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San Francisco, California
Flag of San Francisco, California
Flag
Official seal of San Francisco, California
Seal
Nickname(s): 
The City by the Bay; Fog City
Location of the City and County of San Francisco, California
Location of the City and County of San Francisco, California
City-CountySan Francisco
Government
 • MayorGavin Newsom
Population
 (2005)
 • City
739,426
 • Urban
3,385,000
 • Metro
4,152,688[1]
Time zoneUTC-8 (Pacific Standard Time)
 • Summer (DST)UTC-7 (Pacific Daylight Time)
Websitehttp://www.sfgov.org

The City and County of San Francisco is the fourth-largest city in California and the fourteenth-largest in the United States, with a 2005 population of 739,426.[2] It is located on the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula and has traditionally been the focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the United States.[3]

In 1776, the Spanish became the first Europeans to settle in San Francisco, establishing a mission named for Francis of Assisi. With the advent of the California gold rush in 1848, the city entered a period of rapid growth. After being devastated by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt and is today one of the most recognizable cities in the world.

San Francisco is renowned for its months-long episodes of fog, steep rolling hills, the eclectic mix of Victorian and modern architecture, and its peninsular location surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. Famous hallmarks and landmarks include the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the cable cars, the Transamerica Pyramid, and Chinatown.

History

Main article: History of San Francisco, California

The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula from at least 8000 BCE until the early 19th century. A Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolà, arriving on November 2, 1769, was the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay.[4] Six years later a Spanish mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís (also called Mission Dolores), was established along with an associated military fort in what is now the Presidio, and a small settlement around the Mission.[5]

File:CHS.J2289.jpg
Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores)

The area became part of Mexico upon independence from Spain in 1821 and, being far from Mexico City, lost regular contact with Mexican authorities. In the 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first significant homestead outside the immediate vicinity of the Mission Dolores,[6] near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Mission Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States in 1846, during the Mexican-American War, and, in 1847, Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco.[7] At that point, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography.

San Francisco in 1860

The California gold rush brought an influx of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia,[8] raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849,[9] though contemporary sources estimated the 1850 population as high as 100,000.[10] Silver discoveries including the Comstock Lode in 1859 further drove rapid population growth. San Francisco soon became the largest American city west of the Mississippi River. This period was also marked by lawlessness and chaotic growth, and the Barbary Coast area in the city gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, and gambling.

Entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the gold rush. A banking industry became vital, including the founding of Wells-Fargo by Henry Wells and William G. Fargo in 1852. The railroad industry took hold as the magnates of the Big Four, led by Leland Stanford, collaborated in the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad. The development of the Port of San Francisco established the city as a center of trade. Immigrants from Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and South America came to work as laborers and made the small town a polyglot culture, with Chinese railroad workers creating the city's Chinatown quarter. San Franciscans built parks, schools, streetcars and all the hallmarks of civic life. By the turn of the century, San Francisco was a city of international renown, celebrated for a flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene.

The San Francisco fire after the 1906 earthquake.

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake devastated the city. With water mains ruptured, subsequent fires burned out of control for four days. Approximately 80% of the city was destroyed, including almost all of the downtown core. Contemporary accounts reported that 567 people lost their lives, although modern estimates put the number in the several thousands.[11] Refugees settled temporarily in Golden Gate Park or fled permanently to the East Bay.

The rebuilding of the city was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, led the way in providing loans for many of those affected. The city rebuilt its City Hall and the surrounding Civic Center in Beaux Arts splendor. The city solidified its standing as a financial capital in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash as not a single San Francisco-based bank failed.[12] Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937 respectively. San Francisco celebrated its rebirth and grandeur with World's Fairs in 1915 and 1939-40.

During World War II, San Francisco's underwent further transformation. A major naval shipyard, Hunters Point, was opened and San Francisco became the primary departure point for servicemembers shipping out to the Pacific theater of operations. The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African-Americans from the South, to the area, who stayed after the end of the war. In April 1945, the UN Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco officially ended the war.

The Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915

Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s saw widespread destruction and redevelopment of westside neighborhoods and the introduction of major freeways.[13] The Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1969. Port activity moved to Oakland, the city began to lose industrial jobs, while the suburbs experienced rapid growth. San Francisco began to turn to tourism as the most important segment of its economy.

In the second half of the 20th century, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture. Beat Generation writers centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak in the 1967 Summer of Love. In the 1970s, it became a center of the Gay Liberation movement, with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the city Board of Supervisors, and his assassination, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused significant destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim its historic downtown waterfront.

During the dot-com boom of the 1990s, large numbers of young entrepreneurs and computer software professionals moved into the city, followed by marketing and sales professionals that changed the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became gentrified. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies and their employees left, although high technology continues to be a mainstay of the local economy.

Geography

File:San Francisco Landsat7 (Lg).jpg
San Francisco and northern San Mateo County

San Francisco is located on the U.S. mainland at the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several islands are part of the city, notably Alcatraz, Treasure Island, and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, 27 miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The land within the city limits roughly forms a seven by seven mile square, which has become a colloquialism referring to the city's shape.

San Francisco is famous for its hills, which are defined as elevations over 100 ft (30 m). There are a total of 42 hills within city limits. Some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, Potrero Hill, and Telegraph Hill.

Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill

Near the geographic center of the city and away from the downtown area are a series of less densely populated hills. Dominating this area is Mount Sutro, the site of Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio transmission tower. Nearby are the equally well known Twin Peaks, a pair of hills resting at one of the city's highest points and a popular overlook spot for tour groups. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, is over 925 feet (282 m) high, on top which is a 103 foot (31.4 m) tall cross built in 1934.

Although neither pass through the city iself, the San Andreas and Hayward faults are responsible for much earthquake activity. It was the San Andreas Fault which slipped and caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthqakes occur on a regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. New buildings must meet high structural standards, and older buildings and bridges must be retrofitted to comply with code.

Entire neighborhoods of the city such as the Marina and Hunters Point were created and sit on landfill and other reclamation projects over the San Francisco Bay due to the scarcity of flat land. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from tunneling through Yerba Buena Island in the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes; the resultant liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

Climate

File:Golden Gate by CS2x.jpg
Fog rolling over the Golden Gate Bridge.

A quotation incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain goes, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."[14] Surrounded on three sides by water, San Francisco's climate is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean. Average summertime high temperatures in San Francisco are 20°F (9°C) lower than they are in inland locations of the Bay Area like Livermore.[15] Winters are generally mild, almost never reaching freezing temperatures. The months of May-September are fairly dry, with rain a common occurrence from November-March. Snowfall is extraordinarily rare.[16]

The combination of cold ocean water and the high heat of the California mainland creates the city's characteristic foggy weather that can cover the western half of the city in fog all day during the summer and early fall. The fog is less pronounced in late spring and in September and October, which are warmest months of the year. The city also exhibits distinct microclimates, generally much more differentiated in the summer than in the winter. The high hills in the geographic center of the city protect neighborhoods directly to their east from the foggy and cool conditions experienced in the Sunset District. Template:San Francisco, California weatherbox

Neighborhoods

Chinatown
Main article: Neighborhoods in San Francisco, California

The historic center of San Francisco is the northeast quadrant of the city bordered by Market Street to the south. It is here that the Financial District is centered, with Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district, nearby. The historic cable cars, registered as U.S. National Monuments, carry residents and tourists alike up and over the steep hills to Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and Fisherman's Wharf, a tourist playground featuring dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street, North Beach, the city's version of Little Italy, and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower, a landmark dedicated to San Francisco's firefighters. Nearby is San Francisco's Chinatown, established in the 1860s, and among the largest and oldest such neighborhood in the United States. The Tenderloin, often portrayed as the crime-infested underbelly of the city, today features a fledgling Vietnamese community in an area called Little Saigon. Government and cultural institutions, and a fair amount of the city's homeless population, are concentrated in Civic Center

The city's Japantown district is the oldest in the country, though not nearly as vibrant today as it was before its residents were forcibly removed during the second world war. The Fillmore, once a focal point of the jazz scene, has a large African-American population, as do the Western Addition nearby and Bayview-Hunters Point in the southeast. Along with a Filipino community in Crocker-Amazon, Asian-Americans of all ethnicities are concentrated in the Sunset, Visitacion Valley, and the Richmond District, which has also recently seen an influx of Russian and Eastern European immigrants. San Francisco has one of the largest Jewish American communities in the U.S., while a variety of religions and sects have coexisted since the city's early days.

Haight-Ashbury

The Mission District, home to Mission Dolores, the oldest building in San Francisco,[17] is on the site of the earliest habitation in the city. Previously an Italian and Irish neighborhood, it is now populated predominantly by immigrants from Mexico and Central America, but is also gentrifying and is the focal point of today's urban hipster scene. With the removal of the Central Freeway, Hayes Valley is currently undergoing a renaissance. Haight-Ashbury has few remaining vestiges of the influx of hippies that gained it prominence in the 1960s, but the Castro, although homosexuals also populate many other neighborhoods throughout the city, remains out, loud, and proud. In these neighborhoods can also be found well-restored traditional Victorian homes, similar to the "Painted Ladies" of Alamo Square for which San Francisco is famous. Large mansions can be found in Pacific Heights. Other wealthy neighborhoods include Sea Cliff, the Marina, and the area just west of Twin Peaks, such as Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood. Noe Valley and Potrero Hill feature thoroughly-gentrified commercial corridors.

Current demographic and land use expansion is concentrated in the east and south. The South of Market, filled with decaying remnants of San Francisco's industrial past, has seen significant development in recent years. The construction of the SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Gardens, and the recently expanded Moscone Center have transformed the area between Third and Fifth Streets. The focus of the dot-com boom during the late 1990s, South of Market has seen new skyscrapers and condominiums dot the area, with future growth planned for Rincon Hill. Following the success of nearby South Beach, which arose along with baseball stadium AT&T Park in 2000, a new neighborhood, Mission Bay, is being developed at the far eastern end of South of Market. An extension of the University of California, San Francisco, housing biomedical research facilities, anchors the Mission Bay development.

Beaches and Parks

A footpath in Golden Gate Park
Main article: Parks in San Francisco, California

The most notable public beaches are Ocean Beach, along the Pacific Ocean shoreline, and Baker Beach, at a stunning setting just west of the Golden Gate Bridge. They are not suitable for swimming because the waters off the coast are cold and have deadly rip currents. The biggest and most well-known park is Golden Gate Park, stretching from the center of the city to the ocean. Once covered only in grass and sand dunes, the park is planted with thousands of non-native trees and plants and contains attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers and Strybing Arboretum. The Presidio, a former military base, and its Crissy Field section, restored to its natural salt marsh condition, are part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which includes Alcatraz, and other regional parks. Buena Vista Park is the city's oldest, established in 1867. A large fresh-water lake, Lake Merced, is located in the southwest corner of the city.

Demographics

Population (thousands) by year [18]

The population of San Francisco peaked at 776,733 in 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom, declining by about 35,000 residents by 2005. With nearly 16,000 people per square mile, San Francisco is the second most densely populated major American city after New York.[19] San Francisco is the traditional focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area and forms part of the greater San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area (CSA) whose population is over 7 million - the fifth largest CSA in the United States.

San Francisco is a minority-majority city as non-Hispanic Whites make up 43% of the population. Asian-Americans, principally Chinese, comprise 31% of the population, giving the city the highest such concentration of any city in the continental United States. Hispanics of any race make up 14% of the population. At less than 8% of the population, San Francisco has fewer African-Americans than most other large American cities.

San Francisco has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area.[20] Gay men outnumber lesbians. It's estimated that one in five males over the age of 15 is gay.[21]

Few of San Francisco's residents have lived there their whole lives. Only 35% of its residents were born in California; 39% were born outside the United States.[22] An outmigration of middle class families has left the city with a lower proportion of children, 14.5%, than any other large city in the United States.[23]

Government

See also: San Francisco Board of Supervisors and List of Mayors of San Francisco

The City and County of San Francisco is a consolidated city-county, being simultaneously a charter city and charter county with a consolidated government, a status it has had since 1856. It is the only such consolidation in California and, as such, the mayor is also the county executive and the city council also acts as the county board of supervisors.

San Francisco City Hall

San Francisco's unique status makes it a municipal corporation and an administrative division of the state. In the latter capacity, San Francisco exercises jurisdiction over property that would otherwise be located outside of its corporation limit. San Francisco International Airport, for example, is located in San Mateo County but is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco also exercises jurisdiction over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed, in Yosemite National Park, pursuant to a perpetual leasehold granted by Act of Congress, the Raker Act, in 1913.

Under the current charter, the Government of San Francisco is constituted of two co-equal branches - the executive branch, which is headed by the mayor and includes other city-wide elected and appointed officials, and the civil service; and the legislative branch, which is constituted of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and exercises general oversight over all city and county functions. The mayor is elected every four years, in the odd-numbered year that precedes the U.S. presidential election. If the mayor dies or resigns, the President of the Board of Supervisors, currently Aaron Peskin, assumes the office until a special election can be held. The 11 members of the Board of Supervisors are elected as representatives of specific districts within the city.[24] The Mayor and members of the Board of Supervisors may not serve more than two consecutive terms due to term limits.

The federal government utilizes San Francisco as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the U. S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, the United States Mint, the Customs bureau and the Social Security Administration. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had three major military installations - the Presidio, Treasure Island, and Hunters Point - a legacy still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week.

The State of California uses San Francisco as the home of the state Supreme Court and other state agencies such as the Public Utilities Commission. Foreign governments recognize San Francisco's international importance; there are in excess of thirty foreign consulates located in San Francisco.[25] The municipal budget is greater than $5 billion.[26]

Economy

See also: Companies Headquartered in San Francisco, California

Tourism is the backbone of the San Francisco economy. The city attracts the fifth highest number of foreign tourists of any city in United States by foreign tourists,[27] and one of the top 50 in the world.[28] More than 15 million visitors came to San Francisco in 2005, injecting nearly $7.5 billion into the economy. Conde Nast Traveler ranks the city the top destination in the United States and second in the world.[29] With a large hotel and restaurant infrastructure and a world-class facility in the Moscone Center, San Francisco also is a popular destination for conventions and conferences.

The Transamerica Pyramid in the Financial District

The legacy of the California gold rush turned San Francisco into the main banking and financial center of the West Coast. Montgomery Street in the Financial District is known as the "Wall Street of the West", home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and formerly the site of the Pacific Exchange. Bank of America was founded in San Francisco and many large financial institutions, including VISA, Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab, are still based there. Major multinational banks and venture capital firms set up regional headquarters in the city, mainly to service nearby Silicon Valley. A large support infrastructure of professional services, including law, public relations, and graphic design firms also populates the San Francisco downtown. San Francisco is one of 10 Beta World Cities.

San Francisco's economy has increasingly become tied to that of Silicon Valley to the south, sharing a need for highly educated workers with specialized skills. It has been positioning itself as a biotechnology and biomedical hub and research center. In May 2005, San Francisco was chosen as the headquarters of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the public agency funding stem cell research programs statewide. The Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a new campus of UCSF, fosters a budding industry, complemented by a cluster of biotechnology companies based in neighboring South San Francisco and Emeryville. The city is also home to the McKesson Corporation, the largest medical device supplier in the United States.

The penetration of national big box retail chains into the city has been slow. The Small Business Commission supports local merchants in an effort to keep a larger share of retail dollars in the local economy.[30] Entrepreneurship is a significant contributor to the economy, as small businesses with fewer than ten employees and self-employed firms make up 85% of city establishments.[31] The number of San Franciscans employed by firms of greater than 1000 employees has fallen by half since 1977.[22]

Media

The San Francisco Chronicle, a broadsheet for which Herb Caen famously published his daily musings, is northern California's most widely circulated newspaper.[32] The San Francisco Examiner, once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire, has declined in circulation over the years and been reduced to a small tabloid.[33][34] Sing Tao Daily claims to be the largest of several Chinese language dailies that serve the Bay Area.[35] Alternative weekly newspapers include the San Francisco Bay Guardian and SF Weekly. San Francisco Magazine is a major glossy magazine. There are numerous community-specific papers that serve niche markets and individual neighborhoods

The San Francisco metro area is the sixth largest designated market area in the United States.[36] All the major television networks have affliates serving the Bay Area region, with most of them based in the city. There are also some unaffiliated stations. CNN and BBC have regional offices in San Francisco.

Public broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, broadcasting under the name KQED out of a facility in Potrero Hill. KQED-FM is the most-listened to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.[37]

San Francisco pioneered the use of the internet as a media outlet. Salon.com is based in San Francisco, as is the gay-oriented online community PlanetOut.

Education

Colleges and universities

See also: List of colleges and universities in San Francisco

Though somewhat overshadowed by nearby Stanford University in Palo Alto and the University of California in Berkeley, San Francisco is home to several noteworthy schools.

San Francisco State University, founded in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School, is part of the California State University system, and is located in the southwest corner of the city near Lake Merced. As of 2005, the school had close to 30,000 enrolled students and awarded undergraduate degrees in 112 disciplines, master's degrees in 96, and three doctoral programs offered jointly with other institutions. The City College of San Francisco, one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country, claims an extensive continuing education program and an enrollment of about 65,000 credit- and non-credit students.[38]

File:UCSF-Mission Bay.jpg
The Mission Bay campus of UCSF

The University of California, San Francisco, founded in 1873, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system, but is unique for being the only campus dedicated solely to graduate education. UCSF cites its mission as one "dedicated to saving lives and improving health," and with an educational program focused on health and biomedical sciences, it is ranked among the top-five medical schools in the United States.[39] UCSF also runs the UCSF Medical Center, which is consistently ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the United States.[40] The 43-acre Mission Bay campus opened in 2003. It contains research space and facilities to foster biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship and will double the size of UCSF's research enterprise. The University of California, Hastings College of Law, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and has trained more members of the state bar than any other institution.[citation needed]

Founded in 1855, the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco, focuses on the liberal arts, and is one of the oldest universities established west of the Mississippi. It has been at its present location on Lone Mountain, just east of Golden Gate Park since 1927.

Visual arts are served by the San Francisco Art Institute which can trace its beginnings back to the founding of the San Francisco Art Association in 1871. San Francisco is also the home of Academy of Art University which was founded 1929. It has expanded to occupy almost 30 buildings in the downtown area and, with a 2005 enrollment of approximately 8,700 students, it is the largest private school of art and design in the USA.[41] The San Francisco Conservatory of Music founded in 1917, is the only school of its kind on the west coast, offering degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting. The California Culinary Academy, associated with the Le Cordon Bleu program, is located in the Tenderloin and has been granting degrees in the culinary arts, baking & pastry arts, and hospitality & restaurant management since its founding in 1977.

Primary and secondary schools

San Francisco Unified School District is one of the oldest school districts in California and operates all public schools in the city of San Francisco. Lowell High School is the oldest public high school in the U.S. west of the Mississippi, is widely renowned for its academic achievement, and is one of the few public schools frequently placed on lists of the best high schools in the United States.

San Francisco has more than 100 private schools.[42] In 2005, 29.3 percent of the city's school-age population went to private or religious schools, compared to only 10 percent nationwide.[42] The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco manages 32 elementary schools and 7 high schools in San Francisco, as well as Catholic schools in San Mateo and Marin counties.[43]

Culture and contemporary life

Main article: Culture of San Francisco, California

San Francisco is at once, bohemian enclave and a city that home to the world's wealthy. Starting in the mid-1990's, driven by the twin allures of its salutary climate and culture, and enabled by the great wealth generated by the tech revolution, San Francisco experienced major gentrification.[44] Significant numbers of the wealthy and high income-earners have settled in the city driving up the cost and the standard of living. These changes, coupled with demand generated by tourism, have fueled a substantial gourment food and restaurant industry. Union Street is renowned for boutiques and nightlife, and the downtown area around Union Square is the central shopping district and home to world-class destination restaurants.

Property values, per capita income, and cost-of-living are among the highest in the nation.[45][46] Only three other cities worldwide have more billionaires residing within its limits.[47][48] As a result of the high cost of living many middle class families have left, moving to other cities within the San Francisco Bay Area, and the population of children is among the lowest for major American cities.[23]

The rainbow flag in The Castro.

San Francisco's bohemian nature attracted the counterculture movement, beginning with the San Francisco Renaissance and arrival of Beat Generation writers in the 1950s, who established a coffeehouse culture that still lingers today. This was followed by the influx of hippies, practicing free love and protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s. As a result, San Francisco is today one of the hypocenters of liberalism in the United States, with Democrats, Greens, and progressives dominating city politics.

The gay liberation movement centered in The Castro in the 1970s precipitated the powerful presence gays and lesbians have in city life today. A popular destination for gay tourists, it hosts San Francisco Pride, the world's best known gay pride parade and festival, and Folsom Street Fair, an original event celebrating the leather and S&M subcultures. The Gay Games were founded in 1982 and the annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festival was the world's first.

San Francisco has been ranked by the Mercer human resources firm as one of the best cities to live in United States.[49] The city's residents have been judged to be among the healthiest[50] and fittest[51] in the United States.

Although the poverty rate is among the lowest for major American cities,[52] homelessness has been a chronic and controversial problem for San Francisco since the early 1980s. The city has the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major city in the United States.[citation needed] The problem is a source of much discussion, and has become a significant factor in the politics of the city, most importantly in the mayoral campaigns of Frank Jordan and Gavin Newsom.

Museums and performing arts

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
See also: List of Museums in San Francisco

Major arts museums include the Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the Palace of the Legion of Honor, which contains primarily European works. The De Young Museum and the Asian Art Museum have significant anthropological and non-European holdings. The Palace of Fine Arts was originally built as part of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. Today, it houses the Exploratorium, which like the California Academy of Sciences is an important science museum.

San Francisco's Ballet, Opera and Symphony, each housed at the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center complex, are some of the oldest continuing performing arts companies in the United States. The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) has been a leading force in Bay Area performing arts since its founding in 1965, routinely staging original productions. San Francisco frequently hosts national touring productions of Broadway shows and has in recent years also been used for trial pre-Broadway runs of new ones.

Sports

The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League are the longest-tenured major professional sports franchise in the city. They began play in 1946 and moved to their present location in Monster Park on Candlestick Point in 1971. They reached prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, winning five Super Bowl titles behind stars Joe Montana, Steve Young, and Jerry Rice.

A Muni light rail passes AT&T Park home of the San Francisco Giants

The San Francisco Giants Major League Baseball team of the National League famously left New York for California prior to the 1958 season, supplanting the minor league San Francisco Seals. Though boasting stars such as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Barry Bonds, they have yet to win the World Series while based in San Francisco. Game 3 of the 1989 World Series in San Francisco was infamously pre-empted by the Loma Prieta Earthquake. The Giants play at AT&T Park which was opened in 2000, a cornerstone project of the South Beach and Mission Bay redevelopment.[53]

Although the San Francisco Warriors, before moving to Oakland, played for a time at the Cow Palace, which also briefly hosted the San Jose Sharks, neither the NBA nor the NHL currently has a franchise in the city. The San Francisco Dragons of Major League Lacrosse play at Kezar Stadium. The San Francisco Pilots of the fledgling American Basketball Association play at Kezar Pavilion.

The Dons, the athletic teams of the University of San Francisco, compete in NCAA Divison I. Bill Russell led the Dons to NCAA men's basketball championships in 1955 and 1956. The San Francisco State Gators compete in Division II.

The Bay to Breakers has been held annually since 1912, the longest consecutively run footrace in the world. It is best known for its colorful costumes and celebratory community spirit. The San Francisco Marathon is also an annual event.

Transportation

The Bay Bridge connects to Oakland and the East Bay.

Roads and highways

Because of its unique geography — making "beltways" somewhat impractical — and the results of the "freeway revolts" of the late 1950s, San Francisco is one of the few cities in the U.S. that has opted for European-style arterial thoroughfares instead of a large network of freeways. City residents continued this trend following the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, choosing to demolish the Embarcadero Freeway and a portion of the Central Freeway and convert them into street-level boulevards.

Interstate 80 begins at the approach to the Bay Bridge and is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. U.S. Route 101 extends Interstate 80 to the south along the San Francisco Bay toward Silicon Valley. Northbound, 101 uses arterial streets Van Ness Avenue and Lombard Street to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct road access from San Francisco to Marin County and points north. Highway 1 also enters San Francisco at the Golden Gate Bridge, but diverts away from 101, bisecting the west side of the city as the 19th Avenue arterial thoroughfare, and joining with Interstate 280 at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues this route along the central portion of the Peninsula south to San Jose. Northbound, 280 turns north and east and terminates in the South of Market area. Major east-west thoroughfares include Geary Boulevard, the Lincoln Way/Fell Street corridor, and Market Street/Portola Drive.

Public transportation

A refurbished vintage streetcar from Milan runs down Market Street as part of the F Market line

Public transit solely within the city of San Francisco is provided predominantly by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni). The city-owned system operates both a combined light rail/subway system (the Muni Metro) and a bus network that includes both trolleybuses and standard diesel buses. Additionally, Muni runs the F Market historic streetcar line and the iconic San Francisco cable car system.

Commuter rail is provided by two complementary systems. Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is the regional rapid transit system which connects San Francisco with the East Bay through the Transbay Tube. It extends south of the city through northern San Mateo County to San Francisco International Airport. Caltrain is a separate system that runs along the Peninsula from San Francisco to San Jose, stopping in many communities in between, and continuing further south with limited service to Gilroy in southern Santa Clara County.

The Transbay Terminal serves as the terminus for long range bus service (such as Greyhound) and as a hub for regional bus systems such as AC Transit (to Alameda County), SamTrans (San Mateo County), and Golden Gate Transit (Marin and Sonoma Counties). Amtrak also runs a shuttle bus from San Francisco to its rail station in Emeryville.

A small fleet of commuter and tourist ferries operate from the Ferry Building and Pier 39 to points in Marin County, Oakland, and north to Vallejo in Solano County.

Airports

See also: List of airports in the San Francisco Bay area

San Francisco International Airport (SFO), though located 13 miles (21 km) south of the city in San Mateo County, is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. It is a hub for United Airlines, its largest tenant,[54] and the decision by Virgin America to base its future operations out of SFO[55] reverses the trend of low-cost carriers opting to bypass SFO for Oakland and San Jose. SFO is the second-most important departure point for international traffic leaving the west coast, with the largest international terminal in North America.[56] The airport is built on a landfill extension into the San Francisco Bay. During the economic boom of the late 1990s, when traffic saturation led to frequent delays, it became difficult to respond to calls to relieve the pressure by constructing an additional runway as that would have required additional landfill. Such calls subsided in the early 2000s as traffic declined, and SFO is now the 14th busiest airport in the United States,[57] and 23rd largest in the world,[58] handling 32.8 million people in 2005.[59]

Seaports

Historic piers near Fort Mason.
Main article: Port of San Francisco

The Port of San Francisco was once the largest and busiest seaport on the West Coast. It featured rows of piers perpendicular to the shore, where cargo from the moored ships was handled by cranes and manual labor and transported to nearby warehouses. The port handled long distance trade, to both to trans-Pacific and Atlantic destinations, and local West coast trade, including the West coast lumber trade. The port featured prominently in the 1934 West Coast Longshore Strike, the largest in American history, and an important episode in the history of the American labor movement. Servicemembers in World War II departed from Fort Mason. The advent of container shipping made San Francisco's pier-based port obsolete and most commercial berths have now moved to the Port of Oakland.

Many piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing office space conversions and sale of several piers. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building, while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as a gourmet marketplace. The port's other activities now focus on developing waterside assets to support recreation and tourism.

References

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  2. ^ Census Bureau Estimates Program (2005)
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See also


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