Thinkwalks iPhone apps!
Launched August 31, 2012
The Thinkwalks Know What city guides are available by direct $1.99 purchase. You can buy them separately, or buy one as an in-app purchase from the other app. (The advantage of in-app purchase: all the locations will appear in one app and on one map. For instructions to do this, see below.)
Everything Explained & Local Nerd!
Everyone’s rushing to get theirs and become knowledgious & edumacated!
“It’s surprising I’ve lived here this long and didn’t know about that! And that! And that!,” they exclaim.
163 locations described in 128 different micro-exploration essays, viewable as a list or mapped based on your location.
Each app has about 80 locations mapped and described deeply (and succinctly in ~200 words).
The Everything Explained app is for newcomers, visitors and the uninitiated. It tells about things like the Freeway Revolt, why we know it’s really John Lennon’s signature, secret views, Rosie the Riveter, the truth about Lillie Coit and other debunkings of common SF myths and mis-remembered landmarks.
When you’ve graduated from Everything Explained, the deeper Thinkwalks app is Local Nerd! for all you SF Deep Dynamics* addicts. This app will satisfy your craving to know how the Panama Canal affected the growth of SF, how rebar concrete developed here, hidden springs, cemeteries, altered landforms, and a handful of resource locations for DIY projects.
Recommended method for combining the two apps
To see the two apps as one, follow these steps:
1. Buy the app called Everything Explained. It costs $1.99 and comes with dozens of locations to explore.
It will show up on your phone as an icon called SF Explained. If you love it and want the second app (Local Nerd! for locals who are well-versed in SF stuff) then continue with these steps:
2. Open the SF Explained app, as you would when using it.
3. In the app, choose the option “Add More Places”.
4. Choose the selection called Local Nerd!
This will get you the full content of the Local Nerd! app without creating a separate app icon. This way all your Thinkwalks content is in the one icon call SF Explained.
If you purchase the two apps in the reverse order, Local Nerd! first, then the Local Nerd! icon will contain all the content.
I always like to suggest this “Add More Places” method of purchase because it means you will be able to look at the map in the app and see all the locations I’ve written about, without checking in two separate apps.
If you purchase each app separately, without using the “Add More Places” feature (a.k.a. “in-app purchase”) then your phone will show two apps, one called SF Explained and the other called Local Nerd!
Full List of Locations
Everything Explained contains 62 tasty little blurbs about 75 spots in San Francisco with amazing explanations of how things you take for granted came to be the way they are.
| Source for the First Mission | Bikes for Everyday Transportation | John Lennon in Cement |
| SF’s Mural Trend Started Here | Prostitutes & Fortune Cookies | Diary of a Generation |
| Modern Cultural Invention | Sloppy, Painty, DIY | Secret Ocean View |
| Mainstreaming Gay Culture | Urban Wild Megafauna | Septagonal Port |
| Homage to a Firefighter | In a Land of Crookedness | Take This and Stuff It |
| Justice Doesn’t Trickle | Rigo’s Polygraph Mural | Politics + Art |
| Karl Smiles Upon You | Ready for a Jolt | Steady as a Rock |
| Venetian Gondolas | Creeky Old Porn Fortress | Salt Water on Fire |
| Fireboat Dock & Station | All War All the Time | Shameful Honors |
| Bring Beads & Feathers | Bring Beer & Bike | Murderer in Bronze |
| Inside Track | Lost Souls | Cavalier Climb |
| Grandiose Architecture | Stopping the Car Culture | Radical Publishing & Film |
| The Wheels of Power | Nature Inspired | Half Arted Hillside |
| Where Goes the Wind? | Paddling Burning Man | Shake, Crack & Crumble |
| Poor, Lost Mohandas | Gay Military Mecca | Mural-Graffiti Convergence |
| The Well-Washed Masses | Panama-Pacific Exposition 1915 | Sullied Nests |
| Radical Culture Stamped Out | John McLaren & Jerry Garcia | Bubonic Plague Lab |
| Haunting Sounds | Remnant of a Lesbian Business District | House of God No More, Or Is It? |
| Sun Yat Sen by Bufano | Mona’s First Brush w/ Destiny | Riveting View |
| Lots of Victorians | Labyrinth | Sourdough Protection Fence |
| Nihonmachi | Toasted Museum | Magnetic Shores |
And after you’ve adored Everything Explained, get Local Nerd!, the Thinkwalks app for, well, you know, local nerds. It has 65 big fun wee-short articles about 88 out-of-the-way places and nerdy resources. They’ll make you exclaim:
“It’s surprising I’ve lived here this long and didn’t know about that! And that! And that!”
| Rocky Ridge Munched Flat | Giant Sundial Race-track | A Concrete Accomplishment |
| Revolutionary Stone Kid | Coffee and Views | Water Arrives 1862 |
| Near Death Experience | Its Colors Destroyed It | Highway to the Bridge |
| Fair Weather Fair | Poor Godzila is Dead & Gone | Learning How To Fall |
| Rehabbed Historic Trails | L’ost in the Flood of History | Erosion Moment on High |
| Library of Rubble | Rusty Old Rock (Private) | Watering Our Big Garden |
| Freeway Be(e) Gone | Recycled Gravestones | Carefree |
| Lockout | Weired Name | Relax in the Woods |
| Gilding the Hydrant | Blowin’ in the Wind | Denial Springs Eternal |
| On a Hill Under Market Street | Real Books | Triumph of A.D.D. |
| Street Tree Sampler | Poly Tech Institute | In the Wet, Hayesy Past |
| Red, White, Black & Blue | Scrounge | Turning Evil Into Goods |
| Compost is God | ZooSeismoBotanical Train Set | Incontinent Fountain |
| True Believers | Newly Wet Valley | Training in Property Geometry |
| Just Add Cow | Anarchist Bookstore | No Clothes. Sew What? |
| Giant Warehouse of Salvage | Underappreciated Overview | Pepper Pepper Pepper Cork |
| Hot & Naked at Bob’s | Obliquely Orchestrated Opacity | Organic Corner Market |
| Whittling Robots | Get Some Exposure | Simply Put, Humans Are Insane |
| Bruised Valentine Magnolia | Water Flows Up | Radical History in the Making |
| Fogged Out in the 3rd Inning | Precious Milk | Flooded with Bikes |
| Counterfeit Counterweight | Living Wall | Wheeling a House |
| Feeling Bookish? | Art Above Sleazy Sixth Street | Uninhibited Art Wall |
| Rocket elevators | Free View Tree View |
