
The City and County of San Francisco (estimated population 799,263) is the fourth-largest city in the state of California, United States, in terms of population. It is a consolidated city-county (the only one in California) situated at the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula that forms San Francisco Bay. The city-county also includes several islands in the bay and the Farallon Islands 27 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The city is a focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area, and part of the greater San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area (CSA), whose population is over 7 million. U.S. census data show that San Francisco has the highest population density of any major U.S. city aside from New York City. The first Europeans to settle in San Francisco were the Spain, in 1776. The city grew rapidly due to the California gold rush starting in 1848. The city was devastated by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but was rebuilt quickly. The phoenix on the city's flag represents San Francisco's "rebirth" from the ashes of the fire that resulted from the quake. Long enjoying a Bohemianism reputation, the city became a Underground culture magnet in the second half of the 20th century. It was a center of the dot-com boom at the end of the century. Widely recognized landmarks include the San Francisco cable car system, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid. ==History== European visitors to the Bay Area were preceded 10,000 to 20,000 years earlier by Native Americans. When Europeans arrived, they found the area inhabited by the Yelamu tribe, belonging to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone (a Miwok Indian word meaning "western people") living in the coastal area between Point Sur and the San Francisco Bay. European discovery and exploration of the San Francisco Bay Area began in 1542 and culminated with the mapping of the bay in 1775. A Spanish colonization of the Americas led by Juan Bautista de Anza arrived on March 28, 1776 and established the sites for the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asis (named for Saint Francis of Assisi and now popularly known as "Mission Dolores"). The area first began to develop as a city under the name of Yerba Buena in 1822, when what is now the downtown area was first settled by William Richardson, an England whaler. Yerba Buena remained a small town until the Mexican-American War broke out and a naval force under Commodore John D. Sloat took it in 1846 in the name of the United States. It was then renamed "San Francisco" on January 30, 1847. Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a nineteenth century settlement. These natural disadvantages forced the town's residents to bring water, fuel and food to the site. The first of many environmental transformations was the city's reliance on filled marshlands for real estate. Much of the present downtown is built over the former Yerba Buena Cove, granted to the city by military governor Stephen Watts Kearny in 1847. The California gold rush starting in 1848 led to a large growth in population, including considerable immigration. Between January 1848 and December 1849, the population of San Francisco increased from 1,000 to 25,000. The Chinatown district of the city is still one of the largest in the country; the city as a whole is rougly one-third Chinese, one of the largest concentrations outside of China. Many businesses started at that time to service the growing population are still present today, notably Levi Strauss & Co. clothing, Ghirardelli Chocolate Company chocolate, and Wells Fargo bank. Like many mining towns, the political situation in early San Francisco was chaotic. This was exacerbated by squabbling in the United States Senate, where the Compromise of 1850 was igniting a fierce fight over slavery. Disgusted by increasing corruption and crime, a group of San Franciscans formed a Committee of Vigilance in 1851, and again in 1856. This military government exiled many citizens, executed a few, and forced several elected officials to resign. The Committee of Vigilance relinquished power both times after it decided the city had been 'cleaned up'. San Francisco County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 at the time of statehood. All of the county not in the city limits was split off to form San Mateo County, California in 1856. San Francisco became the USA's largest city west of the Mississippi River. In autumn of 1855, a ship bearing refugees from an ongoing cholera epidemic in the far east (authorities disagree as to whether this was the ''S.S. Sam'' or the ''S.S. Carolina'') docked in San Francisco. As the city's rapid gold-rush area population growth had significantly outstripped the development of infrastructure, including sanitation, a serious cholera epidemic quickly broke out. The responsibility for caring for the indigent sick had previously rested on the state, but faced with the San Francisco cholera epidemic, the state legislature devolved this responsibility to the counties, setting the precedent for California's system of county hospitals for the poor still in effect today. The Sisters of Mercy were contracted to run San Francisco's first county hospital at the height of the cholera epidemic, and in 1857, the order opened its own charity hospital, Mercy Hospital of San Francisco, which is still in operation today at its original location on Stanyan Street. One of most colorful figures of late 19th century San Francisco was "Emperor" Joshua A. Norton. In 1900, a ship from China brought with it rats infected with bubonic plague. Mistakenly believing that interred corpses contributed to the transmission of plague, and possibly also motivated by the opportunity for profitable land speculation, city leaders banned all cemeteries within the city. Burials moved to the undeveloped area just south of the city limit, now the town of Colma, California. A fifteen-block section of Chinatown was quarantined while city leaders squabbled over the proper course to take, but the outbreak was finally eradicated by 1905. On April 18 1906, a devastating earthquake resulted from the rupture of over 270 miles of the San Andreas Fault, from San Juan Bautista to Eureka, centered immediately offshore of San Francisco. The quake is estimated by modern scientists to have reached 8.25 on the Richter scale. Water mains ruptured throughout San Francisco, and the fires that followed burned out of control for days, destroying the vast majority of buildings in the city. The official reported death toll was 478, but most historians agree the true tally was much higher, probably over 3,000. Many residents were trapped between the water on three sides and the approaching fire, and a mass evacuation similar to that of the later Battle of Dunkirk to safety across the Bay saved thousands. With the centennial of the disaster approaching, a city supervisor sponsored a resolution to amend the death toll, noting "there is evidence to show the number was suppressed for political reasons" (namely that the city's reputation would have suffered). [http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/10737701.htm] ''See also: 1906 San Francisco earthquake'' In 1912, this time with no excuse other than the rising value of real estate, all remaining cemeteries in the city were evicted to south of the city limit, where in the modern-day town of Colma the dead now outnumber the living more than ten-thousand to one. Unwilling to evict the remains of San Francisco's most prominent founding citizens, however, the above-ground Columbarium of San Francisco was allowed to remain, whose 30,000 deceased residents are the only permitted within the city to this day. [[Image:Golden_gate_bridge.750pix.jpg|thumb|250px|Golden Gate Bridge]] In 1915, the city hosted the Panama-Pacific Exposition, officially to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, but also as a showcase of the vibrant completely rebuilt city less than a decade after the Earthquake. On July 22, 1916 a bomb exploded on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade, killing 10 and injuring 40. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was opened in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. During World War II, San Francisco was the major mainland supply point and port of embarkation for the war in the Pacific. The United Nations Charter was also drafted in San Francisco in 1945. The Treaty of San Francisco which established peaceful relations with Japan, was drafted and signed there six years later in 1951. During the early 1950s, Caltrans commenced an aggressive freeway construction program in the Bay Area. However, Caltrans soon encountered strong resistance in San Francisco, for the city's high population density meant that virtually any right-of-way would displace a large number of people. Caltrans tried to minimize displacement (and its land acquisition costs) by building double-decker freeways, but the crude state of civil engineering at that time resulted in construction of some embarrassingly ugly freeways which ultimately turned out to be seismically unsafe. In 1959, the Board of Supervisors voted to halt construction of any more freeways in the city, an event known as the Freeway Revolt. Although some minor modifications have been allowed to the ends of existing freeways, the city's anti-freeway policy has remained in place ever since. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed the Embarcadero Freeway and portions of the so-called Central Freeway. Over the course of several referenda, San Francisco's residents elected not to rebuild either structure. The neighborhoods once covered by these freeways have been rebuilt, and the restoration of the Embarcadero, San Francisco's historic bay waterfront, as a public space has been especially successful. In the 1950s San Francisco hired Harvard graduate Justin Herman to head the redevelopment agency for the city and county. Justin Herman began an aggressive campaign to renew blighted areas of the city. Enacting eminent domain whenever necessary, he set upon a plan to tear down huge areas of the city and replace them with modern construction. Critics accused Herman of racism for what was perceived as attempts to create segregation and displacement of African-Americans. Many African-Americans were forced to move from their homes near the Fillmore jazz district to newly constructed projects such as the near the naval base Hunter's Point or even to cities such as Oakland, California. He began levelling entire areas in San Francisco's Western Addition and Japantown neighborhoods. His planning led to the creation of Embarcadero Center, the Embarcadero Freeway, Japantown, San Francisco, the Geary Street superblocks, and Yerba Buena Gardens. San Francisco has often been a magnet for America's counterculture. During the 1950s, City Lights Bookstore in the North Beach neighborhood was an important publisher of Beat Generation literature. Some of the story of the evolving arts scene of the 1950s is told in the article San Francisco Renaissance. During the latter half of the following decade, the 1960s, San Francisco was the center of hippie culture. Thousands of young people poured into the Haight-Ashbury district of the city during 1967, which was known as the Summer of Love. At this time, the "San Francisco sound" emerged as an influential force in rock and roll, with such acts as the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead achieving international prominence, blurring the boundaries between folk, rock and jazz traditions and further developing the lyrical content of rock. Another peculiar development is that the Church Of Satan was founded and made its headquarters in San Francisco in 1966. During the 1980s and 1990s San Francisco became a major focal point in the North American--and international-- punk culture and rave scene. On the rave scene, the city was the first to host the Love Parade outside its birthplace of Berlin, Germany in 2004. The late 1960s also brought in a new wave of lesbians and gays who were more radical and less mainstream and who had flocked to San Francisco not only for its gay-friendly reputation, but for its reputation as a radical, left-wing epicenter. These lesbians and gays were the prime movers of Gay Liberation and often lived communally, buying (like their straight counterparts) decrepit Victorians in the Haight and fixing them up. When drugs and violence began to become a serious problem in the Haight, many lesbians and gays simply moved "over the hill", to the Castro. In the 1970s, large numbers of gay people moved to San Francisco's The Castro, which previous to their arrival, had been abandoned by Irish-Americans who moved en masse to the more affluent and culturally homogenous suburbs. Because of the rise of this new population, as well as the overall change in ethnic and cultural demographics, tensions arose in the city, and these tensions led to tragedy in 1978 when a conservative member of the Board of Supervisors and a former cop, Dan White, murdered San Francisco's first openly gay elected official, Supervisor Harvey Milk and the city's mayor George Moscone on November 27 (see "Twinkie Defense"). In the 1980s, the AIDS virus wreaked havoc on the gay community there. Today, the gay population of the city is estimated to be at about 15%, and gays remain an important force in the city's politics. San Francisco has more gays and lesbians than any other US city. Under former Mayor, and now US senator, Diane Feinstein, San Francisco underwent "Manhattanization" when many of the large skyscrapers present in the Financial District (San Francisco) and residential condominiums were built across the city in the late 1970s through the 1980s. This was met with widespread opposition with the city's residents who felt that the skyscrapers ruined views and destroyed San Francisco's unique character. Similar to the freeway revolt in the city decades earlier, a "skyscraper revolt" forced the city to enact height restriction limits on tall buildings. This law has become a standard in many of the world's cities today, and pushed skyscraper construction to the South of Market district where it is still ongoing. During the 1980s, homeless people began appearing in large numbers in the city, the result of factors that were affecting the country at large, combined with San Francisco's attractive environment and generous welfare policies, economic and social changes, and the availability of addictive drugs are often cited as reasons for the growth of the problem. Mayor Art Agnos (1988-92) was the first to attack the problem, and not the last; it is a top issue for San Franciscans even today. Agnos allowed the homeless to camp in the Civic Center park, which led to its title of "Camp Agnos." The failure of this lenient policy led to his being replaced by Frank Jordan in 1992. Jordan launched the "MATRIX" program the next year, which aimed to displace the homeless through aggressive police action. And it did displace them - to the rest of the city. His successor, Willie Brown (politician), was able to largely ignore the problem, riding on the strong economy into a second term. Present mayor Gavin Newsom's policy on the homeless is the controversial "Care Not Cash" program where he plans to end the city's generous welfare policies towards the homeless and instead wants the homeless to be put in affordable housing and attend city funded drug rehabilitation and job training programs. On October 17, 1989, an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter magnitude scale struck on the San Andreas Fault near Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz mountains, approximately 70 miles south of San Francisco, during game 3 of the 1989 World Series. The quake severely damaged many of the city's freeway's including the Embarcadero Freeway and the Central Freeway. The damage to these freeways was so extensive, that they were eventually demolished. The quake also caused extensive damage in the Marina District and the South of Market. Known in most of the United States as the "World Series Quake," but in California and by seismologists as the Loma Prieta earthquake, it caused significant destruction and loss of life throughout the greater bay area. During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer software professionals moved into the city, followed by marketing and sales professionals, and changed the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became gentrified. The rising rents forced many people and businesses to leave, and this caused considerable tension in the city's politics. The resulting backlash resulted in a progressive majority winning control of the Board of Supervisors in the 2000 election. By 2001, the boom was over, and many people left San Francisco. South of Market (San Francisco), where many dot com companies were located, had been bustling and crowded with few vacancies, but by 2002 was a virtual wasteland of empty offices and for-rent signs. Craig Newmark founded the website Craigslist based in his San Francisco home. The success of Craigslist stands as a testament to the over-production of the dot-com era. In November of 2002, three off-duty police officers (one the son of the assistant chief) allegedly assaulted two civilians over a bag of steak fajitas. The resulting scandal was dubbed "Fajitagate" after it was alleged that high-ranking officers within the Police Department had tried to cover up the incident. Though top officials were formally indicted, they were soon exonerated, but with considerable damage to their reputations, and having brought the city nationwide ridicule. The 2003 mayoral election of Matt Gonzalez versus Gavin Newsom was notable in that it was between a candidate of the progressive left and a moderate liberal, conservative candidates having had a hard time in the city. The newly elected Mayor Newsom, who won by a close margin, burst onto the national political scene when, in defiance of state law, he led San Francisco to become the first city in the U.S. to issue Same-sex marriage in the United States#San Francisco in February, 2004. The California Supreme Court later invalidated these licenses. Newsom also helped enact a strong new homeless policy, "Care Not Cash," in which the checks that homeless people previously received were replaced with vouchers for housing. San Francisco's history of innovative ordinances was seen again with the 2004 decision to smoking ban in all city-owned parks, plazas and public sports venues, amongst other outdoor areas. California's statewide smoking bans already being some of the toughest in the nation, the new policy in San Francisco represents an even stricter stance on public smoking. Other California cities have enacted similar outdoor smoking bans (though not as far-reaching), but San Francisco's new anti-smoking policy is significant considering the city's size and cultural influence on the rest of the state and the nation. While somewhat controversial, the law will go into effect on July 1, 2005. In 2005, San Francisco hosted the United Nations annual World Enivronment Day, the first time it has been held in the US. On June 5th, the mayors of 100 cities, including the mayor of San Francisco, signed an accord that made their cities more compliant with the Kyoto Protocol. == Geography and climate == [[Image:San Francisco Landsat7 (Lg).jpg|300px|left|thumb|San Francisco and northern San Mateo County, California, from NASA Landsat 7 ]] San Francisco lies near the San Andreas Fault; a major source of earthquake activity in California. The most serious earthquake, in 1906, is mentioned above. Earlier significant quakes rocked the city in 1851, 1858, 1865, and 1868. The Daly City, California Earthquake of 1957 caused some damage. The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, which also did significant damage to parts of the city, is also famous for having interrupted a World Series baseball game between the Bay Area's two Major League Baseball teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. The threat of another major earthquake like the 1906 one plays a major role in the city's infrastructure development. New buildings must be built to very high structural standards, while many dollars must be spent to retrofit the city's older buildings and bridges. Entire neighborhoods of the city such as the Marina and Hunters Point were created and sit on man made landfill (made up of mud, sand, and rubble from past earthquakes) and other reclaimation projects over the San Francisco Bay when flatland became scarce. Such land is extremely unstable during earthquakes; the resultant liquefaction during earthquakes causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. San Francisco is famous for its hills and the streets which run straight up and down them. Three of San Francisco's notable hill neighborhoods are Nob Hill, Russian Hill, and Telegraph Hill, all located near Downtown. Near the geographic center of the city and away from the downtown area are a series of less populated hills. Dominating this area is Mount Sutro, which is the site of Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio transmission tower, that is a well known landmark to city residents. Nearby are the equally well known Twin Peaks (San Francisco), which are a pair of hills resting at one of the city's highest points. About 1.2km (1 mile) south of Mount Sutro is San Francisco's highest mountain, Mount Davidson, which is over 282 meters (over 925 feet) high. On top of Mount Davidson is a 31.4 meter (103 foot) tall cross built in 1934. Not to be missed are the beautiful homes and area of the city known as Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California as well as victorians in the Haight-Ashbury and the "painted ladies" of Alamo Square and the Castro. San Francisco is also famous for its Cable car (railway)s (narrow gauge, 1067 mm (3'6")), which were designed to carry residents up those steep hills. It is still possible to take a cable car ride up and down Nob and Russian Hills. Along with New Orleans' streetcars, San Francisco's cable cars are one of only two mobile United States U.S. National Monument. Coit Tower, a notable landmark dedicated to San Francisco's firefighters, is located at the top of Telegraph Hill. Surrounded on three sides by water, San Francisco's climate is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean. The weather is remarkably mild all year round, with a so-called Mediterranean climate characterized by cool, foggy summers and relatively warm winters; average daily high temperatures in the summer typically range from 15 -20 degrees Celsius (the upper 60s to low 70s Fahrenheit), while in the winter it virtually never reaches freezing. Rain in the summer is extremely rare, but winters can often be very rainy. Snow is virtually unheard of. The Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the city is particularly cold year round. The combination of cold ocean water and the high heat of the California mainland mean that San Francisco's western half is often shrouded in fog during the months of July and August. Thus, the summer temperatures are significantly lower in San Francisco than in other parts of inland California. The fog is less pronounced during the month of September, which is generally the warmest, most summer-like month of the year. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city and county has a total area of 600.7 square kilometre (231.9 square mile). 120.9 km² (46.7 mi²) of it is land and 479.7 km² (185.2 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 79.86% water. The city itself is often reputed to be roughly a seven mile by seven mile square, but in fact it is slightly smaller, 46.7 mi², of which .33 mi² are the Farallon Islands. The geographical center of the city is on the east side of Grandview Avenue between Alvarado and Twenty-third Streets. == Economy == Because of the California gold rush, San Francisco became and remains the banking and financial center of the U.S. West Coast of the United States. It is the home of the twelfth district of the U.S. Federal Reserve as well as major production facilities for the U.S. Mint. The Pacific Exchange, a regional stock exchange, is located in the financial district. Many major American and international banks and venture capital firms have all set up their regional headquarters in the city. ===Companies headquartered in San Francisco=== *Anchor Brewing Company *Bechtel Corporation *Charles Schwab *CNET *Dolby Laboratories *The Gap *Levi Strauss & Co. *Macromedia *McKesson Corporation *Pacific Gas & Electric (Frequently referred to as PG&E) *Sega *The Sharper Image *VIZ Media *Wells Fargo *Williams-Sonoma, Inc. *Wired Magazine *Japanese Weekend *Craigslist *Method Some 65 km (~ 40 miles) south of San Francisco is the Silicon Valley, which holds much of the computing business in the world. Apple Computer and Symantec are based in Cupertino, California. Electronic Arts and Oracle Corporation are based in Redwood City, California. Sun Microsystems, Intel, Applied Materials, and McAfee are headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Google Inc. is headquartered (at the "Googleplex") in Mountain View, California. Cisco Systems and Adobe Systems are headquartered in San Jose, California. Hewlett Packard is in Palo Alto, California near Stanford University. Outside of Silicon Valley, in the East Bay (California), Pixar Animation is located in Emeryville. ChevronTexaco (fomerly of San Francisco) and IPIX are based in San Ramon, California, Safeway Inc. is based in Pleasanton, California, and C & H Sugar Company is based in Crockett, California. LucasArts is located in Marin County, California, though the company plans to relocate to the Presidio in the next few years. == Law and government ==
San Francisco, California
The City and County of San Francisco (estimated population 799,263) is the fourth-largest city in the state of California, United States, in terms of population. It is a consolidated city-county (the only one in California) situated at the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula that forms San Francisco Bay. The city-county also includes several islands in the bay and the Farallon Islands 27 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The city is a focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area, and part of the greater San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area (CSA), whose population is over 7 million. U.S. census data show that San Francisco has the highest population density of any major U.S. city aside from New York City. The first Europeans to settle in San Francisco were the Spain, in 1776. The city grew rapidly due to the California gold rush starting in 1848. The city was devastated by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but was rebuilt quickly. The phoenix on the city's flag represents San Francisco's "rebirth" from the ashes of the fire that resulted from the quake. Long enjoying a Bohemianism reputation, the city became a Underground culture magnet in the second half of the 20th century. It was a center of the dot-com boom at the end of the century. Widely recognized landmarks include the San Francisco cable car system, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid. ==History== European visitors to the Bay Area were preceded 10,000 to 20,000 years earlier by Native Americans. When Europeans arrived, they found the area inhabited by the Yelamu tribe, belonging to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone (a Miwok Indian word meaning "western people") living in the coastal area between Point Sur and the San Francisco Bay. European discovery and exploration of the San Francisco Bay Area began in 1542 and culminated with the mapping of the bay in 1775. A Spanish colonization of the Americas led by Juan Bautista de Anza arrived on March 28, 1776 and established the sites for the Presidio of San Francisco and Mission San Francisco de Asis (named for Saint Francis of Assisi and now popularly known as "Mission Dolores"). The area first began to develop as a city under the name of Yerba Buena in 1822, when what is now the downtown area was first settled by William Richardson, an England whaler. Yerba Buena remained a small town until the Mexican-American War broke out and a naval force under Commodore John D. Sloat took it in 1846 in the name of the United States. It was then renamed "San Francisco" on January 30, 1847. Situated at the tip of a windswept peninsula without water or firewood, San Francisco lacked most of the basic facilities for a nineteenth century settlement. These natural disadvantages forced the town's residents to bring water, fuel and food to the site. The first of many environmental transformations was the city's reliance on filled marshlands for real estate. Much of the present downtown is built over the former Yerba Buena Cove, granted to the city by military governor Stephen Watts Kearny in 1847. The California gold rush starting in 1848 led to a large growth in population, including considerable immigration. Between January 1848 and December 1849, the population of San Francisco increased from 1,000 to 25,000. The Chinatown district of the city is still one of the largest in the country; the city as a whole is rougly one-third Chinese, one of the largest concentrations outside of China. Many businesses started at that time to service the growing population are still present today, notably Levi Strauss & Co. clothing, Ghirardelli Chocolate Company chocolate, and Wells Fargo bank. Like many mining towns, the political situation in early San Francisco was chaotic. This was exacerbated by squabbling in the United States Senate, where the Compromise of 1850 was igniting a fierce fight over slavery. Disgusted by increasing corruption and crime, a group of San Franciscans formed a Committee of Vigilance in 1851, and again in 1856. This military government exiled many citizens, executed a few, and forced several elected officials to resign. The Committee of Vigilance relinquished power both times after it decided the city had been 'cleaned up'. San Francisco County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 at the time of statehood. All of the county not in the city limits was split off to form San Mateo County, California in 1856. San Francisco became the USA's largest city west of the Mississippi River. In autumn of 1855, a ship bearing refugees from an ongoing cholera epidemic in the far east (authorities disagree as to whether this was the ''S.S. Sam'' or the ''S.S. Carolina'') docked in San Francisco. As the city's rapid gold-rush area population growth had significantly outstripped the development of infrastructure, including sanitation, a serious cholera epidemic quickly broke out. The responsibility for caring for the indigent sick had previously rested on the state, but faced with the San Francisco cholera epidemic, the state legislature devolved this responsibility to the counties, setting the precedent for California's system of county hospitals for the poor still in effect today. The Sisters of Mercy were contracted to run San Francisco's first county hospital at the height of the cholera epidemic, and in 1857, the order opened its own charity hospital, Mercy Hospital of San Francisco, which is still in operation today at its original location on Stanyan Street. One of most colorful figures of late 19th century San Francisco was "Emperor" Joshua A. Norton. In 1900, a ship from China brought with it rats infected with bubonic plague. Mistakenly believing that interred corpses contributed to the transmission of plague, and possibly also motivated by the opportunity for profitable land speculation, city leaders banned all cemeteries within the city. Burials moved to the undeveloped area just south of the city limit, now the town of Colma, California. A fifteen-block section of Chinatown was quarantined while city leaders squabbled over the proper course to take, but the outbreak was finally eradicated by 1905. On April 18 1906, a devastating earthquake resulted from the rupture of over 270 miles of the San Andreas Fault, from San Juan Bautista to Eureka, centered immediately offshore of San Francisco. The quake is estimated by modern scientists to have reached 8.25 on the Richter scale. Water mains ruptured throughout San Francisco, and the fires that followed burned out of control for days, destroying the vast majority of buildings in the city. The official reported death toll was 478, but most historians agree the true tally was much higher, probably over 3,000. Many residents were trapped between the water on three sides and the approaching fire, and a mass evacuation similar to that of the later Battle of Dunkirk to safety across the Bay saved thousands. With the centennial of the disaster approaching, a city supervisor sponsored a resolution to amend the death toll, noting "there is evidence to show the number was suppressed for political reasons" (namely that the city's reputation would have suffered). [http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/10737701.htm] ''See also: 1906 San Francisco earthquake'' In 1912, this time with no excuse other than the rising value of real estate, all remaining cemeteries in the city were evicted to south of the city limit, where in the modern-day town of Colma the dead now outnumber the living more than ten-thousand to one. Unwilling to evict the remains of San Francisco's most prominent founding citizens, however, the above-ground Columbarium of San Francisco was allowed to remain, whose 30,000 deceased residents are the only permitted within the city to this day. [[Image:Golden_gate_bridge.750pix.jpg|thumb|250px|Golden Gate Bridge]] In 1915, the city hosted the Panama-Pacific Exposition, officially to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, but also as a showcase of the vibrant completely rebuilt city less than a decade after the Earthquake. On July 22, 1916 a bomb exploded on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade, killing 10 and injuring 40. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was opened in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. During World War II, San Francisco was the major mainland supply point and port of embarkation for the war in the Pacific. The United Nations Charter was also drafted in San Francisco in 1945. The Treaty of San Francisco which established peaceful relations with Japan, was drafted and signed there six years later in 1951. During the early 1950s, Caltrans commenced an aggressive freeway construction program in the Bay Area. However, Caltrans soon encountered strong resistance in San Francisco, for the city's high population density meant that virtually any right-of-way would displace a large number of people. Caltrans tried to minimize displacement (and its land acquisition costs) by building double-decker freeways, but the crude state of civil engineering at that time resulted in construction of some embarrassingly ugly freeways which ultimately turned out to be seismically unsafe. In 1959, the Board of Supervisors voted to halt construction of any more freeways in the city, an event known as the Freeway Revolt. Although some minor modifications have been allowed to the ends of existing freeways, the city's anti-freeway policy has remained in place ever since. In 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed the Embarcadero Freeway and portions of the so-called Central Freeway. Over the course of several referenda, San Francisco's residents elected not to rebuild either structure. The neighborhoods once covered by these freeways have been rebuilt, and the restoration of the Embarcadero, San Francisco's historic bay waterfront, as a public space has been especially successful. In the 1950s San Francisco hired Harvard graduate Justin Herman to head the redevelopment agency for the city and county. Justin Herman began an aggressive campaign to renew blighted areas of the city. Enacting eminent domain whenever necessary, he set upon a plan to tear down huge areas of the city and replace them with modern construction. Critics accused Herman of racism for what was perceived as attempts to create segregation and displacement of African-Americans. Many African-Americans were forced to move from their homes near the Fillmore jazz district to newly constructed projects such as the near the naval base Hunter's Point or even to cities such as Oakland, California. He began levelling entire areas in San Francisco's Western Addition and Japantown neighborhoods. His planning led to the creation of Embarcadero Center, the Embarcadero Freeway, Japantown, San Francisco, the Geary Street superblocks, and Yerba Buena Gardens. San Francisco has often been a magnet for America's counterculture. During the 1950s, City Lights Bookstore in the North Beach neighborhood was an important publisher of Beat Generation literature. Some of the story of the evolving arts scene of the 1950s is told in the article San Francisco Renaissance. During the latter half of the following decade, the 1960s, San Francisco was the center of hippie culture. Thousands of young people poured into the Haight-Ashbury district of the city during 1967, which was known as the Summer of Love. At this time, the "San Francisco sound" emerged as an influential force in rock and roll, with such acts as the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead achieving international prominence, blurring the boundaries between folk, rock and jazz traditions and further developing the lyrical content of rock. Another peculiar development is that the Church Of Satan was founded and made its headquarters in San Francisco in 1966. During the 1980s and 1990s San Francisco became a major focal point in the North American--and international-- punk culture and rave scene. On the rave scene, the city was the first to host the Love Parade outside its birthplace of Berlin, Germany in 2004. The late 1960s also brought in a new wave of lesbians and gays who were more radical and less mainstream and who had flocked to San Francisco not only for its gay-friendly reputation, but for its reputation as a radical, left-wing epicenter. These lesbians and gays were the prime movers of Gay Liberation and often lived communally, buying (like their straight counterparts) decrepit Victorians in the Haight and fixing them up. When drugs and violence began to become a serious problem in the Haight, many lesbians and gays simply moved "over the hill", to the Castro. In the 1970s, large numbers of gay people moved to San Francisco's The Castro, which previous to their arrival, had been abandoned by Irish-Americans who moved en masse to the more affluent and culturally homogenous suburbs. Because of the rise of this new population, as well as the overall change in ethnic and cultural demographics, tensions arose in the city, and these tensions led to tragedy in 1978 when a conservative member of the Board of Supervisors and a former cop, Dan White, murdered San Francisco's first openly gay elected official, Supervisor Harvey Milk and the city's mayor George Moscone on November 27 (see "Twinkie Defense"). In the 1980s, the AIDS virus wreaked havoc on the gay community there. Today, the gay population of the city is estimated to be at about 15%, and gays remain an important force in the city's politics. San Francisco has more gays and lesbians than any other US city. Under former Mayor, and now US senator, Diane Feinstein, San Francisco underwent "Manhattanization" when many of the large skyscrapers present in the Financial District (San Francisco) and residential condominiums were built across the city in the late 1970s through the 1980s. This was met with widespread opposition with the city's residents who felt that the skyscrapers ruined views and destroyed San Francisco's unique character. Similar to the freeway revolt in the city decades earlier, a "skyscraper revolt" forced the city to enact height restriction limits on tall buildings. This law has become a standard in many of the world's cities today, and pushed skyscraper construction to the South of Market district where it is still ongoing. During the 1980s, homeless people began appearing in large numbers in the city, the result of factors that were affecting the country at large, combined with San Francisco's attractive environment and generous welfare policies, economic and social changes, and the availability of addictive drugs are often cited as reasons for the growth of the problem. Mayor Art Agnos (1988-92) was the first to attack the problem, and not the last; it is a top issue for San Franciscans even today. Agnos allowed the homeless to camp in the Civic Center park, which led to its title of "Camp Agnos." The failure of this lenient policy led to his being replaced by Frank Jordan in 1992. Jordan launched the "MATRIX" program the next year, which aimed to displace the homeless through aggressive police action. And it did displace them - to the rest of the city. His successor, Willie Brown (politician), was able to largely ignore the problem, riding on the strong economy into a second term. Present mayor Gavin Newsom's policy on the homeless is the controversial "Care Not Cash" program where he plans to end the city's generous welfare policies towards the homeless and instead wants the homeless to be put in affordable housing and attend city funded drug rehabilitation and job training programs. On October 17, 1989, an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter magnitude scale struck on the San Andreas Fault near Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz mountains, approximately 70 miles south of San Francisco, during game 3 of the 1989 World Series. The quake severely damaged many of the city's freeway's including the Embarcadero Freeway and the Central Freeway. The damage to these freeways was so extensive, that they were eventually demolished. The quake also caused extensive damage in the Marina District and the South of Market. Known in most of the United States as the "World Series Quake," but in California and by seismologists as the Loma Prieta earthquake, it caused significant destruction and loss of life throughout the greater bay area. During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer software professionals moved into the city, followed by marketing and sales professionals, and changed the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became gentrified. The rising rents forced many people and businesses to leave, and this caused considerable tension in the city's politics. The resulting backlash resulted in a progressive majority winning control of the Board of Supervisors in the 2000 election. By 2001, the boom was over, and many people left San Francisco. South of Market (San Francisco), where many dot com companies were located, had been bustling and crowded with few vacancies, but by 2002 was a virtual wasteland of empty offices and for-rent signs. Craig Newmark founded the website Craigslist based in his San Francisco home. The success of Craigslist stands as a testament to the over-production of the dot-com era. In November of 2002, three off-duty police officers (one the son of the assistant chief) allegedly assaulted two civilians over a bag of steak fajitas. The resulting scandal was dubbed "Fajitagate" after it was alleged that high-ranking officers within the Police Department had tried to cover up the incident. Though top officials were formally indicted, they were soon exonerated, but with considerable damage to their reputations, and having brought the city nationwide ridicule. The 2003 mayoral election of Matt Gonzalez versus Gavin Newsom was notable in that it was between a candidate of the progressive left and a moderate liberal, conservative candidates having had a hard time in the city. The newly elected Mayor Newsom, who won by a close margin, burst onto the national political scene when, in defiance of state law, he led San Francisco to become the first city in the U.S. to issue Same-sex marriage in the United States#San Francisco in February, 2004. The California Supreme Court later invalidated these licenses. Newsom also helped enact a strong new homeless policy, "Care Not Cash," in which the checks that homeless people previously received were replaced with vouchers for housing. San Francisco's history of innovative ordinances was seen again with the 2004 decision to smoking ban in all city-owned parks, plazas and public sports venues, amongst other outdoor areas. California's statewide smoking bans already being some of the toughest in the nation, the new policy in San Francisco represents an even stricter stance on public smoking. Other California cities have enacted similar outdoor smoking bans (though not as far-reaching), but San Francisco's new anti-smoking policy is significant considering the city's size and cultural influence on the rest of the state and the nation. While somewhat controversial, the law will go into effect on July 1, 2005. In 2005, San Francisco hosted the United Nations annual World Enivronment Day, the first time it has been held in the US. On June 5th, the mayors of 100 cities, including the mayor of San Francisco, signed an accord that made their cities more compliant with the Kyoto Protocol. == Geography and climate == [[Image:San Francisco Landsat7 (Lg).jpg|300px|left|thumb|San Francisco and northern San Mateo County, California, from NASA Landsat 7 ]] San Francisco lies near the San Andreas Fault; a major source of earthquake activity in California. The most serious earthquake, in 1906, is mentioned above. Earlier significant quakes rocked the city in 1851, 1858, 1865, and 1868. The Daly City, California Earthquake of 1957 caused some damage. The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, which also did significant damage to parts of the city, is also famous for having interrupted a World Series baseball game between the Bay Area's two Major League Baseball teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. The threat of another major earthquake like the 1906 one plays a major role in the city's infrastructure development. New buildings must be built to very high structural standards, while many dollars must be spent to retrofit the city's older buildings and bridges. Entire neighborhoods of the city such as the Marina and Hunters Point were created and sit on man made landfill (made up of mud, sand, and rubble from past earthquakes) and other reclaimation projects over the San Francisco Bay when flatland became scarce. Such land is extremely unstable during earthquakes; the resultant liquefaction during earthquakes causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. San Francisco is famous for its hills and the streets which run straight up and down them. Three of San Francisco's notable hill neighborhoods are Nob Hill, Russian Hill, and Telegraph Hill, all located near Downtown. Near the geographic center of the city and away from the downtown area are a series of less populated hills. Dominating this area is Mount Sutro, which is the site of Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio transmission tower, that is a well known landmark to city residents. Nearby are the equally well known Twin Peaks (San Francisco), which are a pair of hills resting at one of the city's highest points. About 1.2km (1 mile) south of Mount Sutro is San Francisco's highest mountain, Mount Davidson, which is over 282 meters (over 925 feet) high. On top of Mount Davidson is a 31.4 meter (103 foot) tall cross built in 1934. Not to be missed are the beautiful homes and area of the city known as Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California as well as victorians in the Haight-Ashbury and the "painted ladies" of Alamo Square and the Castro. San Francisco is also famous for its Cable car (railway)s (narrow gauge, 1067 mm (3'6")), which were designed to carry residents up those steep hills. It is still possible to take a cable car ride up and down Nob and Russian Hills. Along with New Orleans' streetcars, San Francisco's cable cars are one of only two mobile United States U.S. National Monument. Coit Tower, a notable landmark dedicated to San Francisco's firefighters, is located at the top of Telegraph Hill. Surrounded on three sides by water, San Francisco's climate is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean. The weather is remarkably mild all year round, with a so-called Mediterranean climate characterized by cool, foggy summers and relatively warm winters; average daily high temperatures in the summer typically range from 15 -20 degrees Celsius (the upper 60s to low 70s Fahrenheit), while in the winter it virtually never reaches freezing. Rain in the summer is extremely rare, but winters can often be very rainy. Snow is virtually unheard of. The Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the city is particularly cold year round. The combination of cold ocean water and the high heat of the California mainland mean that San Francisco's western half is often shrouded in fog during the months of July and August. Thus, the summer temperatures are significantly lower in San Francisco than in other parts of inland California. The fog is less pronounced during the month of September, which is generally the warmest, most summer-like month of the year. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city and county has a total area of 600.7 square kilometre (231.9 square mile). 120.9 km² (46.7 mi²) of it is land and 479.7 km² (185.2 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 79.86% water. The city itself is often reputed to be roughly a seven mile by seven mile square, but in fact it is slightly smaller, 46.7 mi², of which .33 mi² are the Farallon Islands. The geographical center of the city is on the east side of Grandview Avenue between Alvarado and Twenty-third Streets. == Economy == Because of the California gold rush, San Francisco became and remains the banking and financial center of the U.S. West Coast of the United States. It is the home of the twelfth district of the U.S. Federal Reserve as well as major production facilities for the U.S. Mint. The Pacific Exchange, a regional stock exchange, is located in the financial district. Many major American and international banks and venture capital firms have all set up their regional headquarters in the city. ===Companies headquartered in San Francisco=== *Anchor Brewing Company *Bechtel Corporation *Charles Schwab *CNET *Dolby Laboratories *The Gap *Levi Strauss & Co. *Macromedia *McKesson Corporation *Pacific Gas & Electric (Frequently referred to as PG&E) *Sega *The Sharper Image *VIZ Media *Wells Fargo *Williams-Sonoma, Inc. *Wired Magazine *Japanese Weekend *Craigslist *Method Some 65 km (~ 40 miles) south of San Francisco is the Silicon Valley, which holds much of the computing business in the world. Apple Computer and Symantec are based in Cupertino, California. Electronic Arts and Oracle Corporation are based in Redwood City, California. Sun Microsystems, Intel, Applied Materials, and McAfee are headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Google Inc. is headquartered (at the "Googleplex") in Mountain View, California. Cisco Systems and Adobe Systems are headquartered in San Jose, California. Hewlett Packard is in Palo Alto, California near Stanford University. Outside of Silicon Valley, in the East Bay (California), Pixar Animation is located in Emeryville. ChevronTexaco (fomerly of San Francisco) and IPIX are based in San Ramon, California, Safeway Inc. is based in Pleasanton, California, and C & H Sugar Company is based in Crockett, California. LucasArts is located in Marin County, California, though the company plans to relocate to the Presidio in the next few years. == Law and government ==
San Francisco, CaliforniaZoe i moved the photo as it was (and is) covering up the counties map and it was suggested to me last time i fixed that problem in another article to put the photo at the bottom - but "your mileage may vary" to borrow an American phrase. -- User:PMelvilleAustin ---- Does the postponement of a baseball game really warrant mentioning in the 1989 earthquake part of the geography section? I'm not American, so might be underestimating the importance of a delayed sports game. -- User:Hotlorp The significance was not of the delayed sports game, but several other matters: *Owing to the intense local interest in both an Oakland and San Francisco team playing, not blacked out on local TV, many people had left work early to go home or to sports bars or to after work get-togethers. Owing to this, freeway and bridge traffic was extreemly light. Without this, it is possible that a thousand people could have been killed by the Cypress Viaduct collapse. * This also demonstrates that even unlikely events can happen - U. C. California Memorial Stadium is ''bisected'' by the Hayward Fault - a far more dangerous fault than others in the area (see the article), and the most likely fault in the area to rupture in the near future with a major earthquake resulting. The Regents of the University have not properly addressed the danger posed by this stadium, which can contain up to 72,000 persons several times a year during football season, with occupation of portions likely to be turned into rubble. ---- re: General organization of articles pertaining to SF The neighborhoods and landmarks probably should be standardized and organized so that they uniquely apply to San Francisco. Following the articles on neighborhoods in New York City, article titles could be The Mission District, San Francisco, California instead of the current article The Mission, that contains information on the film ''The Mission'' above a sketch about The Mission District. A similar stub article exists for Pacific Heights. The current article titles might be OK for landmarks such as Coit Tower, but other cities (Long Beach, California, for example) also have a Telegraph Hill, even if they aren't tourist spots . Finally, as a former Richmond resident, who lumped the Sunset and the Richmond together? (!?!) If you're going to do that, why not just call it the "fog belt"? :) Seriously, though, I was going to divide them; that's when I noticed the titles and figured we ought to address this question before I create new articles. Besides, we should differentiate The Richmond District, San Francisco, California from other Richmond--15 in the United States alone!--User:Ishu 20:34 23 Jul 2003 (UTC) ::Point of clarification: Long Beach, California has a Signal Hill, California, not a Telegraph Hill (It's actually an independent city completely surrounded by the City of Long Beach. User_talk:GK">User:GK|gK User talk:GK 10:02, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC) :I checked the New York article. The districts don't seem to be organized the way you've explained them to be (See Broadway). I don't think the article titles should be this long. If there is a conflict, a page break could be added making the disambiguation such as in Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom (see bottom of page). The movie could be placed at The Mission (movie) and a diambiguation link added to The Mission. And please, unlump Richmond and Sunset. You are free to do so. Richmond is a disambiguation page already. The SF page could be at Richmond District (San Francisco). --User:Jiang 21:26 23 Jul 2003 (UTC) ::OK, I only checked Marble Hill, Manhattan, New York, which is distinct from Marble Hill, Missouri, but the New York section is equally lacking in consistency, with articles such as Broadway (almost certainly a future candidate for disambiguation) and Roosevelt Island (not quite like http://www.nps.gov/this NPS link. Compare these to the articles titled Chelsea, Manhattan; Chinatown, Manhattan; Little Italy, Manhattan; and Murray Hill, Manhattan. I'd just prefer consistency across the board, no matter what the standard may be, except for truly unique names. ::On a separate subject, Downtown is not only vague, it's not really San Francisco. There's the Financial District, South of Market, etc., maybe even the Embarcadero. I know, I know, I'll make the changes once we decide on the titles.--User:159.53.32.43 23:59 23 Jul 2003 (UTC) ::Well, there seems to be only limited guidance from the Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names). Some light, lots of heat. I'm with Jiang (above) and mav in the Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (city names)/Archive 5: Richmond District (San Francisco).--User:Ishu 02:34 24 Jul 2003 (UTC) ---- Do we really need two photos of the Golden Gate Bridge? It's a nice enough bridge and all, but the article is a little pic heavy, and the B&W one could easily be removed to free up some space. User:Gentgeen 19:19, 18 Dec 2003 (UTC) --- This article shows accidentally, that we need correct HTML code. All images on this site are without width and height attributes. These tags show the browser the needed space before the image is loaded. And loading might take time with a lot of images. Some browsers need the image sizes before displaying the page. User:ReneS 21:48, 2004 Jan 15 (UTC) ---- I changed the text about the the city being the county seat, as there is no distinction between the city and the county. -- User:Bcorr 18:29, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC) ---- Okay, I seriously believe that the Golden Gate Bridge should be the firstmost image of this article. It is the most widely known symbol of it. No, it is not a "true" example of the city, but we have to serve the masses. The masses equate the bridge with the city. User:WhisperToMe 23:51, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC) :The masses would be better served by us teaching them something - like what the city looks like. The fact that the city is more than the bridge is also an important thing to note. That is the exact same photo that is already at Golden Gate Bridge. The first photo in this article should be of the subject of the article - that subject is the city - not the bridge. --User:Maveric149 :Mav, those pics can come after the Golden Gate Bridge pic. Start with something familiar and then go into the less familiar territory. User:WhisperToMe 00:37, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC) ::No - start with a photo of the subject of the article. --User:Maveric149 ::Its that the bridge is a symbol, Mav. The Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan Skyline symbolize New York. The Eiffel Tower symbolizes Paris. The Opera House is a symbol of Sydney. You cannot change popular culture on this. User:WhisperToMe 04:47, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC) :::You cannot change the fact that the subject of this article is the city - NOT the bridge! I am starting to understand Adam's frustration with you. If you can find an image of the bridge with the city behind it, then that would be OK. But an image of just the bridge is not at all acceptable. --mav ::: I generally agree. But the image layout at present needs work in general. -- User:Fennec 04:54, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC) ::: Then how about having someone find an image of the bridge and the skyline? Do you know anyone in the S.F. area that can do this? User:WhisperToMe 05:00, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC) ::::Because of the angles involved such an image would be hard to get from land without a zoom lens or even via boat on approach to the bridge. I've seen some great air photos showing the bridge with the city behind... I might be able to get a good photo from the top of the Marin Headlands, but I don't travel to the SF area much. Until then the skyline photo should stay. --User:Maveric149 ::I'm not sure I understand the objection to the bridge, which is a well-known object in the city. "Not at all acceptable" seems an insupportable claim. --User:Brion VIBBER 05:04, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC) :::The objection is having it as the first image. A photo of the city is much better there. --mav :::The layout is fine now - Both skyline and the bridge are there. I like it. :) User:WhisperToMe 05:16, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC) ::::I do plan on taking an all-inclusive photo. But the two image solution should work fine for now. --User:Maveric149 ---- I removed the following two external links from the main article, as they seemed more specifically related to articles about their subjects. --User:Zigger 11:11, 2004 Jun 3 (UTC) * [http://www.exploratorium.edu Exploratorium] * [http://www.dreamworld.org/wash George Washington High School] Online community for Washington High School alumni. Yearbooks on CD, class year pictures, live chat rooms, online discussion groups for each graduating class, top 40 chart for each year, school photo tour, and more. Non-commercial site. ---- == Orange Magazine? == In the external links at the bottom of the page, the link to Orange Magazine seems rather gratuitous. == Conservative bashing == Does anyone else think the second half of this sentence is a little POV: "The 2003 mayoral election of Matt Gonzalez versus Gavin Newsom was notable in that it was between two liberal candidates, conservative candidates having had a hard time in the cosmopolitan and well-educated city." :It does seem to imply that you have to be poorly educated and provincial to be a conservative. However, noting that the last conservative politician to come out of SF was Leland Stanford (probibly not true, but I can't think of any) does seem to merrit a mention in the article. User:Gentgeen 20:50, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC) ::Well, James Rolph was a conservative Republican from SF, but his predecessor, C. C. Young was also a Republican, but rather liberal. User:RickKUser talk:RickK 21:04, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC) :::Frank Jordan was a Democrat, but he was very much a conservative for SF. User:Ffirehorse 21:28, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC) == Homelessness == I added a section in history on the city's homeless problem and it was immediately reverted. Writing quality aside, isn't this a legitimate aspect of the city's history, seeing as it was a major issue in early 1990s elections? (New commenter - I don't know who wrote the paragraph above.) I have qualms about including the following statements with no sourcing: ''Newsom also helped enact a strong new homeless policy, "Care Not Cash," in which the checks that homeless people previously recieved were replaced with vouchers for housing. This policy appears to be having some effect; demand for the vouchers is much weaker compared to the previous payment system.'' I think the first sentence, besides the POV-ish word "strong", is grossly oversimplified, since during the debates over Care Not Cash there were plausible assertions (which may since have been disproven, I don't know) that it would only affect a small subset of the homeless population and was therefore more of a public-relations effort. I don't know whether to trust the second statement at all, as it both lacks a source and is very vaguely worded (how was "demand" measured?). Not to mention that this leaves out the significant controversy over whether the housing the vouchers are for is actually available. Unless someone can inject some facts into this passage, I would like to replace it with something clearer and more neutral. User:Hob←User:Hob 06:13, 2004 Sep 7 (UTC) --Regardless of the specifics of these programs, the homelessness situation needs to be addressed at least somewhere in this article. This issue is far more relevant to SF than to any other U.S. city. --User:Jleon 15:17, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Sutro tower == I tried to look into this a little, and I couldn't come to a solid conclusion on the name of the peak where the tower is located. It's not at the main touristy site normally called Twin Peaks, but it's also not at the top of the peak that UCSF is built into, which is what is normally called Mount Sutro. Looking at the only topographic map I could find: http://nmviewogc.cr.usgs.gov/viewer.htm it's clear that the tower is on a peak about equidistant from the points marked as Twin Peaks and Mount Sutro. Conventional wisdom seems to be that this is also called Mount Sutro, and it ''was'' the site of the latter-day Sutro Mansion, but it would be great if anyone else has info on what to call this. : The Tower isn't at the tourist site known as Twin Peaks, but just to make things more confusing, the neighborhood around Twin Peaks is generally called by the same name. It is in that neighborhood that the tower stands. User:Ffirehorse 05:04, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC) Thanks for looking into this. Maybe it doesn't have a name? User: Konky2000 15:25, 19 Aug 2004 (PST) == New City Picture? == [[Image:San Francisco cityscape daytime.jpg|thumb|365px|San Francisco skyline in the daytime; The Transamerica Pyramid stands out prominently, and Sutro Tower on Mount Davidson can be seen in the distance on the right.]] OK, I added a new picture of the city to replace the picture that only showed the skyline. Others can disagree with my decision, but because so little of the city is actually high rise buildings, I thought that it would be good to include something that showed more of the city. Anyways, here is the old image, that in my opinion is too generic... User:konky2000 15:25, 19 Aug 2004 (PST) Here is Konky's picture, which stood for a while but has just been replaced. I personally prefer Konky's image; I agree that the downtown skyline is not very representative of the actual city. --User:Chinasaur 19:10, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC) == Contemporary life == I have to say I think it's odd that an article on SF has not one mention of homosexual culture. Is this because no one cares to write it, or is it some taboo subject? I don't see why not. User:Ensiform There is. See: The Castro and South of Market. User:WhisperToMe 21:14, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC) I think this does need a mention in the main article; someone not familiar with SF wouldn't know to look in those neighborhood articles. And there's nothing more than a few sentences there anyway; I don't think just noting the presence of a "gay community" really conveys the diversity and magnitude of sexual subcultures in SF... User:Hob←User:Hob 06:19, 2004 Sep 7 (UTC) I agree with User:Hob. I don't think the lack of info up to this point has been a conscious oversight, but a paragraph (or more) about SF gay culture would add a lot to this article. (And how about a separate article as well?) User:Ffirehorse 23:20, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC) == Move History? == Would people support splitting out the detail in the History section into History of San Francisco, California? It's already pretty long, and deserves to be longer. User:Hob←User:Hob 06:23, 2004 Sep 7 (UTC) I think that's a great idea. --User:Mizchalmers 21:36, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC) I agree. User:RickKUser talk:RickK 21:50, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC) I also agree. History of Los Angeles, California has its own history section. Also, as User:Hob notes, a separate article would allow the history of SF to be expanded significantly. User:Ffirehorse 23:14, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC) ==Inaccuracy in Law and government section== The second paragraph in the Law and government section of the article states: While most cities in California are General Law Cities, San Francisco in one of a few Charter Cities, theoretically giving the city's voters additional control over governmental structures and allowing the city to exercise considerable control over some lands not located in the city such as those associated with San Francisco International Airport and the Hetch Hetchy water and power system.The inaccuracy is that a "few" chartered cities is actually 108 of 478 cities in California. These are two sources I draw on for my confirmation of the number of chartered and general law cities: #Facts At A Glance (2004)- League of California Cities[http://www.cacities.org/index.jsp?zone=locc&previewStory=53] #List of Chartered cities - Institute for Local Self Government[http://www.ilsg.org/index.jsp?zone=locc&previewStory=571] --User:Scupper 20:17, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC) ==Review of new section summaries needed== An anon had moved most of the bottom half (from Neighborhoods thru External links) of the article to a single 'more reading' page. To restore the section headers to the main article I cobbled together brief summaries for the Neighborhoods, Parks, Culture, and Famous San Franciscans sections. However, as I'm not all that familiar with SF, and felt pressed for time, I imagine they could all use some work. Also, ideally at least some of the subsections at Culture of San Francisco, California should be restored to the main article (summarized), as well. User:Niteowlneils 02:38, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC) == There are 21 missions in California, not 6 == I tried to change it, but I encountered "there is a problem". I also tried to fix the link so it would direct to "California missions". :Looks like the edit actually took. User:Niteowlneils 22:02, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC) == new sub section == The San Diego wiki page has an attractions section, can we get one for SF? :Most of what would fall in that category is in the Culture section and its Main article, with some, depending on your definition are in Parks and its Main article. User:Niteowlneils 22:02, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC) == Public Transportation NPOV Issue? == "San Francisco has the most extensive and best connected public transit system on the west coast and one of the most diverse in the country." Is this statement NPOV? I guess "extensive" can be backed up, but "best?" --User:Newkai 15:19, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC) San Francisco, CaliforniaThe City and County of San Francisco, California, the fourth-largest city in the U.S. state of California, United States, (measured by population within the city limits) is a consolidated city-county situated at the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula that forms San Francisco Bay. It is part of the San Francisco Bay Area metro area, which is the second largest in California. Cities in California California counties San Francisco Bay Area See other meanings of words starting from letter: SSB | SC | SD | SE | SF | SG | SH | SI | SJ | SK | SL | SM | SN | SO | SP | SR | SS | ST | SU | SW | SX | SY | SZ |Words begining with San_Francisco,_California: San_Francisco,_California San_Francisco,_California San_Francisco,_California San_Francisco,_California_maps San_Francisco,_California_neighborhoods |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
These materials are based on Wikipedia and licensed under the GNU FDL
YouTube.com videos better site than Turbo Tax 2007 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
