We tried to put the creek into our mural. Mona sketched it on paper. Seth painted it on the wall—three times before getting it the way he liked it, with the street names of the Wiggle bike route shimmering in the water. We carefully mocked reality with brown (Franciscan chert) rocks on the one side  more »

My mom, Joan Straumanis, arrived home in DC just in time to feel the surprising 5.9 quake. It was the first earthquake she ever felt and she had this to say about it: Where was I during the earthquake? In the bathroom at National Airport, just after returning from Boston. Many people around me were  more »

Or at least rediscovered… A 25-acre Phelps’ Lake in San Francisco’s Panhandle? I’ve just solved a mystery described in my previous research on the south area of Divisadero street. Back when it was a winding path through the dunes, Devisadero, as it was known, connected the Mission Dolores to the Presidio. The incorrect story had  more »

Take a look at this luck! As always, I held off on canceling the tour on Tuesday. I hoped there would be a gap in the rain. I was right, but more than right, I was using a weather prediction system for local San Francisco short-term planning that I’ve now tested enough to share around.  more »

Maps are so unreliable. Even when they are well drawn—which hilly places never were before the advent of contour lines in the 1850s—they don’t necessarily have a key telling useful details. Sometimes a map shows what a place has or had, or what the mapmaker thought was once there. All too often, though not captioned  more »

A report spreads for decades but makes no sense. How intriguing and frustrating. In a newspaper column from (unconfirmed date) April, 1919, Edward Morphy says that the lake in my neighborhood was destroyed by the 1862 storms with which I am so intrigued. But the detail given makes absolutely no sense. Says Morphy: …probably the  more »

Kimberly tweeted it and Bonnie both blogged it and tweeted it after taking a Thinkwalks Walk the Wiggle tour. Some folks even heard the tweeting and signed up for the next Walk the Wiggle. Turns out Bonnie was writing for a blog owned by Discovery, called Treehugger. A few others have picked up on it  more »

Possibly the most popular activities of all time around Divisadero Street involved hunting.

This is the quintessential Thinkwalk, mixing all themes from the other tours: creeks, urban planning, social history, murals and everything else! Curious neighbors and cyclists alike will love this two hour 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  more »