San Francisco

San Francisco - both city and county in California, named after a Catholic saint (in Spanish San) Francis Assisi. San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 13th most populous city in the United States, with a 2010 estimated population of 815,358. San Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States at the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula. During the history, it was the most populous and important city of San Francisco Bay.
In 1776, Spanish colonials established a fort at the Golden Gate and a mission named for Francis of Assisi on the site. A small town called Yerba Buena emerged nearby. During the Mexican-American War California was won by the U.S. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30,1847.Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush in 1848 propelled the city into a period of rapid growth. After the devastating earthquake and fire in 1906 San Francisco was quickly rebuilt.
Tourism is the backbone of the San Francisco economy. Its frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. The Golden Gate Bridge (a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate), Alcatraz Island, Coit Tower and Chinatown are the major attractions.
The historic center of San Francisco now is the centre of the Financial District and stretches from The Embarcadero west to Chinatown and north to North Beach. While Market Street is a “border” to the south. Now it serves as its main central business district. Montgomery Street ("Wall Street of the West") is the traditional heart of the district. The Financial District’s two best-known skyscrapers are the 52-floor Bank of America building (555 California Street), and the nearby Transamerica Pyramid (600 Montgomery Street). If shopping is your favorite pastime, then Embarcadero Center in San Francisco's Financial District is worth noting. It has 120 shops and restaurants. San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest and one of the largest in North America. The city's Japantown district suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. But after the expulsion, the area was occupied by African Americans. The inhabitants of the Mission District are predominantly immigrants from Mexico and South America.
Alamo Square is famous for its houses nearby, called "Painted Lady", where mansions of the business elite are located. To the north is an expensive district with luxury housing is situated – Marina.
Richmond district lies directly north of Golden Gate Park. In the 1950s Chinese immigrants began to replace the ethnic Jewish and Irish-Americans who had dominated the district before World War II. Chinese of birth or descent now make up nearly the majority of residents in the Richmond. Other nationalities besides Chinese people live here, including immigrants from Asia and Russian immigrants. The Richmond District and the neighboring Sunset District (on the south side of Golden Gate Park) are often collectively known as "The Avenues". Bayview Hunters district (southeast of the city) is the poorest and most dangerous, because of high crime level. The other southern neighborhood differs from Bayview Hunters, predominantly students and working class live there.
South-of-Market (there is a trend to shorten the name to SOMA) is an industrial district of San Francisco. During the late 1990s became a local center of the dot-com boom, due to its central location, space for infill housing development, and spaces readily converted into offices. The neighborhood contains many smaller parks and sub-neighborhoods such as South Park and Yerba Buena. Mission Bay neighborhood followed the success of South-of-Market and nowadays it is a wealthy neighborhood of luxury condominiums, high-end restaurants and retail, and biotechnology research and development. Ocean Beach runs along the west coast of San Francisco, but the water is quite cold which discourages beach goers, besides the water at Ocean Beach is noteworthy for its strong currents and fierce waves, which makes it popular among many serious surfers. Baker Beach is a public beach, beginning just south of Golden Gate Point, extending southward toward the Seacliff peninsula. The beach is part of the Presidio, a former military base. The beach is famous for the presence of a threatened plant – Hesperolinon congestum – in surrounding areas.
San Francisco has more than 200 parks altogether. The biggest and most famous park in the city is Golden Gate Park; it covers an area stretching from downtown to the Pacific Ocean. Golden Gate is the third most visited city park in the United States after Central Park in New York City and Lincoln Park in Chicago. The park was carved out of unpromising sand and shore dunes nowadays it has thousands of artificially planted trees and plants. Though the park has seen changes over the years, what remains today is a testament to the will of the city to preserve a place to play, relax and grow culturally. The newly designed California Academy of Sciences and de Young museum have brought a modern feel to one of San Francisco's oldest landmarks. Golden Gate Park is also home to a course for the relatively new sport of disc golf. Meanwhile, many old traditions, like boating on Stow Lake and watching the bison, have remained intact. Its main attractions include The Conservatory of Flower - one of the world's largest conservatories built of traditional wood and glass panes, the Japanese Tea Garden and the Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum (contains more than 7,500 plant species. Lake Merced is a freshwater lake in the southwest corner of San Francisco not far from The San Francisco Zoo, housing more than 250 animal species, many of which are on the verge of extinction. Buena Vista Park is a park in the Haight-Ashbury. It is the oldest official park in San Francisco, established in 1867 as Hill Park and renamed Buena Vista in 1894. The park really offers good views of the city (particularly to the north) as well as impressive natural beauty.
San Francisco is characterized as a city with high living standards. During the Internet revolution, the city became one of the richest in the U.S. by attracting highly skilled workers. Many poor areas have experienced a rebirth. Downtown has experienced a kind of "renaissance", driven by reconstruction of Embarcadero area and South Beach and Mission Bay neighborhoods. Owing to numerous reconstructions and alterations in the city greatly house prices in the city increased greatly, they are still one of the highest in the country.
Large Asian and South American diasporas make San Francisco an international city. 39% of its residents are foreigners, there are several neighborhoods where only immigrants live and work. Since 1970, in Chinatown an annual Chinese New Year parade has been taking place, as there is a considerable number of the Chinese, and every year it is increasing.
Many foreign artists, writers and other professionals in the sphere of entertainment, who arrived in the 50s, founded the modern culture of coffee houses, in addition, they contributed to the social rise of the city in the 60s. San Francisco became the center of liberalism, as urban politics was dominated by Democrats, the Green and Progressive parties. Since 1988, the residents of the city have never given more than 20% of the vote for the candidate of the Republican Party during U.S. president elections
San Francisco has a large number of museums, the most famous of them is the Museum of Modern Art, which contains 20th century and contemporary pieces. It moved to its iconic building in South of Market in 1995 and attracts 600,000 visitors annually. The Palace of the Legion of Honor displays a collection spanning more than 6,000 years of ancient and European art. Golden Gate Park is famous for its Museum of Fine Arts - M.H. de Young. The building was badly damaged in the earthquake of 1906 and was demolished and replaced in 1929 with a Spanish Renaissance style structure. The de Young Museum showcases American art from the 17th through the 21st centuries, international contemporary art, textiles, and costumes, and art from the Americas, the Pacific and Africa. Asian Art Museum, as well as the M.H. de Young displays non-European works. It has one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world. From 1958 until 2003 the collection was housed in a wing of at the original de Young in Golden Gate Park. When the de Young closed while constructing a new building, the Asian Art Museum moved to the former San Francisco City Library building. The Palace of Fine Arts, a remnant of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, today houses the Exploratorium, a popular science museum dedicated to teaching through hands-on interaction.
Near Lake Merced the San Francisco Zoo is located caring for a total of about 250 animal species, 39 of which have been deemed endangered or threatened. San Francisco's diversity of cultures along with its eccentricities are so great that they have greatly influenced the country and the world at large over the years. The city has many museums with unconventional themes: International Museum of Women, Museum of the African Diaspora, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Museum of Craft and Folk Art, The Cartoon Art Museum and the Mexican Museum. San Francisco is famous for its eccentric museums: Antique Vibrator Museum, the Musée Mécanique (Mechanical Museum), Museum of Vision (formerly Museum of Ophthalmology), Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum, Stamp Art Gallery, Tattoo Art Museum (old tattoo machines and instruments), the UFO, Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster Museum, and the Wax Museum at Fisherman's Wharf.
Classical and Opera venues in San Francisco include the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Ballet. They all perform at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. San Francisco's Ballet and Opera are some of the oldest continuing performing arts companies in the United States. San Francisco is the birthplace and home city of the renowned vocal ensemble Chanticleer. The city is also home to the American Conservatory Theater, also known as A.C.T., which has been a leading force in Bay Area performing arts since its arrival in San Francisco in 1967, routinely staging original productions. Theatre Bay Area (or TBA) plays a major role in the promotion of theaters in the Bay Area. A non-profit organization, Theatre Bay Area has members from more than 365 Bay Area theatre and dance companies, is the publisher of Callboard Magazine. Additionally, San Francisco is home to the 200-member San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, the world's first openly gay chorus, as well as the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, the world's first openly gay musical organization.
San Francisco has had a thriving improv theatre community, with a distinctly different style of improv than much of the rest of the country. Unlike Chicago where one venue will host three 30-45 minute shows in one evening, most San Francisco improv shows are 2 hours long. These improv shows are rooted in the idea that if someone can perform something scripted (like a play, movie, or musical) then it can also be improvised just as well. Home groups that define the improvisation scene in San Francisco are: BATS Improv, The Un-Scripted Theater Company, and The San Francisco Improv Alliance.San Francisco has often hosted influential rock music trends, starting with the San Francisco Sound during the 1960s. Two of the most influential bands from that era, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, started out in San Francisco in 1965. San Francisco was a home to a popular punk band the Dead Kennedys. Punk, electronica, industrial, goth, and rave activity of 1980s and early 1990s, was also somewhat influential. However, San Francisco, especially in the Fillmore and Hunters Point districts, is the home of numerous rappers, including Messy Marv, RBL Posse, Rappin' 4-Tay, HughEMC, San Quinn, Andre Nickatina, Big Rich, JT the Bigga Figga, and Paris. San Francisco DJs and electronic musicians are credited with defining the laid-back, dub-influenced sound of the West Coast house music. Prominent DJs and artists include Kaskade, Miguel Migs, Mark Farina, and DJ Garth. Dub Mission and other regular parties keep San Francisco's music scene fresh. Famous songs featuring San Francisco include Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", the Scott McKenzie song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)", People Under the Stairs' "San Franciscan Nights", Chris Isaak's "San Francisco Days", Journey's "Lights", and "Fake Tales of San Francisco" by the Arctic Monkeys.
San Francisco State University is part of the California State University system and is located near Lake Merced. The school has close to 30,000 students and awards undergraduate and master's degrees in more than 100 disciplines. The City College of San Francisco, with its main facility in the Ingleside district, is one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country. It has an enrollment of about 100,000 students and offers an extensive continuing education program. In 1855 a private Jesuit university was founded, it is located on Lone Mountain and is the oldest institution of higher education in San Francisco and one of the oldest universities established west of the Mississippi River.
The University of California is the sole campus of the University of California system entirely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top-five medical schools in the United States and operates the UCSF Medical Center, which ranks among the top 10 hospitals in the country. Hastings College of the Law, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and claims more judges on the state bench than any other institution. With an enrollment of 13,000 students, Academy of Art University is the largest institute of art and design in the nation. Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute is the oldest art school west of the Mississippi. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the only independent music school on the West Coast, grants degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting. The California Culinary Academy, associated with the Le Cordon Bleu program, offers programs in the culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and hospitality and restaurant management.