After a few days in san francisco, you’ll begin to notice a strange proliferation of fat silvery cylinders sprouting from the hands and faces of the local population. Is it an alien invasion? A new kind of cellphone? No. You’ve discovered the secret passion of San Francisco, the vital fuel source of artists, students, plumbers […]

Elizabeth “Lillie” Hitchcock Coit was one of the prototypically colorful characters of San Francisco history. A daughter of high society, she was a tomboy who developed an unusual obsession with fire and firemen, and was associated with them throughout her life. Though much sought after by the young men of the city, she cheerfully ignored […]

Everybody’s having it. at home, at work, on the bus… everywhere in San Francisco the same question… and what are we asking each other about? “Sooo…. how much rent are YOU paying?” We don’t normally discuss things like this. Just as our social mores dictate that questions about sexual habits or body weight are off-limits, […]

What is that THING looming above the San Francisco skyline? Almost a thousand feet tall, covered in stone, with a bright red beacon at the top… okay, I guess even though we’re not in Egypt or Central America the answer is pretty obvious: it’s a pyramid. but why? Is it because the citizens of San […]

The Golden Gate Bridge is the no. 1 suicide landmark in the world. It opened proudly in 1937, but less than two years — and 11 jumpers later — a local newspaper reported that the California Highway Patrol had already begun looking for ways to prevent “further suicidal leaps from the bridge.” An officer was […]

The “fact” that San Francisco was completely destroyed by the Great Earthquake of 1906 is widely known, of course — but less well known is the actual fact that it was the subsequent fire, raging for three days, that did almost all of the damage. I stumbled across a little piece of this history several […]

I can clearly remember the first time I saw the wild parrots of San Francisco flying through the air over my neighborhood. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Or my ears, for that matter…their voices sound like a thousand tin cans rolling down a hill. Where had these bright green strangers come from, and why were […]

Well, I always thought that I knew the story of Levi’s jeans, how the Bavarian Levi Strauss showed up in Gold Rush San Francisco with a ton of heavy canvas for tent-making, met a miner who needed a pair of pants strong enough to withstand the rigors of gold mining, and the rest was history. […]

A nightmare week of computer mayhem and chaos has stimulated the nostalgic, anti-digital-technology side of my brain, and inspired me to talk about my newest old-school adoption: the straight razor! In short: I bought a vintage German razor, it’s an absolute beauty, and I risk my life every morning as I step in front of […]

Think celebrity trials and sensationalist journalism were born yesterday? Think again. The ongoing trial of Michael Jackson has put me in mind of the murder trial of international celebrity Fatty Arbuckle in 1921 — the sexual details printed in the daily press titillated a moralistic nation and ended in the ruin of one of the […]