Culture of San Francisco

A San Francisco cable car

The culture of San Francisco is major and diverse in terms of arts, music, festivals, museums, and architecture. San Francisco's diversity of cultures along with its eccentricities are so great that they have greatly influenced the country and the world at large over the years.

Museums

Palace of Fine Arts

The Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) contains 20th Century and contemporary pieces. It moved to its iconic building in South of Market in 1995 and attracts 600,000 visitors annually.^[1] The California Palace of the Legion of Honor contains primarily European works. The De Young Museum and the Asian Art Museum have significant anthropological and non-European holdings.

Palace of the Legion of Honor

The Palace of Fine Arts, a remnant of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, today houses the Exploratorium, a popular science museum dedicated to teaching through hands-on interaction. The California Academy of Sciences is a natural history museum and hosts the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium. The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco has one of the most comprehensive collections of Asian art in the world. From 1958 until 2003 the collection was housed in a wing of at the original de Young in Golden Gate Park. When the de Young closed while constructing a new building, the Asian Art Museum moved to the former San Francisco City Library building, which was renovated for the purpose under the direction of Italian architect Gae Aulenti who had previously overseen the conversion of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

The San Francisco Zoo cares for a total of about 250 animal species, 39 of which have been deemed endangered or threatened.^[2]

Other museums include the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Museum of Craft & Folk Art, the Cartoon Art Museum, and the Mexican Museum. San Francisco's eccentric nature has also created some "offbeat" museums dealing in unconventional topics. Such museums and galleries include the Antique Vibrator Museum, the Musée Mécanique (dedicated to penny arcade machines), Museum of Ophthalmology, Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, the Stamp Francisco/Stamp Art Gallery (rubber stamps not postal stamps), the Tattoo Art Museum (old tattoo machines and instruments), the UFO, Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster Museum, and the Wax Museum at Fisherman's Wharf.

The Haas-Lilienthal House (2007 Franklin Street) is the only intact private Victorian-era home in San Francisco that is open to the public year-round and available for private functions. Three generations of the Haas and Lilienthal descendants lived in this house after which the house was donated to The Foundation for San Francisco’s Architectural Heritage (later renamed San Francisco Architectural Heritage). It was open to the public for tours in 1972.

Performing arts

War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco

Classical and Opera venues in San Francisco include the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Ballet. They all perform at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. San Francisco's Ballet and Opera are some of the oldest continuing performing arts companies in the United States. San Francisco is the birthplace and home city of the renowned vocal ensemble Chanticleer. The city is also home to the American Conservatory Theater, also known as A.C.T., which has been a leading force in Bay Area performing arts since its arrival in San Francisco in 1967, routinely staging original productions. Additionally, the New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC) is known for being an intimate theater that routinely stages original productions by the local, national, and international LGBT community. Hundreds of smaller, alternative theatres also attract a significant portion of the audience given their historical role in the San Francisco performing arts culture. The oldest of these are Intersection for the Arts, founded in 1965, and the Magic Theatre, founded in 1967. A major player in the promotion of theater in the Bay Area is Theatre Bay Area (or TBA). A non profit organization, Theatre Bay Area has members from more than 365 Bay Area theatre and dance companies, is the publisher of Callboard Magazine, and runs San Francisco's Half-Priced Ticket Booth.

Additionally, San Francisco is home to the 200-member San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, the world's first openly gay chorus, as well as the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, the world's first openly gay musical organization. Two additional gay choruses, the Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco and Golden Gate Men's Chorus, also perform throughout the year.

San Francisco has had a thriving improv theatre community, with a distinctly different style of improv than much of the rest of the country. Unlike Chicago where one venue will host three 30-45 minute shows in one evening, most San Francisco improv shows are 2 hours long, complete with their own intermission. And while Chicago and New York are full of improv companies who perform formats based on the Harold (with multiple storylines going on at the same time), San Francisco is full of improv shows with single-story formats. Often referred to as play-length improv shows, these improv shows are rooted in the idea that if someone can perform something scripted (like a play, movie, or musical) then it can also be improvised just as well. Some groups that define the improvisation scene in San Francisco are: BATS Improv, The Un-Scripted Theater Company, and The San Francisco Improv Alliance.

Popular music

San Francisco has often hosted influential rock music trends, starting with the San Francisco Sound during the 1960s. Two of the most influential bands from that era, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, started out in San Francisco in 1965. Other groups include rockers Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, and Journey, seminal punk band the Dead Kennedys, and alternative metal band Faith No More. It is the birthplace of thrash metal with bands such as Metallica, Testament, and latterly Machine Head. Punk, electronica, industrial, goth, and rave activity 1980s and early 1990s, was also somewhat influential. Gentrification during the late 1990s is said to have forced many performers to move away. However, San Francisco, especially in the Fillmore and Hunters Point districts, is the home of numerous rappers, including Messy Marv, RBL Posse, Rappin' 4-Tay, HughEMC, San Quinn, Andre Nickatina, Big Rich, JT the Bigga Figga, Ant Rich 415, and Paris. San Francisco DJs and electronic musicians are credited with defining the laid-back, dub-influenced sound of the West Coast house music. Prominent DJs and artists include Kaskade, Miguel Migs, Mark Farina, and DJ Garth. Dub Mission and other regular parties keep San Francisco's music scene fresh.

Famous songs featuring San Francisco include Tony Bennett's "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", the Scott McKenzie song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)", People Under the Stairs' "San Franciscan Nights", Chris Isaak's "San Francisco Days", Journey's "Lights", and "Fake Tales of San Francisco" by the Arctic Monkeys.

Festivals and street fairs

Main article: List of San Francisco Bay Area festivals and fairs

San Francisco is home to many different and unique street festivals, parties and parades. Most famous are its gay pride parade, the world's largest, held every June; the Folsom Street Fair held every September; Chinese New Year Parade held in February; Carnaval, held during the spring; Litquake and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in October; and the North American home of the Loveparade (now known as the "Lovefest"), held in the late summer/early fall. San Francisco is also home to running races such as the Bay to Breakers and the San Francisco Marathon. During Labor Day weekend in 2008, the city also played host to the first Slow Food Nation, the first major public event for Slow Food USA and one of the largest food events in the nation.

Many neighborhoods in San Francisco have annual street festivals featuring live music, arts and crafts vendors, and community organizations. Among the largest of these are Castro Street Fair, Union Street Art Festival, North Beach Festival, and Haight-Ashbury Street Fair. The San Francisco Opera company puts on an annual free Opera in the Park performance in Golden Gate Park. The San Francisco Symphony does likewise on several dates in July, including one as part of the Stern Grove Festival. On the Fourth of July holiday, there are fireworks shows over Fisherman's Wharf and Marina Green. Another fireworks show is held every May as part of the KFOG: Kaboom!.

Architecture and tourist attractions

Coit Tower is a major landmark.

The Transamerica Pyramid, completed in 1972, has become an iconic symbol of the City.

Main article: San Francisco architecture

Despite its limited geographical space, San Francisco contains a plethora of unique architecture that also serve as tourist attractions in their own right. They include its Civic Center, Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill, the Ferry Building on its waterfront, the world renowned Golden Gate Bridge, the twisty and windy Lombard Street in Russian Hill, "Painted Ladies", terraced victorian houses that can be found city wide, the San Francisco cable car system, the abstract San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge, the ruins of the once great Sutro Baths, and the Transamerica Pyramid.

Notes

1. ^ Corporate Sponsorship (SFMOMA Facts and Audience) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Accessed September 1, 2006.
2. ^ About the Zoo: Media Center (Press Kit) San Francisco Zoo. Accessed September 3, 2006.

See also

San Francisco Bay Area portal

• San Francisco in popular culture
• List of dramatic theatres in San Francisco
• Haas-Lilienthal House
• San Francisco Nature Education