Back home with treasure!

Well I'm back home and I've brought treasure with me from San Francisco to share with my friends at school - lollypops from See's Candies.

See's Candies is a manufacturer and distributor of high quality candy, particularly chocolate, in the western United States. It was founded by Charles See and his mother Mary See in Los Angeles, California in 1921. The company is now headquartered in South San Francisco, California. It has kitchens at its headquarters and at a second location in Los Angeles, where there is also a retail shop. There is also a distribution center in South Los Angeles. The chocolate in See's candies has been provided by the Guittard Chocolate Company since the 1950s; See's and Guittard pioneered the delivery of bulk chocolate in liquid form in tanker trucks in 1959.

The company is famous for its products, which it largely markets only in its own stores and at those of fellow Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary Nebraska Furniture Mart, allowing it to control the standards under which they are stored and marketed. They are also available in some California airports. Since the late 1990s, the company has also maintained a strong Internet presence via its website. It is also well-known for being one of the very early investments purchased by Warren Buffett (via Blue Chip Stamps) for his Berkshire Hathaway Corporation (in 1972), beginning the path of that company from a textile concern to being one of the world's most successful conglomerates. The company's distinctive white stores are ubiquitous in nearly every U.S. state west of the Mississippi River. There are also stores outside the US in Hong Kong, Japan, and Mexico.

Well, it's been a great trip! If you are ever in the San Francisco area, be sure to let me know so I can tell Max and Jennie to take you on a tour!

A detour on my way home

Did it snow in San Francisco? Nope! Jennie took me on a little trip for work to Minneapolis - the largest city in the state of Minnesota. The city lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the river's confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Saint Paul, the state's capital. Known as the Twin Cities, these two cities form the core of Minneapolis-St. Paul, the fifteenth largest metropolitan area in the United States, with about 3.5 million residents. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the population of the city of Minneapolis at 372,811 people in 2005.

Abundantly rich in water, the city has twenty lakes and wetlands, the Mississippi riverfront, creeks and waterfalls, many connected by parkways in the Chain of Lakes and the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway. Once the world's flour milling capital and a hub for timber, Minneapolis is the primary business center between Chicago, Illinois, and Seattle, Washington. The name Minneapolis is attributed to the city's first schoolmaster, who combined mni, the Dakota word for water, and polis, the Greek word for city. Minneapolis is nicknamed the City of Lakes and the Mill City.

Minnehaha is a fictional Native American woman documented in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. She is the lover of the titular protagonist Hiawatha. The name is often incorrectly said to mean "laughing water", though in reality it translates to "waterfall" in Dakota. Her name is connected to many things in Minnesota, such as Minnehaha Falls, Minnehaha Park, Minnehaha Creek, Minnehaha Academy, and the name of a boat once operated by Twin City Rapid Transit on Lake Minnetonka, which has now been restored, and is now at the Museum of Lake Minnetonka. Minnehaha Avenue and Hiawatha Avenue are both major thoroughfares that run parallel to each other, heading southeast from downtown Minneapolis.

Jennie was in Minneapolis to visit the city's Veteran's Affairs Medical Center. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was established on March 15, 1989, succeeding the Veterans Administration. It is responsible for providing federal benefits to veterans and their families. Headed by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, VA is the second largest of the 15 Cabinet departments and operates nationwide programs for health care, financial assistance and burial benefits. Perhaps the most visible of all VA benefits and services is health care. From 54 hospitals in 1930, VA’s health care system now includes 155 medical centers, with at least one in each state, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. VA operates more than 1,400 sites of care, including 872 ambulatory care and community-based outpatient clinics, 135 nursing homes, 45 residential rehabilitation treatment programs, 209 Veterans Centers and 108 comprehensive home-care programs. VA health care facilities provide a broad spectrum of medical, surgical and rehabilitative care. Almost 5.5 million people received care in VA health care facilities in 2006. By the end of fiscal year 2006, 78 percent of all disabled and low-income veterans had enrolled with VA for health care; 65 percent of them were treated by VA. In 2006, VA inpatient facilities treated 773,600 patients. VA’s outpatient clinics registered over 60 million visits.

My next post will be my last - as I am on my way back home - with TREASURE! More on that on my final post.

The Bay, Bridges, and BART

The San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean. Technically, both rivers flow into Suisun Bay, which flows through the Carquinez Strait to meet with the Napa River at the entrance to San Pablo Bay, which connects at its south end to San Francisco Bay, although the entire group of interconnected bays are often referred to as "San Francisco Bay."

San Francisco Bay is spanned by five bridges: the Golden Gate Bridge, the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, and the Dumbarton Bridge. The bay is also spanned by the Transbay Tube, an underwater tunnel in which BART runs through. Prior to the construction of these infrastructures, transbay transportation was dominated by fleets of ferryboats operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Key System transit company. However, in recent decades, ferries have returned, primarily serving commuters from Marin County, relieving the traffic bottleneck of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate from the opening into the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It connects the city of San Francisco on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County as part of US Highway 101 and State Route 1. The Golden Gate Bridge had the longest suspension bridge span in the world when it was completed in 1937 and has become an internationally recognized symbol of San Francisco and the United States. In the 70 years since completion, the span length has been surpassed by seven other bridges. It still has the second longest suspension bridge main span in the United States, after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City.

Above is a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge taken from Baker Beach - a state and national public beach on the Pacific Ocean coast, on the San Francisco peninsula. It is roughly a half mile long, beginning just south of Golden Gate Point (where the Golden Gate Bridge connects to the San Francisco Peninsula), extending southward toward the Seacliff peninsula and the Palace of the Legion of Honor and the Sutro Baths.

Here is a view of the Golden Gate from atop a mountain in the Marin Headlands, where you can also visit Batteries Hamilton Smith and Edwin Guthrie. During World War II the guns from these two batteries were used to defend the minefields outside the Golden Gate from minesweepers. From this vantage, you can get a panoramic view encompassing the Bay, Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, what seems like the entire city of San Francisco, and open Pacific.

The Richmond-San Rafael Bridge is the northernmost of the east-west crossings of the San Francisco Bay. It measures 5.5 miles long and opened in 1956. At the time it was built, it was one of the world's longest bridges. The bridge spans two principal ship channels and has two separate major spans, each of the cantilever type. In the interest of resistance to earthquakes, the portion connecting the major spans is lowered in elevation, giving the bridge a "roller coaster" appearance and so also the popular name of its style; the "roller coaster span."

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge - known locally as the Bay Bridge - is a toll bridge which spans San Francisco Bay and links the California cities of Oakland and San Francisco in the United States, as part of Interstate 80. It is one of the busiest bridges in the United States, carrying approximately 280,000 vehicles per day - including Jennie and Max when they go to visit Jennie's family in Fremont on weekends - and sometimes Max when he drives to and from client sites around the Bay Area.

The Bay Bridge opened for traffic on November 12, 1936, six months before San Francisco's other famous bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge consists of two major spans connecting each shore with Yerba Buena Island, a natural outcropping located mid-bay. The western crossing, from San Francisco to the island, consists of two suspension bridges end-to-end with an anchorage, plus three shorter truss spans connecting the San Francisco landing to the western cable anchorage located on Rincon Hill. The eastern span between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland consists of a double-tower cantilever span, five medium-span truss bridges, and a 14 section truss causeway. On Yerba Buena Island itself, the crossing consists of a short concrete viaduct at the west span's cable anchorage, a tunnel through the island's rocky central hill, another short concrete viaduct, and a longer high-level steel truss viaduct which leads to the eastern span.

The San Mateo-Hayward Bridge is crosses the Bay to link the San Francisco Peninsula with the East Bay. More specifically, the bridge's western end is in Foster City, the most recent urban addition to the eastern edge of San Mateo. The eastern end of the bridge is in Hayward. The bridge is part of State Route 92, whose western terminus is at the town of Half Moon Bay on the Pacific coast. Its principal function is to link Interstate 880 in the East Bay with U.S. Route 101 on the Peninsula. It is roughly parallel to and lies between the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Dumbarton Bridge, and is sometimes used by commuters to avoid traffic delays due to emergencies on those bridges.

The Dumbarton Bridge is the southernmost of the highway bridges that span the San Francisco Bay. Carrying over 81,000 vehicles daily, it is also the shortest bridge across San Francisco Bay at 1.63 miles. Its eastern terminus is in Fremont, near Newark in the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, and its western terminus is in Menlo Park. The bridge has three lanes in each direction, and features a separated bike/pedestrian lane on its eastbound side. Like the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge to the north, power lines parallel the bridge across the bay.

The Transbay Tube is the part of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) which runs under San Francisco Bay in California and is the longest underwater tube for rapid transit in the world. Constructed in 57 sections, and reposing on the bay floor as deep as 135 feet beneath the surface, the remarkable $180 million structure took six years of toil and seismic studies to design, and less than three years to contract. The tube was constructed on land, transported to the site then submerged and fastened to the bottom - mostly by packing the sides with sand and gravel. This is in contrast to tunneling, where earth is removed to leave a passage, the method of underground mines, and, for example, the Channel Tunnel between France and England. Before it was closed to visitors for installation of tracks and electrification, many thousands of adventurous people had walked, jogged, and bicycled through the tube. It received a dozen major engineering awards and rapidly became famous, seeming to capture the imagination of visitors from all over the world. To youngsters, especially, the transbay tube is BART.

The BART story began in 1946. It began not by governmental fiat, but as a concept gradually evolving at informal gatherings of business and civic leaders on both sides of the San Francisco Bay. The 43 BART stations comprise 15 surface, 13 elevated and 15 subway stations. Four of these are a combination of BART and MUNI Metro stations in downtown San Francisco and one station is a combination of BART and Caltrain in Millbrae. It provides service across a total of 104 miles of track.

In many ways the BART is like the Metro system I use back home... well actually it's more that the Metro system in DC is like BART because it was developed based on the same design and technology. Look how similar the interiors are!

Chinatown

San Francisco Chinatown is the largest Chinese community on the West Coast, and the second largest in the United States next to New York City's settlement. Historically, it was the port of entry for early Taishanese and Zhongshanese Chinese immigrants from the southern Guangdong province of China from the 1850s to the 1900s. The area was the one geographical region deeded by the city government and private property owners which allowed Chinese persons to inherit and inhabit dwellings within the city. The majority of these Chinese shopkeepers, restaurant owners, and hired workers in San Francisco Chinatown were predominantly Taishanese and male. Many Chinese found jobs working for large companies seeking a source of cheap labor, most famously as part of Central Pacific on the Transcontinental Railroad. Other early immigrants worked as mine workers or independent prospectors hoping to strike it rich during the 1849 Gold Rush.

In recent years, other Chinatown areas have been established within the city of San Francisco proper, including the Richmond and Sunset districts. These areas have been settled largely by Chinese from Southeast Asia. There are also many suburban Chinese communities in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially in Silicon Valley, such as Cupertino, Fremont, and Milpitas, where Taiwanese Americans are dominant. Despite these developments, many continue to commute in from these outer neighborhoods and cities to shop in Chinatown - and the location itself draws more visitors annually than the Golden Gate Bridge.

The official entrance to Chinatown is a symbolic and literal transition from standard downtown scenes to what sometimes seems like another country altogether - a dragon-crested gate at Grant Avenue and Bush Street - a gift from the Republic of China in 1969. Stone lions flank the base of the pagoda-topped gate. The male lion's right front paw rests playfully on a ball; the female's left front paw tickles a cub lying on its back. The lions and the glazed clay dragons atop the largest of the gate's three pagodas symbolize, among other things, wealth and prosperity. The fish whose mouths wrap tightly around the crest of this pagoda also symbolize prosperity. The four Chinese characters immediately beneath the pagoda represent the philosophy of Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the leader who unified China in the early 20th century. Sun Yat-sen, who lived in exile in San Francisco for a few years, promoted the notion of friendship and peace among all nations based on equality, justice, and goodwill. The vertical characters under the left pagoda read "peace" and "trust," the ones under the right pagoda "respect" and "love."

Here I am with Max in front of part of the gate where you can see the male lion to our right

San Francisco’s oldest street - Grant Avenue - runs eight blocks through the center of America’s ethnic capital to over 1.5 million people of Chinese descent.

Many examples of Chinese architecture can be spotted throughout along Stockton Street, but one of the most noteworthy is the headquarters of The Chinese Six Companies. With its curved roof tiles and elaborate cornices, the imposing structure's oversize pagoda cheerfully calls attention to itself. The business leaders who run the six companies, which still exist, dominated Chinatown's political and economic life for decades.

Walk down Ross Alley and you'll chance upon Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory - which has been supplying fortune cookies since 1962. Here's how they do it - the workers sit at circular motorized griddles and wait for dollops of batter to drop onto a tiny metal plate, which rotates into an oven. A few moments later out comes a cookie that's pliable and ready for folding. Then, a fortune is placed on one side of the hot, flat dough. Next, each soft, hot cookie is shaped over a steel rod into the shape of a fortune cookie. This process must be done very quickly, otherwise the cookie will harden before it has the right fortune cookie shape.

Most of Chinatown burned down after the 1906 earthquake, and this building -- today the Bank of Canton -- set the style for the new Chinatown. The intricate three-tier pagoda was built in 1909. The exchange's operators were renowned for their prodigious memories, about which the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce boasted in 1914: "These girls respond all day with hardly a mistake to calls that are given (in English or one of five Chinese dialects) by the name of the subscriber instead of by his number..."

Portsmouth Square - a former potato patch - was the plaza for Yerba Buena, the Mexican settlement that was renamed San Francisco. Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island, lived on the edge of Chinatown in the late 19th century and often visited the square, chatting up the sailors who hung out here. Some of the information he gleaned about life at sea found its way into his fiction. Bruce Porter designed the bronze galleon that sits atop a 9-foot-tall granite shaft in the square's northwestern corner in honor of the writer. With its pagoda-shape structures, Portsmouth Square is a favorite spot for morning tai chi. By noon dozens of men huddle around Chinese chess tables, and children can play on one of the two playgrounds.

Fisherman's Wharf

The history of Fisherman's Wharf goes back to the Gold Rush era! Until the turn of the Century, the San Francisco fishing fleet was composed mostly of lateen-rigged sailboats.

They were copies of the craft which the Italian fishermen knew in their native land. Green was the prevailing color of their tiny boats, and the name of a patron saint often appeared on the hull. In the fog-shrouded waters outside the Golden Gate, singing was often used as a means of communication - you couldn't see a companion boat, but you knew it was there when you heard it.

There were also "Shrimp Junks " that mimicked boats familiar to the Chinese fishermen that maneuvered them through the waters. The picture above shows a historic image of a shrimp junk taken in the 1880s and the Grace Quan which is a replica you can view at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

Today, Fisherman's Wharf is a popular tourist attraction. Even though fisherman are now far outnumbered by tourists, the fishing industry is still an important part of the wharf. Pier 45, the heart of the fishing business, had a $14.5 million dollar refurbishment, and if you venture down to Pier 45 at sunrise, you will see the fishing business in full swing.

There are a number of sites to see when walking around the Wharf. Here is the Cannery at Del Monte Square, which was originally a Del Monte cannery, built in 1907 and the world's largest fruit and vegetable cannery by 1909.

Today, the Cannery houses a shopping and dining area, with zigzagging courtyards and a three level brick labyrinth of balconies, bridges, and walkways. Its sturdily built walls and gracefully arched passageways are preserved intact as part of the building's original look and feel.

The Wharf is also home to Ghirardelli Square, which was founded by Domenico "Domingo" Ghirardelli. Born in Rapallo, Italy in 1817, he learned about the confectionery and chocolate trade by the time he was 20. Uruguay and Peru were the first places he set up shop - but tales of the Gold Rush were irresistible. In 1848, Domingo's neighbor, James Lick, packed up $25,000 and 600 pounds of Ghirardelli chocolate, and set sail for the San Francisco Bay. A year later, Domingo followed him through the Golden Gate. After operating stores in several locations, the store that firmly fixed Ghirardelli fame was established on Jackson Street circa 1856 where it flourished for the next 40 years. From this factory, Domingo shipped chocolate products not only throughout the United States, but also to Mexico, Hawaii and British Columbia. At that time, the factory was among the largest in the western half of North America.

Domingo's business was growing and in 1889 he officially signed over ownership of his business to his sons. To accommodate it, Domingo’s sons purchased an entire block of property for their headquarters in 1893 that overlooked San Francisco Bay. The property consisted of the Woolen Mill, the Apartment Building and many other buildings on the property. Domingo and his sons began a spectacular building program that included the Chocolate Building in 1899, Cocoa Building in 1900, the Clock Tower in 1911 and the Power House in 1915. Ghirardelli Square was the result and is now, of course, a San Francisco landmark.

In the 1960’s The Golden Grain Macaroni Company bought Ghirardelli Chocolate and relocated it to a modern new facility across the bay in San Leandro. Upon hearing of the sale and fearing that the historic buildings on the property would be torn down and replaced by a modern apartment complex, two prominent San Franciscans, William Matson Roth, and his mother, Mrs. William P. Roth, purchased the entire Ghirardelli block. In addition to restoring as many of the original structures as possible, William Roth introduced a new marketing method by evolving the old chocolate factory into a lovely brick-terraced courtyard of shops and fine restaurants. In November 1964, Ghirardelli Square opened and is considered the first successful adaptive reuse project in the country. In order to ensure its preservation for future generations, Ghirardelli Square was granted National Historic Register status in 1982.

Another place to visit is the Boudin Bakery. It was established in 1849 by Isidore Boudin, son of a family of master bakers from Burgundy, France, by blending the prevalent sourdough among miners in the Gold Rush with French techniques. Steven Giraudo, an artisan baker from Italy whose first job in America was at Boudin, bought the bakery in 1941 but later sold it. After a series of ownership changes the bakery was bought by two of Giraudo's sons through an investment bank.

While they offer a variety of breads, their most recognizable is sourdough - called Original San Francisco Sourdough French Bread - which also happens to be an iconic bread for San Francisco. Sourdough was the main bread made in Northern California during the California Gold Rush, and it remains a part of the culture of San Francisco today. The bread became so common that "sourdough" became a general nickname for the gold prospectors. The nickname remains in "Sourdough Sam", the mascot of the San Francisco 49ers football team.

Their flagship location is on the Wharf, where bakers make bread with a recipe the company has nurtured since its founding. There's even a demonstration bakery where you can watch the artisan bakers employ their craft. Above, you'll see me posing in front of some loafs in the shape of Dungeness crabs...

... and here you'll see me in front of some real ones that have been cooked and are ready to eat! These crabs are different from the Blue crabs I'm used to eating back home. For one thing they are A LOT bigger. While they typically measure under 8 inches, some are as big as 10 inches in diameter. Like all crabs, the Dungeness crab is high in protein and minerals and low in fat. About one quarter of this crab's weight is meat, making it one of the meatiest crabs available. Most of the meat is in the eight legs and two claws, although the body contains plenty as well. The flesh has what is considered to be a delicate flavor that is slightly sweet. You can find lots of vendors selling them on the Wharf - and they are really tasty.

Nearby is Pier 39, a shopping center and popular tourist attraction built on a pier in San Francisco, California. At Pier 39, there are shops, restaurants, a video arcade, street performances, an interpretive center for the Marine Mammal Center, and the Aquarium of the Bay. On the K dock of Pier 39, you can see California Sea Lions swimming around and resting in the sun. California sea lions are known for their intelligence, playfulness, and noisy barking. Their color ranges from chocolate brown in males to a lighter, golden brown in females. Males may reach 1,000 lbs. (more often 850 lbs., or 390 kg) and seven feet (2.1 m) in length. Females grow to 220 lbs. (110 kg) and up to six feet (1.8 m) in length. They have a "dog-like" face, and at around five years of age, males develop a bony bump on top of their skull called a sagittal crest. The top of a male's head often gets lighter with age. These members of the otariid or walking seal family have external ear flaps and large flippers that they use to "walk" on land. The trained "seals" in zoos and aquariums are usually California sea lions.

Historically, California sea lions have always been observed on Seal Rock, North of Ocean Beach, below the Cliff House Restaurant in San Francisco. They come into the San Francisco Bay to feed, sleep at the surface of the calmer bay waters, and infrequently haul out on land or docks. However, in September 1989, sea lions began to appear consistently at Pier 39's K dock. The dock had recently been refurbished and for a period of time no boats were docked there, leaving large open spaces where sea lions could easily haul out. When the boats returned, no real effort was made to discourage the sea lions from hauling out. Also, only half the dock was filled with boats. The slips closest to the jetty opening were "guest docks" reserved for day or overnight rental. Eventually, the K Dock was closed off so boaters and the sea lions wouldn't bother each other.

From the docks of the Wharf you can see another icon - Alcatraz Island - sometimes informally referred to as simply Alcatraz or by its pop-culture name, "The Rock." The discovery of gold in California in 1848 brought thousands of ships to San Francisco Bay, creating an urgent need for a navigational lighthouse. In response, Alcatraz lighthouse #1 was erected and lit in the summer of 1853. Around the same time, the Army Corps of Engineers began fortifying the island, work which continued until 1858. The island's first garrison, numbering about 200 soldiers, arrived the following year. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861 the island mounted 85 cannon (increased to 105 by 1866) in casemates around its perimeter, though the small size of the garrison meant only a fraction of the guns could be used at one time. Alcatraz never fired its guns in anger, though during the war it was used to imprison Confederate sympathizers on the west coast.

Following the war in 1866 the army determined that the fortifications and guns were being rapidly rendered obsolete by advances in military technology. Modernization efforts, including an ambitious plan to level the entire island and construct shell-proof underground magazines and tunnels, were undertaken between 1870 and 1876 but never completed. Instead the army switched the focus of its plans for Alcatraz from coastal defense to detention, a task for which it was well suited because of its isolation. In 1867 a brick jailhouse was built, and in 1868 Alcatraz was officially designated a long term detention facility for military prisoners. On March 21 1907 Alcatraz was officially designated as the Western US Military Prison. In 1909 construction began on the huge concrete main cell block, designed by Major Reuben Turner, that remains the island's dominant feature. It was completed in 1912. In order to accommodate the new cell block the Citadel, a 100ft x 200ft reinforced three story barracks, was demolished down to the first floor, which was actually below ground level, the building having been constructed in an excavated pit (creating a dry "moat") to enhance its defensive potential. The first floor was then incorporated as a basement to the new cell block, giving rise to the popular legend of "dungeons" below the main cell block.

Due to rising operational costs because of its location, the War Department decided to close this famous prison in 1934, and it was subsequently taken over by the Department of Justice. The Great Depression and Prohibition contributed to a severe crime increase during the late 1920s and 1930s, which produced a new era of organized crime. The nation witnessed a sharp rise in horrific violence, which was brought on by the combined forces of prohibition and great need. The American people watched in fear as influential gangsters and public enemies gained heavy influence in metropolitan areas and the authorities that were responsible for their safe-keeping. Law enforcement agencies were not equipped to deal with the situation, and would frequently be beaten by better armed gangs in a shoot-out. Alcatraz was perceived as the best solution that the government could find in response to these problems. It could serve the dual purpose of placing public enemies away from the general population, and also to serve as a warning to this new and ruthless brand of criminals that were ruling the streets of the country. Many infamous criminals were sent there, including Robert Stroud (aka the Birdman of Alcatraz), George "Machine Gun" Kelly, James "Whitey" Bulger, Clarence "Choctaw Kid" Carnes, and Al Capone (aka Scarface).

By decision of US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the penitentiary was closed for good on March 21, 1963. It was closed because it was far more expensive to operate than other prisons (nearly $10 per prisoner per day, as opposed to $3 per prisoner per day at Atlanta), and the bay was being badly polluted by the sewage from the approximately 250 inmates and 60 Bureau of Prisons families on the island. The National Park Service took over the island, and today visitors can take a ferry boat to "the Rock" and tour the infamous prison.

Here's a picture of Max and I in front of an In-N-Out Burger. In 1948, the first In-N-Out Burger was founded by Harry and Esther Snyder in Baldwin Park. Harry's idea of a drive-thru hamburger stand where customers could order through a two-way speaker box was quite unique. In that era, it was common to see carhops serving those who wanted to order food from their car. Harry's idea caught on and California's first drive-thru hamburger stand was born. The Snyder's business philosophy was simple: "Give customers the freshest, highest quality foods you can buy and provide them with friendly service in a sparkling clean environment." These principles have worked so well over the years that they are still the company's fundamental philosophy.

Adding to the cult appeal of In-N-Out is the presence of the 'Secret Menu" - an unposted medley of items based on variations of the standard cheeseburger, fries, and milkshake. A 'Double-Double' is one of the most popular non-secret items on the menu, so named for 2 burger patties and 2 slices of cheese. On the secret menu you've got the 4x4 (4 patties and four slices of cheese), and you can expand this indefinitely. Another popular secret menu option is ordering "Animal Style" - where the meat is cooked and fried with mustard and then pickles are added, extra spread and grilled onions are added. You can even do that to the french fries, like above bottom right.

Whew! That's a lot for today. I'll be back soon to write about China Town and some famous San Francisco Bridges.

It's really hilly!

It's very hilly in San Francisco! I realized that as I was driving to lunch with Jennie and Max.

After lunch, Max told me that, in fact, San Francisco is the hilliest city in the United States... and Jennie said that she would take us for a drive on one of the most famous hills in the city...

Lombard Street! This street is not only a good example of how hilly it is in San Francisco, but it is also one of America's most crooked streets. What does that mean? If you look in the picture above, you'll see that the hilly street was created with sharp curves to switchback down the one-way hill past the homes that line it. The original street went down the hill at a steep 27° - which was dangerous for many vehicles at the time - and made it very difficult for people to get out of their driveways without encountering cars speeding down the road. So, so between 1922 and 1923 this part of Lombard Street was transformed into a switchback with eight sharp turns. Cars can only drive downhill, east-bound towards Leavenworth Street.

Here is a picture from us going down the street...

and here's a picture looking behind us as we go down!

Not far from where you get off of Lombard Street is the San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf. More on this soon...

Greetings from Silicon Valley

Hello everyone! I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance to write recently, but it's been really busy.

Just the other day Max took me to visit one of his clients - TiVo. The company makes a brand of digital video recorder (DVR) that captures television programming to hard disk storage for later viewing The device also provides an electronic television programming schedule, and provides recording options based on that schedule. You can see a demo of how the system works here.

TiVo is just one of MANY technology companies in San Francisco. In fact, there are so many technology companies in the area that there is an entire area called Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The term originally referred to the region's large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high-tech businesses in the area; it is now generally used as a metonym for the high-tech sector. Despite the development of other high-tech economic centers throughout the United States, Silicon Valley continues to be the leading high-tech hub because of its large number of engineers and venture capitalists.

The term Silicon Valley was coined by Ralph Vaerst, a Northern California entrepreneur. Valley refers to the Santa Clara Valley, located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, while Silicon refers to the high concentration of semiconductor and computer-related industries in the area. These and similar technology and electricity firms slowly replaced the orchards which gave the area its initial nickname, the Valley of Heart's Delight.

Anyways, I have lots more to write about, but I'm out of time tonight. More to come soon, I promise!