[37] Despite an accelerating exodus of businesses from the downtown area of San Francisco,[38][39][40] the city is still home to numerous companies inside and outside of technology, including Salesforce, Uber, Airbnb, OpenAI, Levi's, Gap, Dropbox, and Lyft.

[41][42] It is known for its steep rolling hills and eclectic mix of architecture across varied neighborhoods; its Chinatown and Mission districts; mild climate; and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, and Alcatraz.

[49] The Yelamu group of the Ramaytush people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay.

Following the capture, U.S. forces appointed both José de Jesús Noé and Washington Allon Bartlett to serve as co-alcaldes (mayors), while the conquest continued on in the rest of California.

[75] The rapidly growing population, with its lawlessness, gambling and other vices, and the fact that there were no churches to be found, prompted missionaries like William Taylor to come to San Francisco where he began preaching in the streets, using an upright barrel as his pulpit.

San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939–40, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it.

[95] Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity, and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations.

[96] Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways, of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition.

[99] The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America.

Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified.

By the mid-2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a common place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.

Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to the waterfront tourist attractions of Fisherman's Wharf, and Pier 39, where many restaurants feature Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry.

Further development is taking place just to the south in Mission Bay area, a former railroad yard, which now has a second campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Chase Center, which opened in 2019 as the new home of the Golden State Warriors.

The construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918 connected southwest neighborhoods to downtown via streetcar, hastening the development of West Portal, and nearby affluent Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood.

Further west, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean and north to Golden Gate Park lies the vast Sunset District, a large middle-class area with a predominantly Asian population.

Herbert Eugene Bolton wrote about the expedition camp at Mountain Lake, near the southern end of today's Presidio: "Round about were grazing deer, and scattered here and there were the antlers of large elk.

"[161] Also, when Richard Henry Dana Jr. visited San Francisco Bay in 1835, he wrote about vast elk herds near the Golden Gate: on December 27 "...we came to anchor near the mouth of the bay, under a high and beautifully sloping hill, upon which herds of hundreds and hundreds of red deer [note: "red deer" is the European term for "elk"], and the stag, with his high branching antlers, were bounding about...", although it is not clear whether this was the Marin side or the San Francisco side.

With over 30 international financial institutions,[221] six Fortune 500 companies,[222] and a large supporting infrastructure of professional services—including law, public relations, architecture and design—San Francisco is designated as an Alpha(-) World City.

[228][229][230] In 2004, the city approved a payroll tax exemption for biotechnology companies[231] to foster growth in the Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second campus and hospital of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

[38][236][237] Attributed causes include a shift to remote work in the technology and professional services sectors, as well as high levels of homelessness, drug use, and crime in areas around downtown San Francisco, such as the Tenderloin and Mid-Market neighborhoods.

[250][251] In the second technological boom driven by social media in the mid-2000s, San Francisco became a location for companies such as Apple, Google, Ubisoft, Facebook, and Twitter to base their tech offices and for their employees to live.

[252] In recent years several AI companies have either been founded in the city or moved there, due to a giant talent pool, proximity to venture capital, and serendipitous connections.

[257] Some of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco, as noted by the Travel Channel, include the Golden Gate Bridge and Alamo Square Park, home to the famous "Painted Ladies".

[263] Although the Financial District, Union Square, and Fisherman's Wharf are well known around the world, San Francisco is also characterized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk.

With the arrival of the "beat" writers and artists of the 1950s and societal changes culminating in the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district during the 1960s, San Francisco became a center of liberal activism and of the counterculture that arose at that time.

[285] The city's GoSolarSF incentive promotes solar installations and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is rolling out the CleanPowerSF program to sell electricity from local renewable sources.

The city's large gay population has created and sustained a politically and culturally active community over many decades, developing a powerful presence in San Francisco's civic life.

It is the second incarnation of the historic venue that gained fame in the 1960s, housing the stage where now-famous musicians such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, and Jefferson Airplane first performed, fostering the San Francisco Sound.

The San Francisco Examiner, once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership.

[415] The portions of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area located within the city, including the Presidio and Ocean Beach, are patrolled by the United States Park Police.