Spirits of the City
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Spirits of the City: Chinatown: San Francisco’s Potemkin Village
For more than a century, the exotic architecture of San Francisco’s Chinatown has fascinated visitors. With their bright colors, pagoda…
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San Francisco’s Beautiful, Not-So-Ancient Ruins
Although San Francisco is too young a city to have many ruins, it does boast a few — the brick…
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The Sunken Houses of Shipley Street
During the 1906 earthquake, the greatest loss of life at any single location took place near the corner of Sixth…
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The Relics and Ruins and Huntington Park
Huntington Park’s most striking feature is its superb fountain, a copy of Rome’s Fontana delle Tartarughe (“Fountain of the Turtles”).…
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The Rock House
The Rock House is a strange and wondrous building, with a history to match. (Illustration by Paul Madonna) From Hunters…
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Excelsior: Ever Upward!
The Excelsior District is a pleasantly unpretentious residential neighborhood near the Outer Mission, best known for having the most cosmopolitan…
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The More Things Change … Division Street
Most of once-gritty SoMa has received the massive money makeover that has Botoxed out so many of San Francisco’s wrinkles.…
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The Ghosts of Calhoun Terrace
Calhoun Terrace is haunted, and not by garden-variety ghosts. The spirits that hover around this stunning, split-level balcony of a…
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Three Universes in Three Blocks, a Closer Look at Joice Street
Joice starts (actually it ends, but we’re going backward) high on Nob Hill, as a delightfully unexpected, rather grand staircase…
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Quotable City
“San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every…
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