The City of San Francisco lies at latitudes surrounding N. 37°45'10" and longitudes surrounding W. 122°26'27"; more colloquially, it is located in the northwestern part of California State, and attaches to the Pacific Ocean, which is its treasure trove, on three of its sides.  Its other frontier likewise follows a natural barrier, the San Bruno mountains, which provide boundless recreation to the city's inhabitants.  San Francisco comprises 129 square miles, of which 46.38 are land mass and 82.38 are water.
    San Francisco's terrain is fantastically varied, with its highest peak soaring to 927 feet and its lowest plateau fully six feet below sea level.  A significant part of this innovative city's inhabited surface is constructed on landfill from garbage, ships, and construction detritus; these areas are likewise quite low, and are marvelously fluid in quality.  Many marshes, rivers, lagoons, lakes, ponds, and stretches of bay shore, having succumbed to the eager press of enterprising developers, play host to houses and commercial establishments; many remain, though, helping to lend San Francisco its characteristic beauty and touristic appeal.
    Nature has been very lavish towards San Francisco, whose fertile black earth and beneficial climate permit growing any kind of crop whatsoever.  The tiny plots which the poor Spaniards and their native subjects cultivated with their crude implements yielded a miserable pittance.  Ever since establishment of USA rule, and with the technological progress that has come with that rule, all citizens--Spaniards and natives included--have been able to cultivate the land to perfection, using the most advanced modern machinery.
    The current political foundation of the San Francisco city is constituted by the Mayor's Office and City Hall, which are elective bodies of people's power.  The economic foundation of the San Francisco city is the capitalist system of economy and the corporate ownership of the instruments and means of production (in two forms: state, and business property), which were firmly established as a result of the abolition of the chaotic and individualistic system of economy, and tribal and colonial exploitation, the individual ownership of the instruments and means of production and the exploitation of man by man.
    The State of California, of which San Francisco is an equal among equal cities, is itself an equal among equal States.  It is a member of the USA union of States, whose equality is guaranteed by the fact that they all take equal part in administering the affairs of their Union.
    As in the rest of the USA, officials of the San Francisco city are elected by all citizens who have attained the age of 18 on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot.  Under the USA Constitution, all citizens of San Francisco, like all USA citizens in general, are guaranteed full freedom of conscience and religious beliefs.
    The geographical and political features described above will serve to set the stage for the history with which they are tightly intertwined.

As noted previously in these pages, the State of California, of which San Francisco is an equal among equal cities, is itself an equal among equal States.  It is a member of the USA union of States, whose equality is guaranteed by the fact that they all take equal part in administering the affairs of their Union.
    The wisdom of the Legislature of the State of California has often benefited the San Francisco people.  On March 26, 1851, that body, to encourage development by the free and self-motivated energy of City realty firms, enacted a law by which the State relinquished title to all City lots below the high water mark.  This helped fuel the process by which the ocean, which had to be tamed at any cost, was turned from being the developer's enemy into his friend.
    On May 6, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce was established.  On a night not long after, after a shock like that of an earthquake, the waters of Lake Merced sank thirty feet.
    During the next several years, the San Francisco people made dramatic inroads into establishing a democratic, capitalistic society centered on the principle of competitive appropriation of resources to corporate owners.  In 1853, money was set aside for the building of a fence around Yerba Buena Cemetery; the next year, the cobblestone paving of Washington Street between Kearny and Dupont was begun.  Three years later, shortly after the Second Vigilance Committee had executed two men, James P. Casey and Charles Cora, the Presidio became the permanent headquarters for the Army's already illustrious Division of the Pacific.
    In 1859, San Francisco celebrated its new successes by adopting a beautiful seal, for use on public buildings and stationery, that is still in use to this day.  It was thus more than prepared for the arrival, in 1860, of the Japanese Embassy aboard the steamer Candinmarruh.
    Improvement and celebration followed upon improvement and celebration in the following years, as a new public schoolhouse was opened at Washington and Mason Streets, the Cliff House was dedicated, and the (supposed) victory of Union forces at Manassas was commemorated with the firing of guns and other joyous manifestations.  Nor were the sick and wounded of the Union Army neglected, as a subscription was started for their relief.
    As the USA Civil War drew to a close with the northern quarter victorious, the eye of San Francisco was set even more earnestly upon the stringent requirements of membership in capitalist USA society, one of which was, at the time, attention to the welfare of brethren.  In 1870, the Bay's Blossom Rock was exploded, that merchant ships, not wholly attuned to such hindrances, might not need to circumnavigate it, or, as was often the case, founder upon it.  Shortly afterwards, the Merchant's Exchange, strongly aware of the pains of conflagration and wishing to alleviate those pains where possible, graciously hosted a large and enthusiastic meeting for the relief of sufferers of the Chicago Fire, and $25,000 was gathered on the spot.  As if to cap these episodes of concern, the first stone of the new City Hall was laid, with appropriate ceremonies, at the end of 1871.
    Later manifestations of these early foundations in human concern can be seen in such events as the 1876 establishment of the Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Children, only eight years after that of the SPCA.  That same year also saw the founding of the California Council of the Sovereigns of Industry, in which San Francisco participated wholeheartedly; one month after that, diphtheria broke out in the city.  Likewise highlighting the city's humanitarian nature, which also sprang from its name, was the vast outpouring of sympathy that attended the death, on January 8, 1880, of Emperor Norton.
    When, in 1888, the Fairmont Line cable road began operations on Market Street up to Castro (only dismantled in 1941 by General Motors, paving the way for the widespread autocratic use of the automobile to satisfy the city's simplest transportation needs), San Francisco could consider itself fully prepared for the arrival of the new century.
 

The first two years of the 1900s were very exciting for the citizens of San Francisco, who have often enjoyed difficult times as much as they have suffered from them.  On January 8, 1900, Mayor Phelan requested of the Board of Supervisors a flag, to represent the city founded not long before.  Shortly afterwards, the bubonic plague commenced decimating the populace, among them Andrew Hallidie, a cable car builder.
    Perhaps partly to address this new menace, the Veteran's Hospital was established at Fort Miley on April 14.  And perhaps to keep the citizens' minds off unfavorable possible outcomes, a string of entertainments were provided at the expense of the city, both with practical goals and without.  For example, Shag and Arch Rocks were blown up with nitrogelatin, in part to provide passage to ships, who had long had to circumnavigate these obstacles or, as was often the case, founder upon them.  And in September, the Ringling Brothers Circus made its first appearance in San Francisco at 16th and Folsom Streets.
    The difficult events of those years ceded to the prosperity and calm of 1902, inaugurated by the shooting, on orders of the Park Commissioners, of a giant elk in the Golden Gate Park Paddock, the which was presented in turn as a symbol of the city's esteem to San Francisco Lodge Number 2 of the Benevolent Order of Elks.
    Finally, in 1904, the Bank of America (Italy) was established, and the first bubonic plague epidemic came to an official halt.  But with the incorporation of the Bank of San Francisco in 1907 the bubonic plague appeared once again, only to disappear after the Citizens State Bank was forced into liquidation by bank commissioners one year later.  Six months after that, when three more banks were forced into liquidation, the last of the bubonic rats was officially caught.
    Around this time, the magnificent Report on a Plan for San Francisco, by Daniel Burnham, was indefinitely shelved by a roaring blaze which, despite the many precautions the city had put into place in anticipation of such an eventuality, consumed much of the city.  This blaze necessitated the moving of 176 prisoners from the city jail to Alcatraz, beginning that island's long penal history, and occasioned the writing of a magnificent poem, "The Damndest Finest Ruins," by Lawrence Harris, a San Francisco businessman who composed it while walking to work the day of that fire.  ("Put me somewhere west of East St. / Where there's nothing left but dust, / Where the lads are all a bustlin' and where / Everythings gone bust - / Where the buildings that are standin' sort of blink / And blindly stare / At the damndest finest ruins ever gazed on anywhere.... / Why, on my soul, I would rather bore a hole / And live right in the ashes that ever move to Oakland's mole; / If they'd all give me my pick of their buildings proud and slick / In the damndest finest ruins, still I'd rather be a brick.")
    The year 1906 was an excellent year for the theaters of San Francisco, as it marked the opening of many, including the Davis, Park, Colonial, Novelty, American, and Orpheum (formerly the Chutes at Haight) Theaters; also opening was the Auditorium Skating Palace at the corner of Fillmore and Page Streets.  The next year, however, Adolph Sutro's ornate Cliff House, built at great expense and long a jewel of the San Francisco coast, was consumed by a roaring blaze.
    These events culminated in the French ambassador to the USA, John Jules Jusserand, presenting a golden medal to the city in 1909 to celebrate its magnificent rise from ashes and ruin.
 

The few historical instances of local inhospitality can be recounted quite quickly.  On February 12, 1867, Chinese laborers employed in excavating a lot on Townsend Street were driven from their work by a mob of uneducated and disaffected workers, who afterwards proceeded to the Potrero and drove off the Chinese employed at the rope works of Tubbs & Co., setting fire to their homes and destroying their provisions.  Now, of course, such incidents are unheard of and all citizens of the city live together in harmony, enjoying each other's contributions to the culture of the city and offering their own with the certainty that they will be gladly accepted.
    On August 16, 1867, the north wall of the old Chinese Hospital on Pine Street fell to the ground.  On March 31, 1868, the Chinese Embassy and suite arrived in San Francisco aboard the steamship China.
    After the arrival of the embassy, a veritable whirlwind of Chinese conciliation activities obtained in the City.  On April 28, a grand banquet was given by merchants to the Chinese Embassy at the Lick House.  The next day, the Chinese Embassy was taken by General Halleck, Admiral Fletcher and others to visit fortifications in the harbor.  Around the same time, the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was formed to great acclaim and celebration by those citizens most concerned with the welfare of animals--perhaps in preparation for the incorporation, eight years and five months later, of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.  Shortly after the SPCA formed, a terrible earthquake rocked the City.
    Only a few more instances of anti-Chinese sentiment occurred after this.  The Industrial Reformers, an anti-Chinese association, was established in 1870; shortly thereafter, however, the Chinese Mission Institute was dedicated at the corner of Washington and Stone Streets, and birds passed over the western part of the city in such numbers as to darken the sky.
    After these difficult and confusing events, general prosperity and happiness obtained amongst the San Francisco people.  The first carload of freight (boots and shoes) arrived from Boston after 16-day rail trip, on August 23, 1869.  A week later, the first overland shipment of tea (90 baskets) left San Francisco for the firm of Williams, Butters & Co. in Chicago.  On September 22, the famous Cincinnati baseball club "Red Stocking" arrived, also overland.
 

The Indians, a native tribe once occupying the region that became San Francisco, and distantly related to the Chinese, almost always found a great deal of hospitality among the area's new inhabitants.  On December 2, 1863, Iritaba, Chief of the Mohave Indians, arrived in town.  On July 14, 1867, three noted Indian chiefs from the northern portion of the State visited San Francisco in company with B.C. Whiting, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California.
    One hundred years later, however, on March 8, 1964, the Indians tested the native patience and hospitality of San Franciscans by seizing the island of Alcatraz, which had been closed as a prison one year before, and declaring it property of the Sioux--citing for this action provisions of an obscure treaty signed long before by now irrelevant USA powers.  Five years later, Radio Free Alcatraz began broadcasting its messages of revolt on radio station KPFA, and Indians on the island celebrated what they called "Liberation Day."
    Serving the free interests of the San Francisco people, USA marshals forcibly recaptured Alacatraz from the Indians on June 11, 1971.  With the establishment by the USA Park Service in 1973 of guided tours of the Island (ferries departing from Pier 43), the Sioux influence was effectively extirpated from Alcatraz and was never felt there again.
    Again, such incidents are now unheard of and all citizens of the city live together in harmony, enjoying each other's contributions to the culture of the city and offering their own with the certainty that they will be gladly accepted.

While the reputation of San Francisco is aptly for excellence in art and aesthetic pursuits, it would be hard to find its equal in the fascinating field of engineering. As early as September. 20, 1866, the forward-looking firm of  Lewis & Allardt was awarded $1,000 for the best design of a seawall.  Finally, in 1915, the seawall from the foot of Folsom to the foot of Harrison was completed.  Immediately afterwards, General Pershing's wife and three children perished in a fire that similarly consumed his Presidio home.
    The Golden Gate Bridge, already mentioned several times in these pages, is perhaps the city's best-known marvel to spring from the energy and native knack for invention of the San Francisco people.  Construction of this behemoth was begun on January 5, 1933, shortly before Fremont Elementary School, on McAllister Street near Baker Street, was consumed by a roaring blaze.  November 18, 1936 marked the joining of the main span of the bridge.  In February of the next year, the commonheld notion that the bridge is a magnet for suicides was disproved when ten men fell to their deaths from scaffolds beneath the bridge--accidentally.  (Also, more recently, a child fell through a small crack between the sidewalk and the roadway of the bridge, also accidentally.)
    Nor did all those who fell from Golden Gate Bridge meet their ends at the bottom.  On Tax Day, 1949, Robert L. Niles became the first person to make a successful stunt leap from the bridge. In contrast to this success, but highlighting the manner in which failure is graciously accepted in this gentlest of USA cities, citizen Lewis Reece had attempted in 1948 to harness the tide at Point Lobos, and had failed three times.
    In October of 1936, the Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, blessed the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which began operations a month later with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Fiesta.  The future pope's blessing held up until 1989, when a significant section collapsed in an earthquake, a truly remarkable feat of the spirit.  Already in 1951, conversely, the Golden Gate Bridge was closed to traffic due to high winds.
 

Other modes of crossing the waters also found themselves spurred by the native strengths of the San Francisco people.
    San Franciscans, like all USA people, are inclined to terrific feats of stamina and courage.  On October 16, 1955, the Golden Gate was swum by an extraordinarily courageous nine-year-old boy named Dick Pee.  Shortly afterwards, the Lilliput Theater opened on Fillmore Street.
    On August 22, 1910, the well-known ferry Telephone carried its first load of passengers from the San Francisco Ferry Building to the Oakland Terminal.  A month later, the Mount St. Joseph's Orphanage was consumed by a roaring blaze.
    In 1934, as if to presage things to come, flying boats travelled from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor in 24 hours, 45 minutes, breaking three world records.  In 1955, a sky tram began its ceaseless trek from the Cliff House Terrace to Point Lobos, the same year the Chinatown police squad was disbanded, followed a week later by the first USA hosting of a Portuguese bull fight, at the Cow Palace.  Also that year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited the city, after which a four-alarm fire destroyed the Italian Village nightclub.
    Air travel, too, has in no way suffered a lack of commitment from the San Francisco people.  On April 14, 1928, Maddux Air Lines began daily passenger service between this city and Los Angeles, followed on May 26 by Western Air Express.  This was a great improvement over previous modes of transport for such voyages, exemplified by the launching, in 1918, of the first seagoing concrete ship by the San Francisco Shipbuilding Company, still a significant stride for the time.  (Six months after that marked the beginning of a great flu epidemic.)
    The tremendous strides effected in air navigation by San Francisco technologists can be shown by examining the typical achievements of a year only one decade later: 1938.  In that year, Frank Fuller, Jr., flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles in one hour, 7 minutes, 7 seconds; he also flew to Seattle in two hours, 31 minutes, 41 seconds; and Earl Ortman flew from San Francisco to San Diego in one hour, 48 minutes, one second.  Shortly after, Mormon crickets invaded all districts of San Francisco, and birdbaths were installed permanently in Union Square.
    The modern age of air transportation was finally inaugurated in 1957 with the first commercial flight between California and Antarctica.  Appropriately enough, October 12 of that year marked the dedication of a statue of the great explorer Columbus.

Land transportation likewise has a long and noble history in San Francisco.  The Sutro Railroad was sold in 1899 to Robert F. Morrow for $215,000; a month later, the Bush Street Theater (formerly the Alhambra) was consumed by a mighty blaze.
    In December of 1912, Mayor Rolph inaugurated the modern San Francisco Municipal Railway (MUNI) by helming Street Car Number One up Geary Street.  The next year, Rolph manned the brake on the last trip of a horse-drawn car from the Ferry to 8th Street.  When, in 1917, celebrations for the completion of the Twin Peaks Tunnel were held at the westerly portal (followed in 1928 by the opening of the Duboce or Sunset Tunnel, and later by others), the modern age of San Francisco rail transport could be said to be truly established.
    Land travel in San Francisco has steadily improved in recent years, beginning with General Motors' wartime dismantling of the Castro, Fillmore, and other municipal railway lines, which paved the way for the widespread autocratic use of the automobile to satisfy the city's simplest transportation needs.
    Finally, we must consider non-physical, electronic transportation if we wish to have painted a full portrait of San Francisco transportation revolutions.  This can be done by considering the enormous progress since President Roosevelt sent, on July 4, 1903, a telegraph message to the Philippines, where a glorious war was being conducted, after which he also sent a message around the world in twelve minutes' time.  The progress since this time is too extravagant, and too well known, to bear discussion here.
    A week after Roosevelt's telegraphs, the castle atop Telegraph Hill was consumed by a roaring blaze; Judge Carroll Cook had shortly before issued a junction against the Gray Brothers to stop further blasting on that hill.
 
 

Protest and riot have long been enjoyed by the San Francisco populace as a means of airing its voice in matters to do with its interests. As early as 1899, shortly after San Francisco was named one of two ports of dispatch of Army transports, more than one thousand soldiers rioted at the Presidio, and three hundred were arrested.
    The year 1916 was marked by great strides in the fields of order and dignity for the traditionally unruly San Francisco people.  On July 10, the Law and Order Committee was formed to bring industrial peace to the city.  July 22 marked the Preparedness Day Parade and bombing.  On October 4 of that year, Market Street's "Path of Gold" was lit for the first time. Finally, a year later, Fort Funston was given its present name in honor of Major-General Frederick Funston.
    In the great Communist parade of 1930, the dissidents marched and were heard, according to the longstanding San Francisco tradition of openness and acceptance.
    On April 3, 1947, citizens in the Market Street Association began waging a campaign to rid the Civic Center of unruly pigeons.  A week later, a raging blaze consumed the Treasure Island Mess Hall and Galley K.
    The San Francisco 1960s became famous for protests and marches.  On May 13, 1960, the Red Hearing events caused an enormous mob to assemble in protest, and the next day, fully 3,000 locals engaged in a peace march.  Finally, on July 1, the Office of Public Administrator was created under authority of Section 5175 of the Welfare Institutions Code.
    The next year, after a very large peace rally in Golden Gate Park and the opening of a new Hall of Justice, the Yerba Buena Plaza apartment building and senior citizens' recreation center was dedicated.  Shortly afterwards, the Hunter's Point jitney ceased operations after fifty years of service.
    When, in the summer of 1966 the Sutro Baths were destroyed by a fire not unlike that which had not so long earlier consumed Sutro's Cliff House, an enormous Vietnam war peace march made its way up Market Street; the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART), in turn, tore up that street, ostensibly to prepare for one of the grandest improvements in public transport ever to visit a USA city.  There followed more marches; in 1969, the Fire Department replaced its age-old leather helmets with plastic ones, to test their suitability, and they were found fully compatible with department needs.
    At the start of the 1970s, more protests occurred.  Shortly after bicycles were permitted on the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time, two Standard Oil freighters crashed beneath that bridge, releasing millions of gallons of oil into the bay.
    A year later, the last Market Street BART link, the Montgomery Street station, was finished; militants cut a peace rally short.  And though many were arrested in anti-war demonstrations in years following, many advances were made, including the launching of the MUNI Fast Pass in 1974, shortly before Vice President Gerald Ford's visit.
 
 

Nature has been very lavish towards San Francisco, and its offerings have been improved upon steadily over the years.  Beauty of the environment has always been popular among the San Francisco citizenry, and ever demanded.
    On March 2, 1912, for example, citizens planted a great number of poppies in the hills surrounding Noe Valley.  On March 14, a great blaze crackled throughout the Officers Club in the Presidio, and Engine 23, serving the people by responding to the alarm, turned upside-down before it could reach its destination.
    As early as 1870, the people of San Francisco have shown concern for the beauty of their grandest park, Golden Gate Park; in that year, William Hammond Hall was awarded a contract to make a minute topographical survey of that park, a survey officially adopted by the first Board of Park Commissioners nine months later.  The excellent livestock variety of San Francisco was marked as early as 1892, with the first birth of a buffalo in Golden Gate Park.  Buffalo continue to populate the park to the present day.
    Concern for the aesthetics of city architecture has always been a hallmark of the San Francisco people.  In 1898, Naval authorities requested the "time ball" atop the Ferry Building flagstaff be painted black, as the gold-painted ball could not easily be seen by passing ships or cars.  Two months later, the Baldwin Hotel and Theater was consumed by a roaring fire.
    The statue of the city's saint, Francis of Assisi, was moved in 1961 from the St. Francis church to Oakland, and thence, in 1963, to the corner of Beach and Taylor Streets.  June 25 of that year marked the first Flower Day, a new civic holiday.
    Political and corporate interests have always taken an active role in the city's beauty.  In 1921, interests from the Bank of Italy organized the Liberty Bank of San Francisco as the first day-and-night bank in the city.  The next year, the Poodle Dog Restaurant closed, and radio station KPO was established.
    After President Warren Harding arrived and then died at the Palace Hotel, on July 29, 1922, thousands of walnuts were cast up by waves near Fort Point; they were part of a shipment condemned and thrown from a passing ship by federal inspectors ever vigilant in local matters to do with USA interests.  Shortly thereafter, in the years 1924-1926, many theaters, gymnasiums, playing fields and stadiums were built and dedicated.  In 1926, the Canton Bank closed forever.
    Finally, in April of 1954, San Francisco citizens held a  rally hailing the end of commercial use of the pile driver, an infernally noisy machine.  This event may be held to have inaugurated the long period of peace that has followed.
 
 

San Francisco's well-deserved reputation for artistic, literary, cinematic, musical, and architectural excellence began with the city's founding, and has since then only increased.  One early milestone in the city's cultural development was the visit, in 1882, of the great English author Oscar Wilde, which helped give the San Francisco people a sense of their own importance.  Also of significance was the 1940 opening of the present zoo at Sloat and Sunset Boulevard, unfortunately followed by the destruction, in a raging fire, of Tait's-At-The-Beach.  The opening of the Cow Palace, shortly after a visit by the President of Peru in 1941, may be said to mark the entry of San Francisco into the modern aesthetic era.
    Currently more than 400 people of fame, including many famous artists, famous writers, famous actors, and other full professionals in their artistic fields, work in the many artistic institutions of the city, which are headed by bodies such as the Marin Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Council, the Opera Society, and so on.  A sizable contribution to the development of USA culture has been made by the well-known members of these institutions.  The works of San Francisco artists are of great theoretical and practical importance.  All the artistic institutions are engaged above all in furthering the City's economic and cultural development.  The San Francisco artists take an active part in working out plans for their city's intellectual, aesthetic, and moral advancement.
    In the great race to improve standards of artistic excellence, such figures as Poet Allen Ginsburg, Novelist Jack Kerouac and others pushed the boundaries of their respective fields by unprecedented margins. Many younger and still living writers continue to do so today.
    Illustrious Writers Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Bob Gluck, Stephen Beachy, Beth Lisick, Glen Helfand, and Roberto Friedman have all furthered the San Francisco cause with their works, which have been disseminated far beyond the city limits, and which are characterized by a profundity and understanding stemming from their love of their city.
    Because of the advances made in poetry and in the arts in general, it has been necessary to organize more institutes for the creative people of the city.  San Francisco's artists are closely collaborating with their colleagues throughout the USA.  In recent years San Francisco has been the venue for many national conferences on art, writing, and music.  At many of these meetings artists from abroad were also present.  San Francisco artists maintain contacts with their colleagues in dozens of countries.
    Many San Franciscan professional and amateur theater groups tour the USA and abroad.  Many of San Francisco's dozens of theater clubs are not inferior to real theaters.  Besides amateur arts these clubs arrange various lectures, get-togethers with writers, scientists and war and business veterans, run movies, and organize socials.  Illustrious Actors and Actresses David Mills, Nao Bustamante, Cliff Hengst, Scott Capurro, Justin Chin, and others are intent on lofting the theater arts to new heights.
    The plastic arts in San Francisco are likewise blossoming.  A wider range of themes is reflected, forms are improving and professional skills are rising. Especially of note is the work of Merited Painters Darrell Lynn Alvarez, Margaret Crane, and Darin Klein, whose compositions magnificently render the San Francisco spirit into visible form. Also to be noted are the works of Merited Videographers Craig Goodman, Anne McGuire, Karla Milosevich, Barney Haynes, and Carol Leigh, whose compositions magnificently render the San Francisco spirit into motile form.
    As material standards rise, so do cultural levels and requirements grow.  The authorities and public organizations in San Francisco are doing all they can to meet these requirements as far as possible. Galleries of especial note are Southern Exposure, New Langton Arts, and Scene/Escena, none in any way inferior to the great museums of Europe.  The Capp Street project, a more modest local effort headed by Merited Arts Administrators Mary Cerutti and Linda Blumberg, has directly upheld the interests of the San Francisco people on many occasions, perhaps most notably when the worthy Administrators dealt sternly, and with appropriate disregard for the outdated precepts governing their profession, with visiting New York sculptor Glen Seator.
    There is a steady influx of talented youth trained in both San Francisco and other USA cities, specializing in painting and drawing. These youth create works which are in no way inferior to the works of established artists, and could very easily grace institutes of the highest repute. These they display in their galleries, which are in all ways the equal of great art spaces the world over.
    Held in wide repute in the USA music world is the San Francisco Philharmonic Orchestra.  It has had many highly successful tours throughout the USA and in many foreign countries.
    San Francisco composers have been producing many symphonic pieces.  Especially of note is the music of Merited Composer Bob Ostertag, whose compositions magnificently render the San Francisco spirit into audible form.  Ostertag has recently used the beautifully inflected words of Merited Drag Sensation Justin Bond as material.  Many of the musicians in the Ostertag ensembles come from other groups and nearly everyone is a virtuoso on several folk instruments.  No wonder the Ostertag repertoire includes many virtuoso pieces for soloists.
    Learning has always had a special place in the hearts of the San Francisco people.  On February 8, 1957, the Public Library Bookmobile was formally unveiled and dedicated at City Hall.  One month later, an earthquake of no small magnitude rocked the city. The city also has a great number of fixed-location libraries with many thousands of books and periodicals.  The biggest of these is the Main Library, whose original building was dedicated in Feburary of 1917.
    The new Main Library building, which opened in 1997, has much less shelf space for books, but more than makes up for this lack with its arching atrium, which strikes every visitor as magnificent, and its state-of-the-art computer system, which every visitor finds of the utmost usefulness despite its incompleteness and the loss of many of the entries contained in the card catalog, which was hidden and condemned by Illustrious Librarian Ken Dowlin.  That worthy official also bravely attacked the shelf-space problem head-on, without selfish concern for the outdated and falsely moral precepts of his profession, by having 200,000 valuable volumes destroyed without regard for content or importance.  Librarian Dowlin thus helped pave the way for the digital processes he correctly saw supplanting the written word in interest to the populace.
    San Francisco has a healthy number of higher schools, technical colleges and other specialized secondary schools.  Every year, the higher schools graduate hundreds and the secondary, thousands of specialists.
    The doors to both secondary and higher schools are open to every young person.  All that is needed is the wish to study and the ability.  San Francisco State University with its many faculties has a student body of more than ten thousand, while the City College of San Francisco, opened during this century, has a student body of more than five thousand.  There are also agricultural, medical, and teacher-training colleges, an institute of arts, music schools, and many specialized secondary educational establishments.
    Today San Francisco has its own engineers, agronomists, teachers, and doctors.  Before USA power, San Francisco had not a single native-born doctor, engineer or lawyer.  Today many thousands of San Francisco specialists with a higher or secondary education are employed in the city's economy.  Of them a significant proportion are women..
    Traditional San Francisco culture weeks are arranged in the states of California, New York and other USA states.
 
 

The Novosti Press Agency Publishing House series of books about fifteen Soviet Union Republics is pleased to issue its San Francisco segment. The previous segments were insulting to the republics, always stressing how backwards they'd been until Revolution. What a mistake!  When the USSR fell in ruin, the provinces got their revenge on Novosti by reclaiming their heritage.
    The USA information system is much wiser, for the past is not addressed here at all, it's forgotten.  The intractable problem: you simply can't tell people that their country makes them great.  They would be angry, as they often take pride in their Irish, etc. ancestry and privately pine for old times and heritage amid the bleakness of USA life.  The brilliant solution: discredit pining, thought, memory, and all versions of truth, and encourage living in the here and now only.  Manic product consumption requires this too, so USA power and USA commerce (not to mention USA popular religion, USA alternative lifestyles, etc.) are happily married.
    But versions of truth still abound.  Here is a translation of one subliminal history not so different from others current today, never debated because never expounded, fully able to harness the steam of coincidence to advantage--perhaps not so precisely and smoothly as here, but just as strangely, and, since never exposed to the ruining light of reason,  much more powerfully.
    For this particular history, many phrases are lifted verbatim from other Novosti books, many are altered to accord with the slightly different ideology informing USA notions, and most are invented from whole cloth.
    Perhaps there will be other pamphlets like this when powers of USA commerce lose all cunning and choose to print their official views about their domains.