Click here ) Hotel Diva ( Click here ) W Hotel ( Click here ) Hotel Triton ( Click here ) Best B&Bs Inn San Francisco ( Click here ) Parsonnage ( Click here ) Belvedere House ( Click here ) Chateau Tivoli ( Click here ) Washington Square Inn ( Click here ) Parker Guest House ( Click here ) Best

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3rd-floor fireplace rooms. A heated pool (summer only) and ping-pong keep the kids from getting antsy. Understand San Francisco San Francisco Today History Local Cuisine & Drinks Literary San Francisco Visual Arts San Francisco Music San Francisco Architecture Hills & Fog San Francisco Today Small as it is, this seven-by-seven-mile peninsula looms large in the imagination. The greenest city

…

gave a free performance at Lotta’s Fountain for an audience of 250,000 – virtually every last living man, woman and child in San Francisco. But San Francisco’s greatest comeback performance was the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, held in celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal. Earthquake rubble was used

…

his westward journey, the motley crowd of writers, artists, dreamers and unclassifiable characters Kerouac called ‘the mad ones’ had found their way to like-minded San Francisco. San Francisco didn’t always take kindly to the nonconformists derisively referred to in the press as ‘beatniks,’ and police and poets were increasingly at odds on

…

homes in the out-and-proud Castro, and the sexual revolution was in full swing at gay clubs and bathhouses on Polk St and South of Market (SoMa). Gay San Francisco had arrived; now all it needed was an elected representative. The Castro was triumphant when Castro camera-store owner Harvey Milk was elected city

…

until there’s a cure at AIDS fundraising boutique Under One Roof Come out and play in the Mission, Castro and SoMa San Francisco 3.0 Industry dwindled steadily in San Francisco after WWII, as Oakland’s port accommodated container ships and the Presidio’s military presence tapered off. But onetime military tech contractors

…

, and Amy Tan’s American-born daughters explaining slang to Chinese-speaking moms. Key titles: ➡ Tales of the City (Armistead Maupin) The 1976 San Francisco Chronicle serial follows true San Francisco characters: pot-growing landladies of mystery, ever-hopeful Castro club-goers and wide-eyed Midwestern arrivals. ➡ The Man in the High Castle (Philip

…

sob disconsolately, until you pick it up and pat its posterior. Forget admiring Old Masters from afar: in San Francisco, you’re invited to burp the art. San Francisco Music You’ll have to excuse San Francisco DJs if they seem schizophrenic: only an extremely eclectic set can cover SF’s varied musical tastes. Classical,

…

Renée Fleming, whose dulcet tones you may recognize from a dozen CDs and The Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack. Best for Classical & Opera San Francisco Symphony (Civic Center) San Francisco Opera (Civic Center) Stern Grove Festival (Golden Gate Park) Zellerbach Hall (Berkeley) Rock Fire up those lighters, but don’t go calling for

…

Market St as it climbs steeply uphill (it becomes Portola Ave) and then turn right on Twin Peaks Blvd. Survival Guide Transportation Getting to San Francisco Getting Around San Francisco San Francisco International Airport Oakland International Airport Norman y Mineta San Jose International Airport Bus Train Bus, Streetcar & Cable Car BART Taxi Car & Motorcycle Boat Caltrain

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-minute ride to/from downtown San Francisco. The SFO BART station is connected to the International Terminal; tickets can be purchased from machines inside the station entrance. BusSamTrans (www.samtrans.com; one-way $5) Express bus KX takes about 30 minutes to reach Temporary Transbay Terminal in the South of Market (SoMa) area. Airport Shuttles

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(one-way $14-17) Depart from baggage-claim areas, taking 45 minutes to most SF locations. For service to the airport, call to reserve a pickup from any San Francisco location at least 4 hours in advance of departure

…

Thanksgiving Fourth Thursday in November Christmas Day December 25 Safe Travel Keep your city smarts and wits about you, especially at night at the Tenderloin, South of Market (SoMa) and the Mission. The Bayview- Hunters Point neighborhood south of Potrero Hill along the water is plagued by a high crime rate and frequent

…

credentials she regularly undermines with opinionated culture commentary for radio, newspapers, foodie magazines and books, including Lonely Planet’s California, USA, Coastal California, California Trips, San Francisco and San Francisco Encounter guides. Alison also wrote the Planning, Understand and Survival Guide chapters. John A Vlahides The Marina, Fisherman’s Wharf & the Piers, Downtown & Civic

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luxury-hotel concierge and member of Les Clefs d’Or , the international union of the world’s elite concierges. He lives in San Francisco, where he sings tenor with the San Francisco Symphony, and spends free time skiing the Sierra Nevada. For more, see www.johnvlahides.com and twitter.com/johnvlahides. John also wrote

City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco

by Chester W. Hartman and Sarah Carnochan · 15 Feb 2002 · 518pp · 170,126 words

was William Zellerbach. SPUR immediately focused on redevelopment south of Market Street. According to the February 13, 1960, San Francisco Examiner: The Planning and Urban Renewal Association took dead aim on the “most blighted area in San Francisco” yesterday with a project for coordinated private-public redevelopment of the South of Market St. district. Calling together civic and business leaders

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that San Franciscans would listen when he spoke. What Swig was speaking about in 1954 was his vision of massive clearance and commercial redevelopment South of Market, soon dubbed “The San Francisco Prosperity Plan.” It covered four large blocks and called for constructing a convention center, sports stadium, high-rise ofﬁce buildings, and parking for

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Booster Club / 17 Mayor Christopher entered ofﬁce wary of massive renewal schemes and resisted the Swig plan for South of Market. But eventually the efforts of the Blyth-Zellerbach Committee and its powerful offspring, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association (SPUR), turned him into an enthusiastic supporter of redevelopment. Christopher simply could not

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backing for Yerba Buena Center, was a dramatic reversal of its original stance toward the project. Businesses in the South of Market area were highly unionized, and when redevelopment plans ﬁrst came to light, the San Francisco Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, opposed them on the basis that the development would displace thousands of blue

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the clearance program in Yerba Buena as the beginning of the redevelopment of 1100 industrially zoned acres South of Market. With the support and blessings of the [Redevelopment] agency, they are ready to kick industry out of San Francisco. . . . In addition to the many workers who will lose their jobs, we wonder if the policy

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the court” brief defending the Redevelopment Agency against charges of inadequate relocation brought in federal court by the South of Market residents. The Media The downtown interests found the main outlet for pro-development propaganda in San Francisco’s major daily newspapers, the morning Chronicle and the (until recently) afternoon Examiner.* As political scientist Frederick

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public support for planning and building Yerba Buena Center and for the broader transformation of San Francisco. 3 The Assault on South of Market In 1961, with Justin Herman ﬁrmly in the saddle, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency began the ofﬁcial assault on South of Market by ﬁling for a federal urban renewal survey and planning grant. While outlining a

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renamed Paciﬁc Telesis), Standard Oil (later renamed Chevron), Litton Systems, United California Bank, the Emporium, the 44 The Assault on South of Market / 45 Hearst Corporation (then publisher of the Examiner), the San Francisco Chronicle, and others. Noteworthy is the case of the Emporium department store, then located on the south side of Market between

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built I won’t have to stand in the center of Mission Street on Sundays and apologize for the heart of San Francisco.”)5 The Redevelopment Agency unveiled its plans for the South of Market area in early 1964, and, after making some revisions, applied to the Housing and Home Finance Agency for the urban

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knew in order to pursue easier part-time or irregular work. During World War II, heavy unemployment no longer characterized South of Market, as huge work demands provided ready jobs. In the war years, San Francisco became a dormitory metropolis housing war industry workers and military personnel. As newly arrived workers, seamen, soldiers, and sailors

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past. Historian Kevin Starr’s summation of the neighborhood captures its essence well: This district represents the most comprehensive paradigm of San Francisco. More than any other neighborhood in the city, South of Market is the part that contains the whole: the one matrix that subsumes unto 60 / Chapter 4 itself every successive layer of

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process. As housing was torn down, area residents desperately began to search for a way to stop this forced removal. Many went to the South of Market ofﬁce of the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation (SFNLAF), the federally funded Legal Services agency for low-income clients. They complained vehemently of the tactics employed by

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; the obvious defects of alternative nearby areas with residential hotels; and their adamancy not to be bulldozed out of San Francisco altogether, all meant that the residents took their stand in and for the South of Market neighborhood they knew and inhabited. These demands obviously clashed with Justin Herman’s concept of a “protected environment

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of stability, a place to obtain credit, to meet friends. According to an account in the November 19, 1969, San Francisco Progress: These [1900 remaining] people are ﬁnding it tougher to get along South of Market. The grocery stores and saloons they went to are being closed and ripped down. The cleaning establishment they took

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only the injunction and continued court supervision offered. Thus, TOOR decisively rejected the proposed settlement— which the October 28, 1970, San Francisco Progress characterized as “obviously a bad deal for the . . . elderly South of Market residents”—and Into the Courts / 89 regarded it as a “sell-out”; at one point, they even discussed dismissing their

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used to brag that he always won every battle.” The stalled YBC project and the continuing successful opposition from South of Market residents threatened to present Herman with his ﬁrst major defeat as head of San Francisco’s redevelopment efforts. Indeed, YBC had become so problematic that the City was moving to take the whole

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Canon Kip Community House, the principal social-service center for the residential population in the South of Market area; · · · · Michael Davis, a neighborhood activist representing CCYBC; · · · Morris Evenson, representing the San Francisco Building Trades Council; · John Jacobs, executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal/Research Association (SPUR); · Doris Kahn, staff member of the City

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had been proceeding at a furious rate since the 1970s. Nearly three-ﬁfths of the total ofﬁce space constructed in downtown San Francisco in the 1972 – 82 period was built South of Market.1 And despite massive delays in developing the core of the project area and similar difﬁculties on many of the sites in

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of State Cyrus Vance, who had just ended a nineteen-month stint trying to negotiate a settlement of the ﬁghting in the former Yugoslavia. South of Market Conquered / 171 In San Francisco, the impact of Olympia & York’s downfall was to eliminate them as developer of the building sites they had won in the RFQ

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called Enron Field. (See Frank Ahrens, “For Enron Field, Whole New Ball Name,” Washington Post, 28 February 2002.) South of Market Conquered / 173 baseball team is the closest thing America has to royalty,” sagely observed San Francisco Tomorrow’s February 1993 newsletter.44 In March 1982, the team released a study it had commissioned, ostensibly

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alone appeared in the Voter Information Pamphlet, nominally “representing” constituencies ranging from 49ers fans, Giants fans, some unions, the Chamber of Commerce, restaurateurs, San Francisco’s Irish community, South of Market Conquered / 179 lesbians and gays, women business leaders, Republicans, and city planners— virtually all listed as paid for by the 49ers’ snappily named front

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turn any of these development plans into reality. 182 / Chapter 8 Mission Bay As profound as Yerba Buena Center’s impact has been on South of Market, and on downtown San Francisco generally, it will be dwarfed by the Mission Bay project. Originally a 195-acre development, to be built over a ﬁfteen- to twenty

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Section 8 rent subsidies for most of the units, supplied through the federal McKinney Homeless Assistance Program, administered by the San Francisco Housing Authority. Renamed the Hotel Isabel (after Isabel Ugat, a longtime South of Market neighborhood activist and TODCO’s president, despite becoming wheelchair-bound after a 1990 stroke), this seventy-two-room SRO

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, as well as by larger market forces. For some two decades, the area has been indisputably “chic.” An April 1982 Sunset magazine article, titled “South of Market: No-Nonsense San Francisco,” noted that visitors to the area are “discovering art galleries, historic buildings, no-frills stores with considerable bargains, and unusual little restaurants often tucked

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sense that the whole area will be radically different ﬁve or ten years from now.”11 A June 1981 SPUR report was insensitively titled “South of Market: A Plan for San Francisco’s Last Frontier.” Trendy new restaurants have popped up all over the area. In the western portion of the neighborhood, a regional center

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the “international style” in ofﬁce building design.) Others saw, correctly, that the plan really did not limit ofﬁce growth in San Francisco, but merely shifted it from the ﬁnancial district to the South of Market area, along with strong steps to protect remaining urban design amenities in the ﬁnancial district, and discouraged ofﬁce development in

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permitting virtually unabated growth while giving the appearance of satisfying the growth controllers. By shifting growth (and growth problems) to the South of Market area, in the pithy words of the lobbyist for San Francisco Forward, the Chamber of Commerce front group organized in 1979 to defeat Proposition O, “It’s the way to go

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, investment, and tax revenues to support public services and for housing resources that match economic development plans. At no point in the South of Market/Yerba Buena The Lessons of San Francisco / 395 Center development process or in any other project the City initiated or approved was the basic threshold question posed of how the

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as all these gains have been, it must also be realized that they have not succeeded in halting the transformation of San Francisco, The Lessons of San Francisco / 397 most notably in the South of Market area. Gentriﬁcation has happened with a vengeance. And its more recent wrinkle, via the Internet revolution, has delivered a particularly painful

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, Urban Elites and Mass Transportation, 50. 30. Burton H. Wolfe, “Must San Francisco Choke Itself to Death?” San Francisco Bay Guardian, 18 June 1968. 31. San Francisco Examiner, 28 November 1962, quoting a committee report of the Board of Supervisors. The story continues, “The South of Market Advisory Committee thus outlined yesterday one of the biggest problems it faces

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in trying to restore economic life South of Market.” 32. Frederick M. Wirt, Power in the City: Decision Making in San Francisco (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), 190

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. 33. “Financiers Set on Redevelopment,” San Francisco Examiner, 18 January 1957. 34. San Francisco News, 18 May 1956. 35. Aside from Blyth and

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42–52 / 409 49. Felicity Barringer, “Why the Old Math May Not Apply in San Francisco,” New York Times, 26 March 2000. chapter 3 . the assault on south of market 1. Quotations from Marsha Berzon, “Yerba Buena: A Case Study,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, 17 April 1970, and interview quoted in John Emshwiller’s paper “Yerba Buena

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“guarantee a protected, quality environment.” 18. San Francisco Examiner, 4 January 1966. 19. San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle, 29 December 1965. chapter 4 . the neighborhood ﬁghts back 1. A more complete historical sketch of the South of Market area, from which this section was drawn, is provided in Alvin Averbach, “San Francisco’s South of Market District, 1858–1958: The Emergence of

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New Mission Street Neighborhood.” Notes to Pages 60–69 / 411 4. E. M. Schaffran and Company, “Relocation Survey Report, South of Market Redevelopment Project” (December 1963 and July 1965). 5. “South of Market Turmoil: Rumors and Redevelopment Agency,” San Francisco Examiner, 15 September 1965. For a moving book of photographs of YBC displacees, see Ira Nowinski, No Vacancy

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. 45. Interview quoted in John Emshwiller’s paper, “Yerba Buena: A New Colossus for San Francisco,” submitted to Political Science 109 and Social Science 100BC, University of California, Berkeley, spring 1972. 46. San Francisco Examiner, 31 January 1972. 47. Marybeth Branaman, South of Market Commercial and Industrial Survey (S.F. Redevelopment Agency, July 1963), 6. 48. Malcolm

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You Cry (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 213. 86. Evelyn Hsu, “Feinstein’s Status Still on the Rise,” San Francisco Chronicle, 14 July 1984. chapter 10. yerba buena gardens, todco’s housing, and the south of market neighborhood 1. See Leslie Kaufman, “Sony Builds a Mall. But Don’t Call It That,” New York Times

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Ira Nowinski’s updated No Vacancy. 11. See also Dexter Waugh and Corrie Anders, “South of Market Land Values up—Low-income People Out,” San Francisco Examiner, 2 June 1983. 12. Jean Fuller Anderson, “New Wave of Entrepreneurs Is Rejuvenating South of Market Showplace Square Area,” San Francisco Business, 26 July 1982; Jack Miller, “New Owners Plan for Big Showplace

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,” San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, 22 May 1983. 13. See Gayle S. Rubin, “The Miracle Mile: South of Market and Gay Male Leather,” in Reclaiming San Francisco, ed. James Brook, Chris Carlsson, and Nancy

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J. Peters (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998), 247 – 72. 14. See John McCloud

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, “Builders Bet on San Francisco High-Rises,” New York Times, 29 August 1999. chapter 11 . city

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, 370, 391, 397, 412n24 South of Market Advisory Committee, 52 South of Market Business Association, 223 South of Market Health Center, 217 South of Market Problem Solving Council, 223 South Park, 58, 72 Spectacor Management Group, 174 sports arena, 12, 14, 31, 32, 45, 50, 51, 52, 108, 110, 118, 129–33, 171–78, 396 SPUR. See San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal (Research

The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere

by Kevin Carey · 3 Mar 2015 · 319pp · 90,965 words

with information technology and what the future should bring. — IT WAS FOUR in the afternoon on a gorgeous spring day in the Mission District of San Francisco. I was standing on a sidewalk with Michael Staton, waiting for an Uber to arrive. Michael came to the Bay Area in the early 2000s

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defense contractors and scientific facilities that had begun growing as the military managed points of its global communications and aeronautical networks in and around the San Francisco Bay. Like other universities, Stanford experienced an influx of students after the war. One of Vannevar Bush’s MIT graduate students was appointed dean of

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be a lot of lines networked together. In 1968, Engelbart presented the revolutionary NLS to a thousand fellow computer experts at a conference in the San Francisco Convention Center. The following year NLS was integrated into a new network being developed by the Department of Defense. The copper wire phone network had

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technology married to capital and the best minds of the research university had created a distinct and powerful culture in the converted industrial buildings south of Market Street in San Francisco and the storefronts and garages around the academic and industrial giants of Silicon Valley. It was a belief system in which people were not

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I had first met a year earlier at an education technology start-up company barbecue that Staton had thrown at a friend’s house in San Francisco. At least half of the companies I met that day have since gone out of business: The attrition rate in Silicon Valley is incredibly rapid

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Nelson created the Minerva Project as an answer to that question. As he first described it to me over Chinese food in a restaurant in San Francisco, Minerva is designed to soak up the excess demand for elite American higher education, and provide a better education to boot. Admissions will be based

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don’t measure up will experience something that hardly ever happens at the Ivies: They’ll flunk out. Minerva’s undergraduates will study together in San Francisco for the first year, then spend each of the next six semesters living in a different global city, like Shanghai, Mumbai, São Paulo, or Jerusalem

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oldest institutions of learning. — A FEW DAYS AFTER my first meeting with Ben Nelson, Staton and I walked to the part of Market Street in San Francisco where the city makes a hard transition from tourists and opulent shopping malls to strip clubs and liquor stores. We came to a metal garage

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and Bishay would be well on their way to building new higher-education enterprises existing completely outside of the established system. When I returned to San Francisco the following spring, Dev Bootcamp had moved into a bigger hip start-up space in order to handle pent-up demand. I talked to a

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don’t necessarily need academic libraries and a faculty full of PhDs to have those experiences. Gap Year students spend three months living together in San Francisco, taking seminars and workshops; three months living in a foreign country where they don’t speak the native language; three months in an internship; and

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science department: my father, Bernard Carey. Flagstaff sits at nearly 7,000 feet of elevation in a huge pine forest at the foot of the San Francisco Peaks. Bernard loved the rugged countryside and enjoyed mentoring bright young engineers, much as he had been taught at the Mellon Institute many years before

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bit of exercise, guests can catch their breath at the third floor café, which serves sandwiches and drinks along with a panoramic view of the San Francisco Peaks through floor-to-ceiling glass walls and the outdoor terrace.” The total cost of the 272,000-square-foot building: over $100 million, paid

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Cleveland, August 8, 2012. an average of almost one new community college per week: Arthur M. Cohen and Florence B. Brawer, The American Community College, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003, p. 15. public research universities spend 79 percent more per student on education: Sandy Baum and Charles Kurose, “Community Colleges in Context

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. In 1947 the U.S. Army conducted an education technology experiment: Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Meyer, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2008, p. 12. The U.S. Department of Education has examined scores of online learning studies: Barbara Means, Yukie Toyama, Robert Murphy, Marianne Bakia

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.pdf. Suppes showed up on the first day of class: Michael Allen, “Addressing Diversity in (e-)Learning,” in Michael Allen’s e-Learning Annual, 2008, San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2008. At the original Dartmouth conference on artificial intelligence: J. McCarthy, M. L. Minsky, N. Rochester, and C. E. Shannon, “A Proposal for the

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built them: Douglas Engelbart and William English, “A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect,” AFIPS Conference Proceedings of the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference 33, San Francisco, December 9, 1968, pp. 395–410. Venture capital investment in education technology companies increased: “Global Ed Tech Financing Hits Record in Q1 2014,” CB Insights

San Francisco Like a Local

by DK Eyewitness · 4 Oct 2021 · 268pp · 35,416 words

snub. » Stay hydrated There are lots of water bottle refilling stations, so bring a reusable bottle. GETTING AROUND Occupying the peninsula between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco is a pretty small city – it measures just 7 miles by 7 miles (11 km by 11 km), and is home to

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’ve provided what3words addresses for each sight in this book, meaning you can quickly pinpoint exactly where you’re heading. On foot Compact and gridded, San Francisco is entirely walkable. Downtown and the Mission, in particular, are forgivingly flat, while Nob Hill and Russian Hill reward steep climbs with spectacular views.

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a one-day pass costs just $10. www.lyft.com By public transportation The city has a range of public transportation options run by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA): the Muni Metro light-rail, vintage F-line electric street trams, BART trains, and, of course, those iconic cable cars

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arrivals, and calculates time and cost comparisons between Lyft’s rideshares and bikeshares (provided there are Bay Wheels docks in your area). g Contents San Francisco NEIGHBORHOODS San Francisco is a patchwork of mini-neighborhoods, each with its own distinct look and personality. Here we look at some of our favorites. Bernal Heights

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outpost into a foodie Shangri-La. {map 5} SOMA SOMA stands for “South of the Market” and scoops up the area – wait for it – south of Market Street. Start-up workers flock to the new- builds of this Downtown site, where warehouse nightclubs and trendy restaurants sit uncomfortably alongside homeless encampments. {map

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Parlors g Contents Google Map TARTINE BAKERY Map 4; 600 Guerrero Street, The Mission; ///coffee.diary.museum; www.tartinebakery.com Tartine is a bit like San Francisco: small and unassuming, yet super- influential. Take the morning bun, a sticky, orange-and-cinnamon phenomenon that locals rightly rave about. The bakery also

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STEM KITCHEN AND GARDEN Map 3; 499 Illinois Street, The Mission; ///took.gentle.pitch; www.stemkitchensf.com One of the best rooftop dining spaces in San Francisco, this modern restaurant’s unpretentious decor is matched by its straightforward organic cuisine – think build-your-own salads, sandwiches, and pizzas. For a spot

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Don’t leave without savoring the “three beans,” which supercharges the Mexican food staple to indulgent and delicious levels. g EAT g Contents Cheap Eats San Francisco isn’t exactly synonymous with cheap ($16 sandwiches are as common as cable cars), but while its food-infatuated residents might be happy to forgo

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, The Mission; ///lasts.loyal.cult; www.truelaurelsf.com It should come as no surprise that a bar from the drinks director of Lazy Bear, San Francisco’s hyper-seasonal “dinner party” restaurant, is all about farm-to-glass sips. Visionary blends incorporate local flavors like laurel tincture and redwood tips,

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pals Hit up the outdoor terrace at tropical-themed Anina, where garrulous groups welcome the weekend with punch bowls. g Drink g Contents Historic Boozers San Francisco’s boozing and carousing reputation dates back to the Gold Rush. Today, Wild West saloons with swinging doors, Prohibition-era speakeasies, and Beat bars

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SHOP US Design Record Stores Home Touches Book Nooks Vintage Gems Take a Tour: An afternoon of indie shopping g Shop g Contents US Design San Francisco’s sustainably minded shoppers browse upstart fashion labels and small independent stores for unique, locally designed and Bay-Area-made clothes and accessories. g

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com This bookstore survived Valencia Street’s gentrification thanks to its dedicated regulars, who consider this satisfyingly stuffed store a comforting glimmer of the literary San Francisco that once was. There’s a bit of everything among the new and used, but expect special attention to the obscure. Handwritten signs split

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Judah Street, Outer Sunset; ///human.shows.host; www.blackbirdbooksf.com Kathryn Grantham founded legendary Lower East Side feminist collective bookstore Bluestockings before swapping Manhattan for San Francisco. In her small Sunset spot, every title is hand-picked and displayed with their covers facing out. It’s all about quality over quantity,

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Contents Google Map OMNIVORE BOOKS ON FOOD Map 4; 3885 Cesar Chavez Street, Noe Valley; ///keen.ended.crew; www.omnivorebooks.myshopify.com Of course San Francisco has an entire store devoted to volumes on food. Located in residential Noe Valley, this cute cornershop is all tall, white bookcases crammed with cookbooks

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g Vintage Gems g Contents Google Map RELIC VINTAGE Map 2; 1605 Haight Street, Haight-Ashbury; ///again.polite.galaxy; www.relicvintagesf.com One of San Francisco’s most idiosyncratic clothing boutiques, Relic Vintage nods to the eccentric styles of the 1920s through to the 1960s. The left-of-center retailer sells

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Before the 90s dot-com boom, Valencia Street was seriously avant- garde; its stores targeted women, artists, and the LGBTQ+ community. g Contents ARTS & CULTURE San Francisco swells with culture and creativity. Cavernous museums tell the diverse stories of the past, while theater and public art comment on the present and future

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arty Dogpatch g ARTS & CULTURE g Contents Favorite Museums Think of a museum and a dusty, fusty institution may come to mind. Not so in San Francisco. Here, science is spiced up with drinks and DJ sets, and collections cover everything from arcade games to vibrators. g ARTS & CULTURE g Contents

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Favorite Museums GLBT HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM SFMOMA EXPLORATORIUM SAN FRANCISCO CABLE CAR MUSEUM MUSéE MéCANIQUE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES MUSEUM OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA GOOD VIBRATIONS g Favorite Museums g Contents Google Map GLBT HISTORICAL

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of documentary films, play readings, and archive photo shows tells a different side to the story, revealing the neighborhood’s historic role in some of San Francisco’s most progressive movements and explaining why making the district visible, and city officials accountable, is vital. g ARTS & CULTURE g Contents Public Art

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Far from being just another photo opportunity, public art in San Francisco is a long-held tradition. The city is embroidered with characteristically creative pieces that tell stories about its community and landscape. g ARTS & CULTURE g

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essential to understanding the district. The neighborhood’s talented Latin-American muralists paint about where they’ve come from and the challenges they face in San Francisco: Balmy Alley alone has memorable pieces about the Salvadoran civil war and ongoing gentrification. New works are being added all the time, so trips

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experimental plays and telling diverse stories. g ARTS & CULTURE g Contents Top Theaters AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER SF MASONIC THE MARSH CURRAN NEW CONSERVATORY THEATRE CENTER SAN FRANCISCO PLAYHOUSE THEATRE OF YUGEN LORRAINE HANSBERRY THEATER g Top Theaters g Contents Google Map AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER Map 1; 415 Geary Street, Union Square;

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///reds.armed.detail; www.act-sf.org The ACT embodies the San Francisco tradition of reinvention, with a program that leans into rethinking classics. That could mean refocusing Caryl Churchill’s feminist play Top Girls through the lens

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YUGEN Map 4; 2840 Mariposa Street, The Mission; ///resort.shield.hours; www.theatreofyugen.org This experimental troupe has been bringing its works to the San Francisco stage for more than 30 years, but only recently found itself a permanent space in the Mission. Original pieces at the teeny nonprofit theater explore

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3; 354 11th Street, SoMa; ///epic.shady.inform; www.smoothasbutter.com There are dive bars, and then there’s Butter. The ultimate antidote to San Francisco’s health-conscious, finely crafted, and trend-forward culture, this novel spot gleefully serves deep-fried Twinkies and “cocktails” mixed with off-brand fruit sodas

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. g NightLife g Contents Comedy Nights PUNCH LINE CHEAPER THAN THERAPY STAGE WERX COBB’S COMEDY CLUB SECRET IMPROV SOCIETY PIANOFIGHT THE SETUP BEST OF SAN FRANCISCO STAND-UP COMEDY g Comedy Nights g Contents Google Map PUNCH LINE Map 1; 444 Battery Street, Jackson Square; ///names.decreased.member; www.punchlinecomedyclub

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jazz club, played by all the greats (think Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and Thelonius Monk). g Comedy Nights g Contents Google Map BEST OF SAN FRANCISCO STAND-UP COMEDY Map 1; 582 Market Street, Financial District; ///admire.sound.waters; www.bestofsfstandup.com Flashier than many of its counterparts, this show

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deconstruct the movie over nitro gimlets. Try it! Become a filmmaker Always fancied yourself the next Chloë Zhao? Join an Introductory Filmmaking Workshop at the San Francisco Film School (www.sanfranciscofilmschool.edu). It covers everything from screenwriting to editing. g Movie Theaters g Contents Google Map NEW PEOPLE CINEMA Map 2;

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array of international screenings. Annual events like the Legacy Film Festival on Aging (movies and documentaries about the aging process), the 3rd i (San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival) and CAAMFest (works by and about Asian-Americans) bring an unpredictable and always-brilliant roster of films, in between

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Spoken Word g Contents Google Map BAWDY STORYTELLING Map 3; Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa Street, The Mission; //starts.crops.boats; www.bawdystorytelling.com The San Francisco kink community is alive and kicking – and having a fine old time at this monthly storytelling night, where all the true-life tales are about

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’t leave without trying the much-celebrated and oh-so-oozy grilled cheese sandwich. g NightLife g Contents A fabulous night out in the Castro San Francisco’s famous “gayborhood” has a history of LGBTQ+ activism; this was famously the neighborhood of politician Harvey Milk, the country’s first elected

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Staircases On the Water Alfresco Fitness Wonderful Walks Nearby Getaways Take a Tour: An afternoon exploring Golden Gate Park g OUTDOORS g Contents Green Spaces San Francisco isn’t just surrounded by nature; pockets of green punctuate the city. Locals don’t take these parks for granted, and woodland strolls and

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pyrotechnics in Crissy Field, Oakland, and the East Bay simultaneously is an added bonus. g OUTDOORS g Contents Scenic Staircases There are two things San Francisco has in ample supply: steep hills and jaw-to-the-floor views. This unique topography produces the rare phenomenon of secret, scenic staircases all

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boho SF living. g Scenic Staircases g Contents Google Map Greenwich Stairs Map 1; 231 Greenwich Street, Telegraph Hill; ///sings.nearly.back; One of San Francisco’s best-kept secrets, the Greenwich Stairs transport walkers to a jungle paradise – it’s even advisable to wear bug spray. The steps are fringed

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across the bay to mansions scattered across Marin County’s ravishingly rugged hills. » Don’t leave without stopping halfway to take in the “Heart of San Francisco” sculpture, part of an annual charitable art installation. g Scenic Staircases g Contents Google Map Hidden Garden Stairs Map 5; 1520 16th Avenue, Inner

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step, the geometric tiles and swirling design almost create an optical illusion. g OUTDOORS g Contents On the Water Ringed by its infamous Bay, San Francisco is literally shaped by water and so to are San Franciscans’ weekends. From high-octane hijinks to soothing sailing outings, there’s something for

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Surfing Lessons Map 6; 5000 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacifica; ///bureaucrats.highs.shocking; www.parks.ca.gov Anyone expecting the quintessential California surfing experience in San Francisco will leave disappointed. The city only has a couple of surf spots, which are both suited solely to the super-experienced. But it’s not

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– on paddleboards, nodding hello to the sea lions and peeking at the hippie houseboats, which more closely resemble floating cottages. The view of the San Francisco skyline silhouetted on the horizon is pretty unforgettable. “Picturesque” just doesn’t cut it. g On the Water g Contents Google Map Oceanic Society

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www.sonomavalley.com If Napa is traditional wine country – think expensive restaurants and swanky hotels – then Sonoma is the hipster equivalent. It’s where San Francisco’s young and restless drink non-interventionist wines under string lights at Scribe Winery, a palm-flanked hacienda. Farm town Healdsburg, an hour’s drive

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brass Spreckels Lake was added in 1904 for model boating enthusiasts; today the “Spreckels Irregulars” meet here regularly to race. g OUTDOORS g Contents San Francisco DIRECTORY With a little research and preparation, this city will feel like a home away from home. Check out these websites to ensure a healthy

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Low-cost sexual health clinic, including emergency contraception and post-exposure medication to prevent HIV. www.sfdph.org A complete list of local clinics from San Francisco Department of Public Health. www.walgreens.com Store locator showing 24-hour and late-night Walgreens pharmacies. www.zuckerbergsanfranciscogeneral.org Inpatient, outpatient, and emergency

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for all, regardless of insurance. TRAVEL SAFETY ADVICE Before you travel – and while you’re here – always keep tabs on the latest regulations in San Francisco, and the US. www.sanfranciscopolice.org Safety tips, precinct news, and information on how to report various crimes. www.sfnightministry.org Multi-faith nonprofit

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providing referral services, counseling, and a crisis helpline. www.sf.gov COVID-19 news and advice from the City and County of San Francisco. www.stopaapihate.org Website for reporting hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. www.travel.state.gov Latest travel safety information.

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www.twitter.com/sf_emergency Real-time safety alerts. ACCESSIBILITY Most venues in San Francisco do a good job of being accessible, as do surrounding state beaches and parks. These resources will help make your journeys go smoothly. www.

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of America Museum Curran Et Al. Exploratorium Good Vibrations Grace Cathedral Musée Méchanique Language of the Birds Rincon Center Murals San Francisco Cable Car Museum San Francisco Playhouse SF Masonic NIGHTLIFE Best of San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Cheaper Than Therapy Cobb’s Comedy Club Punch Line Secret Improv Society OUTDOORS Embarcadero Center Steps Filbert

San Francisco Like a Local: By the People Who Call It Home

by Dk Eyewitness · 5 Apr 2023 · 168pp · 33,200 words

uber-cool Greenpoint. When not working at The Washington Post, Laura is tucking into local fare and exploring Long Island’s beach towns. g Contents San Francisco WELCOME TO THE CITY Today, San Franciscans are divided into two camps: “old-school” (hippies) and “new-school” (techies). But if one thing unites

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snub. » Stay hydrated There are lots of water bottle refilling stations, so bring a reusable bottle. GETTING AROUND Occupying the peninsula between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco is a pretty small city – it measures just 7 miles by 7 miles (11 km by 11 km), and is home to fewer

…

’ve provided what3words addresses for each sight in this book, meaning you can quickly pinpoint exactly where you’re heading. On foot Compact and gridded, San Francisco is entirely walkable. Downtown and the Mission, in particular, are forgivingly flat, while Nob Hill and Russian Hill reward steep climbs with spectacular views.

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and a one-day pass costs $10. www.lyft.com By public transportation The city has a range of public transportation options run by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA): the Muni Metro light-rail, vintage F-line electric street trams, BART trains, and, of course, those iconic cable cars.

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the free what3words app, type a what3words address into the search bar, and you’ll know exactly where to go. TRANSIT Your local transit advice San Francisco mightn’t have a cohesive public transportation system, but it does have a cohesive public transportation app. Transit predicts all bus and train arrivals,

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and calculates time and cost comparisons between Lyft’s rideshares and bike shares (provided there are Bay Wheels docks in your area). g Contents San Francisco NEIGHBORHOODS San Francisco is a patchwork of mini-neighborhoods, each with its own distinct look and personality. Here we look at some of our favorites. Bernal Heights

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Beach. Here, a diverse mix of locals have transformed this outpost into a foodie haven. {map 5} SOMA SoMa stands for “South of Market” and scoops up the area – wait for it – south of Market Street. Start-up workers flock to the new-builds of this downtown site, where warehouse nightclubs and trendy restaurants sit uncomfortably

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Treats g Contents Google Map TARTINE BAKERY Map 4; 600 Guerrero Street, The Mission; ///coffee.diary.museum; www.tartinebakery.com Tartine is a bit like San Francisco: small and unassuming yet super- influential. Take the morning bun, a sticky, orange-and-cinnamon phenomenon that locals rightly rave about. The bakery also does

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Map STEM KITCHEN & GARDEN Map 3; 499 Illinois Street, The Mission; ///took.gentle.pitch; www.stemkitchensf.com One of the best rooftop dining spaces in San Francisco, this modern restaurant’s unpretentious decor is matched by its straightforward organic cuisine – think build-your-own salads, sandwiches, and pizzas. For a spot of

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attention to detail: staff are always friendly and attentive, the ingredients are sourced sustainably, and the carefully crafted sushi might just be the best in San Francisco. g Special Occasion g Contents Google Map LAZY BEAR Map 4; 3416 19th Street, The Mission; ///slower.drew.minus; www.lazybearsf.com San Franciscan

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BARS Breweries and Beer Bars Rooftop Bars Coffee Shops Take a Tour: An evening of cocktails in the Tenderloin g Drink g Contents Historic Boozers San Francisco’s boozing and carousing reputation dates back to the Gold Rush. Today, Wild West saloons with swinging doors, Prohibition-era speakeasies, and Beat bars

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SHOP US Design Record Stores Home Touches Book Nooks Vintage Gems Take a Tour: An afternoon of indie shopping g Shop g Contents US Design San Francisco’s sustainably minded shoppers browse upstart fashion labels and small independent stores for unique, locally designed and Bay-Area-made clothes and accessories. g Shop

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Ginsburg pin. g US Design g Contents Google Map MARINE LAYER Map 2; 498 Hayes Street, Hayes Valley; ///pasta.mixed.hike; www.marinelayer.com San Francisco’s dressed-down residents perfect their Cali-casual look at Marine Layer. Everything from the snuggly hoodies to the stylish dresses are made with custom

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trial for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems in 1956. The poetry book defined the Beat generation and forever linked City Lights with San Francisco counterculture. The store continues to make space for progressive ideas today, with sections dedicated to topics like “Anarchism and Class War.” » Don’t leave

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.com This bookstore survived Valencia Street’s gentrification thanks to its dedicated regulars, who consider this satisfyingly stuffed spot a comforting glimmer of the literary San Francisco that once was. There’s a bit of everything among the new and used, but expect special attention to the obscure. Handwritten signs split

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Irving Street, Outer Sunset; ///stage.cargo.brand; www.blackbirdbooksf.com Kathryn Grantham founded legendary Lower East Side feminist collective bookstore Bluestockings before swapping Manhattan for San Francisco. In her small Sunset spot, every title is hand-picked and displayed with their covers facing out. It’s all about quality over quantity, and

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. g Vintage Gems g Contents Google Map RELIC VINTAGE Map 2; 1475 Haight Street, Haight-Ashbury; ///dwell.spoon.quest; www.relicvintagesf.com One of San Francisco’s most idiosyncratic clothing boutiques, Relic Vintage nods to the eccentric styles of the 1920s all the way to the 1960s. The left-of-center

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Before the 90s dot-com boom, Valencia Street was seriously avant-garde; its stores targeted women, artists, and the LGBTQ+ community. g Contents ARTS & CULTURE San Francisco swells with culture and creativity. Cavernous museums tell the diverse stories of the past, while theater and public art comment on the present and future

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Generation alive and kicking. Alternative folk gather for feminist readings, small-press launch parties, and the occasional vigil for departed Beat-scene heroes. It’s San Francisco as it used to be: disheveled literary types kicking against the system with novels and poems, ideas, and debate. There’s also a little

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and its past, with rotating exhibits, art shows, and an events calendar of panel discussions and “documentary watch parties” exploring the Chinese immigrant experience in San Francisco and the wider US. Try it! WALKING TOUR For an insight into Chinatown the community – rather than Chinatown the tourist trap – check out one of

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really there? g ARTS & CULTURE g Contents Favorite Museums Think of a museum and a dusty, fusty institution may come to mind. Not so in San Francisco. Here, science is spiced up with drinks and DJ sets, and collections cover everything from arcade games to vibrators. g ARTS & CULTURE g Contents

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Favorite Museums GLBT HISTORICAL SOCIETY MUSEUM SFMOMA EXPLORATORIUM SAN FRANCISCO CABLE CAR MUSEUM MUSÉE MÉCANIQUE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES MUSEUM OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA GOOD VIBRATIONS g Favorite Museums g Contents Google Map GLBT HISTORICAL

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’t leave without screaming your way around the Tactile Dome, an assault course tackled in the pitch-dark. g Favorite Museums g Contents Google Map SAN FRANCISCO CABLE CAR MUSEUM Map 1; 1201 Mason Street, Nob Hill; ///badly.dragon.form; www.cablecarmuseum.org For many San Franciscans, the workings of their

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purchase and take home as an intimate souvenir. g ARTS & CULTURE g Contents Public Art Far from being just another photo opportunity, public art in San Francisco is a long-held tradition. The city is embroidered with characteristically creative pieces that tell stories about its community and landscape. g ARTS & CULTURE g

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’re essential to understanding the district. The neighborhood’s Latin American muralists paint about where they’ve come from and the challenges they face in San Francisco: Balmy Alley alone features numerous memorable pieces about the Salvadoran civil war and ongoing gentrification. New works are being added all the time, so

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experimental plays and telling diverse stories. g ARTS & CULTURE g Contents Top Theaters AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER SF MASONIC THE MARSH CURRAN NEW CONSERVATORY THEATRE CENTER SAN FRANCISCO PLAYHOUSE THEATRE OF YUGEN LORRAINE HANSBERRY THEATER g Top Theaters g Contents Google Map AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER Map 1; 415 Geary Street, Union Square; ///

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reds.armed.detail; www.act-sf.org The ACT embodies the San Francisco tradition of reinvention, with a program that leans into rethinking classics. That could mean refocusing Caryl Churchill’s feminist play Top Girls through the lens

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YUGEN Map 4; 2840 Mariposa Street, The Mission; ///resort.shield.hours; www.theatreofyugen.org This experimental troupe has been bringing its works to the San Francisco stage for more than 30 years but only recently found itself a permanent space in the Mission. Original pieces at the teeny nonprofit theater explore

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. g NightLife g Contents Comedy Nights PUNCH LINE CHEAPER THAN THERAPY STAGE WERX COBB’S COMEDY CLUB SECRET IMPROV SOCIETY PIANOFIGHT THE SETUP BEST OF SAN FRANCISCO STAND-UP COMEDY g Comedy Nights g Contents Google Map PUNCH LINE Map 1; 444 Battery Street, Jackson Square; ///names.decreased.member; www.punchlinecomedyclub.

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Hawk jazz club, played by all the greats (think Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and Thelonius Monk). g Comedy Nights g Contents Google Map BEST OF SAN FRANCISCO STAND-UP COMEDY Map 1; 582 Market Street, Financial District; ///admire.sound.waters; www.bestofsfstandup.com Flashier than many of its counterparts, this show

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deconstruct the movie over nitro gimlets. Try it! BECOME A FILMMAKER Always fancied yourself the next Chloë Zhao? Join an Introductory Filmmaking Workshop at the San Francisco Film School (www.sanfranciscofilmschool.edu). It covers everything from screenwriting to editing. g Movie Theaters g Contents Google Map MARINA THEATRE Map 5; 2149

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g Spoken Word g Contents Google Map BAWDY STORYTELLING Map 3; Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa Street, The Mission; //starts.crops.boats; www.bawdystorytelling.com The San Francisco kink community is alive and kicking – and having a fine old time at this monthly storytelling night, where all the true-life tales are about

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as a hub for community activities, like letter-writing parties to raise political awareness. g NightLife g Contents A fabulous night out in the Castro San Francisco’s famous “gayborhood” has a history of LGBTQ+ activism; this was famously the neighborhood of politician Harvey Milk, the country’s first elected official

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Green Spaces Scenic Staircases On the Water Alfresco Fitness Wonderful Walks Nearby Getaways An afternoon exploring Golden Gate Park g OUTDOORS g Contents Green Spaces San Francisco isn’t just surrounded by nature; pockets of green punctuate the city. Locals don’t take these parks for granted, and woodland strolls and

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the pyrotechnics in Crissy Field, Oakland, and the East Bay simultaneously is an added bonus. g OUTDOORS g Contents Scenic Staircases There are two things San Francisco has in ample supply: steep hills and jaw-to-the-floor views. This unique topography produces the rare phenomenon of secret, scenic staircases all over

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fringed by verdant undergrowth and soaring trees, interrupted only by the occasional flap of wings or sound of birdsong. On warm summer days, flocks of San Francisco’s famous (and invasive) cherry-headed conures, a species of parrot native to South America, can be heard squawking in the overhead canopies. g

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top step, the geometric tiles and swirling design almost create an optical illusion. g OUTDOORS g Contents On the Water Ringed by its infamous Bay, San Francisco is literally shaped by water and so too are San Franciscans’ weekends. From high-octane high jinks to soothing sailing outings, there’s something

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Map SURFING LESSONS Map 6; 5000 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacifica; ///bureaucrats.highs.shocking; www.parks.ca.gov Anyone expecting the quintessential California surfing experience in San Francisco will leave disappointed. The city has only a couple of surf spots, which are both suited solely to the super-experienced. But it’s not

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bay – on paddleboards, nodding hello to the sea lions and peeking at the hippie houseboats, which more closely resemble floating cottages. The view of the San Francisco skyline silhouetted on the horizon is pretty unforgettable. “Picturesque” just doesn’t cut it. g On the Water g Contents Google Map OCEANIC SOCIETY

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Map 2; Mission Dolores Park, The Mission ///eager.barks.milky; www.17thstreetathleticclub.com Dolores Park may be where the party’s at on sunny San Francisco evenings, but in the morning, this leafy spot is taken over by serious fitness fans. Locally based 17 Reasons Athletic Club hosts lively bootcamps on

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; www.sonomavalley.com If Napa is traditional wine country – think expensive restaurants and swanky hotels – then Sonoma is the hipster equivalent. It’s where San Francisco’s young and restless drink non-interventionist wines under string lights at Scribe Winery, a palm-flanked hacienda. Farm town Healdsburg, an hour’s drive

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.brass Spreckels Lake was added in 1904 for model boating enthusiasts; today the “Spreckels Irregulars” meet here regularly to race. g OUTDOORS g Contents San Francisco DIRECTORY With a little research and preparation, this city will feel like a home away from home. Check out these websites to ensure a healthy

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care for all, regardless of insurance. TRAVEL SAFETY ADVICE Before you travel – and while you’re here – always keep tabs on the latest regulations in San Francisco and the US. www.sanfranciscopolice.org Safety tips, precinct news, and information on how to report various crimes. www.sfnightministry.org Multi-faith nonprofit providing

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and Pacific Islander communities. www.travel.state.gov Latest travel safety information. www.twitter.com/sf_emergency Real-time safety alerts. ACCESSIBILITY Most venues in San Francisco do a good job of being accessible, as do surrounding state beaches and parks. These resources will help make your journeys go smoothly. www.accessnca

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Chinese Historical Society of America Museum Curran Et al. Exploratorium Good Vibrations Grace Cathedral Musée Méchanique Language of the Birds San Francisco Cable Car Museum San Francisco Playhouse SF Masonic NIGHTLIFE Best of San Francisco Stand-Up Comedy Cheaper Than Therapy Cobb’s Comedy Club Punch Line Secret Improv Society OUTDOORS Embarcadero Center Steps Filbert Street

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

by Fred Turner · 31 Aug 2006 · 339pp · 57,031 words

civilization. 2. Brand, Stewart. 3. Information technology—History—20th century. 4. Counterculture—United States— History—20th century. 5. Computer networks—Social aspects. 6. Subculture— California—San Francisco—History—20th century. 7. Technology—Social aspects— California, Northern. 8. Whole earth catalog. I. Title: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth network, and the rise of

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And who enlisted computing machines to represent them? To answer these questions, this book traces the previously untold history of an extraordinarily inﬂuential group of San Francisco Bay area journalists and entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between the late 1960s and the late 1990s, Brand assembled a network of

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the Internet. On February 8, 1996, John Perry Barlow, an information technology journalist and pundit, and a former lyricist for the house band of the San Francisco LSD scene, the Grateful Dead, found himself at his laptop computer in Davos, Switzerland. While attending the World Economic Forum, an international summit of politicians

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began to feel restless in his offduty hours. “I was looking for the wrong thing,” he wrote in his diary. “I was looking for San Francisco beauty, San Francisco people, San Francisco happiness—the bohemian style. . . . Therefore, Resolved—to go posh. To frequent the theaters, music halls, galleries, and homes not as an interloper taking all

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without LSD. As it turned out, the Trips Festival featured plenty of LSD. But more importantly, it represented a coming together of the Beatnik-derived San Francisco psychedelic scene and the multimedia technophilia of art troupes such as USCO. On the ﬁrst night, Brand and some friends performed his multimedia piece America

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had helped found a new tribe of technology-loving Indians, artistic engineers of the self. Very soon these new Comprehensive Designers would set out from San Francisco to found their own communities in the wilderness. When they got there, thought Brand, what they would need most would be tools and information.

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of mobility and networking as an American cultural style. As he migrated from Stanford to the art worlds of Manhattan and the psychedelic bohemias of San Francisco, Brand became a key link between very different countercultural, academic, and technological communities. When he founded the Whole Earth Catalog in 1968, he gathered

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that it featured contributions from four somewhat overlapping social groups: the world of university-, government-, and industry-based science and technology; the New York and San Francisco art scenes; the Bay area psychedelic community; and the communes that sprang up across America in the late 1960s. When these groups met in its

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Buckminster Fuller for allowing only two classes in his work: elite designers and mass consumers. In the same issue, Brand reprinted an article from the San Francisco Good Times describing how commune dwellers in the Southwest had taken advantage of impoverished locals. A year later, Brand printed a letter calling for the

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edition of the Catalog and the end of the Whole Earth Catalog publishing project. He invited ﬁve hundred Whole Earth staffers, readers, and friends to San Francisco’s Palace of Arts and Sciences. He also promised them a “surprise educational event.” At about ninethirty that evening, a procession of entertainers appeared:

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of that year, at the Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (ACM/IEEE)–Computer Society’s Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, Engelbart and members of the ARC team demonstrated the NLS system to three thousand computer engineers. Engelbart sat on stage with a screen behind him

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of view characterized the work of two subsequent generations of innovators. The ﬁrst comprised the “hardware hackers” of the 1970s. Clustered in and around the San Francisco Bay area, they included the young founders of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, as well as early proselytizers for personal computing such as

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-the-land movement. They did so, however, under radically new economic and technological conditions. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the professional communities of the San Francisco Bay area, where the WELL was located, and especially those associated with digital technology, witnessed an extraordinary rise in networked forms of economic organization and

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was particularly true for the early users of the WELL. As Manuel Castells has pointed out, the electronics industry and its geographical hubs, including the San Francisco Bay area, were among the industries and regions most dependent on network patterns of organization.22 In Silicon Valley, these networks had been coming together

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.27 Throughout its early years, the WELL population included large numbers of users from the growing computer industry. Most of its members hailed from the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley areas. Moreover, its contributors included a substantial number of professionals from other industries that had long depended on networks, including academe

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who contributed would ultimately be rewarded with information themselves over time. This pattern of giving without expectation of immediate reward had deep roots in the San Francisco Bay area counterculture; for Rheingold and others, it was this pattern that distinguished the sorts of information exchange happening in places like the WELL from

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manufactured the ﬁrst glove in March 1986.59 Another East Coast engineer, Eric Gullichsen, arrived at about the same time. He ultimately joined Autodesk, a San Francisco Bay area maker of CAD systems. In 1988 Autodesk developed a “cyberspace” initiative (quickly dubbed “Cyberia”) in which they tried to build “‘a doorway

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. He engaged in furious and funny debates about the nature of intellectual property, told personal stories, and periodically appeared for face-to-face meetings in San Francisco. For Barlow, as for Rheingold, the WELL was a simultaneously professional and interpersonal community; and as a working journalist, Barlow, like Rheingold, was able to

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ﬂexible and more open to change and, in particular, that businesses, unlike governments, could be decentralized. This impression was reinforced by his participation in the San Francisco Bay area’s countercultural business scene. Schwartz happened to live near Paul Hawken, founder of the organic grocery chain Erewhon Trading Company and later cofounder

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Catalog had made an underground network of communitarians visible and available to one another and to mainstream America; by 1988 the computer culture of the San Francisco Bay area was national news. For communards and commune wannabes, the Whole Earth Catalog offered a unique collection of contacts and information sources. But

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be-annual Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) Conference. In 1988 Kevin Kelly gave Electric Word an enthusiastic review in Signal, thus alerting a number of San Francisco Bay area technology journalists to its existence. Around the time when the Signal review appeared, Rossetto began visiting the United States in the hope of

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Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe took readers inside the garage where the Merry Pranksters painted their psychedelic bus. Quittner here took readers inside San Francisco’s Bistro Rôti—“a cozily upscale place overlooking the bay . . . woodburning stove . . . valet parking . . . white Jaguar in front . . .”—for the EFF’s quarterly board meeting

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that they claimed the government should now step away from.49 If the “Aspen Summit” was intended to unite the technology industry, representatives of the San Francisco Bay area counterculture, and Republican Washington, it failed. Nevertheless, though that meeting of the minds did not take hold in the mountains, it found

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the cover of Wired signaled the high-water mark of the alliance between the techno-libertarians of the computer industry, the former counterculturalists of the San Francisco Bay area, and the social conservatives of the New Right. As the failure of the second “Cyberspace and the American Dream” conference suggested, the

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entered a new era. Young engineers were migrating to the hubs of digital innovation as fast as they could. In the industrial-era lofts south of Market Street in San Francisco and in the narrow corridors of Manhattan’s Silicon Alley, twenty-something marketers pulled their six-hundred-dollar Herman Miller chairs around hand-hewn

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Even as the Free Speech Movement and the New Left explicitly confronted military, industrial, and academic institutions, the bohemian artists of cold war Manhattan and San Francisco, and later the hippies of Haight-Ashbury and the youthful back-to-the-landers, in fact embraced the technocentric optimism, the information theories, and the

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a group of Whole Earth afﬁliates staged a twenty-four-hour virtual reality marathon called Cyberthon 1.0 at the Colossal Pictures sound stage in San Francisco. Among the attendees were Brand, William Gibson, Jaron Lanier, Colossal Pictures executive and founding member of the Global Business Network Lawrence Wilkinson, Wavy Gravy,

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telephony bill that included a wiretapping provision, the foundation’s ﬁnancial and management troubles, and the return of its headquarters from Washington, D. C., to San Francisco. In this story, Barlow and other staffers appeared naive. As the story’s extended headline put it, Washington had “reverse-engineered the EFF, driving it

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suits in Washington were trying to hold it back. And, like the countercultural revolution before it, the digital revolution would have to be headquartered in San Francisco. 28. Garreau, “Conspiracy of Heretics,” 98; Best, quoted ibid., 154. 29. Michael McClure and Ramón Sender Barayón, respectively, quoted in Hafner, “Epic Saga of

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Essential Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools and Ideas. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1986. ———. “History.” In Whole Earth Epilog, edited by Stewart Brand, 752 –53. San Francisco: Point Foundation, 1974. ———. How Buildings Learn: What Happens after They’re Built. New York: Viking, 1994. ———. “How to Do a Whole Earth Catalog.” In Brand

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7, 1972. ———. “Sticking Your Head in Cyberspace.” Whole Earth Review 63 (Summer 1989): 84 – 85. ———, ed. The Updated Last Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools. San Francisco: Point Foundation, 1974. ———. “We Owe It All to the Hippies.” Time 145, special issue, Spring 1995. ———, ed. Whole Earth Catalog. Menlo Park, CA: Portola Institute

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, CA: Portola Institute, Fall 1969. ———, ed. Whole Earth Catalog One Dollar. Menlo Park, CA: Portola Institute, January 1971. ———, ed. Whole Earth Epilog: Access to Tools. San Francisco: Point Foundation, 1974. ———. Whole Earth Software Catalog. Garden City, NY: Quantum Press/Doubleday, 1984. ———. Whole Earth Software Catalog for 1986. Garden City, NY: Quantum Press

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, 1982. Brenner, Robert. The Boom and the Bubble: The US in the World Economy. London: Verso, 2002. Brockman, John. Digerati: Encounters with the Cyber Elite. San Francisco: HardWired, 1996. Bromell, Nicholas Knowles. Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Bronson, Po. “George Gilder.” Wired

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, MA: MIT Press, 2003). (Page citations are to the 2003 reprint.) Byerly, Victoria Morris. Gerd Stern, “From Beat Scene Poet to Psychedelic Multimedia Artist in San Francisco and Beyond, 1948 –1978”: An Oral History Conducted in 1996. Berkeley, CA: Regional Oral History Ofﬁce, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2001. Byron

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– 44. Ehrlich, Paul R., and Richard W. Holm. The Process of Evolution. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963. Einstein, David. “Think Tank Helps Prevent Future Shock.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 1995, D1. Ellis, David, Rachel Oldridge, and Ana Vasconcelos. “Community and Virtual Community.” In Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, edited

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Women On Line (Continued).” Electronic Frontier Foundation Conference, in the WELL, topic 476. This source available to WELL subscribers. Fairﬁeld, Richard. Communes U.S.A. San Francisco: Alternatives Foundation, 1971. Farber, David R., and Eric Foner. The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994.

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New York: Times Books, 1994. Ginsberg, Allen. “The New Consciousness.” In Composed on the Tongue: Literary Conversations, 1966 –1977, edited by Donald Allen, 63 –93. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1980. Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam Books, 1987. ———. The Whole World Is Watching: Mass

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Dutch/Shell.” Global Business Network, Emeryville, CA, 1990. Kleiner, Art, and Stewart Brand, eds. News That Stayed News, 1974 –1984: Ten Years of CoEvolution Quarterly. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1986. Kline, David. “‘Friction-Free’ Foolishness,” Hotwired, September 11, 1995. http:// webmonkey.wired/market/95/37/index1a.html (accessed July 16, 2005

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of the Electronic Frontier.” In Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information, edited by James Brook and Iain A. Boal, 49 –58. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995. Miller, Timothy. American Communes, 1860 –1960: A Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1990. ———. The 60s Communes: Hippies and Beyond. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse

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Above. New York: Hill and Wang, 1968. Rheingold, Howard, ed. The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog: Access to Tools and Ideas for the Twenty-First Century. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994. ———. “A Slice of My Life in My Virtual Community.” In High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace, edited by Peter

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of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Roszak, Theodore. From Satori to Silicon Valley: San Francisco and the American Counterculture. San Francisco: Don’t Call It Frisco Press, 1986. ———. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reﬂections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. Garden

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of Capitalism. New York: H. Holt, 1990. Royce, Joseph. Surface Anatomy. Philadelphia: F. A. Davis, 1965. Rushkoff, Douglas. Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994. Rybczynski, Witold. Paper Heroes: Appropriate Technology: Panacea or Pipe Dream? New York: Penguin, 1991. Savio, Mario. “California’s Angriest Student.” Life, February 26

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Directions, edited by David Silver and Adrienne Massanari. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Ullman, Ellen. Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997. U.S. Ofﬁce of Scientiﬁc Research and Development. Science, the Endless Frontier. A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director

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(Semi-Automated Ground Environment air defense system), 19, 24, 27–28, 266n53 Salmon, Robert, 191 Salon (online magazine), 156 San Francisco Mime Troupe, 66 San Francisco Museum of Art, 1963 USCO performance, 51 San Francisco Oracle, 80 San Francisco Zen Center, 125 Santa Fe Institute (SFI), 176, 190, 198, 200 Savio, Mario, 11, 12, 14, 16 Saxenian, AnnaLee

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups

by Randall Stross · 4 Sep 2013 · 332pp · 97,325 words

’T QUIT 21 SOFTWARE IS EATING THE WORLD Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendix: The Summer 2011 Batch Notes Index INTRODUCTION San Francisco Gray Line is the largest sightseeing tour company in Northern California. It offers tours of San Francisco, of Muir Woods and Sausalito or the wine country north of the city, but it no longer

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see the most promising startups, not museums and historic garages. There are literally thousands of startups, dispersed along the sixty-mile corridor that extends between San Francisco and San Jose, but they all operate under secrecy until they are ready to launch their first product. That’s why there can never be

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blog is “The Art of Ass-Kicking.”1 The three are about twenty-four years old, recent graduates of Stanford and Berkeley, roommates living in San Francisco, and fast friends. They would like to start their own startup together. What the particular business will be is not firmly settled—it changes day

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the founders live in Mountain View, near Y Combinator. The middle of Silicon Valley is boring, he knows. But he says: If you live in San Francisco, it will introduce drag on your coming here, and that will cause you to occasionally miss things. We don’t do things here just for

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know: you guys don’t want to live in Mountain View. Do it for three months. After you’re done, you’re funded, move to San Francisco and be hipsters. He tells the founders that they are not going to be closely supervised, that they should not assume that Y Combinator partners

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“accelerators.” But the terms were sometimes used loosely. The others all shared one characteristic, however: they were singletons. Chicago had Excelerate Labs; Durham, LaunchBox Digital; San Francisco, KickLabs; Dallas, Tech Wildcatters; Pittsburgh, AlphaLab; Cincinnati, The Brandery; Austin, Capital Factory; New York, NYC SeedStart; Providence, Betaspring; Salt Lake City, BoomStartup—and this is

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’d expect from a group of Asian immigrants.”9 Shortly after YC concluded, inDinero raised $1.2 million. • “Where is the female Mark Zuckerberg?” asked San Francisco magazine in a cover story that ran in late 2011. “For the first time in startup history,” the article asserted, “girl wonders actually have an

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, condition for making a go of Boso. They needed different surroundings, a place where experienced founders who could provide guidance were plentiful. Kulveer flew to San Francisco to talk with Evan Williams; he also met Max Levchin, a cofounder of PayPal, and Naval Ravikant, a serial founder. When he returned home, he

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loved them!”8 When the two Taggars arrived and settled in, Harj marveled at the friendliness of everyone they met. They got an apartment in San Francisco and Evan Williams offered them desks within his own space at Obvious Corporation—soon to evolve into Twitter—that was only a five-minute commute

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sold in 1998 for $50 million. Harj worked at Live Current Media in Vancouver for a little more than a year, then moved back to San Francisco in August 2009, planning to do another startup.20 For the first one, his motive had been mercenary: “I’d never had much money growing

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class at UW for which Ballinger had been the teaching assistant. After graduation, Tan had worked at three startups. He is moving from Seattle to San Francisco to join Ballinger and is on the highway this very day, with all of his possessions in the car. When Ballinger walks into the small

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would be offered to consumers. But they are free to shop around, seeking guidance from the other YC partners. Once Jason Tan has arrived in San Francisco, he and Ballinger sign up for office hours with Sam Altman. Perhaps he will give them the encouragement to pursue one of the consumer ideas

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-can-eat data plan. So it’s very easy for us to reach out to people there.” Standard Chartered Bank, which has an office in San Francisco, is keenly interested in MobileWorks and has provided the startup with free office space. Lee finishes his note taking, thanks the founders, then heads to

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, storefront by storefront, selling CampusCred deals in every market. He needed an army of clones as his field sales force. CampusCred has an office in San Francisco. Once YC’s summer batch has begun, the cofounders start coming down to Mountain View for office hours, seeking guidance on how to attack a

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fun to share rides with other people.” The number of rideshare posts on Craigslist—about a thousand are listed at the moment for just the San Francisco Bay Area—provides encouraging evidence of demand. Shen says they will start off with long-distance ridesharing, to the upcoming Burning Man festival in the

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desert and also between San Francisco and Los Angeles. As the other startups do at the end of their presentations, Shen offers to the batch the expertise of his team’s

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Sims decided to look for another idea. They were renting an apartment in Sunnyvale, a place far duller than Mountain View and even farther from San Francisco, and discovered when they attempted to order food that many restaurants did not have their own Web sites. Today, the two introduce their new idea

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prepared: they have stocked up on Red Bull. Their apartment is in Sunnyvale, about a ten-minute drive from YC, in the direction away from San Francisco. It’s a location suited for round-the-clock work, without diversions. The apartment is minimally furnished and without a television set, a place lived

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, though, when founders crave having more company around than that supplied by one or two cofounders. As the summer batch progresses, the startups based in San Francisco organize an occasional hackathon, a designated evening in which others in the batch are invited to come over with their laptops to the host’s

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YC invest and though Kan and Shear did not formally belong to a YC batch, they became de facto second-timers. When they moved to San Francisco in October 2006 to begin work on Justin.tv, they had no idea what the cost of streaming video would be or how they would

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. In the meantime, Kan and Shear had added two other cofounders: Michael Seibel, a fellow Yalie, and Kyle Vogt, who left MIT and moved to San Francisco to join them. The founders did not have anything resembling a plan, other than to start and see how much interest Justin.tv would attract

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. About two thousand people became regular viewers, making Justin Kan a minor celebrity who was recognized on the streets of San Francisco. But that was not a base sufficient to support even a tiny four-person business—and Justin.tv had neither sponsors nor advertising. The founders

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users had NFC phones. This had left the residual choice of outdoor advertising. Taggar describes their intention to buy advertising space at bus stops in San Francisco and then offer it to YC companies like Dropbox and Airbnb. Graham has not heard of this plan. “No shit? Bus stop advertising!” “On the

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printed up these labels, which are like, ‘Tap here’ or ‘Scan a QR code.’ We’re going to put them up on MUNI stops around San Francisco. Just to see what people do.” Geoff Ralston speaks up. “Aren’t a lot of people doing that kind of thing?” He knows that there

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which they work. It is mid-June and the Ridejoys—Kalvin Wang, Randy Pang, and Jason Shen—are living in a three-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. The common area serves as Ridejoy’s world headquarters. The threesome originated in a friendship that Wang and Shen struck up when they were students

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in San Francisco but didn’t then work together. Shen, who had studied biology and philosophy, worked after graduation as the business manager of the Stanford Daily and commuted down to Stanford. Wang, a computer science major, worked at a number of startups and landed at Virgance, an incubator located in the South of Market

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area of San Francisco, not far from their apartment. The two needed to find someone for the third bedroom in their apartment. They ran an ad on Craigslist

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done before it will be ready for a beta release, however. Kantor and Tim Suzman live in an apartment in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco and their front room serves as the company’s office. Ted Suzman has his own apartment in the Mission district, so the three are not

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a “great user experience.” Shen anticipates a question that may be in the minds of the audience members: “Maybe this is some kind of crazy San Francisco hipster thing. It’s not.” He shows a photograph of an older man. “That’s Michael. He’s a former director of Merrill Lynch. And

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batch. Mark Kantor and Tim Suzman remembered the earlier time when they lived in the “Y Scraper”: a twelve-story building on Taylor Street in San Francisco that acquired the nickname because of the large number of YC-funded founders who lived and worked there. It was one of the only places

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partner Justin Kan is in this batch with you! He has decided to do another startup.” They and a third cofounder have launched Exec in San Francisco, which offers to dispatch, within ten minutes of a request, someone who will do most anything. “We are delighted beyond words,” says Graham. “And we

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of the same paragraph is included earlier in the post. 10. E. B. Boyd, “Where Is the Female Mark Zuckerberg?” San Francisco, December 2011 [posted online November 22, 2011], www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/where-the-female-mark-zuckerberg. Earlier in the year, Aileen Lee, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, had

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20, 2011, www.jasonshen.com/2010/the-rejection-therapy-challenge-week-1/. Shen’s gauntlet of rejection was covered in the San Francisco Chronicle: Meredith May, “Experimenting with Rejection Builds Self-Confidence,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 2010, http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-11-27/news/24948328_1_rejection-stings-elayne-savage-social-media

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the past about the value of a university education,” said a Stanford faculty member. “Peter Thiel to Teach Stanford Class on Startups,” Tech Chronicles blog, San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 2012, http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2012/03/12/peter-thiel-to-teach-stanford-class-on-startups/. 2. Justin Kan, “Drop Out

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.com, 31, 204 Salt Lake City, UT, 42 San Diego, CA, 20 San Francisco, CA, 41, 54 CampusCred, 111 hipsters, 36, 211 living in, 9, 35–36 Mission, 165 MobileWorks, 90 MUNI, 153 rideshare listings, 120–21 Russian Hill, 165 South of Market, 163 Standard Chartered Bank office, 90 Taylor Street, 223–24 Y Scraper

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, 223–24 YC founders in, 58, 71, 133–34, 141, 142, 163, 229 San Francisco Gray Line, 1 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, 41–42, 202–3 Santa

Dead Companies Walking

by Scott Fearon · 10 Nov 2014 · 232pp · 71,965 words

hell of a lot of money. The Business of Failure Shortly after the collapse, I left Houston for the San Francisco Bay Area. From 1987 to 1990, I managed a mutual fund in downtown San Francisco. Since 1991, I’ve run a hedge fund from a modest Marin County office park in the shadow

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. The Cal Coastal guys were jammed up the rest of the day. I had no other meetings scheduled, and I was due back in the San Francisco Bay Area that evening for dinner. I was torn. Half of me wanted to just head back to the airport and fly standby on the

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is how many people refused to face this reality. Two weeks before Cal Coastal filed for bankruptcy in October 2009, a well-known analyst at San Francisco–based JMP Securities put out a research report on the company. The stock cost was $1.50 at the time, and the analyst strongly advised

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Not Going to Like This TXU News,” Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2013. **Kathleen Pender, “Ex-Dean of Stanford Business School Led Enron Audit Panel,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 7, 2002. ††Robin Pogrebin, “In Madoff Scandal, Jews Feel an Acute Betrayal,” New York Times, December 24, 2008. Two The Fallacy of Formulas

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. My first meeting was with the chief financial officer of Costco (stock symbol: COST), a fellow named Richard. I took a morning flight out of San Francisco and drove across Lake Washington from Sea-Tac airport to the company’s corporate headquarters, which were still in Kirkland at the time. On the

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three cups of coffee I’d bought that day—one from a Starbucks location near my house in Mill Valley, one from a kiosk at San Francisco airport, and one on the way to Kirkland. Orin was right. I had absolutely no idea what any of them had cost. I’d plunked

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than they should. I first spotted this tendency early in my career when I was managing mutual funds for a company called GT Capital in San Francisco. My focus was investing in smaller, lesser-known companies, and I couldn’t help but notice that a lot more stocks in that sector went

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. I was thirty years old and making $80,000 a year. I was recently married. My wife and I were living on Nob Hill in San Francisco and expecting our first child. Aside from the political turmoil inside GT, life was pretty good. I started my hedge fund on December 1, 1990

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find a good bowl of gumbo within a thousand miles—and believe me, I tried. There was exactly one restaurant in the whole city of San Francisco that served it, a place on Fillmore Street called the Elite Cafe. It’s still there. The food wasn’t all that bad. It just

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the rugged Pacific Coast. Another ten minutes and I’m at the beach. If I go fifteen miles in the other direction, I’m in San Francisco, one of the best cities in the world. But let’s be frank: Marin County is not terribly exciting. Most of the people are old

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wasn’t so thrilled with inline skates after all. He never wore them again. Around that time, I was at a Hambrecht & Quist conference in San Francisco, and I saw the two guys running First Team Sports Inc. (stock symbol: FTSP), one of the biggest makers of inline skates, give a presentation

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fitness gear is a terrible trait for any investor. Yet most brokerage firms actively seek out competitive people to work for them. Montgomery Securities in San Francisco used to recruit, almost exclusively, former college athletes. They liked the fire and the discipline that the ex-jocks brought to the job. To be

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together. And I appreciate the company while I’m on the road. One morning in 1999, we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and through San Francisco to a business park built on a spit of land, called Oyster Point, that sticks out into the bay. A company called PlanetRx (stock symbol

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for being skeptical of this nonsense. Sunk One month after my visit to Women.com, I parked my car on Brannan Street in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco and strolled into the corporate headquarters of a company called Quokka Sports (stock symbol: QKKA). Its CEO was a youthful, energetic Aussie named Alan

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cause Americans to love sailing, Oracle founder Larry Ellison tried to bring yachting to the masses again when he hosted the America’s Cup on San Francisco Bay. Ellison made many of the same claims the CEO of Quokka Sports had tried out on me more than a decade earlier—specifically, that

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races would attract huge influxes of visitors and over a billion dollars in economic benefits (three times as much as the Super Bowl!), he convinced San Francisco’s political leaders to spend millions in public money on waterfront facilities and viewing areas. Ellison even managed to get NBC Sports to broadcast the

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cast a spell. She had long cinnamon-colored hair and striking brown eyes. I went to visit her in Shaman’s offices down by the San Francisco airport in 1998. Even though she’d been running the company for nine years by then, she was still quite young. I don’t think

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’d all go out for a meal and talk shop. One night, about ten of us went to Il Fornaio down on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. A man named Gary Smith stood up after our plates were cleared and handed around some papers he’d copied for us. He was a

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’s stock had already doubled. Then it doubled again, and again, and kept going up. By the time I left TCB for GT Capital in San Francisco three years later, it was up around fifty bucks, a full ten times what we had paid for it. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration

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name was Rob, and he had a beautifully appointed corner aerie on the thirty-second floor of Embarcadero Center Four in the Financial District of San Francisco. His company, Building Materials Holding Corporation (stock symbol: BMHC), sold construction materials and services to housing developers. It had originally been owned by the old

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turned it into a billion-dollar concern. I had actually met Rob once before, in 2002, but when he escorted me into his office overlooking San Francisco Bay that second time, the view almost knocked me flat. Unlike my previous visit, and on most summer days in the city, the fog had

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a commodity-driven business. It might have been easy for Rob and its other executives to forget, on the thirty-second floor of one of San Francisco’s most exclusive business addresses, but the firm made its money framing up suburban tract homes and wholesaling low-margin commodities like plywood, drywall, and

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the managers of businesses he invests in, but he was particularly pointed with the brass at BMHC. He took to publicly calling out Rob as “San Francisco’s own $6 Million Man” and urged the company to reduce “its bloated cost structure.”* Even as the housing crisis became a clear supercycle event

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, BMHC—again, a low-margin commodity and service provider with its roots in Boise, Idaho—kept its tony corporate headquarters on the San Francisco waterfront. That fact alone, even more than the firm’s increasingly gruesome finances, convinced me to short its stock. Relatively speaking, the expense of maintaining

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the San Francisco office might have been small compared to BMHC’s overall budget, but the symbolism of it was enormous. It displayed a leadership that was, quite

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own employees—that they were going to do everything it took to weather the downturn, even if it meant living and working (gasp!) outside of San Francisco. Eventually, in early 2009, BMHC did move its headquarters back to its original hometown of Boise, Idaho. But by then, it was too late to

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Plano as insignificant. But his imperial attitude reminded me of Rob, who was running what amounted to a lumber company from the Financial District of San Francisco. That sort of elitism rarely sits well with workers, middle management, or even other executives, and it almost always leads to internal problems. In Johnson

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-plus stores were in working-class areas in the middle of the country. Like Rob managing a lumber supply company from the rarified air of San Francisco’s Financial District, JCPenney’s directors failed to venture beyond their own insulated perspectives when they hired Johnson. Instead of finding someone who understood the

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the companies, but often for the directors and executives themselves. One of the most infamous examples took place back in the late 1980s when the San Francisco investment bank Hambrecht & Quist—which specialized in rehabbing troubled tech companies—acquired a major stake in a struggling disk drive manufacturer called MiniScribe. A few

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they wonder why their companies aren’t growing or producing as much anymore. A little over a decade ago, the so-called Four Horsemen of San Francisco investment banks—Hambrecht & Quist, Montgomery Securities, Robertson Stephens, and the Baltimore-based Alex. Brown & Sons—were each bought out by major financial conglomerates. These were

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before I became a money manager, I had a personal connection to Cost Plus. My father used to bring my brother and me along to San Francisco when he attended conferences there, and I have fond memories of walking from our hotel in Union Square through Chinatown and into the original Cost

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original location—which opened way back in the 1950s—was the first major treasure hunt retailer, and it was as much of a destination in San Francisco as Coit Tower or Golden Gate Park. Stepping through the doors was like going on a mini round-the-world tour. I can still smell

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to make millions on the offering. The third phone call I made that day was to the brokerage handling the stock offering, Montgomery Securities in San Francisco. The institutional salesman there who had recommended the stock was named Rick. Like just about everybody else at Montgomery, Rick was an aggressive pitchman. The

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for all of his talent, he also had a critical weakness: he thought he had friends on Wall Street. After he brought me out to San Francisco with him to work at GT Capital, he bought into two more ill-fated stock offerings on the advice of another Wall Street “friend” at

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away with it?” He paused for a moment before answering. “Yes, Mr. Fearon. I’m afraid they are.” Notes *William A. Sherden, The Fortune Sellers (San Francisco: Wiley, 1999), 6. †Amy Feldman and Joan Caplin, “Is Jack Grubman the Worst Analyst Ever?” Money Magazine, April 5, 2002. ‡Charles Gasparino, “Salomon Admits That

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as Losses Plunge Hedge Fund into the Red,” CNN.com, November 2, 1998. **Daniel A. Strachman, A Tiger in the Land of Bulls and Bears (San Francisco: Wiley, 2004), 169. Conclusion Learning to Love Failure All Over Again When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together

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helping people who at times cannot help themselves. Everyone who works with Nicholas, from his home aides to his doctors at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, has been amazing. Thank you. Because of Nicholas, our family has become involved with charities that help the disabled. My wife and I

Black Fire: The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer--And of the Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San Francisco

by Robert Graysmith · 30 Oct 2012 · 314pp · 106,575 words

ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Sawyer, Tom, 1832–1906. 2. San Francisco (Calif.)—Biography. 3. San Francisco (Calif.)—History—19th century. 4. Adventure and adventurers—California—San Francisco—Biography. 5. Firefighters—California—San Francisco—Biography. 6. Fires—California—San Francisco—History—19th century. 7. Arson—California—San Francisco—History—19th century. 8. Twain, Mark, 1835–1910—Friends and associates. 9

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CONTENTS Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Author’s Note Dramatis Personae Prologue Part I: THE MAN WHO BURNED DOWN SAN FRANCISCO December 24, 1849–September 16, 1850 Chapter 1 Broderick and the Christmas Eve Catastrophe Chapter 2 Sawyer Chapter 3 Sleeprunners and Flying Houses Chapter 4

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wanted Tom Sawyer to be the boy who carried on the nation’s soul. In 1850, America was San Francisco. —ROBERT GRAYSMITH SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, NOVEMBER 2011 DRAMATIS PERSONAE The Protagonists Clockwise, from left: Mark Twain: San Francisco Call reporter in search of his first novel; Tom Sawyer: veteran volunteer fireman, customs inspector, and savior of

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city, but that some of these had unfortunately been successful. Fire, however, was only one means of obtaining their ends. —Frank Soule, The Annals of San Francisco David C. Broderick Broderick and the Christmas Eve Catastrophe Tom Sawyer had known from the beginning that the fierce competition between the volunteer companies would

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city turned out to share their grief. The volunteers were not only heroes, but family members and an extension of the citizens themselves. The fledgling San Francisco companies kept two sets of uniforms—one for firefighting and a more ostentatious costume for ceremonial purposes. The volunteers pressed their dazzling full-dress uniforms

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. As the flames pushed toward them, they touched the foot of Commercial Street where the considerable premises of the three most important mercantile houses in San Francisco—Simmons, Hutchinson & Company, S. H. Williams & Company, and Macondray & Company—sat east of Clay Street fronting the bay. Their stored merchandise was immensely valuable. The

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crash of fire and smoke, the grand finale to a stupendous pyrotechnic exhibition.” Street preachers shuffled through the smoking embers bellowing that God was leveling San Francisco for its debauchery, sharpsters, and thieves. They were probably right, but the noise of busy hammers drowned them out, leaving their dour sermons to hang

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and boys. When an officer intervened, the Tarflatters beat him nearly to death. The call of gold had drawn the most reckless young men to San Francisco: the best artists, intellectuals, farmers, merchants, and clerks. It also attracted the worst: cutthroats, ex-convicts, profiteers, pirates, traders, deserters, renegades, crooked politicians, and the

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caught, the Ducks shielded one another from arrest, conviction, and punishment. They controlled not only most of the vice, murder, crimping, extortion, and arson within San Francisco but also employed unscrupulous shysters and two-bit politicians to make payoffs for them. They intimidated incapable prosecutors, bribed police and juries, and elected criminals

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vigilantes organized a rally in the Square. More than ten thousand bloodthirsty citizens gathered to authenticate the hanging men as essentially the new government of San Francisco. One lynching infallibly produces more lynchings. Mark Twain later suggested a brave man be stationed in each affected community to bring to light the deep

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of the Vigilance Committee had lately discovered more kindling fires than ever. As thick black clouds filled the streets, plunderers and looters marched lockstep across San Francisco, taking full advantage of the confusion to loot the gold stores. Because it was Sunday, Captain Coffin and Captain Haskel called onboard the James Caskie

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-century American West. It was a hub of creative expression that magnetically attracted talent. Former torch boy Charles Dormon Robinson (later called the dean of San Francisco artists) worked out of his upstairs painting studio opposite Ambrose Bierce’s old apartment. Robinson and his fellow artists frequented the Occidental Hotel. Jack London

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rambunctious ways, she translated Confederate reports into French and smuggled secret documents for the rebel cause. In 1862 she became the “lady correspondent” of the San Francisco Evening Bulletin. Her detailed “Letter from Paris” became an anticipated weekly feature in the city. On October 3, 1863, Lillie, now twenty years old, returned

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its steam engine was transferred to Engine Eleven of the new paid New York Fire Department and they were disbanded. Would the San Francisco volunteers meet a similar fate? All fourteen San Francisco volunteer fire companies held divergent views. The regional, ethnic, and national difference of the strikingly disparate companies caused friction. Three in

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engine houses were inconvenient to fighting fire. Almost all were within one area—bounded by Broadway, Bush, Stockton, and Front streets. Only two companies lay south of Market or in the distant countryside near Mission Dolores. Homes burned long before the volunteers reached them. One day a fire broke out at a suburban

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: The slaughterhouse burned to ashes. Hand-operated fire engines constructed in New York, Rhode Island, and Baltimore began to be shipped to the West. In San Francisco a yearlong economy drive reduced the volunteers’ effectiveness. Company Five and Company Three were given defective replacements for their worn-out hoses and were temporarily

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particular. Broderick had used the fire station’s influence to put him and his friends politically in power in almost every aspect of San Francisco government for years—from San Francisco’s first appointed sheriff to chief engineer of the volunteer fire department. He was removed from office in 1874 over a squabble between

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autobiography and in his Mississippi Writings, chapter 20, “A Catastrophe,” writes of his brother Henry’s death and the fatal steamboat explosion. I reviewed the San Francisco Fire Department Museum for lists of SFFD firehouses, volunteer companies of 1850–66, and notable people; consulted 1850s diaries and letters, birth and death records

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of arrivals, marriages at sea, and shipwrecks; and studied fleets lists, pictures, journals, immigration reports, and the San Francisco Delinquent Tax List, 1867. I used the San Francisco History Center, the San Francisco Public Library, the Historical Abstract of San Francisco for 1897, Vigilance Committee trial transcripts, hundreds of books on the Gold Rush and the adventurers who

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Coast. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1937. Askins, Col. Charles. Texans, Guns & History. New York: Winchester Press, 1970. Bacon, Daniel. Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail. San Francisco: Quicksilver Press, 1996. Baldwin, Joseph G. Edited by Richard E. Amacher and George W. Polhemus. The Flush Times of California. Athens, Georgia: University

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is discussed on pp. 604–8.) Barker, Malcolm E. San Francisco Memoirs 1835–1851: Eyewitness Accounts of the Birth of a City. San Francisco: Londonborn Publications, 1996. ———. More San Francisco Memoirs 1852–1899. San Francisco: Londonborn Publications, 1994. Beebe, Lucius, and Charles Clegg. San Francisco’s Golden Era: A Picture Story of San Francisco Before the Fire. Berkeley: Howell-North, 1960. Bell

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, Major Horace. On the Old West Coast. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1930. Benemann, William, editor. A Year of Mud and Gold. San Francisco in Letters and Diaries, 1849–1850. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Boessenecker, John. Against the Vigilantes: The Recollections of Dutch Charley Duane

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. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. (Duane’s memoir was originally printed in the San Francisco Examiner, 1881. An excellent history, well written and an important source.) ———. Gold Dust & Gunsmoke: Tales of Gold Rush Outlaws, Gunfighters, Lawmen, and Vigilantes. New York

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World, 1849 to 1852. Chicago: Gorham B. Coffin, 1908. (Firsthand accounts of the great fires by an artistic sailor.) Cole, Tom. A Short History of San Francisco. San Francisco: Don’t Call It Frisco Press, 1981. Country Beautiful editors. Great Fires of America. Waukesha, Wisconsin: Country Beautiful Publishing, 1973. DeFord, Miriam Allen. They Were

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Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. ———. Gold Rush Port: The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco’s Waterfront. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2009. (A treasure trove of valuable archaeological information about Yerba Buena Cove from a leading maritime archaeologist

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.) Dickson, Samuel. Tales of San Francisco. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965. ———. Tales of Love and Hate in Old San Francisco. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1971. Dillon, Richard H. Embarcadero: Being a Chronicle of True Sea Adventures from the Port of

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, Inc., 1959. ———. Humbugs and Heroes. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1970. ———. Shanghaiing Days. Garden City, NY: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1961. Dobie, Charles Caldwell. San Francisco: A Pageant. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1934. Dunshee, Kenneth Holcomb. As You Pass By. New York: Hastings House, 1952. A major source for

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Oxford Mark Twain. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Fracchia, Charles A. Fire & Gold. Encinitas, California: Heritage Media, 1996. Garvey, John. San Francisco Fire Department. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2003. Gilliam, Harold. San Francisco Bay. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1957. (A terrific book and one of my all-time favorites.) Goodenough, Simon. The

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. The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. Green, Floride. Some Personal Recollections of Lillie Hitchcock Coit-5. San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, Limited Edition of 450 copies, 1935. Includes plates from old photographs of Lillie, her mother and father, and engravings. Illustrator might have been

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Green herself. Greer, James Kimmins. Colonel Jack Hays, Texas Frontier Leader and California Builder. Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1987. Harlan, George. San Francisco Bay Ferryboats. San Diego: Howell-North Books, 1967. Hazen, Robert M., and Margaret Hindle Hazen. Keepers of the Flame. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Hearn

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’s enduring friendship with Mark Twain.) Jackson, Donald Dale. Gold Dust. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980. Jackson, Joseph Henry, editor. The Western Gate, A San Francisco Reader. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young. (Jackson reprints “The Terry-Broderick Duel,” Ben C. Truman, 1859.) Jacobson, Pauline. City of the Golden ’Fifties. Berkeley

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: The Talisman Press, 1964. Johnson, Paul C. Pictorial History of California. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1970. Johnson, Paul C., and Richard Reinhardt. San Francisco As It Is, As It Was. San Francisco: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979. Johnson, William Weber. The Forty-Niners. New York: Time-Life Books, 1974. (On p. 192 Charles Robinson relates

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how he and two other torch boys fell into a pit leading an engine when he was a torch boy in North Beach, San Francisco.) Jones, Idwal. Ark of Empire, San Francisco’s Montgomery Block. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1955. (The author discusses Sawyer and Twain steaming together in the baths in the

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. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. Kelly, Joellen L., Robert A. Yatsuk., and J. Gordon Routley. Firefighters. New York: Universe Publishers, 2003. Kemble, John Haskell. San Francisco Bay, A Pictorial Maritime History. Cambridge, MD: Cornell Maritime Press, 1957. Kersey, A.T.J., and William J. Goudie, editors. Ripper’s Heat Engines. London

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, Michael, editor. Gold Rush. Berkeley, California: Heyday Books, 1997. Levy, Jo Ann. They Saw the Elephant. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992. Lewis, Oscar. San Francisco: Mission to Metropolis. San Diego: Howell-North Books, 1980. ———. Sea Routes to the Gold Fields. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949. (The sinking of the

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Independence is presented on pp. 252–53.) Lewis, Oscar, editor. This Was San Francisco. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1962. Lockwood, Charles. Suddenly San Francisco. San Francisco: The Hearst Corporation, 1978. MacMullen, Jerry. Paddle-Wheel Days in California. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1944. Marryat, Frank. Mountains and

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his courage. It is one of my favorites and a tremendous source.) Rasmussen, Louis J. San Francisco Ship Passenger Lists. Volumes 1, 2, 4. San Francisco. Rathmell, George. Realms of Gold. Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Company, 1998. Richards, Rand. Historic San Francisco. San Francisco: Heritage House Publishers, 1991. (Twain met “a fireman named Tom Sawyer,” p. 342.) Riesenberg

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. The Log of a Forty-Niner (edited from the original manuscript). Boston, MA: B. J. Brimmer Company, 1923. San Francisco Fire Department. History of the Fire Department. San Francisco: Press of Commercial Publishers Co., 1900. San Francisco Fire Department, Historical Review. Part II, the Paid Department, December 3, 1866. (Tom Sawyer, paid corporation yard keeper, December

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in his casket, pp. 124–29.) Schultz, Charles R. Forty-Niners ’Round the Horn. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999. Scott, Mel. The San Francisco Bay Area. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959. Secrest, William B. California Badmen. Sanger, CA: Word Dancer Press, 2007. (Includes Yankee Sullivan’s and Billy

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. New York: Berkley Books, 2003. Walkins, T.H., and R.R. Olmsted. Mirror of the Dream: An Illustrated History of San Francisco. San Francisco: Scrimshaw Press, 1976. Williams, Mary Floyd. History of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851. Herbert Botton, editor. Vol. 12. (Lists minutes of the Executive Committee for July 21, 1851, and

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’s bedside.” Sunday magazine, March 29, 1908. (Letters and citations from the Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley.) Perrigan, Dana. “Beneath the City.” San Francisco Examiner, March 16, 1998, p. A-1 and p. A-10. Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, http://bancroft.berkeley.edu. Guardians of the

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biographical notes: www.marktwainproject.org. See also the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, “Tom Sawyer,” www.theshipslist.com/ships/passengerlists/, and San Francisco: Ships in Port, www.maritimeheritage.org/inport.htm. See San Francisco Fire Department Museum, 655 Presidio Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 9415-2424; the fire engines of 1850–1866 are on display there

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Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption

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The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993

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Lonely Planet London City Guide

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Makers

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The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea, at the Right Time

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Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble

by Dan Lyons · 4 Apr 2016 · 284pp · 92,688 words

9Tail Fox

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood · 19 Oct 2005 · 404pp · 108,253 words

Why Do I Love These People?: Understanding, Surviving, and Creating Your Own Family

by Po Bronson · 26 Dec 2006 · 365pp · 120,105 words

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet

by Andrew Blum · 28 May 2012 · 314pp · 83,631 words

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities

by Michael Shellenberger · 11 Oct 2021 · 572pp · 124,222 words

The Future Won't Be Long

by Jarett Kobek · 15 Aug 2017 · 510pp · 138,000 words

Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet

by Claire L. Evans · 6 Mar 2018 · 371pp · 93,570 words

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

by Clive Thompson · 26 Mar 2019 · 499pp · 144,278 words

Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age

by Virginia Eubanks · 1 Feb 2011 · 289pp · 99,936 words

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

by Nick Bilton · 15 Mar 2017 · 349pp · 109,304 words

The Internet Is Not the Answer

by Andrew Keen · 5 Jan 2015 · 361pp · 81,068 words

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

by Anna Wiener · 14 Jan 2020 · 237pp · 74,109 words

Facebook: The Inside Story

by Steven Levy · 25 Feb 2020 · 706pp · 202,591 words

How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight

by Julian Guthrie · 19 Sep 2016

Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History

by Ben Mezrich · 6 Nov 2023 · 279pp · 85,453 words

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

by Ashlee Vance · 8 May 2023 · 558pp · 175,965 words

The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-Hackers Is Building the Next Internet With Ethereum

by Camila Russo · 13 Jul 2020 · 349pp · 102,827 words

Food Trucks: Dispatches and Recipes From the Best Kitchens on Wheels

by Shouse, Heather · 19 Apr 2011

What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry

by John Markoff · 1 Jan 2005 · 394pp · 108,215 words

Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places

by Sharon Zukin · 1 Dec 2009 · 415pp · 119,277 words

A Man in Full: A Novel

by Tom Wolfe · 31 Mar 2010 · 970pp · 302,110 words

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination

by Adam Lashinsky · 31 Mar 2017 · 190pp · 62,941 words

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley

by Corey Pein · 23 Apr 2018 · 282pp · 81,873 words

A Paradise Built in Hell: Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

by Rebecca Solnit · 31 Aug 2010

Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime

by Julian Guthrie · 15 Nov 2019

How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success From the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs

by Guy Raz · 14 Sep 2020 · 361pp · 107,461 words

Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand

by John Markoff · 22 Mar 2022 · 573pp · 142,376 words

Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter

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We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory

by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin · 1 Oct 2018

What Should I Do With My Life?

by Po Bronson · 2 Jan 2001 · 446pp · 138,827 words

Hollow City

by Rebecca Solnit and Susan Schwartzenberg · 1 Jan 2001

The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions...and Created Plenty of Controversy

by Leigh Gallagher · 14 Feb 2017 · 290pp · 87,549 words

The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice

by Julian Guthrie · 31 Mar 2014 · 428pp · 138,235 words

Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley

by Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans · 25 Apr 2023 · 427pp · 134,098 words

The Passenger

by AA.VV. · 23 May 2022 · 192pp · 59,615 words

Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America

by Conor Dougherty · 18 Feb 2020 · 331pp · 95,582 words

Western USA

by Lonely Planet

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

by Mike Isaac · 2 Sep 2019 · 444pp · 127,259 words

1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before You Die, Updated Ed.

by Patricia Schultz · 13 May 2007 · 2,323pp · 550,739 words

A Crack in the Edge of the World

by Simon Winchester · 9 Oct 2006 · 482pp · 147,281 words

Frommer's San Diego 2011

by Mark Hiss · 2 Jan 2007

Frommer's California 2009

by Matthew Poole, Harry Basch, Mark Hiss and Erika Lenkert · 2 Jan 2009

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)

by Adam Fisher · 9 Jul 2018 · 611pp · 188,732 words

The Rise of the Network Society

by Manuel Castells · 31 Aug 1996 · 843pp · 223,858 words

Lonely Planet's Best of USA

by Lonely Planet

Coastal California Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Northern California Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet

Coastal California

by Lonely Planet

California

by Sara Benson · 15 Oct 2010

Frommer's California 2007

by Harry Basch, Mark Hiss, Erika Lenkert and Matthew Richard Poole · 6 Dec 2006 · 769pp · 397,677 words

USA Travel Guide

by Lonely, Planet

Fodor's California 2014

by Fodor's · 5 Nov 2013 · 1,540pp · 400,759 words