Jeff Altman took some of his grandfather's 16mm Kodachrome home movies and made some really nice HD transfers out of them: San Francisco circa 1958, Disneyland in 1956 (part 2).
posted by mikesch on Oct 23, 2009 - 44 comments

"Chinatown" communities across the United States (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco) are undergoing a shift in linguistic identity, as recent immigrants are more likely to natively speak Mandarin (the official spoken language of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan,) instead of Cantonese. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Oct 22, 2009 - 56 comments

"The What Cheer House catered to men only, permitted no liquor on the premises, and housed San Francisco's first free library and first museum." Opened in 1852 by Robert B. Woodward it became immensely popular. "[S]ailors enjoyed staying there... [he] was such a well-liked man that they would often bring him trinkets from around the world when they’d come to town. For Woodward, these gifts were the beginning of what would become a life-long obsession with collecting." He moved the collection and opened Woodward's Gardens in 1866 between Mission and Valencia at 13th-15th streets. Called the Central Park of the West, it was San Francisco's most famous public resort. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn on Oct 4, 2009 - 23 comments

Ben Wiggins features stunning time-lapse photography. From the strange colorings of the Cnidarian and Montipora coral species, to summer cloud transformations in and around San Francisco. Couldn't make it to Burning Man 2009? See it... in just two minutes (2008, 2007).
posted by netbros on Sep 26, 2009 - 6 comments

The San Francisco Bay Bridge has been shut down for the weekend to allow workers to roll a section of the old bridge away, and roll in a temporary section, while they build the new permanent bridge. Download the video here showing how they'll do it. [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer on Sep 3, 2009 - 61 comments

Sweet! The Crookedest Street in the World was turned into a giant Candy Land game today, to celebrate the board game's 60th anniversary. Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4 [more inside]
posted by zarq on Aug 19, 2009 - 26 comments

San Francisco's Black Exodus. Since the last report in 1990, San Francisco’s Black population has dropped by 40 percent, faster than any other major city in the country. In an effort to reverse the loss, Mayor Gavin Newsom started the African American Out-Migration Task force in 2007. [more inside]
posted by lunit on Aug 13, 2009 - 27 comments

Where do you wanna meet, Fahey's Bar or the Dragon Lounge? How an ordinary San Francisco bar adapted to shifting demographics by developing a dual personality.
posted by w0mbat on Aug 8, 2009 - 21 comments

Ship to Shore. Much of downtown San Francisco, including everything in this photo, is built on landfill based on sunken ships that were abandoned during the Gold Rush (see the map linked at the bottom of the page). [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha on May 18, 2009 - 26 comments

"I photograph people who skirt the edges of things; people whose connection to the broader flow is murky or obscured. Mistaken as more, less or different than they are; they aren’t really seen and don’t really belong. That’s everyone sometimes; but some more often. I try to establish a line for a moment. I hope to connect. And I see the most beautiful and the most heartbreaking things."
posted by parudox on May 10, 2009 - 34 comments

Thirty years of community fundraising, flawless makeup, genderbending, and hysterically offensive names: the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are celebrating their 30th anniversary in San Francisco this weekend with parties, library exhibits, an art show, and their usual over-the-top Easter celebration. [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer on Apr 10, 2009 - 18 comments

Wilfred Sätty; 1939 - 1982 Illustrator and Collagist extraordinaire; like many talented people of that era hung out at Vesuvio.
" There is a time in the span of civilizations when creative energy and the human spirit are wholly, if briefly focused. When this occurs culture in all its manifestations reaches its zenith. The moment passes; civilizations decline, only to be replaced by others. This process of life appears cyclic. Communities become tribes, turn into nations and become empires which, like suns, radiate their energy to the limits of their power, then decay and finally vanish, leaving behind only traces. This cycle, which may continue until our sun--or our planet--fails us..... "
When you want to know about someone's life you either ask the person yourself or you ask friends ... Sätty is Dead [more inside]
posted by adamvasco on Feb 14, 2009 - 4 comments

The End of an Era. Apple has just announced this January will be the last Macworld.
posted by four panels on Dec 16, 2008 - 57 comments

"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.
posted by hal incandenza on Dec 4, 2008 - 8 comments

Thirty years ago yesterday (November 27, 1978) San Francisco Board of Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor. Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the U.S. Prior to his death he championed a movement against a California proposition (Proposition 6, dubbed the Briggs Initiative) which sought to ban gays and lesbians, and anyone who supported gay rights, from working in California's public schools. In the midst of a national right-wing, conservative, religious movement heralded by folks like Anita Bryant the proposition was soundly defeated. Fast forward to today. A new film "Milk" [trailer] (starring Sean Penn in the title role) is garnering critical acclaim and is relevant to current events. "Harvey came up against a lot of obstacles, which I think is the case for any gay man now," says Brolin, who plays Dan White [in the film]. "The irony is that Prop 8 is now what Prop 6 was then."
posted by ericb on Nov 28, 2008 - 60 comments

Is Oakland supposed to...ripple like that? [more inside]
posted by rtha on Nov 12, 2008 - 63 comments

NextBus uses GPS to tell you the predicted time of the next bus. Google maps show buses in real time, and you can get updates on your phone/PDA. The coverage is limited to certain agencies within the US, so these other sites might be useful: Hopstop covers subways and buses in NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, DC, and more. (mobile version) Google Transit has many US metro areas in addition to Canada, Europe, and Japan. (previously) Many more locations inside. [more inside]
posted by desjardins on Oct 21, 2008 - 36 comments

Mother's Cookies is no more.
posted by Reverend Robbie on Oct 10, 2008 - 59 comments

Del Martin, with her partner Phyllis Lyon, were pioneers in so many fields that it's hard to do justice to all of it in one post. [more inside]
posted by gingerbeer on Aug 27, 2008 - 78 comments

myopenbar.com (Chicago link) is a dandy little site that lets you know where to score free and/or cheap eats and/or drinks on any given night in your area (assuming 'your area' = NYC, SF, LA, Honolulu, Miami, or the aforementioned Chi-town). The places are rated, and visited personally by the website's bloggers, but who cares? It's free booze. [more inside]
posted by shakespeherian on Jul 15, 2008 - 6 comments

The Bullitt chase entirely geocoded. (Previously.)
posted by miss lynnster on Jun 30, 2008 - 38 comments

These "track boards," or "fix push" boards, were initially developed to be raced in the velodrome, and differ from traditional skateboards in one major way: the rider can never coast. A brief documentary on the increasingly popular fix-push skateboard culture and its roots in San Francisco's Mission district. [more inside]
posted by whir on Jun 17, 2008 - 54 comments

With over 35,000,000 visitors a year, it could be argued that it is the busiest museum in the world. Yet most people are there to catch a plane. [more inside]
posted by oneirodynia on Jun 12, 2008 - 8 comments

So you'd like to see daily photographs taken in San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area? You can start with What I'm Seeing and supplement your viewing with the following sites. [more inside]
posted by whir on Jun 12, 2008 - 10 comments

The world's largest ball pit? 400,000 black plastic balls, one reservoir, thousands of happy goths. Other unusual things being filled with balls: the Spanish Steps, Rome, a co-worker's cube, San Francisco. (videos)
posted by Leon-arto on Jun 10, 2008 - 44 comments

In 1974 - or 1976, depending who you ask - Armistead Maupin began writing "an extended love letter to a magical San Francisco” in the form of a serialized, fictional drama published originally in the Pacific Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, originally called "The Serial" which then became collectively known as Tales of The City. It is a suprisingly beautiful, deep, emotional, cosmopolitan and lasting tale about life in San Francisco in the turbulent, heady days of the 1970s and 1980s. Widely credited with and cherished for helping spread a little of the openess, tolerance and acceptance that San Francisco is now famous for. It then became a series of books - Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You - and lastly, the spin-off tale of Michael Tolliver Lives. Almost exactly twenty years after first publishing, it then became an excellent miniseries from the United Kingdom's Channel 4, which aired in the United States on PBS, but not without protest or limitations. [more inside]
posted by loquacious on May 4, 2008 - 39 comments

San Francisco's Hugo Hotel, the current home of Brian Goggin's Defenestration, has been seized by eminent domian and will probably be demolished. Fear not; San Francisco has many other ancient hotels.
posted by fandango_matt on Jan 28, 2008 - 17 comments

Postcards from Our Awesome Future. [via] An art exhibition stemming from the minds of Packard Jennings (whose illustrations have appeared in Adbusters) and Steve Lambert (of Anti-Advertising Agency fame); using San Francisco's infrastructure as a model for improvement, the duo answered the siren call of Objectivism through an arcology devoid of “...budgets, beauracracy [sic], politics, or physics”. [more inside]
posted by Smart Dalek on Jan 8, 2008 - 11 comments

Life isn't always easy if your father or grandfather was Jim Jones, the legendary founder of the People's Temple. Jones and wife Marcelline adopted seven children of varying ethnicities. Son Jim Jones Jr. lives an upstanding existence as a pharmaceutical sales rep and volunteer basketball coach, but has been hounded by his past throughout his life. Meanwhile, grandson Rob Jones is San Francisco's top high school basketball player. But sometimes the legacy just follows you. (Video)
posted by huskerdont on Jan 1, 2008 - 22 comments

One man was killed and two others critically injured when Siberian tiger Tatiana escaped from her pen at the San Francisco Zoo. The men were eating at a cafe on the Ocean Boulevard end of the zoo. The tiger was shot to death by police at the scene. Tatiana, allegedly not known for violence, mauled her keeper one year and three days ago, after which the Lion House was closed for ten months for a $250,000 safety upgrade. It reopened in September, 2007.
posted by rednikki on Dec 25, 2007 - 149 comments

The NY Times looks at the decline of gay meccas. The GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco has held several discussions about the Castro district. A shift in values, gentrification, and violence are named as factors in the "de-gaying" of the Castro. The area's famed Halloween party has been canceled and revelers told to stay out. What will happen to this gay destination?
posted by desjardins on Oct 30, 2007 - 41 comments

"California has a decision to make. We either brace ourselves for long-term [water] cuts that threaten our economy and our very way of way of life, or we invest in a solution to fix the [San Francisco Bay] Delta and expand our water toolbox so we can meet future challenges head-on.” [more inside]
posted by salvia on Sep 16, 2007 - 41 comments

Rents are up in San Francisco. CraigStatsSF can tell you by how much over the last year. (coming soon: NYC, Chicago, Toronto, Boston, and more. What neighborhoods are hot? (Heatmaps are cool). Firefox is your friend.
posted by rtha on Sep 14, 2007 - 45 comments

In the winter of 2007, a pair of great horned owls was staying at the top of Bernal Hill. On April 9th, one of these amazing creatures was found dead. And today, July 19th, the body of the other was found as well. The first died of an avian herpes virus. We still don't know what killed the second. These owls were great ambassadors of nature to our hill, and we'll miss them.
posted by subaruwrx on Jul 31, 2007 - 39 comments

Picnicmob would like to invite you to a picnic and seat you precisely with those most like you.
posted by sudama on Jul 25, 2007 - 46 comments

When Wild Coyotes in San Francisco Attack (previously).
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Jul 16, 2007 - 27 comments

The mission stencil story is an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story that takes place on the sidewalks of the Mission district in San Francisco. Via
posted by jonson on Jul 13, 2007 - 14 comments

Modern Military Ruins in San Francisco. Really awesome Flickr set includes documentation of Hunters Point Shipyard, Treasure Island Naval Station, Alameda Naval Air Station, the SF-88 Nike Missile Site, Hamilton Field Air Force Base, and Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
posted by otherwordlyglow on Jun 12, 2007 - 30 comments

Wild coyotes roam San Francisco.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Jun 6, 2007 - 60 comments

The San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority is reviewing and asking for your votes and comments on new designs for San Francisco's bus shelters, kiosks, and shared bicycles. SFGate story here.
posted by fandango_matt on Jun 5, 2007 - 30 comments

Misako Inaoka is a Japanese born artist living and working in San Francisco who makes her own ecosystems where the real and the artificial intertwine. She is currently showing at the Johansson Projects gallery. [via]
posted by grapefruitmoon on May 30, 2007 - 6 comments

Summer of Love: 40 Years Later , a series of articles appearing this week in the San Francisco Chronicle, revisits the fabled, far-out, semi-spontaneous happening of 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Videos and oral history interviews help tell the story of a utopian vision which created a pivot point for American social values, before going a bit rancid around the edges. For more consciousness expansion, see PBS' The American Experience episode on the same topic. Check out that summer's San Francisco Oracle. Oh, and the Diggers are still around.
posted by Miko on May 23, 2007 - 59 comments

104 year-old Herb Hamerol was the lone survivor on hand at this year's 101st memorial for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. To some people he's a celebrity. Truth is, to attend the memorial he took the day off from his long-held job as a stock clerk at Andronico's supermarket. Yes, read that paragraph again.
posted by miss lynnster on Apr 25, 2007 - 33 comments

Photos and videos of the 2007 Big Wheel race down Lombard Street, the "crookedest street in America." (Or is it?) Official BYOBW page [warning: very loud music on pageload] (via)
posted by desjardins on Apr 11, 2007 - 19 comments

Requiem for La Contessa: After she was set afire in December, three questions arose: who burned her, why, and what became of her figurehead? The first two have been answered, but the third remains a mystery despite the sculpture's brief appearance in a photo on tribe.net.
posted by fandango_matt on Feb 3, 2007 - 8 comments

Where, exactly, were commercial vessels in the San Francisco Bay in the past hour? Here, for one. Behold the power of AIS! Previously
posted by Ogre Lawless on Jan 28, 2007 - 22 comments

The San Francisco Armory, was built in 1914 and its 200,000 square feet spans an entire city block. For 30 years empty, abandoned, defunct, its imposing architecture, modeled on a Moorish castle, has long been an unsettling and intriguing curiosity for local residents. But new life will at least be breathed into this historic monument: the Armory has been purchased by Kink.com [nsfw], a fetish porn studio that will soon begin filming within its walls.
posted by bukharin on Jan 11, 2007 - 41 comments

San Francisco, 1967. CBS news is there: "This is the house of a popular local band that plays hard rock music. They call themselves the Grateful Dead." In between some seriously heavy-handed editorializing from grand old man of the news Harry Reasoner, you can catch an interview with Garcia and company plus footage of a Golden Gate Park concert. Jump ahead 38 years, and another CBS newsman, a rather more respectful Ed Bradley, pays a friendly visit to grand old man of the 60's, Mr. Zimmerman. [links to Google video]
posted by flapjax at midnite on Jan 10, 2007 - 97 comments

The Cliff House was San Francisco Mayor Adolph Sutro's amazing 7-storey Victorian chateau built in 1896 and destroyed by fire in 1907. The Cliff House Project (photos) has a large and absorbing database of related material. [via the indefatigable gmtPlus9 (-15)]
posted by peacay on Dec 14, 2006 - 14 comments

My name is Jack and I live in the back of the Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls: A movie, a producer, a hotel, and a song.
posted by Astro Zombie on Sep 27, 2006 - 6 comments