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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 is a city of hills and distinct neighborhoods. As
a general rule, geographical elevation means wealth - the higher
up you are, the less fog you endure, resulting in better views.
Commercial square-footage is surprisingly small and mostly confined
to the downtown area, and the rest of the city is made up of primarily
residential neighborhoods with street-level shopping districts,
easily explored on foot. Armed with a good map and strong legs,
you could plough through much of the city in a day, but the best
way to get to know San Francisco is to dawdle
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