43 Masonic | Lombard and Lyon Streets When people ask me how I spent my teenage years, I tell them a lot of different things.  Sometimes I try to describe the political and social climate of San Francisco during the late 1970s and early 1980s, or talk about spending evenings at Baker Beach, the Palace [...]

Off of Washington Street near Grant, you’ll find an unassuming little byway cutting you a path toward Jackson Street. You’ll see tourists clustered in front of the fortune cookie factory, locals toting pink bags of groceries, laundry hung out to dry on the fire escapes high above the storefronts. You’ll see signs for acupuncture, the [...]

On Labor Day 2007 I escaped from Alcatraz, braving the September waters of San Francisco Bay. Only three times did I make the mistake of looking back at the Rock and thought to myself, “Doesn’t that damn island ever get any smaller?” as rollers broke in my face and toxic salt water went up my [...]

Chick Perkins’ cherry ’59 Chevy roars up the Great Highway. In the darkness, headlamps reveal only the moment of road before him, and if he didn’t know this stretch like his face in a mirror it might seem a mystery. But a road doesn’t change. Once you know it, you know it, and following it’ll [...]

They hopped backwards in their Reeboks. Clearly the spectacle of Powell and Market—the medicated street preachers and grown men wandering around in blankets—had been one hell of an appetizer for them. Now for the main entrée of dense urban terror: public transit.

An Interview with Shari Mueller It was Christmas Eve, 1974, and a girlfriend of mine was supposed to visit from L.A. but she canceled at the last minute. I felt a little upset, so I decided to go for a walk. Everything was closed for the holiday. I lived right off Union Street and I [...]