Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
A traveler's guide to the history and traditions of San Francisco
Mar 24, 2000 | The frontier cities of the United States were originally settled by small groups of people who shared the same values, the same religion and the same hope for a new life in the New World. They wanted to build communities based on agriculture, craft work and trading -- Puritans in Boston, Mormons in Salt Lake City, Catholics in New Orleans. There is, however, one extraordinary exception -- San Francisco.
There's gold in them thar hills
San Francisco was settled by 25,000 guys who showed up one afternoon to find gold. They came from all over the world -- Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. They were Catholic, Protestant, Russian Orthodox, Buddhist and Jewish. They came from just about every ethnic or religious group you can think of, and as they mixed together they established the traditions that make San Francisco what it is today.
Native tribes had been living in the neighborhood for thousands of years when the Spanish wandered in during the 1700s and began building missions along the California coast. But nothing much happened until 1848, when gold was discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Word of the find spread throughout the world and each day hundreds of people arrived hoping to find their fortune in the gold fields. And each day the fields yielded over $50,000 worth of gold. Within three years of the original discovery, the area's population had gone from 850 people to over 50,000. They worked in the fields or in the support structure that was set up in San Francisco. The cultural diversity was amazing -- and almost everyone was a newcomer and a risk-taker.
And right there, in the gold rush, is where you find the cultural traditions that make San Francisco what it is today. During the rush newcomers from all over the world were welcomed to San Francisco -- and they still are. You never knew where your neighbor was going to come from, so you learned to be open and accepting of other cultures and religions -- and San Franciscans still are. And you never knew who was going to strike it rich and start leading a life of affluence beyond your wildest dreams -- and maybe share it with you. Today San Francisco may be the most tolerant city in the world; at the same time, it is seriously devoted to the pleasures of life, two traditions that make it a great city for tourists.
What's shakin'
The second most significant event in the history of San Francisco was the great earthquake. On April 18, 1906, at 5:16 a.m., every church bell in San Francisco suddenly began ringing. There was a deep rumbling sound throughout the city. The pavements twisted. Electric wires split apart and fell to the ground. Within 48 seconds, more than 5,000 buildings had collapsed. In less than a minute, the great San Francisco earthquake was over, but the real damage was caused by the fires that lasted for five days after the quake. In 1906 the buildings and streets were filled with gas lines and gas lamps and when they ruptured the city went up in flames. As soon as the fires were out, reconstruction began. Cooperation between all groups became essential for survival and the rebuilding of the city once again reflected the diversity of the community, its tolerance for new ideas, its love of opulence and its appreciation of risk-takers.
Extraordinary ethnic diversity
San Francisco is a city of neighborhoods that overlap. It's not always easy to mark the spot where one ends and another begins, but once you've arrived, it's easy to see that each neighborhood has its own distinct ethnic history, religion, culture and food.
North Beach is the ancestral home of the Italian community. During the 1830s it was a cattle ranch that supplied fresh meat to trading ships that sailed into San Francisco for provisions. Many of those ships were from the Italian city of Genoa. When gold was discovered, hundreds of Italian sailors decided to shift from rigging to digging and sent word about the gold back to their relatives in northern Italy. Hundreds more made the exhausting five-month trip, only to discover that the good stuff was already gone. Yet life in San Francisco was better than what it was in the old country. The land was good for farming, the waters were filled with fish and it was easy to start a new life. They stayed and sent home for their relatives.
During the 1880s there was a second wave of Italian settlers. This time they came from southern Italy and Sicily. They joined with the original Italian immigrants and turned North Beach into a classic Italian-American community. In its churches, shops, coffeehouses, bakeries and restaurants, the neighborhood still honors its Italian heritage.
North Beach is also the home of City Lights Bookstore. It was founded in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and was the first bookstore in the country to be devoted entirely to paperbacks. It also became the epicenter for the beatnik literature of the '50s and '60s. Dozens of internationally renowned writers have worked in San Francisco, including Jack London and Mark Twain, Ken Kesey, who wrote "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and Dashiell Hammett, who set "The Maltese Falcon" in San Francisco.
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