In the late nineteenth century, San Francisco's merchant princes built grand stores for a booming city, each with its own niche. For the eager clientele, a trip downtown meant dressing up--hats, gloves and stockings required--and going to Blum's for Coffee Crunch cake or Townsend's for creamed spinach. The I. Magnin empire catered to a selective upper-class clientele, while middle-class shoppers loved the Emporium department store with its Bargain Basement and Santa for the kids. Gump's defined good taste, the City of Paris satisfied desires for anything French and edgy, youth-oriented Joseph Magnin ensnared the younger shoppers with the latest trends. Join author Anne Evers Hitz as she looks back at the colorful personalities that created six major stores and defined shopping in San Francisco.

The Emporium--"California's Largest, America's Grandest Store"--was a major shopping destination on San Francisco's Market Street for a century, from 1896 to 1996. Shoppers flocked to the mid-price store with its beautiful dome and bandstand. Patrons could find anything at the Emporium, from jewelry to stoves, and it was a meeting place for friends to enjoy tea while listening to the Emporium Orchestra. Founded as the Emporium and Golden Rule Bazaar, the store flourished until the disastrous 1906 earthquake. Once it reopened in 1908, it dominated shopping downtown until mid-century. Many San Franciscans remember with great nostalgia the Christmas Carnival on the roof, complete with slides, a skating rink, and a train. Santa always arrived in grand style with a big parade down Market Street. After World War II, the Emporium, which had merged with H.C. Capwell & Co. in the late 1920s, began its push and opened branch stores throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. However, as competition increased, the company's financial situation worsened, and the Emporium name was no more in 1996.

Within thirty years of the Great Chicago Fire, the revitalized city was boasting some of America's grandest department stores. The retail corridor on State Street was a crowded canyon of innovation and inventory where you could buy anything from a paper clip to an airplane. Revisit a time when a trip downtown meant dressing up for lunch at Marshall Field's Walnut Room, strolling the aisles of Sears for Craftsman tools or redeeming S&H Green Stamps at Wieboldt's. Whether your family favored The Fair, Carson Pirie Scott, Montgomery Ward or Goldblatt's, you were guaranteed stunning architectural design, attentive customer service and eye-popping holiday window displays. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, advertisements, catalogue images and postcards, Leslie Goddard's narrative brings to life the Windy City's fabulous retail past.

Mike Sullivan loves his adopted city of San Francisco, and he loves trees. In The Trees of San Francisco he has combined his passions, offering a striking and handy compendium of botanical information, historical tidbits, cultivation hints, and more. Sullivan's introduction details the history of trees in the city, a fairly recent phenomenon. The text then piques the reader's interest with discussions of 71 city trees. Each tree is illustrated with a photograph--with its common and scientific names prominently displayed--and its specific location within San Francisco, along with other sites; frequently a close-up shot of the tree is included. Sprinkled throughout are 13 sidelights relating to trees; among the topics are the city's wild parrots and the trees they love; an overview of the objectives of the Friends of the Urban Forest; and discussions about the link between Australia's trees and those in the city, such as the eucalyptus. The second part of the book gets the reader up and about, walking the city to see its trees. Full-page color maps accompany the seven detailed tours, outlining the routes; interesting factoids are interspersed throughout the directions. A two-page color map of San Francisco then highlights 25 selected neighborhoods ideal for viewing trees, leading into a checklist of the neighborhoods and their trees.

This book tells the intimate history of a family of two men plus triplets that came together suddenly one day, and thrived for a year before being torn apart by groundless prejudice. San Francisco author Kevin Fisher-Paulson tells this riveting story with grace, dignity, and a surprisingly generous dose of humor.A Song for Lost Angels takes the discussion of gay marriage to the next level, where the rights and struggles of gay parents and their kids can be openly recognized. This family history will make you laugh, cry, and sometimes sputter with outrage, even as it redefines what Americans call "family values." Originally published by Fearless Books, this Second Edition from the author's own press has been updated with a new selection of photos.Finalist, LGBT Category, 2015 Benjamin Franklin AwardsIndependent Book Publishers AssociationFinalist, GBLT Category and Finalist, Memoirs Category 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards

A career-spanning anthology of essays on politics and culture by the best-selling author of The Flamethrowers includes entries discussing a Palestinian refugee camp, an illegal Baja Peninsula motorcycle race, and the 1970s Fiat factory wildcat strikes.

Like a majestic ocean liner or a grand hotel, the Victorian-era Sutro Baths dazzled visitors with its over-the-top opulence and its many attractions: seven swimming pools filled with filtered and heated seawater, a museum, restaurants, tropical plants, promenades, and seating for thousands of spectators, all covered by more than 100,000 square feet of glass. The creation of Comstock millionaire Adolph Sutro, the Baths opened in 1894 and ended in fire in 1966. Once the debris was cleared, little remained of Sutro's ambitious structure, which he intended to outshine the baths of Rome. Today, visitors explore its concrete ruins and mysterious tunnels, which are protected by the National Park Service as part of the larger Lands End site. Sutro's Glass Palace, the fascinating story of a vanished but enduring piece of San Francisco history, comprehensively answers the question, "What was this place?". Inside you'll find: An in-depth account of the rise and fall of Sutro Baths Detailed architectural renderings and diagrams Historical and contemporary photographs News stories of the day revealing the Baths' darker side A field guide to the ruins

The 1950s, 60s, and 70s were defining moments in our nation's history, and San Francisco was at the forefront of the avant-garde artistic, intellectual, and cultural movements of the time. San Francisco gave rise to the most significant countercultural revolutions of the century, including the Beatniks of the 1950s, the hippies in the 1960s, and the gay rights movement in the 1970s. This volume, Historic Photos of San Francisco in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, captures the revolutionary and tumultuous spirit of these historic times in stunning black-and-white photography. The book provides a retrospective view of ordinary citizens enjoying their daily lives in an extraordinary city, and illustrates the participants, protests, riots, triumphs, and tragedies of this extraordinary period in San Francisco and American history.

"A compelling history of America's famous Jewish shopkeeping families shows how the Filenes, Gimbels, Marcuses, and others created renowned retail empires out of small pushcart beginnings, powerfully evoking the social changes that were transforming America early in the century."--

"The Strachwitz Frontera Collection is the largest repository of commercially produced Mexican and Mexican American vernacular recordings in existence. It contains more than 130,000 individual recordings. Many are rare, and some are one of a kind. Although border music is the focus of the collection, it also includes notable recordings of other Latin forms, including salsa, mambo, sones, and rancheras. More than 40,000 of the recordings, all from the first half of the twentieth century, have been digitized with the help of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center and are available online through the University of California's Digital Library Program. Agustin Gurza explores the Frontera Collection from different viewpoints, discussing genre, themes, and some of the thousands of composers and performers whose work is contained in the archive. Throughout he discusses the cultural significance of the recordings and relates the stories of those who have had a vital role in their production and preservation. Rounding out the volume are chapters by Jonathan Clark, who surveys the recordings of mariachi ensembles, and Chris Strachwitz, the founder of the Arhoolie Foundation, who reflects on his six decades of collecting the music that makes up the Frontera Collection."--Publisher description.