Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Panic struck when Australia glutted the market with gold in 1854. Rioters burned water-
front 'Sydney-Town' before turning on SF's Chinese community, who from 1877 to 1945
were restricted to living and working in Chinatown by anti-Chinese exclusion laws.
Chinese laborers were left with few employment options besides dangerous work building
railroads for San Francisco's robber barons, who dynamited, mined and clear-cut their way
across the Golden West, and built Nob Hill mansions above Chinatown.
But the city's grand ambitions came crashing down in 1906, when earthquake and fire
reduced the city to rubble. Theater troupes and opera divas performed for free amid smol-
dering ruins, and reconstruction hummed along at an astounding rate of 15 buildings per
day.
During WWII, soldiers accused of insubordination and homosexuality were dismissed
in San Francisco, as though that would teach them a lesson. Instead San Francisco's coun-
terculture thrived, with North Beach jazz and Beat poetry. When the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) tested LSD on the willing volunteer and
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
author Ken Kesey, he slipped some into Kool-Aid and kicked off the psychedelic '60s.
The Summer of Love brought free food, love and music to the Haight, and pioneering
gay activists in the Castro helped elect Harvey Milk as San Francisco supervisor - Amer-
ica's first out gay official. When San Francisco witnessed devastating losses from HIV/
AIDS in the 1980s, the city rallied to become a global model for epidemic treatment and
prevention.
San Francisco's unconventional thinking spawned the web in the 1990s, until the dot-
com bubble burst in 2000. But risk-taking SF continues to float outlandish new ideas - so-
cial media, mobile apps, biotech. Congratulations: you're just in time for San Francisco's
next wild ride.
Sights
