San Francisco, California
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'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.
[Census Bureau Estimates Program (2005)] 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.
In 1776, the Spain became the first Europeans to settle in San Francisco, establishing a California missions 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 San Francisco earthquake, 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 Painted ladies 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 Island, the San Francisco cable car system, the Transamerica Pyramid, and Chinatown, San Francisco, California.
History
The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people inhabited the San Francisco Peninsula from at least 8000 BCE until the early 19th century. A Spanish colonization of the Americas, led by Don Gaspar de Portolŕ, arriving on November 2, 1769, was the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay.
Six years later a Spanish Missions of California, Mission San Francisco de Asís (also called Mission Dolores), was established along with a small settlement around the Mission, and an associated military fort in what is now the Presidio.
The area became part of Mexico upon Mexican independence from Spain in 1821 and, being far from Mexico City, lost regular contact with Mexican authorities. In the 1835, Englishman William A. Richardson erected the first significant homestead outside the immediate vicinity of the Mission Dolores,
[ From the 1820s to the Gold Rush San Francisco Virtual History Museum Accessed August 28, 2006] 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.
[History of Yerba Buena Gardens Yerba Buena Gardens Accessed August 28, 2003] At that point, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California gold rush brought an influx of treasure seekers. With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, California,
[San Francisco's First Brick BuildingThe Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, Accessed August 28, 2006] raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849,
though contemporary sources estimated the 1850 population as high as 100,000.
[San Francisco Gold Rush Chronology 1846-1849 "The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco" Accessed August 27, 2006] 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, San Francisco, California 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. An early winner was the banking industry which saw the founding of Wells-Fargo by Henry Wells and William G. Fargo in 1852. The railroad industry took hold as the business 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 Han Chinese railroad workers creating the city's Chinatown, San Francisco 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 1906 San Francisco earthquake devastated the city. With water mains ruptured, subsequent fires burned out of control for four days. Some buildings were intentionally destroyed with dynamite to create firebreaks to contain the inferno. Approximately 80% of the city was in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core. Contemporary accounts reported that 567 people lost their lives, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands.
["Who Perished" A list of Persons Who Died as a Result of the Great Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco on April 18, 1906 "The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco" Accessed August 27, 2006] Jack London wrote: "Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone. Nothing remains of it but memories and a fringe of dwelling-houses on its outskirts. Its industrial section is wiped out. Its business section is wiped out. Its social and residential section is wiped out. The factories and warehouses, the great stores and newspaper buildings, the hotels and the palaces of the nabobs, are all gone. Remains only the fringe of dwelling houses on the outskirts of what was once San Francisco."
[The Story of an Eyewitness by Jack LondonThe Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, Accessed August 29, 2006] 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 (USA), later to become Bank of America, led the way in providing loans for many of those affected. The city rebuilt its San Francisco City Hall and the surrounding Civic Center, San Francisco, California in Beaux Arts splendor. The city solidified its standing as a financial capital in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash as not a single San Francisco-based bank failed.
[San Francisco Gold Rush Banking "The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco" Accessed August 27, 2006] 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 Panama-Pacific International Exposition and Golden Gate International Exposition. During World War II, San Francisco's underwent further transformation. A major naval shipyard, Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, was opened and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for servicemembers shipping out to the Pacific theater of operations.
[World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area National Park Service Accessed August 29, 2006.] 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. Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s saw widespread destruction and redevelopment of westside neighborhoods and the introduction of major freeways.
[Urban Renewal Revisited: A Design CritiqueSan Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, Accessed August 28, 2006] The Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1969. Port activity moved to Port of 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 District 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 bubble 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
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 of San Francisco Bay are part of the city, notably Alcatraz Island, Treasure Island, California, 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, San Francisco, California, Russian Hill, Potrero Hill, and Telegraph Hill, San Francisco. 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 (San Francisco), 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 Fault and Hayward Fault 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 District 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, California 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
A quotation incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain goes, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco."
[FOG HEAVEN: The sun will come out tomorrow. Or maybe not. It's summer in the city, and that means gray skies "San Francisco Chronicle" Accessed August 27, 2006] 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, California.
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.
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, San Francisco, California.
Neighborhoods
The historic center of San Francisco is the northeast quadrant of the city bordered by Market Street (San Francisco) to the south. It is here that the Financial District, San Francisco, California is centered, with Union Square (San Francisco), the principal shopping and hotel district, nearby. The historic Cable car (railway)s, 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, San Francisco, California, a tourist playground featuring dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, San Francisco, California, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street, San Francisco, North Beach, the city's version of Little Italy, and Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, which features Coit Tower, a landmark dedicated to San Francisco's firefighters. Nearby is San Francisco's Chinatown, San Francisco, California, established in the 1860s, and among the largest and oldest such Chinatown in the United States. The Tenderloin, San Francisco, California, often portrayed as the crime-infested underbelly of the city, today features a fledgling Vietnamese community in an area called Little Saigon#San Francisco. Government and cultural institutions, and a fair amount of the city's homeless population, are concentrated in Civic Center, San Francisco, California The city's Japantown, San Francisco, California district is the oldest in the country, though not nearly as vibrant today as it was before its residents were Japanese American internment during the second world war. The Fillmore District, San Francisco, California, once a focal point of the jazz scene, has a large African-American population, as do the Western Addition, San Francisco, California nearby and Hunters Point, San Francisco, California in the southeast. Along with a Filipino American community in Crocker-Amazon, San Francisco, California, Asian-Americans of all ethnicities are concentrated in the Sunset District, San Francisco, California, Visitacion Valley, San Francisco, California, and the Richmond District, San Francisco, California, which has also recently seen an influx of Russian people 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. The Mission District, San Francisco, California, home to Mission Dolores, the oldest building in San Francisco,
[California Mission History: Mission San Francisco de Asís CaliforniaMissions.com Accessed August 27, 2006] 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, San Francisco, California is currently undergoing a renaissance. Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, California has few remaining vestiges of the influx of hippies that gained it prominence in the 1960s, but the The Castro, San Francisco, California, 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 house homes, similar to the "Painted Ladies" of Alamo Square for which San Francisco is famous. Large mansions can be found in Pacific Heights, San Francisco, California. Other wealthy neighborhoods include Sea Cliff, San Francisco, California, the Marina District, San Francisco, California, and the area just west of Twin Peaks, such as Forest Hill, San Francisco, California and St. Francis Wood, San Francisco, California. Noe Valley, San Francisco, California and Potrero Hill, San Francisco, California 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 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 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, San Francisco, California, which arose along with baseball stadium AT&T Park in 2000, a new neighborhood, Mission Bay, San Francisco, California, 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
The most notable public beaches are Ocean Beach (San Francisco), 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. Presidio of San Francisco, 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
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 City.
San Francisco is the traditional focal point of the San Francisco Bay Area and forms part of the greater San Jose, California-San Francisco-Oakland, California 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 White (people)s make up 43% of the population. Asian-Americans, principally Han 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-American (U.S. Census)s 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.
Gay men outnumber lesbians. It's estimated that one in five males over the age of 15 is gay.
[San Francisco may be the World's Gayest City, People's Daily (China) Accessed August 23 2006.] 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.
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.
Government
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'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 drainage basin, 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.
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 Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the United States Mint, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Social Security Administration. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had three major military installations - the Presidio of San Francisco, Treasure Island, California, and San Francisco Naval Shipyard - 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 of California and other state agencies such as the California Public Utilities Commission. Foreign governments recognize San Francisco's international importance; there are in excess of thirty foreign consulate located in San Francisco.
[Search for consulates in San Francisco, CA Yellowpages.com, Accessed August 27, 2006] The municipal budget is greater than $5 billion.
Economy
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,
[Overseas Visitors To Select U.S. Cities/Hawaiian Islands 2002-2001"U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Travel & Tourism Industries" Accessed August 27, 2006] and one of the top 50 in the world.
[World's Top 50 Tourist Destinatoins www.Srikumar.com Accessed August 27, 2006] More than 15 million visitors came to San Francisco in 2005, injecting nearly $7.5 billion into the economy. Conde Nast ranks the city the top destination in the United States and second in the world.
[San Francisco seeing more visitors, more cash -- it's our No. 1 industry From the San Francisco Chronicle . Accessed August 23 2006.] 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 legacy of the California gold rush turned San Francisco into the main banking and financial center of the West Coast of the United States. Montgomery Street in the Financial District (San Francisco) 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 (credit card), Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab Corp., 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 firm, public relations, and graphic design firms also populates the San Francisco downtown. San Francisco is one of global 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 (San Francisco) neighborhood, site of a new campus of University of California-San Francisco, 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.
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.
The number of San Franciscans employed by firms of greater than 1000 employees has fallen by half since 1977.
Media
The
San Francisco Chronicle , a broadsheet for which Herb Caen famously published his daily musings, is northern California's most widely circulated newspaper.
[Top 200 Newspapers by Largest Reported Circulation Audit Bureau of Circulations Accessed August 28, 2006] 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.
[The San Francisco Examiner, 1887-2000 Salon.com March 20, 2000 Accessed August 28, 2006][Examiner Staff Ends and Era With Tears, Newsroom Tales "San Francisco Chronicle" November 22, 2000 Accessed August 28, 2006] Sing Tao Daily claims to be the largest of several Chinese language dailies that serve the Bay Area.
[Newspaper war in the Bay Area: Ming Pao becomes 6th Chinese-language daily San Francisco Chronicle Accessed August 28, 2006] 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.
[Nielsen Media Research Local Universe Esitmates Accessed August 27, 2006] 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 KQED-TV and a KQED-FM, broadcasting under the name KQED out of a facility in Potrero Hill, San Francisco, California. KQED-FM is the most-listened to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.
[Top 30 Public Radio Subscribers - Winter 2004 Arbitron "Radio Research Consortium" Accessed August 27, 2006] 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
Though somewhat overshadowed by nearby Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, 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, 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.
[Enrollment Report 2002 City College of San Francisco. Accessed August 27, 2006 (PDF).] The University of California, San Francisco, founded in 1873, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, 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.
[America's best graduate schools 2007. U.S. News and World Report . Accessed August 26, 2006.] UCSF also runs the UCSF Medical Center, which is consistently ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the United States.
[Best Hospitals 2006 U.S. News and World Report . Accessed August 26, 2006.] The 43-acre Mission Bay, San Francisco, California 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. Founded in 1855, the Society of Jesus-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, San Francisco, 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.
[About Us Academy of Art University Website, Accessed August 27, 2006.] 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, San Francisco 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 (San Francisco) 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.
[Many reluctanlty chose private schoolsFrom the San Francisco Chronicle, May 31, 2006. Accessed August 27, 2006.] In 2005, 29.3 percent of the city's school-age population went to private or religious schools, compared to only 10 percent nationwide.
[Many reluctanlty chose private schoolsFrom the San Francisco Chronicle, May 31, 2006. Accessed August 27, 2006.] 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.
[School Directory Department of Catholic Schools. Accessed August 27, 2006.] Culture and contemporary life
: 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.
[San Francisco by the Numbers: Planning after the 2000 CensusSan Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, Accesed August 28, 2006] 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, San Francisco, California 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.
[It may not feel like it, but your shot at the good life is getting better. Here's why San Francisco Magazine Accessed August 28, 2006] Only three other cities worldwide have more List of cities with the most billionaires residing within its limits.
[Forbes.com list of billionares. Accessed August 28, 2006][Indybay.org list of billionaires living in San Francisco. Accessed August 28, 2006. ] 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.
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 Democratic party, Green party, and progressivism 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 subculture and Sadism and Masochism 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 Quality of Living Survey human resources firm as one of the best cities to live in United States.
The city's residents have been judged to be among the healthiest
and fittest
in the United States. Although the poverty rate is among the lowest for major American cities,
[U.S. Census finds more are poor San Francisco Chronicle Accessed August 28, 2006] 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. 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
Major arts museums include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, which contains primarily European works. The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco have significant anthropological and non-European holdings. The Palace of Fine Arts was originally built as part of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915). Today, it houses the Exploratorium, which like the California Academy of Sciences is an important science museum. San Francisco's San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Symphony, each housed at the San Francisco 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 State Recreation Area in 1971. They reached prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, winning five Super Bowl titles behind stars Joe Montana, Steve Young, and Jerry Rice. 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. San Francisco and Mission Bay, San Francisco, California redevelopment.
[EPA Study: SBC Park Environmental Protection Agency, Accessed August 28, 2006] 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 National Basketball Association nor the National Hockey League 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 (21st century) play at Kezar Pavilion. The Dons, the athletic teams of the University of San Francisco, compete in NCAA NCAA Division I. Bill Russell led the Dons to NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship in 1955 and 1956. The San Francisco State University Gators compete in NCAA 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
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 San Francisco-Oakland 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 (San Francisco) to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct road access from San Francisco to Marin County and points north. California State Route 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 (California) at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues this route along the central portion of the Peninsula south to San Jose, California. 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
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 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 (California) through the Transbay Tube. It extends south of the city through northern San Mateo County, California to San Francisco International Airport. Caltrain is a separate system that runs along the San Francisco Peninsula from San Francisco to San Jose, California, stopping in many communities in between, and continuing further south with limited service to Gilroy, California in southern Santa Clara County, California. The Transbay Terminal serves as the terminus for long range bus service (such as Greyhound Lines) 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 (Amtrak station). A small fleet of commuter and tourist ferries operate from the Ferry Building and Pier 39 to points in Marin County, California, Oakland, California, and north to Vallejo, California in Solano County, California.
Airports
San Francisco International Airport (SFO), though located 13 miles (21 km) south of the city in San Mateo County, California, is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. It is a hub for United Airlines, its largest tenant,
[Pact keeps United from flying away San Francisco Business Times Retrieved on August 28 2006] and the decision by Virgin America to base its future operations out of SFO
[Taking to the air: Low-fare startup Virgin America says it has the funding to fly San Francisco Chronicle December 9, 2005, Retrieved on August 28 2006] reverses the trend of low-cost carriers opting to bypass SFO for Oakland International Airport and San Jose International Airport. SFO is the second-most important departure point for international traffic leaving the west coast, with the largest international terminal in North America.
[International Terminal Fact Sheet. Retrieved on August 22 2006.] 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,
[North America's largest airports by number of passengers. Retrieved on August 23 2006.] and 23rd largest in the world,
[World's largest airports by number of passengers. Retrieved on August 23 2006.] handling 32.8 million people in 2005.
[San Francisco International Airport 2005 Passenger Fact Sheet. Retrieved on August 23 2006.] Seaports
The Port of San Francisco was once the largest and busiest seaport on the West Coast of the United States. 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 Labor unions in the United States. 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 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
See also
- San Francisco Bay Area
- 49-Mile Scenic Drive
- List of places named after Saint Francis
- Sister cities of San Francisco, California
- San Francisco Municipal Railway
- San Francisco Police Department
- San Francisco Sheriff's Department
- Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco
- San Francisco Unified School District
External links
Explain San Francisco 
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