San Francisco
"The bay of San Francisco has been celebrated from the time of its first discovery as one of the finest in the world. It rises into an importance far above that of a mere harbor....Its latitudinal position is that of Lisbon, its climate is that of Southern Italy, settlements attest to its healthfulness, bold shores and mountains give it grandeur, the extent and fertility of its dependent country give it great resources for agriculture, commerce and population....To this gate I gave the name Chrysopylae or Golden Gate..."
JOHN FREMONT
"San Francisco is like Venice and Athens in having strange memories; she is unlike them in being lit from within by a large and luminous hope. Wonder and terror may pass over her spirit; still nothing changes her purpose, nothing weakens her courage."
EDWARD MARKHAM
"Now there's a grown-up swinging town."
FRANK SINATRA
"I like the way the wind whips your skirts when you go by cable car up Nob Hill. I like the salt spray in your face when the surf breaks on the rocks at Fort Point. I like the white waves the ferry boats leave as they ply the bay, to the Oakland mole. I like the seals barking on the rocks at the Cliff House. I like the fog rolling over the St. Francis Wood. I like the trolleys racing each other down Market Street's four tracks. I like the Irish cops and the Italian flower vendors. I just like San Francisco, I guess."
RITA HAYWORTH
"It is the paradise of ignorance, anarchy,
and general yellowness.
"It needs another quake, another whiff of
fire, and more than all else, a steady trade-
wind of grape-shot.
"It is moral penal colony. It is the worst
of all the Sodoms and Gomorrahs in our
modern world."
AMBROSE BIERCE
"San Francisco is West as all hell."
BERNARD DE VOTO
"San Francisco is the genius of American cities...It seems delirious with energy, incoherent because of the many things it has to say, broken-hearted with sorrowful memories. You walk through the streets of the city and wonder what memory is troubling its heart."
WILLIAM SAROYAN
