Beautiful San Francisco [antikvár]

IntroductionA northern Californian of long standing will sometimes make a conversational reference to "the City". The term will be couched in a deferential, respectful tone. A non-Californian hearing this may wonder if the speaker means Sacramento, Oakland, Berkeley, Palo Alto, or some other place.But no, "the City is unmistakably San Francisco. The code word and its connotations are immediately understood by a northern Californian: San Francisco has no equal. Other towns may excel it in limited ways; none can match it as a place where urban civilization and culture have achieved an exhilarating level of sophistication.And what is San Francisco. ?It is everybody's favorite city. This is both a subjective impression and an objective fact. Public-opinion polls have indicated that San Francisco is one of the most visited United States cities, not only by Americans and their proximate neighbors, the Canadians, but by visitors from abroad such as the Japanese, who arrive here some 200,000 strong each year. Those who came here share a conviction that the good life flourishes in San Francisco, a premise that certainly holds true when the city's fine hotels, restaurants, and shops are taken into account. But the community's real assets are less easily identifiable in a specific way. They include, of course, its matchless physical setting and the man-made things, like the Golden Gate Bridge and the cable cars, that have become an integral part of that setting. But perhaps the city's most solid asset is something very immaterial and that would be its atmosphere of personal freedom.San Francisco is a city in love with its past. No other American city contemplates its own history with such passionate and narcissistic intensity. But San Francisco may be excused such self-absorption. No other city in the United States has a past marked with such violent and legendary events as its beginnings during the Gold Rush and its (temporary) ending, the earthquake and fire of 1906.The city's people represent an extraordinary ethnic diveristy. The populace is a composite of hyphenated Americans who tend to celebrate rather than supress their roots. It was fitting that the visionaries who created the United Nations in 1945 happened to do so in the city of unmeltable ethnics.San Francisco is sometimes saluted for its civilized traditions, but it also offers an ambience of choice, an opportunity for lifestyle exploration, architectural daring, culinary novelty in short, the search for new answers in all areas of human activity.All of the various aspects of San Francisco outlined here will be explored in the five essays that follow, with the hope that they will contain something of value for the on-the-spot visitor, in addition to observations that the armchair admirer can savor. Lee Foster 7