Portal San Francisco Bay Area

The Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco is the head of the executive branch of the San Francisco city and county government. The mayor has the duty to enforce city laws, and the power to either approve or veto bills passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch. The mayor serves a four-year term and is limited to two successive terms. Because of San Francisco's status as a consolidated city-county, the mayor also serves as the head of government of the county; both entities have been governed together by a combined set of governing bodies since 1856.

There have been 42 individuals sworn into office. John W. Geary, elected in 1850, was the first mayor of the city. Charles James Brenham, who served as mayor during the 1850s, is the only person who has served two non-consecutive terms. The previous mayor, Gavin Newsom resigned to become the Lieutenant Governor of California on January 10, 2011. Ed Lee was appointed by the Board of Supervisors on the following day to finish out Newsom's term. Lee was elected to his own term on November 8, 2011. (more...)

Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs ("Migrant Mother", 1936, pictured, left) humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography.

Lange was educated in photography at Columbia University in New York City, in a class taught by Clarence H. White. She was informally apprenticed to several New York photography studios, including that of the famed Arnold Genthe. In 1918, she moved to San Francisco, and by the following year she had opened a successful portrait studio. She lived across the bay in Berkeley for the rest of her life. In 1920, she married the noted western painter Maynard Dixon, with whom she had two sons. (more...)

Sunnyvale (/ˈsʌniveɪl/ or /ˈsʌnivəl/), officially the City of Sunnyvale, is a city located in Santa Clara County, California. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 140,095.

The city is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is the seventh most populous city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sunnyvale is bordered by portions of San Jose to the north, Moffett Federal Airfield to the northwest, Mountain View to the west, Los Altos to the southwest, Cupertino to the south, and Santa Clara to the east. It lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101.

As part of the Silicon Valley, high-tech companies such as Juniper Networks, Fortinet, AMD, NetApp, Spansion, Yahoo!, AppliedMicro and Ariba are headquartered there. Sunnyvale is also home to several aerospace/defense companies; Lockheed Martin has a major facility in Sunnyvale, and Honeywell, Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems - Marine Systems (formerly Joshua Hendy Iron Works), Finisar, and Spirent also have offices in Sunnyvale. Sunnyvale was also the home to Onizuka Air Force Station, where its memorial building was locally known as the Blue Cube. The base, named for the deceased Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka, was an artificial satellite control facility of the United States armed forces until August 2010. (more...)

• Treasure Island is leased to the United States Navy, which opens Naval Station Treasure Island the next year
• World War II enlistment commences in the Bay Area (San Francisco recruiting office pictured)
• A two-masted schooner, Benicia, built in Tahiti by a shipwright who had worked in Matthew Turner's Benicia shipyard, arrives in San Francisco under the French flag
• The Xerces Blue butterfly is last observed in San Francisco either this year, or in 1943

• ... that the vivid colors of the San Francisco Bay Salt Ponds (pictured), ranging from magenta to blue-green, come from the brine shrimp and microorganisms that thrive in the water?
• ... that the Laguna Creek watershed debouches into the San Francisco Bay near the site of the ghost town of Drawbridge?
• ... that the chase scene from the 1968 Steve McQueen film Bullitt starts on Cesar Chavez Street (then Army Street) before continuing through San Francisco?
• ... that the title of There There, a 2018 novel about urban Indians in Oakland, California, mirrors Gertrude Stein's quip about the city that "There is no there there"?

• ... that Rattlesnake James, the last man to be hanged in California, was convicted of drowning his wife after a failed first attempt to kill her with rattlesnake venom?
• ... that the San Francisco garter snake (pictured) is an endangered species capable of digesting toxic newts but is not found in San Francisco?
• ... that Chuck Muncie was a star running back for The University of California, Berkeley during the 1970s, where he broke six school rushing records that stand to this day?
• ... that prehistoric inhabitants of the San Francisco Bay Area fished the bat ray in large numbers, while more recently it is mostly taken by oyster growers who mistakenly believe it feeds on their oysters?
• ... that the endangered subspecies California Clapper Rail (pictured), a chicken-sized bird that rarely flies, has chicks that can swim when they are just two hours old?
  
• ...that before Robert Louis Stevenson became a successful novelist with Treasure Island in 1883, he was a struggling author of travel narratives who published An Inland Voyage, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes and Silverado Squatters?

January - May 2006

The American Indian Film Festival is an annual non-profit film festival in San Francisco. It is the world's oldest venue dedicated solely to Native American films. The Festival was first presented Seattle in 1975 and moved to San Francisco in 1977. (awardee Adam Beach pictured)

• more quotes about San Francisco from Wikiquote

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