SF Times
Features on the people who make San Francisco, The Best lists, itineraries and the weekly digest. Reader-funded. No banner ads.
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The librarian who would not accept 478
In the summer of 1906 the Army put San Francisco’s dead at 498 and called the early reports exaggerated. A city librarian spent decades proving the opposite, one name at a time. Disaster counts still come in low, and the question is who is left off them in 2026.
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Seventy five cents or one dollar
Weeks after the 1906 fire, the companies that had insured San Francisco took a roll call in Oakland. Pay the policies in full, or pay three quarters? The ones who chose three quarters became the six bit companies. In 2026 the refusal tends to come before the fire, and on…
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The valley San Francisco took after the fire
Six days after the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco’s water company reported a main pipeline gone. Seven years later Congress gave the city a valley inside Yosemite, on conditions written into the law. The valley is still under water, and in 2026 Congress is arguing again over who…
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First the law made them aliens
Takao Ozawa graduated from Berkeley High, and the Supreme Court still ruled he could never become a citizen. Japanese immigrants stayed foreigners for life, and in 1942 their American born children were locked up with them. In 2025 the wartime law used against those immigrants…
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The drayman said they must go
In 1877 an Irish immigrant with three wagons stood on a sandlot by City Hall and told San Francisco that the Chinese were stealing its jobs, its wages and its future. Five years later Congress wrote his slogan into federal law. The sentences he used have never fully left town.
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The island presumed you were lying
For thirty years the United States ran a detention station in the middle of San Francisco Bay where arriving Chinese had to prove, question by question, that they were who they said they were. Men carved poems into the walls while they waited. This year more than 65,000 people…
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The fairies passed every test
The experts found no trace of fakery. They were right. The fairies were paper. What Arthur Conan Doyle got wrong in 1920 is the mistake your phone asks you to make every day.
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The machine said launch
On 26 September 1983 a Soviet computer reported five American missiles, rated its own confidence “highest,” and was wrong. The officer on duty had no rule telling him how long he could think. Now we are building systems that could answer for him.
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The man who asked for a balance sheet
Enron was Fortune’s most innovative company six years running. When a fund manager asked why it could not produce a balance sheet, the CEO called him an obscene name on a recorded call. Seven and a half months later it was bankrupt. Who are we calling names today?
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The card table at 23rd and Treat
In 2008 a Mission gardener named Tree began giving away surplus vegetables from a card table in a neighborhood garden. Published reporting traces how it grew into a Sunday line of more than 200 people, a farm on a church lot, and a supply chain reaching the city's largest urban…
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The last nondenominational resting place inside San Francisco, and the man who restored it almost entirely alone
The Columbarium sat abandoned for close to half a century, open to pigeons and raccoons. Emmitt Watson came to paint the outside of it, stayed, and made himself its caretaker, its historian and, by his own account, its entire crew.
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The Best Korean BBQ in the Bay Area
15 Korean BBQ restaurants across the Bay Area, found through research against each place's own official page. Not ranked. No paid placements.
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The Best Dessert in the Bay Area
25 dessert places across the Bay Area, found through research against each place's own official page. Not ranked. No paid placements.
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The Best Dog Parks in the Bay Area
25 dog parks across the Bay Area, found through research against each place's own official page. Not ranked. No paid placements.
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The Best Coffee in the Bay Area
25 coffee shops across the Bay Area, found through research against each place's own official page. Not ranked. No paid placements.
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The Best Bakeries in the Bay Area
25 bakeries across the Bay Area, found through research against each place's own official page. Not ranked. No paid placements.
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The Best Hole in the Wall Restaurants in the Bay Area
25 hole-in-the-wall restaurants across the Bay Area, found through research against each place's own official page. Not ranked. No paid placements.
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The Best Fine Dining in the Bay Area
24 fine dining restaurants across the Bay Area, found through research against each place's own official page. Not ranked. No paid placements.
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The two people photographing San Francisco's neon before the last of it goes dark
Randall Ann Homan and Al Barna have spent more than a decade documenting the city's neon signs, arguing for them at City Hall, and standing underneath them on the days they come down. Market Street, which once carried hundreds, is down to the Odd Fellows building on Seventh.
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The last person in San Francisco who can recast the city's Victorian ornaments, and the archive she has spent 40 years building
The painted ladies are one of San Francisco's biggest identities. When scrolls and rosettes rot off a building, Lorna Kollmeyer Ornamental Plaster at Hunters Point can still remake them, and holds an estimated 60 to 70 percent of the city's Victorian plaster molds and forms.