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Tags

San Francisco

Death and Heirs: A View from the San Francisco Housing Market

Fighting the romanticism of owning a home in one of the nation’s most competitive housing markets.

Lydia Kiesling The Millions Jan 2016 10min Permalink

How San Francisco Renamed Its Schools

An interview with Gabriela López, the head of the San Francisco Board of Education.

Isaac Chotiner New Yorker Feb 2021 Permalink

Health

What the Bay Area Can Teach Us About Fighting a Pandemic

The region’s hyper-local response has lessons for us as we confront the winter wave and begin to distribute vaccines.

Jay Caspian Kang The New Yorker Jan 2021 25min Permalink

Business

What My Dad Gave His Shop

For 45 years, , Harmony Audio Video, has been my dad’s life: the reason he left home early every day, the reason he was chronically late to pick me up from school, the reason he didn’t take a single vacation for 25 years.

Francesca Mari The Atlantic Dec 2020 Permalink

History

Castles in the Sky

A found diary holds a love story—and a mystery.

Christina Lalanne The Atavist Magazine Nov 2020 30min Permalink

Food

The Queer Legacy of Elka Gilmore

The chef, who died last year, was one of San Francisco’s culinary stars in the 1990s. She created a space for the city’s queer women to thrive in the kitchen.

Mayukh Sen Eater Jun 2020 15min Permalink

Politics Health

A Window Onto an American Nightmare

On homelessness in San Francisco.

Nathan Heller New Yorker May 2020 35min Permalink

Sex

The Last Days of the Leather Fortress

An insider watches Kink.com prepare to leave the hundred-year-old armory it occupies in San Francisco.

Tina Horn Hazlitt Oct 2017 20min Permalink

Best Article

Gimme Shelter

A year living in a shack in Oakland.

Wes Enzinna Harpers Nov 2019 25min Permalink

‘‘You Got Your High School Diploma?’’

What happens when you put a classroom on wheels and park it in the poorest neighborhoods of San Francisco?

Elizabeth Weil California Sunday Mar 2019 25min Permalink

Media

Thrashed

If Thrasher is Vogue for skaters, 53-year-old Jake Phelps is the sport’s Anna Wintour.

Willy Staley California Sunday Mar 2016 20min Permalink

Tech

Google Invades

Boomtown San Francisco, as seen from the Google Bus.

Rebecca Solnit London Review of Books Feb 2013 15min Permalink

Best Article History

Tribes

Generations of the writer’s family experience the “romantic delusions and hazardous fortunes” of San Francisco.

Nathan Heller New Yorker Aug 2018 20min Permalink

Fiction

Fiction Pick of the Week: "Bound"

An adopted woman's brushes with fortunes and family ties.

Belinda Hermawan Split Lip Magazine Jul 2018 15min Permalink

The Story of an Eyewitness

A first-hand account of San Francisco in the hours and days after the devastating 1906 earthquake.

Jack London Collier's May 1906 10min Permalink

Occupied Territory

An essay on power.

Rebecca Solnit Harper's Jul 2017 10min Permalink

Arts

The Life and Death of Richard Brautigan

"His friends remembered when Richard became famous. It was the year the hippies came to San Francisco. Richard had published one novel, A Confederate General from Big Sur, but it had sold miserably 743 copies and his publisher, Grove Press, had dropped its option on Trout Fishing in America."

Lawrence Wright Rolling Stone Apr 1985 30min Permalink

Crime

Death By Gentrification: The Killing That Shamed San Francisco

Alex Nieto died because a series of white men saw him as a menacing intruder in the place he’d spent his whole life.

Rebecca Solnit The Guardian Mar 2016 20min Permalink

Arts Business Music

Wenner's World

How a hanger-on at the fringe of San Francisco’s rock scene built the Rolling Stone empire.

David Weir Salon Apr 1999 15min Permalink

Crime

Shrimp Boy’s Day in Court

What happened when one of San Francisco’s most notorious underworld bosses tried to go clean.

Elizabeth Weil New York Times Magazine Oct 2015 20min Permalink

Business

Black Arts

The Academy of Art University in San Francisco is very profitable for the family who runs it. But not so much for the students who attend in hopes of becoming artists.

Katia Savchuk Forbes Aug 2015 Permalink

Best Article

Playing Doc's Games

Surfing San Francisco with a true believer.

William Finnegan New Yorker Aug 1992 1h15min Permalink

Tech

The Real Teens of Silicon Valley

High school dropouts are descending on San Francisco with nothing more than a backpacks full of clothes and ideas.

Nellie Bowles California Sunday May 2015 Permalink

Tech

A Changing Mission

To whom does San Francisco’s oldest neighborhood belong?

Joe Garofoli, Carolyn Said San Francisco Chronicle Dec 2014 Permalink

Business Tech

I Want It, and I Want It Now

A five-part series on the instant gratification economy.

  1. It’s Time for Instant Gratification

  2. It Takes a New Kind of Worker to Make “Instant” Happen

  3. Can “Instant” Become a Viable Business?

  4. Instant Replay: The Second Coming of On-Demand Delivery

  5. Living in an Instant World: What’s Next After Now?

Liz Gannes Re/Code Aug 2014 50min Permalink

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