SAN FRANCISCO proper
occupies just 48 hilly square miles at the tip of a slender
peninsula, almost perfectly centered along the California
coast. Arguably the most beautiful, certainly the most
liberal city in the US, it remains true to itself: a funky, individualistic,
surprisingly small city whose people pride themselves on
being the cultured counterparts to their cousins in LA – the
last bastion of civilization on the lunatic fringe of America.
It's a compact and approachable place, where downtown streets
rise on impossible gradients to reveal stunning views of
the city, the bay and beyond, and blanket fogs roll in unexpectedly
to envelop the city in mist. This is not the California of
mono-tonous blue skies and slothful warmth – the temperatures
rarely exceed the seventies, and even during summer can
drop much lower.
The original inhabitants of this area, the Ohlone
Indians ,
were all but wiped out within a few years of the establishment in
1776 of the Mission Dolores , the sixth in the chain
of Spanish Catholic missions that ran the length of California. Two
years after the Americans replaced the Mexicans in 1846, the discovery
of gold in the Sierra foothills precipitated the rip-roaring Gold
Rush . Within a year fifty thousand pioneers had traveled
west, and east from China, turning San Francisco from a muddy village
and wasteland of sand dunes into a thriving supply center and transit
town. By the time the transcontinental railroad was
completed in 1869, San Francisco was a lawless, rowdy boomtown of
bordellos and drinking dens, something the moneyed elite – who hit
it big on the much more dependable silver Comstock Load – worked
hard to mend, constructing wide boulevards, parks, a cable car system
and elaborate Victorian redwood mansions.
In the midst of the city's golden age, however, a massive earthquake ,
followed by three days of fire, wiped out most of the town in 1906.
Rebuilding began immediately, resulting in a city more magnificent
than before; in the decades that followed, writers like Dashiell
Hammett and Jack London lived and worked here. Many of the city's
landmarks, including Coit Tower and both the Golden Gate and Bay
bridges, were built in the 1920s and 1930s. By World War II San Francisco
had been eclipsed by Los Angeles as the main west coast city, but
it achieved a new cultural eminence with the emergence of the Beats
in the Fifties and the hippies in the Sixties, when the fusion of
music, protest, rebellion and, of course, drugs that characterized
1967's "Summer of Love" took over the Haight-Ashbury district.
In
a conservative America, San Francisco's reputation as a liberal oasis
continues to grow, attracting waves of resettlers from all over the
US. It is estimated that over half the city's population originates
from somewhere else. It is a city in a constant state of evolution,
fast gentrifying itself into one of the most high-end towns on earth – thanks,
in part, to the disposable incomes pumped into its coffers from its
sizeable singles and gay contingents. Gay capital of the world, San
Francisco has also been the scene of the dot.com revolution's rise
and fall. The resultant wealth at one time made housing prices skyrocket – often
at the expense of the city's middle and lower classes – but the closure
of hundreds of start-up IT companies has brought real-estate prices
back down to (almost) reasonable levels. Despite the city's current
economic ebbs and flows, your impression of the city likely won't
be altered – it remains
one of the most proudly distinct places to be found anywhere.
SAN FRANCISCO proper
occupies just 48 hilly square miles at the tip of a slender
peninsula, almost perfectly centered along the California
coast. Arguably the most beautiful, certainly the most
liberal city in the US, it remains true to itself: a funky, individualistic,
surprisingly small city whose people pride themselves on
being the cultured counterparts to their cousins in LA – the
last bastion of civilization on the lunatic fringe of America.
It's a compact and approachable place, where downtown streets
rise on impossible gradients to reveal stunning views of
the city, the bay and beyond, and blanket fogs roll in unexpectedly
to envelop the city in mist. This is not the California of
mono-tonous blue skies and slothful warmth – the temperatures
rarely exceed the seventies, and even during summer can
drop much lower. 
The original inhabitants of this area, the Ohlone
Indians ,
were all but wiped out within a few years of the establishment in
1776 of the Mission Dolores , the sixth in the chain
of Spanish Catholic missions that ran the length of California. Two
years after the Americans replaced the Mexicans in 1846, the discovery
of gold in the Sierra foothills precipitated the rip-roaring Gold
Rush . Within a year fifty thousand pioneers had traveled
west, and east from China, turning San Francisco from a muddy village
and wasteland of sand dunes into a thriving supply center and transit
town. By the time the transcontinental railroad was
completed in 1869, San Francisco was a lawless, rowdy boomtown of
bordellos and drinking dens, something the moneyed elite – who hit
it big on the much more dependable silver Comstock Load – worked
hard to mend, constructing wide boulevards, parks, a cable car system
and elaborate Victorian redwood mansions. 
In the midst of the city's golden age, however, a massive earthquake ,
followed by three days of fire, wiped out most of the town in 1906.
Rebuilding began immediately, resulting in a city more magnificent
than before; in the decades that followed, writers like Dashiell
Hammett and Jack London lived and worked here. Many of the city's
landmarks, including Coit Tower and both the Golden Gate and Bay
bridges, were built in the 1920s and 1930s. By World War II San Francisco
had been eclipsed by Los Angeles as the main west coast city, but
it achieved a new cultural eminence with the emergence of the Beats
in the Fifties and the hippies in the Sixties, when the fusion of
music, protest, rebellion and, of course, drugs that characterized
1967's "Summer of Love" took over the Haight-Ashbury district. 
In
a conservative America, San Francisco's reputation as a liberal oasis
continues to grow, attracting waves of resettlers from all over the
US. It is estimated that over half the city's population originates
from somewhere else. It is a city in a constant state of evolution,
fast gentrifying itself into one of the most high-end towns on earth – thanks,
in part, to the disposable incomes pumped into its coffers from its
sizeable singles and gay contingents. Gay capital of the world, San
Francisco has also been the scene of the dot.com revolution's rise
and fall. The resultant wealth at one time made housing prices skyrocket – often
at the expense of the city's middle and lower classes – but the closure
of hundreds of start-up IT companies has brought real-estate prices
back down to (almost) reasonable levels. Despite the city's current
economic ebbs and flows, your impression of the city likely won't
be altered – it remains
one of the most proudly distinct places to be found anywhere.