For close to a half century, Kem Lee photographed daily life in San Francisco’s Chinatown. His archive of images, housed at UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Library, contains more than 200,000 photos. (Image courtesy of the Kem Lee estate/UC Berkeley). A few years back, I drove over to Berkeley in search of a single photograph. If […]
San Francisco’s cable cars are one of the only moving National Historic Landmarks. The system’s inner workings are on view at the Cable Car Museum. Illustration by Dan Bransfield. The Cable Car Museum is a free museum located at the corner of Mason and Washington Streets in San Francisco’s Nob Hill. The building, also referred […]
Chambers models for a promotional photo for Behind the Green Door, the 1972 film that made her a star. On the southeast corner of O’Farrell and Polk Streets in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco sits a now-vacant building that once housed, as Hunter S. Thompson noted, “the Carnegie Hall of public sex in America.” […]
Photograph by Gene X. Hwang Cooped up in my small apartment, imagining what I’d otherwise be doing on a Friday night in August, I return over and over to the same memory: my first visit to the Church of 8 Wheels roller rink. It was a crisp Saturday night in February. I had moved to […]
In her new novel On the Rooftop, Sexton paints a personal and vivid portrait of family life set against the backdrop of the 1950s Fillmore District. Photograph by Yiqian Barba. The September heat wave was in full force when author Margaret Wilkerson Sexton and I opted to chat in the indoor comfort of “Café Zoom.” […]
Please note: We are not accepting submissions at this time. The San Franciscan publishes two print issues per year featuring work from a diverse group of local artists and writers. Our magazine celebrates the unique and diverse subcultures of San Francisco and the Bay Area. Please browse our website and read past issues to get […]
Illustration by Karen Chan https://thesanfranciscanmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/No-Idea-v3dp.mp3 Audio: Author Christopher Merchant reads. by Christopher Merchant This work of short fiction is adapted from the author’s novel-in-development. Nic worked as a teacher’s aide at an elementary school. Work meant showing up on time with a manageable hangover. Most mornings, he’d wake up, stop hugging himself on the cold […]
Fire in the Sky. Presidio, San Francisco. Photograph by Ashley Kaplan. Photography has been the thread sewing together the different chapters of my life. I was that kid with a camera ever since I got my first Kodak when I was eight years old. It wasn’t until college that I took my first photography class. […]
Come Celebrate The Release of Issue 2 Wiith us Join us from 1-4pm on Saturday, March 7th for a celebration of Issue 2 of The San Franciscan magazine! We look forward to celebrating with you! -Amanda & Erica | Co-founders of The San Franciscan
Photograph by Jane Ciabattari, courtesy of Grant Faulkner Unlike novels, or even short stories, flash fiction is impatient. “Get on with it,” it says. Exposition is its death knell. It withholds, teases, and entices the reader to enter and then lingers like an all-too-real dream. Microfiction, a subgenre of flash, is normally described as under […]
Photograph by Jack Bober Jack Bober is an ocean photographer from Marin County who focuses on surf in the Bay Area, Southern California, and Hawaii. His work has been featured in Surfline’s Swell Story, the Inertia, Salt Water, and Marin Magazine, and has been selected as a finalist in the National Geographic Student Photo Contest. […]
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Photograph by Diaspora Arts Connection Listen to the curated playlist that accompanies this piece to hear the women of Let Her Sing. “In some ways, it’s the most natural, most legitimate thing, for a woman to sing for her child. And some countries will take the voice of a woman away,” Nazy Kaviani told me. […]
Lydia, a resident of the Wood Street Commons homeless encampment, has participated in organizing efforts to preserve her community. Oakland, like most cities on the West Coast, continues to face a growing housing crisis that has displaced record numbers of people from their homes. Unhoused residents are living outside, either on public land, in city-sanctioned […]