September 16, 2005
As I was riding around town this weekend, I was suddenly struck by a thought: stopped at the intersection of Broadway and Battery Streets, I suddenly wondered to myself: “Broadway? Battery? Where did those names actually come from? Does anyone still remember?” These names must reveal something about the character, history, and essential nature of a mature city, and so I decided to walk the city, block by block, and try to find out the what and why of our city streets.
Links to a couple of the resources that I used are listed below, as well as some random street photos.
Streets of San Francisco
Splendid Survivors – San Francisco’s downtown architectural heritage
Tales of San Francisco
S.F. Museum online – San Francisco street names
A wonderful 1890’s map with the extent of modern landfill indicated in pink.
Thanks to Denis Kitchen for the use of the track “My Friend”, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network.
Sparkletack was the blog and podcast of a guy obsessed with diggin' up San Francisco history. The site is on permanent hiatus.
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June 12, 2007 at 8:42 pm
I recently discovered this (and then heard from a friend that you were in 7×7). I’ve been trying to catch up with all your earlier episodes — I love it!
Somehow this episode isn’t showing up in iTunes…Is there any way for me to access the mp3 otherwise?
June 13, 2007 at 7:39 am
Thanks for the tip, Liz — the podcast came unglued! I’ve fixed it, and now both the feed and the audio player at the top of the post should be working fine.