Neither of us is a native San Franciscan. We both moved here as adults but fell in love with the City by the Bay because while it lures you in with a veneer of optimism and beauty, its history has enough pathos to be real. For every start-up that claims it will change the world, there is an older story of destruction, vice, or tragedy. Life-hackers might claim that they can transcend ordinary humanity, but there have already been thousands of bad acid trips on Haight Street alone. Dolores Park fills with techies and hipsters every weekend, most not realizing that half of the park was once a Jewish cemetery. The City was built over the bones of the Ohlone, grew through greed and violence, and has harbored almost every vice and form of personal liberation known on earth. Transformation, mutation, and syncretism have defined this sordid city. 

The culture here has been profoundly influenced by libertines, scammers, murderers, artists, and eccentrics. From Emperor Norton to Etta James, Carol Doda, Alan Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, Janis Joplin, the Zodiac Killer, Burners, Hippies, Drag Queens, the Leather Scene, and Cyberpunks, San Francisco has embraced, feared, hounded, and become home to each. Sometimes all at once. Tech billionaires dream of a government-less future predicated on surveillance capitalism, meanwhile, the head of public works is under indictment for taking bribes. COVID-19 and ongoing gentrification have forced The Stud out of business, but its collective ownership swears it will be back in some form. Recent criminal enterprises have run from the darknet’s Silk Road to Shrimp Boy’s relatively old-fashioned racketeering operation. Nothing is ever really past here, yet we still find ways to innovate in the fields of crime, iniquity, and general mayhem. 

Anthony Bourdain ז״ל  once said “Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me. You go there as a snarky New Yorker thinking it’s politically correct, it’s crunchy granola, it’s vegetarian, and it surprises you every time. It’s a two-fisted drinking town, a carnivorous meat-eating town, it’s dirty and nasty and wonderful…”  That captures a lot of it. We’re here to tell those two-fisted dirty stories, from the past to today.