Aside from my usual, “Let’s understand how the natural landscape affected our existence as a city,” I used the opportunity to proclaim the benefits of arguing and evaluating evidence. Public democracy and human planning for the future of our species depend both on these skills, and on our ability to harvest good information from weedy field of distortions.

Heaped into this next calendar week, there are some excellent opportunities to join our footloose argument and look at the evidence together on a Thinkwalk. Set your own cost: $10 to $40 donation asked.

Be sure, also, to check out the excellent online resources at FoundSF and ShapingSF where you can listen to podcasts of the talk series at CounterPULSE. One up there now (see the last on the list for 2011) is Chris Carlsson’s fascinating and spontaneous commentary to the Transit History photos. Click the Transit History Tour, then use that same button at the bottom of each tour page to follow along, viewing the wonderful videos, pictures and essays.

Let them know you’re using the podcast as the soundtrack for the online tour, as they would do well to increase opportunities for that kind of usage. Also, let me know what you want and like on this site!

Friend and Thinkwalks volunteer Nancy Botkin told me the other day that it’s strangely easy to change my mind about an “objective fact.” All you need to do is give me careful evidence of something that contradicts what I used to adamantly believe. I flip from saying I’m sure the Emperor was present to saying I’m not sure—or even that I was totally wrong. It’s not that I’m so easy to convince, but that information available is fuzzy and subject to interpretation.

Heck, I know, I dunno

There! You’re prepped now with a relativistic haze casting doubt on the existence of Truth itself. That makes you fully ready for my confessions.

Here’s the top stuff I’ve said that deceived The Public (you, me, etc.) on early tours. I’ve since found evidence of being so wrong.

Untruth #1 Many streams in eastern SF flowed year-round at one time.
Untruth #2 ‘San Souci’ (the creek, the valley) was from a family name.
Untruth #3 The San Francisco Mission was founded at Camp and Albion.
Untruth #4 Divisadero St. was named after the nearby watershed divide (Bay to the east, Pacific to the west).
Untruth #5 Hayes Creek was never an actual surface flow.
Untruth #6 The bison in Golden Gate Park were gifts to SF from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.
Untruth #7 The scent added to odorless methane to make it easier to smell a leak comes from onions.
Untruth #8 Ramaytush is a language not a Ohlone Indian group name.
Untruth #9 Candy-cane-shaped poles (and various other vent poles) sticking out of the sidewalk are vents from old wells.

This is a classic vent pole shape, on the corner of 22nd & Church Streets, where Mona Caron's Botanical Mural is located. See Untruth #9.

Below are my replacement untruths (or at least incomplete unknowables).

#1 Other than in very wet years, it appears (from scarce early SF photos and maps with useful views) that San Souci Creek down 14th/15th Streets and the “Dolores” Creek down 18th Street may have been dry much of the time, though wet enough to redirect them into irrigation ditches. Mission Creek, itself a tidal lagoon, not a real creek, was probably sometimes just mud with a trickle. There’s much more to learn on this. If you’ve seen documents on it, show me!

#2 It’s coincidence that there’s such a last name as ‘San Souci’. The valley (Lower Haight, Wiggle, Panhandle) was probably named after the way-station discussed in my previous post.

#3 Despite the claims made on a bronze plaque at the corner of Camp and Albion Streets, there is little evidence of a lake in that location, and though the Mission was probably founded near there somewhere, it may have been more toward Duboce Park, or right where the Mission sits today.

#4 There’s much better evidence that Divisadero was named using the Spanish term for ‘lookout point’ (same linguistic root as “visual”), although there are only sketchy stories as to why it’s called this. It likely relates to a hilltop nearby, but old maps are very hard to read as to the precise hill.

#5 Maps from the mid 1800s show some ditches and possibly some intermittent flows from Hayes Valley across Market Street. It was most certainly a strong flow during the weeks of storms in the winter of 1861-62. At most other times, it was probably a trickle through muddy or sandy flats. And now it’s seeping through the soils.

One of many poles I had convinced myself was from an old well. This one is at the very top of Masonic Street and immediately beside the headwaters springs of a stream that went south toward the Castro District and then down 18th Street into Mission Creek.

#6  Stories of the first bison placed in the Park conflict on key points, but none of the reliable ones are about Buffalo Bill Cody. A girl bison, or cow, named Madame Sarah Bernhardt (after the notorious stage actor), and a bull called Ben Harrison (after the then President of the USA), were brought from the plains of Wyoming and Kansas, or Utah, along with a third and attempted fourth, fifth and sixth bison, depending which story you trust. The Paddock was moved from where the AIDS Grove is now. Some of the herd may be descended from Sarah.

#7 The stinky scent released by onions is allyl mercaptan (C₃H₆S₁), while the scent used to make methane odorous is methyl mercaptan (CH₃SH). DIY: Chop an onion and put it in a jar in your fridge for two days undisturbed. When you open it, you’ll smell mercaptan.

#8 Linguists group people by the way they speak. Yelamu Ohlone people in what’s now SF all spoke subset tongues of the Ramaytush language group, as did some other people in the region. As a result of this artificial grouping, many people now refer to the group of people who spoke those tongues by the language name. That usage created a meaning that represents a discernible group.

#9 It seems most of the vent poles are associated with subsurface PG&E utility vaults nearby. Others are still a mystery, but city employee Greg Braswell, who knows far more than anyone else I’ve met about the details of streets, doesn’t think they’re from wells. If you find one that’s not near a PG&E-marked metal cover, let me know and I’ll investigate.

Since learning about the past is tricky enough with all the interested parties convincing themselves of some version of events, and other versions being invented by chance, I came to realize how silly it is to stick to a story in the face of evidence.

I mean, c’mon! The things we tell and believe are never entirely reliable, even when we think we have first-hand knowledge.

It’s yet another reason to come on a tour you’ve been on once before!

My intent is to publish articles and a prospectus booklet, eventually extruding a book on the topic. I hope I can nudge The Great Storm and Flood from obscurity into public awareness with some serious research and writing. I consider myself lucky to have stumbled upon this incredible little-known topic. Of the professionals I recently consulted in related fields, few have been aware of the significance of the winter of 1861-62. Many of them coyly said they had heard “something about that” but few really had a clear idea that The Great Flood of California easily rivaled the Big One (1906 quake) in its impact.

Weekly update [October 10–16, 2010]

Sunday — Agitation. I’m nervous about launching into a book project, since I haven’t yet published an entire book myself. More jitterly, I haven’t yet had the chance to look into the quantity of information that may be available on my undeservedly obscure subject. Will it be enough for a serious book? I’m having some trouble setting up a database for my research notes. This is both frustrating and humiliating. The frustration is that I already have notes accumulating haphazardly. But worse: I used to be a professional database developer, and I keep finding that the new structure of FileMaker Pro stumps me. It’s a great distraction from the miserably low level of of my historical expertise—yet another concern. I’ve never even been to the California State Library’s History Room.

Monday — More frustrations with research notes database. The templates are backwards, or simply not useful. Backwards = many documents per note rather than many notes per document. Database guru Nancy Botkin encourages me to go simple, and just start a flat file of documents until I need to start detailed notes. I’m frantic to get going on topic evaluation. I had intended to decide a final “go or no” for this book project back in August. Here it is, October! I need administrative help! Luckily, a phone call to an old co-worker turned the mood. Next Wednesday, we meet. If it works out for us to collaborate, I’ll trumpet it then.

Tuesday — I’m frustrated, too, by the financial obligations involved, and my need to keep both the tours and my nascent Life History Books work going. I haven’t even had a chance to find a single client to interview for a Life History Book yet, despite Corina’s excellent set-up and gracious invitations. I vented my frustrations for more than an hour with poor Beate, but it really helped me to sort through priorities. She’s so patient with this. I looked up the ARkStorm project online and found ample reason to get in touch with the people there, at the US Geological Survey: Apparently, they’ve planned the project partly to create a new system for rating storm severity, designating the 1862 storm as the ultimate standard, set at 1,000 on the new scale they’re developing. This topic interests me greatly. I assume they are replacing the scale that measures storm severity by the average years between storms of that magnitude. That scale is becoming less useful, as extreme weather events increase. And the tropical storm scale of 1 to 5 is too blunt.

Wednesday — I awoke early at 4:30 and immediately tackled my database problems, without the former hesitation. I managed to set up my own many-to-one notes-to-documents relational file. I feel encouraged! Then I hopped a train to Sacramento for a couple days in the State Library. What a wonderful resource. A reference librarian named Karen gave me a brief but thorough introduction to the collection: photos, reading room shelves, file card system, web search, making reproductions and using their free wi-fi and free web site printing. My enthusiasm shot way up as soon as I began pursuing my main questions. Those were: What newspapers existed in California in 1862? (I found six so far.) What towns existed? (I extracted 78 towns from a complex compilation called Population History of California Places by Berlo.) Are there other photos than the two I’ve seen from the levee in Sacramento? (They have copies of ten or more!) I also found rainfall summaries and lists of newspapers to look at tomorrow.

Thursday — Up early again at Gordon’s house in Sacramento. I organized my many culled resources until the State Library opened. It was another banner day. I found a dozen more papers that existed, and a resource to find even more. Librarians had found, and held for me, a couple seriously useful bookish compilations, including a Newspaper History of the Great California Floods of 1861-62 and a book called California Storms, Floods, and Other Natural Benefits 1849–1997: A documentary by Allan Shields. There is clearly a plentitude of information, and I haven’t yet even begun to look at secondary topics. I also had a wonderful lunch with Mark Miller, a local acquaintance who showed me his house, where, he says, the sheriff lived at the time of the floods. I return to San Francisco deeply pleased.

Friday — Today’s effort, though it should be devoted to digesting the hundreds of notes and source leads from the California State Library, is instead a brief return to the California Historical Society archive on Mission Street here in San Francisco. Just in case the State Library is an anomaly, I need to experience at least one more major resource before I decide this book project is on. After my visit, I must say, yes. I have never seen two archivists’ faces light up so dramatically. Sure, I’ve found myself introducing the topic to people before. But I got the privilege of introducing two inspired people to the existence of this important event. This kind of startling interaction—which I’ve had with flood control people, geographers and historians alike—is what makes it worth my time to do this book. And, on top of that, I emerged, after only an hour, with seven leads to diaries and personal papers covering the topic (or at least the time period, in some cases), all held in their collection.

After six months of exploring haphazardly and a week of final evaluation, I’m now ready to brave the financial contortions and exhaustive effort to make this book happen. I already crave a written summary to print and hand out as the process begins. Oh, and…did I mention?…the sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary of the storms will be upon us in a mere 14 months. Time to leap.

Some of the clear needs at the moment are for people to help compile information either from bibliographies or from very old news articles on the Great Storm and Flood. And to distribute (to cafés) the wonderful flyers Martina D’Alessandro designed in her volunteer gig. Also, there’s a volunteer design project underway in mapping some of SF’s great public art locations, if you have ideas or want to help. If you have skill in FileMaker Pro, there’s some adjustment (or even data entry) to be done with the database. And some very nerdy research to do on fun subjects like finding schematics of an old bridge in GG Park, lawsuits from 1862 about a lake that is described but not reliably enough to be sure it existed.

So if you have an interest in figuring out the past and/or microfilmed newspapers get in touch!

Here’s Martina’s sweet flyer. It’s two sided, folded. It ends up 5″ x 5″—perfect for a self-standing table card or flapping protrusion from a bulletin board. Flapping protrusion! Is that racy or what!?

On a Shaping SF tour, I’ve learned such dramatic little morsels as where the co-op food movement came from and disappeared to, where the dirt came from that filled in Mission Bay, and why the Marin Headlands weren’t developed into urban and suburban tracts.

I’ve worked with Chris on a few projects, including books (The Political Edge, Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration) and Found SF, the create-it-ourselves peoples’ history of San Francisco. I’m glad to announce that Chris and I have agreed to collaborate on tour planning and promotion.

From now on, I’ll have some of Chris’s Shaping SF bike tours in my calendar. Consider attending one. I thought they were great. Chris collects donations at the start. I collect at the end. Make of it what you will!

Thinkwalks bike tours are never strenuous. We travel slowly between nearby stops and never ride steep hills. I’m a hill wimp. That’s why I love the Wiggle so much!

Before coming to a ride, you’ll need to be sure your tires are firm and your bicycle is functioning reasonably smoothly. If you need assistance, please get in touch. If you need a bicycle and are between 5’2″ and 6’2″, please ask me about my loaner bike.

Thinkwalks Tours by bicycle

Outside Lands Bike Cruise
Social Justice Mural Tour (ride by request only)
The Wiggle and San Souci Watershed (ride by request only)

Bike tours of your own design

Custom tours are available with many variations. Some groups ask for me to arrange rental bikes. Some bring bikes. Some like to rent a bus. Some groups arrange an indoor discussion or workshop to follow their tour. Some even start with a slide presentation and follow it with an unstructured ride to replace a question-and-answer period afterwards.

I can easily accommodate these and other special desires, but some require advance notice.

Other bike tours you might like

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has frequent rides that include presentations. Some are more about riding, some more about the presentations.

Shaping San Francisco bike tours, by Chris Carlsson, are approximately monthly rides with lots of highly detailed political history presentation and discussion.

Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center accommodates tour requests by foot or bike.

Cycling resources

Rental shops along Stanyan Street and at Fulton/5th Ave. give easy access to Golden Gate Park. Pacific Bicycles at 4th Street/Folsom rents good bikes. The Bike Hut (415-543-4335) sometimes has clunkers (or nicer bikes) they’ll rent out. In the waterfront tourist zones you can find rental bikes galore.

SF Biking and Walking Maps are available from Joel, here at Thinkwalks, and at many SF shops (bicycle shops and other stores). They cost under $5 and show official bike routes (easier, safer) plus hill grades and important bike facilities. The Duboce Bikeway Mural is also on the map, twice. It’s marked at Church Street and Duboce Avenue, and a detail from the mural is shown as a graphic.

Streetsblog is the best web site for people who use their bicycle for everyday transportation in San Francisco. (They have one in NYC, too.)

The SF Bicycle Coalition has a much more complete resource list.

This year’s version of the water tour focuses on the history of the Dolores Creek watershed, above the Mission District.

We’ll examine water’s artful sculpting of our hills and shorelines based partly on this book chapter by your Thinkwalks guide. Recent research has cast doubt on the existence of the lake (Laguna Manantial) that is featured in that article. On the tour, we’ll discuss the evidence for and against, with an open mind.

Discover springs, hidden watercourses and even waterfalls (cascading beneath sewer covers where you can still hear them!). Why was Hetch Hetchy Reservoir built? Where did the water come from before that? What happened to the streams and springs in San Francisco?

Let’s go look for them! This could be a watershed moment in your life.

San Francisco’s political power was originally derived almost entirely from water. According to historian Gray Brechin, our water system was purposely designed on the model of ancient Rome, to dominate the West economically, as Rome dominated its empire. Get to know your local water sources!

Suggested donation $15 to $50 per person.
3 & 1/2 hours with an optional picnic after (bring your lunch).
Snacks provided. Bring your own water.
Meet at Adobe Book Shop, 3166 16th Street near Guerrero Street.

Please check tour dates, then invite your friends & RSVP
(RSVP by phone if the tour is within a couple days: 415-505-8255).

There are steep hills in the second half of the tour!

The Wiggle itself is now so popular, it’s rapidly becoming SF’s human-powered answer to the iconic U.S. Highway called Route 66. The popular Wiggle bike route, zig-zagging to avoid the hills, is also a walking route—and has been for almost 5,000 years.

When you follow the Wiggle bike route, through the Lower Haight, did you know that you’re moseying along:

• A dune field burying a rocky watercourse?
• An old Spanish trail? (Mission to Presidio)
• An ancient trail walked by Ohlone villagers?
• A remote and wild land called San Souci Valley?

This is the practical way to get from Market Street to the Panhandle and western neighborhoods, but it’s many other things, too! Come walk the Wiggle! Thrill nerdily to the natural and human history of this celebrated route!

Come see exactly where the dunes and hills were, one hundred fifty years ago, when the city boundary was extended to include this land. Locate just where the stream flowed. Discover the history of Reservoir Street, which you never noticed before. Learn why the sewers are inviting big trouble. See maps and photos of a forgotten ravine. Thank Sue for the Freeway Revolt.

While you’re at it, ask your bike politics questions of guide and researcher Joel Pomerantz, who co-founded the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, organized the Duboce Bikeway Mural, and has published and spoken widely on the topic of waterways in the city.

Joel, in a 1994 article, was the first to popularize the ridiculous moniker ‘the Wiggle’—so he can ridicule it all he wants! It took more than a decade for the term term to enter popular parlance. Now it’s posted on official street signs!

Free tour but donations are encouraged.
I ask $15 to $50 per person on other tours, but this one is zilch-on-up.
2 hours with lots to cover so please be on time.
Meet at the Bike Mural, Duboce Avenue near Church Street.

Please check tour dates, then invite your friends & RSVP
(RSVP by phone if the tour is within a couple days: 415-505-8255).

This tour can be done as a bike ride, by request (extended to cover more ground). For more details, see Thinkwalks Bike Tours page.

As a public mural organizer for more than a decade, I bring insider knowledge of the mural scene. And as a community journalist with an interest in radical social trends, I can shed light on the interplay between the street art scene and the political scene in San Francisco.

I worked with top-notch muralist Mona Caron for twelve years, after enticing her to become a muralist. Our murals won many awards and honors, and my own mural production work was recognized through a Golden Wheel Award and a Commendation from the Board of Supervisors.

But Thinkwalks mural tours focus on dozens of local street artists, sanctioned and rogue. We’ll discuss the effects of economic booms and social upheaval on the mural scene. We’ll talk about the history of murals, and SF’s lineage back to Mexico’s muralismo. Ralph Stackpole, a San Francisco sculptor during the Great Depression, brought famed muralist Diego Rivera to San Francisco and he inspired a movement.

Now, after decades of making that mural movement our own, San Francisco has spawned the Mission School of muraling, has attracted street works by the mysterious street artist Banksy, and has matured into a messy scene of gallery-oriented street art and alley-based art galleries as complex as the fertile art universe of the Bay area has ever seen.

Come enjoy and second-guess the varied techniques, psyches and dreamy illusions of street murals in the North Mission.

Suggested donation $15 to $50 per person
Varies from 1 to 3 hours, depending on event & requests
Location: TBD, but North Mission or near Church Street.

Request a date, length & topic or check tour dates.
Please RSVP (by phone if the tour is within a couple days).

This tour can be done as a bike ride, by request. If you need a bike, rent one near Dolores Park, or use my loaner bike. For more details, see Thinkwalks Bike Tours page.

Once a field of dunes, Golden Gate Park was built on a swath of sand called the Outside Lands. An ambitious garden the size of New York’s Central Park replaced the dunes, partly to create a refuge from city stresses of the Industrial Age and partly to boost land investment profits.

The Park’s Music Concourse was the site of the first electric light displayed publicly in San Francisco, the first childrens’ playground in the world…and many peculiar statues. The Park also happens to be where the first reinforced concrete bridge was built, the first drivers license issued (yes, in the whole world!) and the first parachute jump was made (no deaths!). There are even ruins of a stolen eleventh century Spanish monastery!

Golden Gate Park has become a showcase for exotic and native species with lush woods, flowerbeds, recreation sites and jungles.

On the Outside Lands Bike Cruise, we tour the park using transportation history as our lens to examine how parks reflect the social patterns and technological shifts of a society. The shift to a car-dominated society happened in parallel with the development of the Park, and we’ll learn how the two “projects” interweave.

We’ll bicycle to the remains of bridges and railroads, and discuss how the areas around the Park developed, too.

Please join this exploration of the refuge that San Franciscans use for our ball games, car races, drug trips, and law suits and curse for its weather—and where we spontaneously reenact the Summer of Love whenever blessed by a sunny afternoon.

If you need a bike, rent one near the Park, or we can try to find you a free loaner. Please check your bike for basic functioning.

Suggested donation $15 to $50 per person
Approximately 2 & 1/2 hours
Meet at the McKinley monument in the Panhandle, across Baker Street from the DMV (Baker & Fell Streets).

Please check tour dates, invite your pals & RSVP
(by phone if the tour is within a couple days).

This tour is generally a bike ride, but can be adapted to walking, by request. If you need a bike, rent one near Dolores Park, or use my loaner bike. For more details, see Thinkwalks Bike Tours page.