archive for February, 2006
Friday, February 24th, 2006
#48: mark twain and the great earthquake of 1865
by now just about every san franciscophile has been alerted to the fact that april 18th of this year will mark the centennial of the 1906 earthquake — the “big one” which destroyed the city that once was, and gave rise to the one which we inhabit today.
but that “great quake” of 1906 was [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in San Francisco history podcasts by richard - sparkletack
Friday, February 17th, 2006
#47: robert louis stevenson — chinatown treasure
San Francisco has a long-standing reputation as a literature-loving town, as evidenced by government statistics ranking us as having the highest per-capita spending on books in the country. Over the decades this city has nurtured a number of notable writers from Mark Twain to Dashiell Hammett.
However, there’s one literary memorial in town that [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in San Francisco history podcasts by richard - sparkletack
Friday, February 10th, 2006
#46: san francisco fortune cookie
on a tour of the alleyways of chinatown last week i learned a story that i hadn’t heard before — namely, that the world-famous chinese fortune cookie was invented right here in san francisco.
that’s right — the fortune cookie is just about as chinese as french toast is french. which is to say, [...]
4 Comments » - Posted in San Francisco history podcasts by richard - sparkletack
Friday, February 3rd, 2006
#45: frank chu just shows up
downtown san francisco on a tuesday afternoon, and every businessman’s face looks the same. whatever happened to eccentric and iconic characters like emperor norton and oofty goofty? you search the streets, hoping desperately for a flicker of life or a flash of the eccentricity that once shaped our city. then you spot something out [...]
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