Writing about San Francisco is a pleasant affair for me. I have lived in and around that city for forty years and love the sound of its street names and hills as much as the sound of its coming winter storms. In the nineteen seventies, San Francisco was just beginning to awaken to the enormous possibilities of its modern beauty. Those seventies were indeed a simpler time, a time before cell phones and laptops. Mixed in with its beauty lay whole areas of waste and ruin just waiting for the money and energy far-sighted developers and city planners would soon lavish upon it. It was a time I remember with fondness. I taught English at the University of San Francisco and lived in the Richmond District within walking distance of my classes. After a long stint as a technical writer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, I moved with my wife to Berkeley. From there we can ride a local underground to beautiful San Francisco, and on most days we can see it clearly across the bay from the Berkeley Marina.