Comments on: Shaping San Francisco

Shaping San Francisco

hal incandenza — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:52:01 -0800

"Shaping San Francisco is an ongoing multimedia project in bottom-up, participatory history." Earthquakes, freeways, baths, parks, jazz clubs, chutes, streetcars, neighborhoods dead and alive, and oh so much more.

By: Devils Rancher

Devils Rancher — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:57:35 -0800

Where's the chapter on how it became a disneyland caricature of itself? (sorry -- it makes me sad when I go home every 10 years or so). I miss Playland. Dolores park seems to have survived as part of the neighborhood, and it's not swollen with camera-wielding Europeans, which is nice. Some of my earliest childhood memories revolve around the sound of congas rising from drum circles there, in the mid-sixties.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:32:18 -0800

Where's the chapter on how it became a disneyland caricature of itself? That happened in the 1850s. Thats the great things about sites like this, to help dispel the common misconceptions colored by nostalgia, that things are always getting worse.

By: fleacircus

fleacircus — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:58:24 -0800

It's nice to read unflinching, detailed histories of earlier SF. Too much of it is too focussed, too narrow, too sanitized. Samuel Brannan's story is hilarious; Mormans enforcers fighting each other in the desert over remittances from the Bay Area to Salt Lake City is something I'd rather see reappear than anything from the 1960s. And, plus ca change:

The cost of a brick house was estimated at one dollar a brick. Common iron tacks of the smallest size, much in demand for fastening cloth partitions, were worth their weight in gold—a pound of gold bought a pound of tacks. Since gold was current at sixteen dollars an ounce (the rate of exchange established at a public meeting in September 1848), the tacks actually cost the purchaser $192 a pound. So far as the records show, this was the top price, although tacks seldom dropped below ten dollars an ounce for more than a year. By that time San Francisco had begun to pass the muslin-partition stage, and so many tacks had been imported that they couldn't be given away. One merchandising genius is said to have brought in a whole shipload, most of which were eventually dumped into the bay at a considerable loss.

By: Quietgal

Quietgal — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:42:31 -0800

Wonderful! Bookmarked.

By: mano

mano — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:06:51 -0800

if you're local, take a bike tour! it's worth it.

By: MiltonRandKalman

MiltonRandKalman — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:23:11 -0800

This site generates the most frightful URLs I've ever seen.

By: troybob

troybob — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:25:53 -0800

San Francisco...bottom-up...very funny...

By: ioesf

ioesf — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:48:00 -0800

it's a great project! (though the transition from cd rom to tourist kiosk to website makes the interface a bit web x.N.) if you like it you might also like organizer and contributor chris carlsson's other projects.