Research Catalog

Title

San Francisco : a cultural and literary history / Mick Sinclair.

Author

Sinclair, Mick.

Publication

New York : Interlink Books, 2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xi, 254 p. : ill., maps; 21 cm.

Summary

Within a generation San Francisco grew from an isolated Mexican trading post with more hills than people into America's major Pacific coast city. Shaped by entrepreneurs, eccentrics, and visionaries, it became renowned for accommodating those who dared to be different. Mick Sinclair explores gold-rush San Francisco and the early free-for-all to corruption, vigilantism, and public hangings. From the nineteenth-century mansions of Nob Hill and the Barbary Coast with its spiked drinks, he charts the 1950s San Francisco Poetry Renaissance that sired the Beat Generation. Through literature, music, and popular culture, he considers the rise of Berkeley's student activism, the genesis of hippie culture and Haight-Ashbury's legendary Summer of Love. Explaining how the Castro became the world's most famous gay neighborhood, he also reveals how a booming internet economy transformed and then threatened to destroy the city. -- From publisher's description.

Series Statement

Cities of the imagination

Uniform Title

Cities of the imagination.

Subject

• Popular culture > San Francisco > History
• City and town life > San Francisco > History
• American literature > San Francisco > History and criticism
• City and town life in literature
• Authors, American > Homes and haunts > San Francisco
• Literary landmarks > San Francisco
• San Francisco (Calif.) > Social life and customs
• San Francisco (Calif.) > Intellectual life
• San Francisco (Calif.) > Biography
• San Francisco (Calif.) > History

Genre/Form

• Biographies
• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-246) and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• Foreword by / Sedge Thomson -- Preface -- Intorduction: Navagating San Francisco -- Historical geography -- The modern city -- Up and down in San Francisco -- Maritime navigation -- pt. 1. The instant city -- A great and magnificent port -- Gold: half the size of a pea -- The world rushes in -- Winners, losers-and Emperor Norton -- pt. 2. Shaping San Francisco -- Rubbish and bones -- The O'Farrell plan -- Elegant and handsomely-furnished homes -- The nobs of Nob Hill -- Pacific Heights -- Taming the hills: Andrew Hallidie's cable cars -- Away from the hills -- San Francisco in ruins -- April 18, 1906 -- All tomorrow's Parties -- Citadels of Commerce -- Willis Polk: Architect, Visionary, Drunkard -- Manhattanization and urban renewal -- Yerba Buena Gardens -- pt. 3. Crime and culture, Punishment and pleasure -- Fires, ducks, hounds, and hangings -- A low set of politicians -- pandemonium let loose -- Tom Maguire: Napoleon of the stage -- The mesmerizing Adah Menken -- Spider-dancing Lola Montez -- Lotta Crabtree's beautiful ankle -- Isadora Duncan: The California faun -- The Barbary Coast -- Pretty waiter girls -- A voyage to Shanghai -- Three hundred pounds of passion: 50c -- The breasts of Carol Doda -- A golden era: literary life in the west -- A literary fog -- Bohemia in Russian Hill -- A story of San Francisco: Dashiell Hammett -- Atherton, Sterling, and Demerest -- Shootings, stabbings, and feuds: newspapers and their owners -- William Randolph Hearst's Examiner -- Herb Caen: nostalgia ain't what it used to be -- pt. 4. Landmarks, ruins and memories -- Alcatraz Island, 1775, 1934, 1969 -- The Sutro Baths, 1896 -- The Ferry Building, 1898 -- City Hall, 1899, 1915, 1999 -- The St. Francis Hotel, 1904/The Palace Hotel, 1875 -- The Palace of Fine Arts, 1915 -- Coit Tower, 1933 -- Golden Gate Bridge, 1937 -- Treasure Island, 1939 -- The Transamerica Pyramid, 1972/The Montgomery Block, 1853.
• pt. 5. United Nations -- A Mission -- The Mission District -- Chinatown -- A New Chinatown -- Paper Sons, Paper Daughters -- Celebrated Chinatown -- Japantown -- "A Jap's a Jap" -- unhappy returns -- The western addition and the Fillmore district -- Leidesdorff and "Mammy" Pleasant -- The Rise of the Fillmore -- Black Panthers and St. John Coltrane -- The Richmond -- North Beach -- pt. 6. Turning America on its head -- A howl in North Beach, 1955 -- Six poets at the Six Gallery -- Naked before the world -- Beat goes beatnik -- Across the Bay: Berkeley and the 1960s -- A machine so odious: The free speech movement -- Power to the People Park -- A private revolution: Haight-Ashbury, 1964-7 -- Altered states -- Can you pass the acid test? -- Electric music for the mind and body -- Summer in the city -- It's free because it's yours -- The San Francisco Sound -- The death of hippie -- The Castro: the rise of gay San Francisco -- Harvey Milk and the Castro Clone; A fury unleashed -- Aids: A new battle -- Queer capital of the world -- A cybernetic ecology: SoMa, 1985-2001 -- South of the slot -- Multimedia gulch -- Silicon suburbia -- The rise and fall of the cyberhood -- Archive of the future -- Further reading -- Index.

ISBN

1566564891 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2003013413

OCLC

• 52478427
• SCSB-10680843

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library