San Francisco History Podcast – Sparkletack

Elizabeth “Lillie” Hitchcock Coit was one of the prototypically colorful characters of San Francisco history. A daughter of high society, she was a tomboy who developed an unusual obsession with fire ...

22 Jul 200512min

Everybody’s having it. at home, at work, on the bus… everywhere in San Francisco the same question… and what are we asking each other about? “Sooo…. how much rent are YOU paying?” We don’t normally di...

15 Jul 200511min

What is that THING looming above the San Francisco skyline? Almost a thousand feet tall, covered in stone, with a bright red beacon at the top… okay, I guess even though we’re not in Egypt or Central ...

9 Jul 20059min

The Golden Gate Bridge is the no. 1 suicide landmark in the world. It opened proudly in 1937, but less than two years — and 11 jumpers later — a local newspaper reported that the California Highway Pa...

2 Jul 200510min

The “fact” that San Francisco was completely destroyed by the Great Earthquake of 1906 is widely known, of course — but less well known is the actual fact that it was the subsequent fire, raging for t...

25 Jun 20056min

I can clearly remember the first time I saw the wild parrots of San Francisco flying through the air over my neighborhood. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Or my ears, for that matter…their voices sound li...

19 Jun 20056min

Well, I always thought that I knew the story of Levi’s jeans, how the Bavarian Levi Strauss showed up in Gold Rush San Francisco with a ton of heavy canvas for tent-making, met a miner who needed a pa...

15 Jun 20058min

A nightmare week of computer mayhem and chaos has stimulated the nostalgic, anti-digital-technology side of my brain, and inspired me to talk about my newest old-school adoption: the straight razor! I...

12 Jun 20057min