Even after the gold fever died down, gold itself was in the air in San Francisco—as long as you knew where to look. That place would be in the San Francisco Mint. In a majestic granite and sandstone building downtown, bullion was turned into gold coins—as well as lots and lots of gold dust.
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As a big urban walker, I like to head for the hills. So when I stumbled upon this list of the steepest streets in the U.S., I just had to see what they looked like, and I started planning a trip to hit all of the most insanely steep stretches of our American streets. The scariest thing? People live (and park!) on them.
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San Francisco’s iconic Victorian style homes, such as the Painted Ladies of Full House fame, weren’t built merely as protection against the elements. Like 19th century Klout Scores, these houses were just as much status symbols as they were domiciles. But what do their ornate facades actually mean? 7×7’s Mary Jo Bowling explains.
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Changes in Red Hook, violence in Kiev, and new ideas for Paris from mayoral candidates. Plus Bogotá bans cars for a week, California might divide into six states, and the surprising history of Hollywood. These are all the Urban Reads you need.
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This is the story of how Robot Dance Party came to be—how it was born, how it went through "robot puberty," and how it became the unwitting sex symbol of Dolores Park.
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You think rents are high in San Francisco? Try Williston, North Dakota. No wait, don’t—there’s nowhere to live. According to a new study by Apartment Guide, the most expensive rents in the country can be found in this relatively tiny North Dakota town.
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San Francisco’s skyline has a handful of famous landmarks dotted around the city—the Transamerica Tower, the Painted Ladies, the Golden Gate Bridge—but the most visible might be Sutro Tower, standing 977-feet-tall on Twin Peaks since 1973. As icons go, it’s definitely got the minimal, industrial-chic vibe going on—essentially the complete opposite of this ambitious 1933 plan for an illuminated monument and water feature cascading down the hillside. Whaaaa??
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Google’s mystery barge
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San Francisco is fantastic. I’m admittedly biased because I live here, but behind all the headlines of late—skyrocketing housing prices, burgeoning class war, tech bubble 2.0—it’s still chock full of weird, wonderful, and just plain beautiful stuff. Marc Donahue from PermaGrin Films turned his sights on the city for "I Left My Heart," an impressive timelapse that shows SF from all the best angles.
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An emerging maker culture building Cincinnati, a "Green Line" making a Mexican city healthier, and a car-free festival changing L.A.—all that, plus preserving post offices in an age of email and three plans to save San Francisco from a housing crisis, in this week’s Urban Reads.
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