Frommer's San Francisco 2012 - Matthew Poole [18]
THE MILLENNIUM When the city woke up from the dot.com party, they found themselves suffering from a major new millennium hangover. In the early 2000s, dot.coms became “dot.bombs” faster than you could say “worthless stock options,” with companies shuttering at a rate of several per day. The crash of the Internet economy brought with it a real estate exodus, and scads of empty live-work lofts sprouted up in SoMa. But from the ashes of the collapse grew the seeds of innovation, and by mid-decade, San Francisco was back on the cutting edge with a little search engine that could, called Google. Wikipedia, YouTube, and new skyscrapers followed, holding steady even as Wall Street and big banks fell around their feet in 2008. It’s an undeniable testament to the resilience and mettle of San Franciscans, who always seem to have an ace in the hole, even when things seem at their worst.
SAN FRANCISCO IN POPULAR CULTURE: BOOKS, FILMS & MUSIC
Getting acquainted with San Francisco through the work of authors and filmmakers will provide an extra dimension to your trip and perhaps some added excitement when you happen upon a location you recognize from a favorite cinematic moment or literary passage. San Francisco’s own Chronicle Books publishes a great variety of material on the city, for children, cooks, art and architecture students, and readers of memoirs and fiction. One of Chronicle’s best books to stimulate your interest and curiosity is San Francisco Stories: Great Writers on the City, edited by John Miller. This collection of short pieces covers the personal and the political as recalled by acclaimed authors including Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, Tom Wolfe, and Amy Tan. To find out about a smaller, more intimate city, check out Good Life in Hard Times: San Francisco in the ’20s and ’30s, by former journalist and San Francisco native Jerry Flamm (published by Chronicle Books).
One of the more famous and beloved pieces of modern fiction based in San Francisco is Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City (published by Perennial). If you’ve seen the miniseries, and especially if you haven’t, this is a “must read” for a leisurely afternoon—or bring it with you on the plane. Maupin’s 1970s soap opera covers the residents of 28 Barbary Lane (Macondry Lane on Russian Hill was the inspiration), melding sex, drugs, and growing self-awareness with enormous warmth and humor.
A work of fiction featuring San Francisco during the gold rush is Daughter of Fortune, by acclaimed novelist and Marin County resident Isabel Allende (published by HarperTorch). Allende’s depiction of life in California during the mid–19th century is vividly described and is one of the novel’s strengths.
As one of the loveliest spots on the planet, San Francisco has been a favorite of location scouts since the beginning of the film industry. Hundreds of movies and television shows have been shot or placed in San Francisco, making the hills and bridges among the most recognized of backgrounds. It may be difficult to locate at your local video store, but the 1936 Clark Gable/Jeanette MacDonald romance, San Francisco, is lauded for its dramatic reenactment of the 1906 earthquake and for MacDonald’s rendition of the song of the same name. The Maltese Falcon (1941), Dashiell Hammett’s classic detective story, with Humphrey Bogart starring as Sam Spade, includes shots of the Bay Bridge, the Ferry Building, and Burrit Alley (above the Stockton Tunnel). John’s Grill, mentioned in the novel, continues to flog its association with Hammett’s hero from its location at 63 Ellis St. (btw. Stockton and Powell sts.).
A poster of The Maltese Falcon (1941).
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, is admittedly an obvious choice on the list of great San Francisco films, but it’s always