Cutesy collection of pop history that's really slight and was unfortunately timed with the housing crisis in the city. It was exactly the sort of thing of vapid, uncritical pap with no sense of urgency that I didn't want to read at that moment. I ended up being pretty right, Gary Kamiya, at least around that time, shrugged his shoulders and collected a paycheck from 7x7 Magazine in exchange for writing columns about how SF's always been a boom town and is constantly under flux. Super lame. ( )

Very cool collection of vignettes about San Francisco--its history and most interesting spots. ( )

For a native San Franciscan such as myself, pure delight. Gary Kamiya wanders through the City starting about 12,000 years ago when mastodons and sabre tooths were scrimmaging on the sand dunes, on through the native Americans and the Spanish Presidio, the Californio ranchos and the Sidney Ducks, blue collar WWII San Francisco, Beatnik San Francisco, Hippie San Francisco, the Castro during the AIDS epidemic, the earthquakes ('08 and '89) -- just a delight of a read in all its immensity. ( )