San Francisco (USA, California)
Numerous Diaspora from Asia and South America makes San Francisco an international city. 39% of its residents are foreigners; there are several districts where only immigrants live and work. Starting from 1970, it was allowed to celebrate annual Chinese New Year’s parade in Chinatown, because a big number of Chinese live in the city, and this number is increasing from year to year.
Many foreign actors, writers, and other workers of show business who arrived in the 1950s founded the modern culture of coffee houses; besides, they brought in social upheaval in the 1960s. San Francisco became one of the centers of liberalism because in the city’s politics the Democrats and green and progressive parties predominate. The city’s residents, starting from 1988, have never given more than 20% of ballots for a candidate of the Republican Party in the US presidential elections.
San Francisco has a big number of museums, the best known of which is Museum of Modern Art where modern exhibits of the XX century are collected. The museum moved to a new building on South of Market in 1995. The collection attracts around 600 thousand visitors a year. Palace of the Legion of Honor demonstrates mainly European works. The Golden Gates Park is famous for its museum of Fine Arts – M. H. de Young. It was founded in 1824, but was seriously damaged after an earthquake of Loma Prieta; in 2004 it was closed for remodeling and was opened on October 15, 2005. Just like in the museum of Asian Art in M. H. de Young non-European works are exhibited. The museum of Asian Art has one of the biggest collections of Oriental artifacts and works in the world. From 1958 till 2004, all the exhibits were in the wing of the museum of M. H. de Young, but when it was closed for remodeling the museum of Asian Art moved into the building of the San Francisco Library.
The Palace of Fine Arts, originally built for Panama Pacific exhibition, receives tourists today as a popular science museum – Exploratorium.
Near Lake Merced there is the San Francisco zoo which takes care of about 250 animals, 39 of which are becoming extinct. In the city there are a lot of museums with untraditional themes: international museum of women, museum of African Diaspora, Modern Jewish Museum, Museum of Folk Trades, Museum of caricatures, and Mexican museum. San Francisco is known for eccentric museums: Antique Museum of Vibrators, Museum of Mechanics, Museum of Ophthalmology, Ripley’s Museum “Believe It or Not”, Gallery of stamps, Museum of Tattoos (old tattooed cars and tools), UFO museum, museum of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and museum of wax figures in the Fisherman’s Warf.
In San Francisco a lot of different and unique street festivals, parties and parades take place. Folsom Street Fare occurs in September, Chinese New Year Parade — in February, Carnival (Season of Christian Holidays) occurs during spring, the Navy week — in October and Rave music festival called Love Feast – in the beginning of October. San Francisco also hosts various mass sports events, such as the Bay to Breakers footrace or San Francisco Marathon.
Many districts of the city have their own annual festivals, especially live performances of musicians. The biggest are: Castro Street Fair, Union Street arts festival, North Beach festival and Haight Ashbury Fair. San Francisco Opera holds a free of charge festival every year in the Golden Gates Park in the open air. San Francisco Symphony, like the Opera, holds several performances in July, also being an essential part of Sterm Groove festival. On July 4, the Independence Day of USA, there is an annual fireworks show over the Fisherman’s Warf; another firework show takes place in May at “KFOG: Kaboom!” Festival.
The base of San Francisco’s economics is tourism. Because the city is shown in movies, depicted in music and pop culture, San Francisco is familiar to the whole world. This is the city where Tony Bennett “left his heart,” where Franklin Stroud, known as “the Catcher of Birds”, spent many years in prison and Rice-a-Roni became the favorite food of the people. San Francisco holds 5th place in foreign tourists’ visitations among all the cities of USA, while Pier 39 in the area of Fisherman’s Wharf is the third most popular site in the country. More than 50 million tourists visited the city in 2005 and left around 7.5 billions of dollars in the city’s treasury. In Moscone Center district a big infrastructure of hotels and restaurants is concentrated. San Francisco is one of ten places of North America that are most convenient for hosting different conferences and summits.
The Gold Rush stimulated development of banking system of San Francisco; now the city is the main financial center on the west coast. Montgomery Street and Financial district are known as “the Wall Street of the West”; it is a home of the Federal Reserves Bank of San Francisco and Pacific Exchange. The Bank of America, a pioneer in serving the middle class, was founded in San Francisco in 1928. A lot of big financial institutions, multi-national banks and insurance companies are located or have their regional offices in the city. Close to 30 international financial organizations, 6 companies from the Fortune’s 500 list, and a big number of institutions specialized in rendering professional services to the residents (lawyers’ offices, PR companies, architecture companies etc) are located in downtown. San Francisco is one of the ten Beta World Cities.
The economy of the city rapidly boomed after the Silicon Valley appeared in the south, which required specialists of high class. Biotechnological and biomedical research center is also located in the valley. In Mission Bay there is a second UCSF campus, which prepares highly qualified personnel and is the headquarters of California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, which sponsors a program of stem cell research statewide.
Small companies, with a staff less than 10 people, make up 85% of all the businesses in the city. The number of employees in companies with a staff over 1,000 people was reduced in half, beginning from 1977. One can see huge supermarkets, so called Big Boxes, in the city very seldom; it is because construction of Big Boxes negatively affects small businesses in San Francisco which give the biggest income to the city’s treasury. The small business committee supported a campaign to maintain the portion of small business, which caused the City Council to introduce limitations in the districts where supermarkets can be built; this strategy was supported by the city’s dwellers, who voted for enacting of these limitations.
As of 2005, the population of the center of the city was 739,426 people. Around 16,000 people live on one square mile; San Francisco is the second city in the USA as far as population density is concerned. In San Francisco there are around 0.7 million people; it is the biggest population among the entire Bay area; the city holds the fifth place in the USA in this category after the 2000 Census.
The white are around 44% of the total number of San Francisco’s dwellers, Asians — around 31%, Latino and Hispanic — 14%, less than 8% are Afro Americans.
Not many residents of San Francisco have lived their whole life in the city. Only 35% of them were born in California, 26% were born in the US, and 39% — outside the country.