Welcome to Wild Radish

Almost thirty years ago, shortly after I moved to San Francisco, I audited a class at SF State called San Francisco: Biography of a City. The word that should stand out is biography. Not history. Biography. The idea that the city is a living, breathing thing, a life still being lived, that its past isn’t behind it but still all around it.

The course helped me see this city through its many layers of time, not just in the classroom, but also in my day-to-day. In the decades since, my life in San Francisco has been ornamented by seemingly mundane moments unraveling into snapshots of time. In this city, time is not simply clockwork. It’s not linear. We don’t move through it; it moves through us. You can experience this phenomenon yourself by looking anywhere and observing its many layers in that singular glance.

Sometimes the layers are apparent. Other times, less so or not at all. That’s what it’s like being here, time moving through us all at once whether we are conscious or not. There is a simultaneous thrill and sadness to this feeling, on consciously observing and detecting while also never really knowing. I tried to find a word to describe this dichotomy but as far as I know it doesn’t exist, so I’ll just leave it at that.

This is my chance to share in this phenomenon with you, to unravel these glances and their layers, known and obscured. The shop that’s been on the same corner since before the automobile. The mid-block Victorian that seems more rudimentary compared to those around it. The neighborhood that was once a sand dune dotted with decommissioned trolley cars. The street that bends nonsensically (not that one, or even the other one). The old buckling stained glass transom, dingy with neglect. The creek that wiggles under the Wiggle.

Now I’m starting a consulting practice that works with the city’s planning process, and as part of learning its ins and outs I’ll be observing hearings at the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission: the body that meets the first and third Wednesday of most months in Room 400 at City Hall. This body decides what gets landmarked and recognized, what’s worth keeping alive and visible. Every item on the agenda is a door into something older and deeper. I’ll cover the hearings here, but I’ll also follow the history wherever it goes, past and present.

I hope you’ll come along.