San Francisco is an old, iron safe filled with gold, glory, disaster, and secrets. SFCentric History is a column, by SF writer V. Alexandra de F. Szoenyi, that digs in the vaults of local history and shares the sensational people, places, and things that rocked San Francisco. San Francisco history

Fetid tide rushes and sand dunes, are what the first settlers got when they first laid eyes on the city that scrapes the stars. Never the less they put on some furs, shucked a few mussels and made it work. A few eons later, some smelly, hairy guys wearing crosses