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San Francisco and Bay Area

San Francisco and Northern California
Here are some of our favorite guides and literature on San Francisco and Northern California that we have previously featured on our home page.

Stairway Walks in San Francisco 6th Ed Adah Bakalinsky ( Wilderness Press, $16.95) Over 350 stairways traverse San Francisco's 42 hills, linking diverse neighborhoods and offering inspiring vistas. Absorb the sights, scents, and sounds of San Francisco on 27 stairway walks. In this sixth edition of Stairway Walks in San Francisco, you'll find up-to-date architectural, historical, and horticultural information for each walk. Easy-to-follow maps correspond to lucid directions, including public transportation. - ADD TO CART	Invisible-5 Amy Balkan, Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice, and others ( Collaboration, $15.00) In California, Interstate 5 is straight as an arrow and runs through the center of the state. A commuter sees undeveloped desert, the aqueducts, fields of almond trees and cattle in massive pens. What they don’t see, or at least, don’t recognize, are the hazardous waste incinerators, nuclear facilities, power plants, polluted water tables and the people that live around these sites. Invisible 5, a project by artist Amy Balkin and collaborators, explores the geopolitics of this once sparsely populated area that has suffered most of California’s environmental degradation and the attendant health problems on its local population. The 2 CD set, meant to be played along the route from San Francisco to Los Angeles or vice versa, features local activists and historians discussing local environmental issues and the community responses. You quickly realize how little you have heard about these stories and how important they are to these communities. The CDs come with directions, map, audio cues and more information on each site. All sales benefit Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice. - ADD TO CART
NOWTOPIA; How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today! Chris Carlsson ( AK Press, $18.95) There’s a current in the eco movement that shopping ‘green’ will somehow preserve the earth, as if just shifting how we consume is going to be enough. As one of the founders of Critical Mass, Carlsson is a long time local community activist who believes that true change will only emerge when people shift their behavior away from eco-consumption or market based lifestyle choices. Nowtopia embodies a movement of people looking to create new ways of existing outside of the confines of the market. The practices outlined embody a real challenge to the accepted realities of modern life, reshaping our assumptions about science, technology, and human potential. In ways as diverse as urban permaculture, biofuels, open source coding, even the Burning Man festival, people are taking back their time and technological know-how from the market. Nowtopia outlines an ecologically driven and community based idea of politics propelled by the people who are farming vacant-lots in West Oakland or running community bike kitchens in Los Angeles. - ADD TO CART	Time Off! The Leisure Guide to San Francisco 2nd ed Dean LaTourrette and Kristine Enea ( Leisure Team Productions, $19.95) It's both a primer on being unemployed in San Francisco - by choice or by circumstance - and a guide book for locals. Authors Dean LaTourrette and Kristine Enea's premise is that unemployment should be an opportunity for leisure rather than a source of guilt. Mindful of its title, the book gives advice on living large with little money, and, of course, resources for finding employment. Best of all, the book is fun: There is information on cheap taquerias and happy hours, street fairs and music event, as well as great day trips around Northern California. - ADD TO CART
A Writer’s San Francisco: A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul Eric Maisel ( New World Library, $19.95) In this collection of essays author Eric Maisel extols the virtue of San Francisco as both literary mecca and muse. Sentimentally weaving historical and mythical conceptions of the town into accounts of his own experience as a writer and creativity coach here, Maisel explores the unique function San Francisco fulfills in the American creative imagination, examining its psycho-geographical landscape and the climate it has engendered. Despite a few lapses, such as asserting that no San Franciscan would ever call South of Market “SoMa”, Maisel’s work offers an interesting insight into the complex and contradictory place of San Francisco as a “bohemian symbol” in modern consciousness. Beyond this, however, A Writer’s San Francisco is a personal account of one man’s experience in relation to a physical place, through which he reveals the districts, haunts and encounters that have shaped him into the person he continues to become. Accompanied by charming illustrations of various locales, Maisel’s is a fluent and lighthearted text that languidly wanders the San Francisco streets and ends up in a café to write. - ADD TO CART	Imperial San Francisco Gray Brechin ( University of California Press, paperback, $19.95) Were San Francisco's first skyscrapers inverted and hollowed-out hard rock mines? Why did the architect of Central Park consider it folly to do anything similar in San Francisco, (now Golden Gate Park)? Drawing important connections between natural resources, capital, and manifest destiny, Brechin puts today's over-development woes into historical perspective. With an ecological analysis that acknowledges the heavy price paid by the environment surrounding any metropolis, the city is mapped out as a process of generating maximum revenue for its landowners. Empire building’s relationships with the Pacific rim is examined as the bleeding edge of America's westward expansion. If you liked Mike Davis’s take on Los Angeles, consider the city of the 49ers, you'll never look at cable cars the same way again. - ADD TO CART
San Francisco: The Unknown City Helene Goupil & Josh Krist ( Arsenal Pulp Press, $17.95) This is a guidebook for San Franciscans. All the regular sites and much more are here. There are so many tidbits of information in the margins that you'll have to dog-ear your pages to remember where you came across an interesting factoid. Locals Robin Williams, Huey Newton, Jerry Garcia and Jello Biafra make an appearance, as do writers, politicians and murderers. There's the story of the 300 Gold Rush era bodies dug up on the grounds of the Legion of Honor (who knew?) and, of course, a rundown of the city's cultural events, bars, unusual shops and restaurants. - ADD TO CART	San Francisco’s Lost Landmarks James R. Smith ( World Dancer Press, $14.95) Once, long ago, San Francisco had pleasure palaces like Woodward's Gardens and Sutro Baths. It hosted international expositions in Golden Gate Park, the Marina and on Treasure Island. There were ships in Mission Bay, which was not yet landfill. The city had jazz clubs, grand hotels and Playland-at-the-Beach. Using old photographs and historical records, author James R. Smith uncovers San Francisco's little known, but long gone, landmarks. - ADD TO CART
The Cheap Bastard’s Guide to San Francisco: Secrets of Living the Good Life for Free! Karen Solomon ( The Globe Pequot Press, $14.95) Add this excellent addition to those San Francisco guidebooks intended for locals. The Cheap Bastard’s Guide to San Francisco is a wealth of information on getting by in this extremely expensive city. Get your hair cut in some of the best salons for $15.00. Find free dance classes, meditation groups, art galleries, tennis courts, and concerts. There is a chapter on cheap food and great happy hours. But it isn’t all about consumption. The book lists walks, street fairs and health services. Author Solomon never imagined so much generosity and kindness in the city. You’ll be surprised how much you can experience in the city on the cheap. - ADD TO CART	Mundane Journeys: Field Guide to Color Kate Pocrass ( , $5.00) Perhaps you are the kind of person that notices how the color of a Laundromat reflects the decade in which it was designed. Or maybe at Mitchell’s Ice Cream you match the delicate purple of your Ube ice cream to something similarly delicate and purple in the neighborhood. Maybe still you are the kind of person that sees the wider picture; either way Kate Pocrass’ new volume of Mundane Journeys will force you to engage with your surroundings in a way that you may have not considered before. Since 2001, Pocrass has been compiling aesthetically minded guided tours of San Francisco which are available either by calling a phone number and listening to a weekly voicemail message, taking a guided bus tour, or by purchasing this second volume of Mundane Journeys. These colorful micro-adventures are cheap, charming, and provide an idiosyncratic and whimsical way to discover San Francisco. - ADD TO CART
Hamburger Eyes: Inside Burgerworld Ray Potes ( Powerhouse, $35.00) Hamburger Eyes started life as a photo zine put together by the Potes brothers and their friends out of their Mission apartment. Now they have this book and their own photo development complex and art gallery, still in the Mission district and still serving as a document of underground street culture and art. The Hamburger Eyes aesthetic is a distinctly deadpan, black humor laden take on photo realism; some of the images remind me of classic war photography, the stark brutality and ideas of 'truth' transposed to 3am on Market Street, juxtaposed with an image of a kid inventing a hula hoop out of toilet paper. - ADD TO CART