Downtown San Francisco is struggling, not because of WFH (work from home), COVID, or even the tech industry’s great abdication. It’s in trouble because it was made to struggle, by force and design. The city’s upper-right quadrant, where it first emerged from the water like some Silurian hexapod, has undergone

Everybody knows the Big One is coming. Depending on where it strikes, it’ll be felt from Oregon to Baja California as well as Nevada and Arizona. Thousands may die. Millions will lose homes. The Big One is a California problem, but it won’t send a tsunami crashing around the Pacific

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June was off to a bumpy start in the Bay Area. Three separate tremors happened in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 3rd. The first at 1:40 AM rattled the leeward side of the Berkeley Hills two miles north of Orinda. It was a M2.2, barely perceptible but to

On April 18, 1906, five-foot-deep holes cracked through Market Street and ate people whole like cavernous maws to hapless anchovies. Author David K. Randall recounts in Black Death at the Golden Gate how Howard Street’s American Hotel collapsed on firefighter James O’Neill, crushing him beneath. And, when the first intense

Turkey’s tectonic predicament, responsible for the massive quake that struck Kahramanmaras at 4:17 Monday morning, looks awfully familiar.  The tectonic situation in Turkey nearly mirrors California’s. Similar mechanics are at work here. Our dominant faults shove landmasses past one another in opposing directions, much like theirs. The major difference is,

Sunday night’s earthquake was unremarkable by California standards. For some, the M2.9 tremor was their very first seismic experience. A burp of the notorious Hayward Fault, it struck near the mouth of the Caldecott Tunnel directly beneath Highway 24, where it dams Lake Temescal. North Oakland’s Rockridge and Piedmont neighborhoods,

In 1942, San Francisco City Hall employees began to fear their place of work.  Every day, shortly after noon, employees heard five rapping sounds, seemingly emanating from within the walls. This was followed by a brief pause, then another three raps. Nobody could explain the source of these eerie sounds. 

The Westin St. Francis Hotel looms on the edge of Union Square, bearing silent witness to flocks of tourists and shoppers who likely know nothing of its history. Built in 1904, the St. Francis Hotel is now known to be one of the most haunted hotels in California. Many notable