| Earthquake
Building Safety Report |
|
By
Andrea Perkins
... It has
only been in the last couple of years that the city has accurately
mapped liquefiable soil areas, such as those comprised of old landfill
or saturated sand. These delicate areas are especially vulnerable
during earthquakes. They are often densely developed, like Multimedia
Gulch, which is located on the worst fill in the city. Only now
is the city conducting a "hazardous building survey," the very first
...
|
| Big
Trash, Bright City |
|
 By
Katie Degentesh
It
was a Sunday afternoon,
sunny. Exiting the posh organic grocery store on California Street,
the one I've affectionately dubbed "Whole Paycheck," I was carrying
two full brown bags by their trendy handles. After walking less
than one block in the direction of Fillmore Street, I saw them:
A well-dressed woman in her late 50s, a younger man in baggy shorts
and a T-shirt, and five or six large black garbage bags filled with
such potentially attractive trash ...
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| Halloween
Hacienda |
|
By Joe Smith
Some centuries ago
a man noted that the cosmos is in love with whatever is to be. His
response was to say to the cosmos, "I will love with you, then."
These words, which might well belong to a
man saddled with a shrewish wife, are in fact from the musings of
an old soldier faced with the task of keeping hordes of fertile,
perfidious savages on the other side of the Rhine. Like starch in
a shirt, the melancholy resignation of Marcus Aurelius' meditations
have come down to us unwrinkled ...
|
| City
of Paris in San Francisco |
|
 By
Kathy Nguyen
About all it takes these days is the glimmer of
the new golden domes on City Hall to evoke memories of the gilded
monuments of Paris. Venture no further than downtown San Francisco,
and you'll be transported to the bistros and sidewalk cafés of Montparnasse,
where literary expatriates the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Anais Nin, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein spent many
an hour ...
|
| Maverick's:
Sleeper Controversy |
|
By Michael Breen
Pumpkins and Christmas trees were once all that
Half Moon Bay, California, was known for. Today, it is known as
home of the world’s largest surfable waves....But exposure has brought
inevitable change to the once-quiet town, and not everyone likes
it. "It's growing like gang busters," says John Zents, a 15-year
resident who moved to the town to find peace and quiet....
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| Qi
Gong: You Can Find It Everywhere |
|
 by
Nina Wu
Offering an alternative to conventional medicine,
qi gong is an ancient mind-body healing system from China that attempts
to cultivate inner energy through a combination of slow movements,
meditation and breathing exercises. The ancient Chinese exercise
is growing popular in the United States as part of a broader interest
in mind-body medicine....
|
| Food
for the Mind, Body and Soul |
|
By Kathy Nguyen
... In Union Square the sidewalks resemble
a sea of floating umbrellas carried forth by wave after wave of
tenacious tourists and shoppers wielding digital cameras and bag
loads of merchandise. Beyond the stream of shoppers in the City’s
most gilded district looms the imposing entrance to Chinatown at
Grant and Bush. Its columns of snarling dragons ...
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