San Francisco Archives

San Francisco

Saturn Return

by Andrew Weil,

Scenes from the life of a psychedelic pioneer

Book of Lies

From Orphan Bachelors, which will be published this month by Grove Press. Our father’s elder sister arrived with her husband in 1921. We called her Big Aunt. Big Uncle was…

Not Safe For Work

From a complaint filed by Elizabeth Scott against UploadVR in a California Superior Court in May. UploadVR is a virtual reality company based in San Francisco. Scott, who was hired…

Total Eclipse of the Heart

From a Craigslist ad posted in the San Francisco area in August, preceding a total solar eclipse that passed over Oregon and other parts of the United States.

Now and Then

by Rebecca Solnit,

The present is by common definition the instant between the not yet and the already, a moment as narrow and treacherous as a tightrope. But you might instead define it…

Eddie and Lindsay

by Robert Gumpert,

Remembering a homeless couple shot in San Francisco's Mission District

Coming Apart

by Rebecca Solnit,

In early 2015, fire ravaged a three-story building at the corner of 22nd and Mission in San Francisco. The blaze killed Mauricio Orellana, an immigrant from El Salvador, and destroyed…

Division Street

by Robert Gumpert, Rebecca Solnit,

Chances are that you are living the good life, at least in the most fundamental sense. You have the liberty to leave your home and the security of a home…

In the Wilderness

by Parker Yesko,

Robert Gumpert discusses "Division Street," his photo essay on homelessness in San Francisco, which was published in the October issue of Harper's Magazine

Silicon Ally

by Richard Rodriguez,

From an interview with Richard Rodriguez published in the Spring 2014 issue of Boom: A Journal of California. Rodriguez is the author, most recently, of Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography, excerpted…

More Irksome Than a California Quake

by John R. MacArthur,

The taming of a once-wild state