San Francisco County at a Glance

© McCormack's Guides

 

One of the most beautiful cities on the planet, San Francisco is located atop a peninsula and measures east to west and north to south roughly eight miles and covers 48 square miles, about twice the size of Manhattan. Residents, who number 808,844, call the place “The City.” www.mccormacks.com

To the west of San Francisco is the Pacific, to the east the Bay, on many a day filled with billowing sails, and to the north the Golden Gate, the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Hills run up and down San Francisco. Mt. Davidson, the highest, rises to 927 feet. Delightful vistas. Golden sunrises and sunsets. In summer, the fog pours through the Golden Gate and cascades over the hills and into valleys — damp and cold (many hate it) but entrancing to behold.

You can walk San Francisco, from Bay to Pacific, in about two hours. Every year, in a race known as the Bay-To-Breakers, 50,000 people, many in zany costumes, run the east-west route, many in less than an hour, and the fastest in about 35 minutes.

To an extent that often surprises newcomers, San Francisco is an intimate city. Politicians often descend from old-line political families or move quickly from neighborhood leaders to city leaders. The electorate in important races numbers only about 200,000 and in minor races less than 25,000.

San Francisco is not the most populous city in Northern California. That honor goes to San Jose, 953,679 residents. But in history, tradition, allure and power to cast spells, it is, unmistakably, The City, one of the magic places of the world. In politics, social verve and leadership, San Francisco sets the tone for Northern California and often much of the state.

Commute

Compared to other counties, San Francisco has probably the best commute in the Bay Area. Seven miles, after all, is seven miles, and no bridges to cross. www.mccormacks.com

The MUNI, as the local light rail-bus-trolley system is called, is frequently criticized but widely used by the locals. Studies done down through the years show San Francisco leading all other counties in the state in the use of public transit.

San Francisco, along with Alameda, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties, is served by BART (commute trains), which in 2003 extended its line to San Francisco International Airport. Also by the former Southern Pacific, now called Caltrain. A commute rail, it starts in the downtown (near the baseball stadium) and runs down the Peninsula to Gilroy.

Because it has a good system of buses and trains, San Francisco has shorted parking garages. Not completely. Shoppers will still find garages in the downtown. But in many neighborhoods, often it's hard — in our experience, sometime impossible — to find street parking. Some people have taken to parking on sidewalks and lawns.

An earthquake in 1989 damaged freeways in the downtown. San Francisco, which has never liked freeways, tore down its damaged Embarcadero spur and other spurs and refused to rebuild several downtown access ramps.

Even if you have a car, you will often find it faster to take a bus or a train or BART or light rail. As for the cable cars, some residents find them useful but most of the passengers are tourists. www.mccormacks.com

Housing

Although few open parcels remain in the City, San Francisco is still building, mainly in the downtown and south of Market Street .

On the south side, industrial buildings are being demolished to make way for apartments and condos and office and research buildings, many of them being erected just south of Giants Stadium in a neighborhood called Mission Bay.

With Mission Bay, San Francisco is betting on bio-tech and medical research. The University of California at San Francisco has a large medical complex spread over the hills south of Golden Gate Park. Many of these facilities are being moved to Mission Bay. In 2005, Mission Bay landed the headquarters for stem-cell research, a state-sponsored project.

In 2007, the city opened a light-rail line running from the downtown, to Giant’s Stadium and down Third Street through Mission Bay to the county line and Candlestick Park, home of the Forty Niners.

Just north of Candlestick is Hunters Point, a former Navy base full of decrepit buildings and a power plant. The plant, one of the worst polluters in the state, was closed in 2006 and is being dismantled. The base is being cleaned up and in some parts turned to housing, the construction well underway in 2007. www.mccormacks.com

Hunters Point is about three miles south of Mission Bay. So … new housing and high tech on the north side, new housing on the south side (with businesses to follow). Between these poles, old industrial buildings and a mix of housing, some well maintained, a lot run down, especially the public sector apartments. The conservative prediction: this section, over the next few decades, will move up scale and turn into a popular residential sector. It’s already happened near Mission Bay — many new complexes of apartments and condos. See Mission Bay and Hunters Point in the neighborhood profiles.

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For the rest of San Francisco, high-rise or mid rise apartments and condos in the downtown and just north of the downtown (Nob Hill, Marina District, Russian Hill, Chinatown.) The remainder of the City, with occasional exceptions, single homes, mostly two stories, and apartment complexes that rarely rise above five stories. Two of the largest neighborhoods on the west side — Richmond and Sunset — are carpeted with single homes.

Rental units outnumber owner-occupied units 69 percent to 31, census figures show.

This ratio has created a large and powerful renter class. San Francisco has probably the toughest rent-control laws in California. And the renters are always trying to keep rents down and restrict the powers of landlords; endless arguments and part of the City's vocabulary.

Singles, Children and Moving Along

The median age of residents is 37. Males outnumber females 394,828 to 381,905 (2000 census). www.mccormacks.com

Among California's 58 counties, San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children. The 2000 census put just 14 percent of the City under age 18. San Francisco has supported its schools by voting for bonds but education and the problems of school often excite only the parents.

School-age children number about 96,000 and about 32 percent of them attend private schools, a tradition in the City. In its early years, San Francisco attracted Irish and Italian immigrants and they built many parochial schools.

San Francisco runs a complex school system. See chapter on How Public Schools Work.

Because of this and other factors, some urban experts call San Francisco, especially for families, a transition town. People settle in when they are young and leave when they have children. Many exceptions of course and some neighborhoods are more family oriented than others. But even in the family neighborhoods, the old people might hold onto the house, the sons and daughters move to the suburbs. About three-fourths of the housing units have two bedrooms or less, city hall reports.

San Francisco is a singles' town. Census figures show that compared to other counties, San Francisco has a disproportionate number of people who have never married. www.mccormacks.com

An Immigrant’s City

San Francisco has always welcomed immigrants and newcomers.

The roster of recent mayors: Jordan (Irish), Agnos (Greek), Feinstein (Jewish), Moscone (Italian), Alioto (Italian), Willie Brown, African American, out of Texas — not one descended from the Puritans. The current mayor, Gavin Newsom, comes from an old San Francisco family.

The immigration continues. Over the last two decades, Asians, many of them Chinese, and Hispanics sharply increased their numbers in the City. In the 1990s, thousands of Russians settled in San Francisco.

The 2000 census counted 338,909 Caucasians, 239,565 Asians, 109,504 Hispanics, 67,076 African-Americans, 3,458 American Indians and 3,844 Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.

San Francisco and San Mateo

San Francisco owns much of San Mateo, the county to the immediate south. The city's holdings include the international airport and miles of watershed located on the west side of San Mateo County. Many people who live in San Mateo County work in San Francisco or the airport or the businesses surrounding the airport.

If San Francisco is “The City,” what is San Mateo? Many call it “the Peninsula,” a name that takes on some parts of Northern Santa Clara County, notably Palo Alto. www.mccormacks.com

San Francisco’s Place in Northern California

Although the acknowledged cultural and social leader in Northern California, San Francisco in many ways is out of step with the region.

Politically, Northern California votes slightly left of middle. Among California's 58 counties, San Francisco, by a count made in the 1990s, had the lowest percentage of Republicans and (joined by Alameda County) almost invariably votes liberal Democratic: Not just Gore and Clinton but McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry and had he made the ticket, Howard Dean, whom San Franciscans would have loved.

Suburban communities these days take a much more enlightened view of homosexuals than they have in the past. But in terms of sexual live-and-let-live, San Francisco leads the way.

San Francisco City College has a gay studies department. Prostitutes and body piercers have formed unions. Condoms can be obtained at the high schools. The board of supervisors has passed measures forbidding discrimination against transsexuals and providing funding for sex changes.

In 2000, supervisors decreed that it was against the law to discriminate against the short and the fat or anyone based on body shape. www.mccormacks.com

One of the first things Gavin Newsom did upon taking over the Mayor's office in 2004 was to recognize gay marriages. For months, thousands of gay couples took their vows at city hall, then the state courts said, sorry, the city does not have the right set marriage policy.

In ignoring so many taboos, San Francisco perversely has taken some of the sizzle out of sex, made it bland, instead of shocking. Not everything goes; the city still locks up rapists and molesters.

Alone among California’s 58 counties, San Francisco, even for cop killers, has given up the death penalty.

In 2007, San Francisco began a program to provide medical insurance to just  about all residents, another first for California counties.

San Francisco refuses to take marijuana seriously. “Medicinal” pot clubs thrive in the City, to the consternation of federal authorities who see trouble, trouble, trouble and occasionally, without city cooperation, stage their own raids. www.mccormacks.com

In crime, many of San Francisco's neighborhoods are as safe as a typical suburb. But some parts of the City are high in crime and this has pushed the San Francisco rate into an urban pattern. In 2006, San Francisco reported 86 homicides, many of them occurring in Bayview, a low-income section. The counts for previous years are 96, 88, 69, 68, 41, 66, 66, 58, 59, 84, and 99.

Both the City and suburbs have their homeless and beggars. But San Francisco has them in greater numbers.

Mayor Newsom installed a program — Care Not Cash — that diverted welfare funds that went directly to the homeless into structured care. Critics of the old system charged that the homeless spent the money on drugs and drink.

After decades of tolerating beggars, San Franciscan voted in laws curtailing the practice (but if lessened, it still goes on.) Not a few residents will tell you that San Francisco would not have half its problems with the homeless if other cities did their share in helping them.

Despite these Differences...

Northern Californians continue to look to San Francisco for leadership, and in ways large and small the City exerts great influence on the region. www.mccormacks.com

Former Mayor Brown for years was the speaker of the California Assembly. Dianne Feinstein, U.S. senator, is a former mayor of the City. Barbara Boxer, the other U.S. Senator, is from Marin County, on the other side of the Golden Gate, but in politics and temperament, very much in the San Francisco tradition: liberal and proud of it. She now lives in Oakland. San Francisco Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is the House Democratic leader.

Only a few cities in the north have shown metropolitan energy — the will and imagination to attempt and manage big projects.

In the arts and amusements — museums, plays, exhibits, operas, symphonies, restaurants, saloons and more — San Francisco remains light years ahead of what the suburbs can muster.

In 2005, San Francisco opened its rebuilt DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park and later that year the Museum of the African Diaspora in the downtown.

In style, despite (or perhaps because of) its zanies, San Francisco is the only Northern California city that can be called cosmopolitan. www.mccormacks.com

A Word About Government

San Francisco is the only city in California that is also a county. Instead of a city council, San Francisco elects an 11-member board of supervisors as its legislative body. Members serve four years. The mayor is elected directly to a four-year term and can veto legislation by the board. Because it is a charter city, San Francisco can amend its powers at the polls without seeking permission from the state. Almost every election features ballot amendments.

The school district, governed by an elected board, is an agency unto itself, separate from the city government.

San Francisco Before the Europeans

Before the Europeans, there were the Indians, called Costanoans by the Spanish and Ohlones by modern historians. The Indians fished for salmon in the Bay and ocean, gathered shellfish, ground acorns for meal and hunted deer, bear and other animals. Historians estimate that about 10,000 lived between San Francisco and Monterey. Their ways were the ways of their ancestors; very little changed apparently over several thousand years. They had no contact with the great outside world and when contact was made, it destroyed them.

Nothing about the days of the Dons (the Spanish and Mexican periods) makes sense unless it is realized that they came late and few in number. Fierce Indians and a hostile desert discouraged exploration north from Mexico and ship explorations of the coast were rare and hazardous. Sir Francis Drake supposedly set foot in Marin County in 1579.

The Spanish Arrive

Not until 1769, on the eve of the American Revolution, did the Spanish (Gaspar de Portola and Junipero Serra) discover the Bay. The mission, named after St. Francis of Assisi, and the Presidio followed. Lacking their own laborers (at the time of the Mexican-American War, fewer than 7,000 Spanish-Mexicans resided in California), the Spanish dragooned the Indians. They were brought to the missions where they were trained as field hands and under the tutelage of the padres ushered into Catholicism. The policy, as it worked itself out over the next 75 years, killed almost all of the Indians, mainly by measles, smallpox and other diseases. www.mccormacks.com

The Mexicans overthrew the Spanish in 1821.

The new leaders secularized the missions in the 1830s, weakening the little protection afforded Indians. Rancheros were carved out of the countryside for the original soldiers and their heirs.

The Yankees

Meanwhile, the United States had beaten the British and purchased the Midwest. Over the mountains came the Americans, first trappers, then merchants and farmers. When war came in 1846, the Americans didn’t so much beat the Mexicans, although there were skirmishes, as overwhelmed them by numbers.

Two years later, while building a mill in the Sierra, James Marshall caught sight of shiny flakes in the water. The Gold Rush was on. Within a year, even though sailors abandoned ships for the gold fields as soon as they arrived, San Francisco’s population jumped from 800 to more than 25,000, and the City became the financial and commercial heart for mining towns. Factories were built and thrived.

The Railroad

The continental railroad, built largely by the Chinese and the Irish, was finished in 1869, a great boost to the West Coast economy. Four years later, cable manufacturer Andrew S. Hallidie built a railroad of a different sort — the city’s first cable car. His invention was the safest means of transportation over the city’s many hills.

This was the era of fabulous fortunes and fabled men and women. Plagued by thieves and murderers (the section near Pacific Avenue and Kearney Street was known as the Barbary Coast), San Francisco formed a Vigilance Committee and hanged or banished the worst. Great mansions were erected on Nob Hill. Streets were laid out, parks planted, the arts encouraged, and vice, to a certain extent, ignored. San Francisco has always been sympathetic to flesh, the foundation of its modern sexual tolerance. San Francisco entered the 20th century confident of its future and boasting a population of 342,782. www.mccormacks.com

The Great Quake

Six years later, on April 18, 1906 a great earthquake struck the City. Little damage was done initially but the quake destroyed the water mains, making it impossible to put out the fires that consumed the financial section and most of the downtown. The fire line was Van Ness Avenue. If you want to see Victorians, don’t look east of Van Ness; look west.

About 700 people were killed, 300,000 lost their homes and the damage exceeded $500 million, in those days an enormous sum. But San Francisco came roaring back, part of its legend. The destroyed neighborhoods were rebuilt, the saved expanded.

In 1915, a new San Francisco showed itself off to the world by hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, celebrating the opening of the Panama Canal. By 1930, the city’s population had almost doubled to 634,394.

The 1930s also saw San Francisco shine. While other cities stagnated in the Depression, San Francisco (and its neighbors) built the region’s two great public works: the Bay Bridge, 1936, and the Golden Gate Bridge, 1937.

After the War

World War II brought another population boom. Tens of thousands came to the City to build ships and work in the war industries. Thousands of GIs embarked for the Pacific through the port of San Francisco. In 1945, San Francisco served as host for the formation of the United Nations. www.mccormacks.com

The postwar period is often portrayed as a period of stagnation. San Francisco’s population, fattened to 827,000 by the war, shed over 200,000 residents by 1980. The new suburbs attracted the City’s middle class, leaving behind a disproportionate number of the poor and the old.

Unfortunate decisions were made. Victorians were demolished to make way for ugly public housing. Neighborhoods were sacrificed to freeways, and the Embarcadero freeway commissioned, cutting off the Bay. The Embarcadero was to have run up to the Golden Gate Bridge but citizens revolted and stopped it well short of Fisherman’s Wharf. The port, always the pride of the City, faded in the postwar years. Oakland and the oil wharves of Contra Costa County now handle most of the shipping to Northern California.

Hippies, Drugs and Cults

San Francisco celebrates the Hippie era but it made drug usage popular, not only here but throughout the country. Modern crime in the City owes much to drugs. Eccentrics have always been welcome in the City but in the 1970s the outlandish became the tragic. Jim Jones established his People’s Temple on Geary Boulevard, cozied up to politicians and was on his way to fame and fortune before tripping over his own malevolence. The whole business ended sordidly in South America with the shooting death of a congressman and the suicide of hundreds, including Jones.

Months later, Dan White, a disgruntled ex-fireman and politician, climbed through a city hall window and gunned down Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, the City’s first openly-gay member of the board of supervisors. White’s lawyer said his man had strained his nerves by eating many cupcakes, a tactic known in local lore as the “Twinkie Defense.” The jury bought this and other arguments and let White off with voluntary manslaughter. That night, gays rioted in the downtown. After serving his term, White committed suicide.

The ’80s— Highs and Lows

In the 1980s, the homeless began appearing in great numbers, particularly in the downtown and around city hall. San Francisco is a humane town and the City tried to do well by its unfortunates. But crime rose, appearances suffered and confidence eroded in the ability of government to solve problems. www.mccormacks.com

The City closed out the 1980s on what promised to be a high note — a World Series showdown in October 1989 between the Giants and the A’s — but just as the third game was to start, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck. The Bay Bridge collapsed in one spot and many structures in the Marina District were badly damaged.

If problems abounded, however, so did triumphs, although perhaps less appreciated.

The City joined Contra Costa and Alameda counties in constructing a rail rapid transit system called BART. Service started in 1972. The international airport was expanded several times to keep up with growing air traffic. Davies Symphony Hall was built. The downtown, not without opposition, underwent a building boom. It’s a much different, livelier downtown than it was 30 years ago. And a much higher one; many skyscrapers.

After years of decline, the population in the 1980s began to rise, much of the increase coming from Asians and Hispanics. When people vote for a city with their feet, when they commit themselves to reside in that city, that’s a strong vote of confidence. The Forty-Niners and Joe Montana and Steve Young, with their winning ways, put a lot of sparkle in the town.

The Nineties

One-term mayors start cropping up, the city's politics unsettled by its failure to find solutions to the homeless and other problems. For all the misery of the 1989 earthquake, many San Franciscans were glad it demolished the much despised freeway that had intruded into the beloved waterfront. The waterfront, with newly-cleared vistas to the Bay, is undergoing a renaissance. With the end of the Cold War, the Army gave up the Presidio, which has glorious views of the Golden Gate. George Lucas of Star Wars fame built a studio and digital facilities at the site. www.mccormacks.com

2000-2003

The City started flush with money. Then came 2001 ... thud! Tourism down, air travel down, tax revenue down, employment down.

But amid the losses, some triumphs. In 2000, the City, next to its downtown, opened what many consider the prettiest ballpark in the U.S.

In 2003, work began on the Bay Bridge, one of traffic lifelines to and from San Francisco. The job will take about six years and raise havoc with travel but it needed to be done; bridge was damaged in the 1989 earthquake.

With the BART extension to the airport in 2003, other stations were opened along the route at South San Francisco, San Bruno and Millbrae. This will help getting around the City and the Peninsula.

Leash laws were tightened, a big deal in San Francisco, long a friend the furry ones. www.mccormacks.com

The city restored two vintage landmarks. The 104-year-old Ferry Building which withstood the 1906 earthquake, and the ensuing fire was completely renovated. Also restored, for $25 million, the 124-year-old Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.

The City in 2003 opened a third trade show hall, the $187 million Moscone West.

In 2003, the University of California at San Francisco opened its first research building at Mission Bay, the giant project that is remaking the waterfront south of Market Street.

2004

Giants fold in finish, Forty-Niners free-fall and pick up velocity, court says “whoa” to gay marriage, Local newspaper reviews all the good things that came out of the 1989 earthquake — museums, city hall and public buildings rebuilt (seismics), freeways demolished, vistas created, neighborhoods revived, residential construction stimulated. Ah yes! The earthquake! Nothing like it to put a little spring in the municipal step.

Peregrine falcons, almost wiped out by pesticides, take up residence in San Francisco high rises. www.mccormacks.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom okays marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples. State Supreme Court later said that mayor did not have the right to decide this.

2005.

One museum opened, another re-opened.

Stem-cell headquarters headed for Mission Bay.

2006. Bloomindales opens. Forty Niners threatened to leave for City of Santa Clara (Silicon Valley.) Nancy Pelosi named speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

2007.

Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron’s record for home runs. Many cheer but suspicions that Bonds, never Mr. Personality, took steroids dampens enthusiasm. At the of the season, the Giants said goodbye to Barry and shortly after, a grand jury indicted him. q65n u53 www.mccormacks.com
    City vows to hold on to Forty Niners.

Barneys (upscale clothing) under construction; San Francisco loves to shop.

Virgin Airlines opens U.S. headquarters at San Francisco International Airport; to hire 2,000.

Donald Fisher, founded of Gap, offers to build a museum to store his modern art. San Fran loves museums.

City reviews designs for tallest building on the West Coast. To be located in the downtown and include a transit terminal. www.mccormacks.com

Mayor Newsom makes love to wife of aide and admits to boozing to excess. I’m sorry, says he. We forgive, says the City and re-elects him in November.

San Francisco has one of the purest sources of water in the West — the snows of the Sierra. Yet the City spends $500,000 a year on bottled water for its employees. Shocked, shocked the mayor was and ordered the end of bottled water. Drink from the tap, advises the mayor.

San Francisco starts program to provide medical care for the uninsured, who number about 80,000 in the City.

Oops! Tanker in fog hits Bay Bridge, opens a long gash, and spills 58,000 gallons of heavy oil into the Bay. At least 2,100 birds die. People irate.