San Francisco

The Plan to Demolish SF’s Old Bay Bridge Could Be Derailed By Birds

To us, the bridge is a way to get across the water, but to cormorants in San Francisco Bay, the old Bay Bridge is home sweet home. And the 800 protected birds currently nesting there are not very keen on moving to the new Bay Bridge span—despite its shiny $700,000 bird “condos.” If Caltrans can’t…

Every City Deserves Space Murals This Gorgeous

Space, the final frontier… for street art. No, we’re not quite ready to tag the International Space Station, but a pair of artists in San Francisco is working on bring space down to Earth with a series of murals depicting everything from constellations to nebulae. And, boy, are they pretty. With the help of Nils…

These Time-Warp Photos Show Six Cities In the Past and Present

Cities change: skyscrapers go up, row houses are torn down, neighborhoods gentrify, earthquakes destroy. Vintage photographs of cities can be fascinating in and of themselves, but the familiar unfamiliarity of these time-warped photographs are especially intriguing. From San Francisco to St. Petersburg, here are how cities have changed—and not changed—over the years. See history peek…

The Futuristic Liquid Nitrogen Machine That Makes Ice Cream To Order

Despite the warm wood and cheery red accents, Smitten Ice Cream can feel a bit like a mad scientist’s shop. There’s the industrial-sized tank of liquid nitrogen that greets you inside the entrance of its new flagship location in Oakland. And there’s the billowing clouds of nitrogen when the stainless steel ice cream machines churn…

Climb into a sinkhole of bureaucracy in Pennsylvania (no, really, it’s a cave), explore San Francisco’s most storied structure (not the Golden Gate bridge), and jet off to to Myanmar (or is it Burma?). Plus, SCARY CLOWNS! In this week’s Urban Reads. “The employees here pass thousands of case files from cavern to cavern and…

Text While Driving In The Bay Area And You Might End Up On A Billboard

This month, some residents of San Francisco could discover photographs of themselves engaging in rather embarrassing behavior. A website has been collecting photos of people texting while driving, and some of those photos have now found their way onto billboards throughout the region. The project, called Texting While in Traffic (TWIT) is the brainchild of…

A tree so mighty it deforms space itself!

Take a peek at Deformscape, a garden patio in San Francisco. The architectural sculpture is a practical solution to limited space, and a vertigo-inducing illusion of a wormhole ready to suck the neighbourhood into the Japanese Maple tree. Continuing the theme of space-time warping optical illusions used in design, browsing architect Thom Faulders wanted to…

An Inside Tour of San Francisco’s Sewage Treatment Plant

If you have ever been to San Francisco, then some part of you—or some former part of you—has almost certainly passed through the city’s Southeast Wastewater Treatment Plant. But, considering how utterly vital it is to the city, the wastewater plant is also very much invisible, tucked away in a neighborhood no tourist would have…

I Didn’t Know Garage Doors Could Be This Cool

San Francisco, as everyone who lives there knows, is a city desperate for more space. But making due with a small lot can sometimes lead to amazing things—like this 1,900-square-foot home designed by Craig Steely. The one-year-old house is built atop a 24 foot by 24 foot concrete garage, perched above San Francisco’s Dolores Park.…

The Purpose Behind San Francisco’s Weirdest Looking Tower

At 977 feet tall and situated atop the peak of San Francisco’s biggest hill, the three-legged Sutro Tower dominates the city’s skyline. But this isn’t some grand scale art installation like Cupid’s Span; this massive structure acts as a vital part of San Francisco’s communications infrastructure, bouncing radio waves over Twin Peaks and all the…

San Francisco’s Iconic Sourdough Is Made from 160-Year-Old Yeast

Boudin’s sourdough bread’s unique tangy taste and chewy center has been a hit with San Francisco residents since the bakery first opened in 1849. A big part of brand’s success has been due to its unyielding consistency—a feat only accomplished because the company is still using the same yeast culture that Isidore Boudin collected 160…

A 100-Year-Old Emergency Water Supply Put Out A Fire In SF This Week

The five-alarm fire that destroyed a San Francisco apartment building this week put the city’s municipal water supply to the test: When water pressure began to dwindle, firefighters tapped an emergency system that was built below the city—all the way back in 1913. The six-story building under construction in the city’s Mission Bay neighborhood caught…

Scenes of San Francisco’s Urban Life Told Through Illustrated Stories

Despite the whimsical nature of her drawings, make no mistake: San Francisco artist Wendy MacNaughton is a gifted urban anthropologist. Her newest book, Meanwhile in San Francisco: The City In Its Own Words, is an insightful, illustrated compendium of contemporary city life. MacNaughton spent hours in San Francisco’s urban institutions, from libraries to farmers markets…

Mapping San Francisco’s Microclimates With Wine Grown in the City

When you think of wine, you probably don’t think of an urban farm wedged between public housing projects. But a pair of devoted viticulturists have upped the game in local winemaking, planting San Francisco’s first vineyard since the 1906 earthquake. What will the terroir of a city built on sand and landfill be like? We…

A new movie about Chicago; an unbelievable road diet in Buenos Aires creates 100 blocks of pedestrian space; and a tour of the vibrant city of Accra. Plus, another idea for solving San Francisco’s housing crisis, and everyone’s favorite cokehead mayor hits the late night talk show circuit, all in this week’s Urban Reads. A…

Google Glass, Mines, and Hipsters: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week

Is Google Glass really “killing cities” or just the douchebags who wear them? Are mines bringing cities down—literally? Is the Bowery doomed? Is Berlin really over? We examine these questions and more, in this week’s edition of What’s Ruining Our Cities. Google Glass is ruining all cities It’s always fun to blame technology companies for…

San Francisco Plans on Banning Plastic Water Bottles

San Francisco wants to cut its landfill waste down to absolute zero by 2020. While a city-wide plastic bag ban has been in effect for a few years, new legislation approved by the Board of Supervisors this week sets its sights on the bane of tap-water enthusiasts and thirsty environmentalists alike: Bay Area, say goodbye…

In this week’s landscape reads, we rediscover the future of steampunk energy, we walk the radioactive shores of a manmade island in San Francisco, we climb to the top of California’s surreal palm tree economy, and we look back with both amusement and horror at pest control in communist China. The Radioactive Legacy of San…

Sorry, It’s Not Tech Money Ruining San Francisco

They’re being targeted as harbingers of evil as their buses chug through otherwise inaccessible, gentrified neighborhoods. Now San Francisco’s tech workers are fighting back with a networking event called theTech Workers Against Displacement Happy Hour, that, in addition to sounding like a whole lot of fun, hopes to gather attendees who are “sick of being…

San Francisco skeleton find sheds light on ancient Bay Area villages

Last week, construction workers on San Francisco’s new Transit Terminal unearthed a skeleton 60 feet underground. The life of the person whose bones they found reveals a lot about how rising water levels have changed life in the Bay Area over the past few thousand years. The skeleton found last week hasn’t been dated yet,…