title: Fleetwood Mac

text: Following "Mirage" the band went on hiatus, which allowed members to pursue solo careers. Nicks released two more solo albums (1983's "The Wild Heart" and 1985's "Rock a Little"). Buckingham issued "Go Insane" in 1984, the same year that Christine McVie made an eponymous album (yielding the Top 10 hit "Got a Hold on Me" and the Top 40 hit "Love Will Show Us How"). All three met with success, Nicks being the most popular. During this period Fleetwood had filed for bankruptcy, Nicks was admitted to the Betty Ford Clinic for addiction problems and John McVie had suffered an addiction-related seizure, all of which were attributed to the lifestyle of excess afforded to them by their worldwide success. It was rumoured that Fleetwood Mac had disbanded, but Buckingham commented that he was unhappy at allowing "Mirage" to remain the band's last effort.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: The "Rumours" line-up of Fleetwood Mac recorded one more album, their fourteenth studio album, "Tango in the Night", in 1987. As with various other Fleetwood Mac albums, the material started off as a Buckingham solo album before becoming a group project. The album went on to become their best-selling release since "Rumours", especially in the UK where it hit No. 1 three times in the following year. The album sold three million copies in the US and contained four hits: Christine McVie's "Little Lies" and "Everywhere" ("Little Lies" being cowritten with McVie's new husband, Eddy Quintela), Sandy Stewart and Nicks's "Seven Wonders", and Buckingham's "Big Love". "Family Man" (Buckingham and Richard Dashut) and "Isn't It Midnight" (Christine McVie) were also released as singles, with less success.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: With a ten-week tour scheduled, Buckingham held back at the last minute, saying he felt his creativity was being stifled. A group meeting at Christine McVie's house on 7 August 1987 resulted in turmoil. Tensions were coming to a head. Fleetwood said in his autobiography that there was a physical altercation between Buckingham and Nicks. Buckingham left the band the following day. After Buckingham's departure, Fleetwood Mac added two new guitarists to the band, Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, again without auditions.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: Burnette was the son of Dorsey Burnette and nephew of Johnny Burnette, both of The Rock and Roll Trio. He had already worked with Fleetwood in Zoo, with Christine McVie as part of her solo band, had done some session work with Nicks, and backed Buckingham on "Saturday Night Live". Fleetwood and Christine McVie had played on his "Try Me" album in 1985. Vito, a Peter Green admirer, had played with many artists from Bonnie Raitt to John Mayall, to Roger McGuinn in Thunderbyrd and worked with John McVie on two Mayall albums.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: The 1987–88 "Shake the Cage" tour was the first outing for this line-up. It was successful enough to warrant the release of a concert video, entitled "Tango in the Night", which was filmed at San Francisco's Cow Palace arena in December 1987.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: Capitalising on the success of "Tango in the Night", the band released a "Greatest Hits" album in 1988. It featured singles from the 1975–1988 era and included two new compositions, "No Questions Asked" written by Nicks and "As Long as You Follow", written by Christine McVie and Quintela. 'As Long as You Follow' was released as a single in 1988 but only made No. 43 in the US and No.66 in the UK, although it reached No.1 on the US Adult Contemporary charts. The "Greatest Hits" album, which peaked at No. 3 in the UK and No. 14 in the US (though it has since sold over 8 million copies there) was dedicated by the band to Buckingham, with whom they were now reconciled.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In 1990, Fleetwood Mac released their fifteenth studio album, "Behind the Mask". With this album, the band veered away from the stylised sound that Buckingham had evolved during his tenure (which was also evident in his solo work) and developed a more adult contemporary style with producer Greg Ladanyi. The album yielded only one Top 40 hit, Christine McVie's "Save Me". "Behind the Mask" only achieved Gold album status in the US, peaking at No. 18 on the "Billboard" album chart, though it entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 1. It received mixed reviews and was seen by some music critics as a low point for the band in the absence of Buckingham (who had actually made a guest appearance playing on the title track). But "Rolling Stone" magazine said that Vito and Burnette were "the best thing to ever happen to Fleetwood Mac". The subsequent "Behind the Mask" tour saw the band play sold-out shows at London's Wembley Stadium. In the final show in Los Angeles, Buckingham joined the band onstage. The two women of the band, McVie and Nicks, had decided that the tour would be their last (McVie's father had died during the tour), although both stated that they would still record with the band. In 1991, however, Nicks and Rick Vito left Fleetwood Mac altogether.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In 1992, Fleetwood arranged a 4-disc box set, spanning highlights from the band's 25-year history, entitled "25 Years – The Chain" (an edited 2-disc set was also available). A notable inclusion in the box set was "Silver Springs", a Nicks composition that was recorded during the "Rumours" sessions but was omitted from the album and used as the B-side of "Go Your Own Way". Nicks had requested use of this track for her 1991 best-of compilation "TimeSpace", but Fleetwood had refused as he had planned to include it in this collection as a rarity. The disagreement between Nicks and Fleetwood garnered press coverage and was believed to have been the main reason for Nicks leaving the band in 1991. The box set also included a new Nicks/Rick Vito composition, "Paper Doll", which was released in the US as a single and produced by Buckingham and Richard Dashut. There were also two new Christine McVie compositions, "Heart of Stone" and "Love Shines". "Love Shines" was released as a single in the UK and elsewhere. Buckingham also contributed a new song, "Make Me a Mask". Fleetwood also released a deluxe hardcover companion book to coincide with the release of the box set, titled "My 25 Years in Fleetwood Mac". The volume featured notes written by Fleetwood detailing the band's 25-year history and many rare photographs.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: The Buckingham/Nicks/McVie/McVie/Fleetwood lineup reunited in 1993 at the request of US President Bill Clinton for his first Inaugural Ball. Clinton had made Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" his campaign theme song. His request for it to be performed at the Inauguration Ball was met with enthusiasm by the band, although this line-up had no intention of reuniting again.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: Inspired by the new interest in the band, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, and Christine McVie recorded another album as Fleetwood Mac, with Billy Burnette taking lead guitar duties. Burnette left in March 1993 to record a country album and pursue an acting career and Bekka Bramlett, who had worked a year earlier with Fleetwood's Zoo, was recruited to take his place. Solo singer-songwriter/guitarist and Traffic member Dave Mason, who had worked with Bekka's parents Delaney & Bonnie twenty-five years earlier, was subsequently added. In March 1994 Billy Burnette, a good friend and co-songwriter with Delaney Bramlett, returned to the band with Fleetwood's blessing.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: The band, minus Christine McVie, toured in 1994, opening for Crosby, Stills, & Nash and in 1995 as part of a package with REO Speedwagon and Pat Benatar. This tour saw the band perform classic Fleetwood Mac songs from their 1967–1974 era. In 1995, at a concert in Tokyo, the band was greeted by former member Jeremy Spencer, who performed a few songs with them.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: On 10 October 1995, Fleetwood Mac released their sixteenth studio album, "Time", which was not a success. Although it hit the UK Top 60 for one week, the album had zero impact in the US. It failed to graze the "Billboard" Top 200 albums chart, a reversal for a band that had been a mainstay on that chart for most of the previous two decades. Shortly after the album's release, Christine McVie informed the band that the album would be her last. Bramlett and Burnette subsequently formed a country music duo, Bekka & Billy.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: Just weeks after disbanding Fleetwood Mac, Mick Fleetwood started working with Lindsey Buckingham again. John McVie was added to the sessions, and later Christine McVie. Stevie Nicks also enlisted Buckingham to produce a song for a soundtrack. In May 1996, Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, and Nicks performed together at a private party in Louisville, Kentucky, prior to the Kentucky Derby, with Steve Winwood filling in for Buckingham. A week later, the "Twister" film soundtrack was released, which featured the Nicks-Buckingham duet "Twisted", with Fleetwood on drums. This eventually led to a full reunion of the "Rumours" line-up, which officially reformed in March 1997.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: The regrouped Fleetwood Mac performed a live concert on a soundstage at Warner Bros. Burbank, California, on 22 May 1997. The concert was recorded, and from this performance came the 1997 live album "The Dance", which brought the band back to the top of the US album charts for the first time in 10 years. "The Dance" returned Fleetwood Mac to a superstar status they had not enjoyed since "Tango in the Night". The album was certified 5 million units by the RIAA. An arena tour followed the MTV premiere of "The Dance" and kept the reunited Fleetwood Mac on the road throughout much of 1997, the 20th anniversary of "Rumours". With additional musicians Neale Heywood on guitar, Brett Tuggle on keyboards, Lenny Castro on percussion and Sharon Celani (who had toured with the band in the late 1980s) and Mindy Stein on backing vocals, this would be the final appearance of the classic line-up including Christine McVie for 16 years. Neale Heywood and Sharon Celani remain touring members to this day.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In 1998 Fleetwood Mac were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Members inducted included the original band, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer, and Danny Kirwan, and "Rumours"-era members Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks, and Lindsey Buckingham. Bob Welch was not included, despite his key role in keeping the band alive during the early 1970s. The "Rumours"-era version of the band performed both at the induction ceremony and at the Grammy Awards programme that year. Peter Green attended the induction ceremony but did not perform with his former bandmates, opting instead to perform his composition "Black Magic Woman" with Santana, who were inducted the same night. Neither Jeremy Spencer nor Danny Kirwan attended. Fleetwood Mac also received the "Outstanding Contribution to Music" award at the Brit Awards (British Phonographic Industry Awards) the same year.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In 1998 Christine McVie left the band. Her departure left Buckingham and Nicks to sing all the lead vocals for the band's seventeenth album, "Say You Will", released in 2003, although Christine contributed some backing vocals and keyboards. The album debuted at No.3 on the "Billboard" 200 chart (No. 6 in the UK) and yielded chart hits with "Peacekeeper" and the title track, and a successful world arena tour which lasted through 2004. The tour grossed $27,711,129 and was ranked No. 21 in the top 25 grossing tours of 2004.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: Around 2004–05 there were rumours of a reunion of the early line-up of Fleetwood Mac involving Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer. While these two apparently remained unconvinced, in April 2006 bassist John McVie, during a question-and-answer session on the "Penguin" Fleetwood Mac fan website, said of the reunion idea:


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In interviews given in November 2006 to support his solo album "Under the Skin", Buckingham stated that plans for the band to reunite once more for a 2008 tour were still in the cards. Recording plans had been put on hold for the foreseeable future. In an interview Nicks gave to the UK newspaper "The Daily Telegraph" in September 2007, she stated that she was unwilling to carry on with the band unless Christine McVie returned.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In March 2008, it was mooted that Sheryl Crow might work with Fleetwood Mac in 2009. Crow and Stevie Nicks had collaborated in the past and Crow had stated that Nicks had been a great teacher and inspiration to her. Later, Buckingham said that the potential collaboration with Crow had "lost its momentum" and the idea was abandoned.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In March 2009, Fleetwood Mac started their "Unleashed" tour, again without Christine McVie. It was a greatest hits show, although album tracks such as "Storms" and "I Know I'm Not Wrong" were also played. During their show on 20 June 2009 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Stevie Nicks premiered part of a new song that she had written about Hurricane Katrina. The song was later released as "New Orleans" on Nicks's 2011 album "In Your Dreams" with Mick Fleetwood on drums. In October 2009 and November the band toured Europe, followed by Australia and New Zealand in December. In October, The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac was re-released in an extended two-disc format (this format having been released in the US in 2002), entering at number six on the UK Albums Chart. On 1 November 2009 a one-hour documentary, "Fleetwood Mac: Don't Stop", was broadcast in the UK on BBC One, featuring recent interviews with all four current band members. During the documentary, Nicks gave a candid summary of the current state of her relationship with Buckingham, saying, "Maybe when we're 75 and Fleetwood Mac is a distant memory, we might be friends."


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: On 6 November 2009, Fleetwood Mac played the last show of the European leg of their "Unleashed" tour at London's Wembley Arena. Christine McVie was present in the audience. Nicks paid tribute to her from the stage to a standing ovation from the audience, saying that she thought about her former bandmate "every day", and dedicated that night's performance of "Landslide" to her. On 19 December 2009 Fleetwood Mac played the second-to-last show of their "Unleashed" tour to a sell-out crowd in New Zealand, at what was originally intended to be a one-off event at the TSB Bowl of Brooklands in New Plymouth. Tickets, after pre-sales, sold out within twelve minutes of public release. Another date, Sunday 20 December, was added and also sold out. The tour grossed $84,900,000 and was ranked No. 13 in the highest grossing worldwide tours of 2009. On 19 October 2010, Fleetwood Mac played a private show at the Phoenician Hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona for TPG (Texas Pacific Group).


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: On 3 May 2011, the Fox Network broadcast an episode of "Glee" entitled "Rumours" that featured six songs from the band's 1977 album. The show sparked renewed interest in the band and its commercially most successful album, and "Rumours" re-entered the "Billboard" 200 chart at No. 11 in the same week that Nicks's new solo album "In Your Dreams" debuted at No. 6. (She was quoted by "Billboard" saying that her new album was "my own little "Rumours".") The two recordings sold about 30,000 and 52,000 units respectively. Music downloads accounted for 91 per cent of the "Rumours" sales. The spike in sales for "Rumours" represented an increase of 1,951%. It was the highest chart entry by a previously issued album since "The Rolling Stones"' reissue of "Exile On Main St." re-entered the chart at No. 2 on 5 June 2010. In an interview in July 2012 Nicks confirmed that the band would reunite for a tour in 2013.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: Original Fleetwood Mac bassist Bob Brunning died on 18 October 2011 at the age of 68. Former guitarist and singer Bob Weston was found dead on 3 January 2012 at the age of 64. Former singer and guitarist Bob Welch was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 7 June 2012 at the age of 66. Don Aaron, a spokesman at the scene, stated, "He died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest." A suicide note was found. Welch had been struggling with health issues and was dealing with depression. His wife discovered his body.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: The band's 2013 tour, which took place in 34 cities, started on 4 April in Columbus, Ohio. The band performed two new songs ("Sad Angel" and "Without You"), which Buckingham described as some of the most "Fleetwood Mac-ey"-sounding songs since "Mirage". "Without You" was rerecorded from the Buckingham-Nicks era. The band released their first new studio material in ten years, "Extended Play", on 30 April 2013. The EP debuted and peaked at No. 48 in the US and produced one single, "Sad Angel". On 25 and 27 September 2013, the second and third nights of the band's London O2 shows, Christine McVie joined them on stage for "Don't Stop".


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: On 27 October 2013, the band cancelled their New Zealand and Australian performances after John McVie had been diagnosed with cancer so that he could undergo treatment. They said: "We are sorry not to be able to play these Australian and New Zealand dates. We hope our Australian and New Zealand fans as well as Fleetwood Mac fans everywhere will join us in wishing John and his family all the best." Also in October 2013, Stevie Nicks appeared in "" with Fleetwood Mac's song "Seven Wonders" playing in the background. In November 2013, Christine McVie expressed interest in a return to Fleetwood Mac, and also affirmed that John McVie's prognosis was "really good".


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: On 11 January 2014, Mick Fleetwood confirmed that Christine McVie would be rejoining Fleetwood Mac. On with the Show, a 33-city North American tour, opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 30 September 2014. A series of May–June 2015 arena dates in the United Kingdom went on sale on 14 November, selling out in minutes. Due to high demand, additional dates were added to the tour, including an Australian leg.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In January 2015, Buckingham suggested that the new album and tour might be Fleetwood Mac's last and that the band would cease operations in 2015 or soon afterwards. He concluded: "We're going to continue working on the new album and the solo stuff will take a back seat for a year or two. A beautiful way to wrap up this last act." But Mick Fleetwood stated that the new album might take a few years to complete and that they were waiting for contributions from Nicks, who had been ambivalent about committing to a new record.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In August 2016, Fleetwood revealed that while the band had "a huge amount of recorded music", virtually none of it featured Nicks. Buckingham and Christine McVie, however, had contributed multiple songs to the new project. Fleetwood told "Ultimate Classic Rock": "She [McVie] wrote up a storm. She and Lindsey could probably have a mighty strong duet album if they want. In truth, I hope it will come to more than that. There really are dozens of songs. And they're really good. So we’ll see." Nicks explained her reluctance to record another album with Fleetwood Mac. "Is it possible that Fleetwood Mac might do another record? I can never tell you yes or no, because I don't know. I honestly don't know. It's like, do you want to take a chance of going in and setting up in a room for like a year [to record an album] and having a bunch of arguing people? And then not wanting to go on tour because you just spent a year arguing?". She also emphasised that people do not buy as many records as they used to.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: On 9 June 2017, Buckingham and Christine McVie released a new album, titled "Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie", which included contributions from Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. The album was preceded by the single "In My World". A 38-date tour began on 21 June and concluded 16 November. Fleetwood Mac also planned to embark on another tour in 2018. The band headlined the second night of the Classic West concert (on 16 July 2017 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles) and the second night of the Classic East concert (at New York City's Citi Field on 30 July 2017).


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: The band received the MusiCares Person of the Year award in 2018 and reunited to perform several songs at the Grammy-hosted gala honouring them. Artists including Lorde, Harry Styles, Little Big Town and Miley Cyrus also performed. In April 2018, the song "Dreams" re-entered the Hot Rock Songs chart at No. 16 after a viral meme had featured the song. This chart re-entry came 40 years after the song had topped the Hot 100. The song's streaming totals also translated into 7,000 "equivalent album units", a jump of 12 per cent, which helped "Rumours" to go from No. 21 to No. 13 on the Top Rock Albums chart.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: That month, Buckingham departed from the group a second time, having reportedly been dismissed. The reason was said to have been a disagreement about the nature of the tour and in particular the question of whether newer or less well-known material would be included, as Buckingham wanted. Mick Fleetwood and the band appeared on "CBS This Morning" on 25 April 2018, where he said that Buckingham would not sign off on a tour that the group had been planning for a year and a half and they had reached a "huge impasse" and "hit a brick wall". When asked if Buckingham had been fired, he said, "Well, we don't use that word because I think it's ugly." He also said that "Lindsey has huge amounts of respect and kudos to what he's done within the ranks of Fleetwood Mac and always will."


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In October 2018, Buckingham filed a lawsuit against Fleetwood Mac for breach of fiduciary duty, breach of oral contract, and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, among other claims. He stated that they eventually came to a settlement, which he would not share the terms of, but claimed he was "happy enough with it". Buckingham also told his version of what had led to his departure from the band. Two days after their performance at the MusiCares event, he had a phone call from the band's manager, Irving Azoff, who had a list of things that, as Buckingham put it, "Stevie took issue with" that evening, including the guitarist's outburst just before the band's set over the intro music for their acceptance speech being the studio recording of Nicks's "Rhiannon" and the way he "smirked" during Nicks's thank-you speech. Buckingham conceded the first point. "It wasn't about it being "Rhiannon". It just undermined the impact of our entrance. That's me being very specific about the right and wrong way to do something." As for smirking, "The irony is that we have this standing joke that Stevie, when she talks, goes on a long time", Buckingham said. "I may or may not have smirked. But I look over and Christine and Mick are doing the waltz behind her as a joke." At the end of that call, Buckingham assumed Nicks was quitting Fleetwood Mac. He wrote an email to Fleetwood assuring the drummer that the group could continue. There was no reply. A couple of days later, Buckingham said, "I called Irving and said, 'This feels funny. Is Stevie leaving the band, or am I getting kicked out?'." Azoff told the guitarist he was "getting ousted" and that Nicks gave the rest of the band "an ultimatum: Either you go or she's gonna go."


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: Former Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell and Neil Finn of Crowded House were named to replace Buckingham. On "CBS This Morning", Fleetwood said that Fleetwood Mac had been reborn and that "This is the new lineup of Fleetwood Mac." Aside from touring, the band planned to record new music with Campbell and Finn in the future. The band's "An Evening with Fleetwood Mac" tour started in October 2018. The band launched the tour at the iHeartRadio Music Festival on 21 September 2018 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: On 8 June 2018, former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Danny Kirwan died at age 68, having contracted pneumonia earlier in the year. The British music magazine "Mojo" quoted Christine McVie as saying: "Danny Kirwan was "the" white English blues guy. Nobody else could play like him. He was a one-off. Danny and Peter [Green] gelled so well together. Danny had a very precise, piercing vibrato – a unique sound. He was a perfectionist; a fantastic musician and a fantastic writer." Kirwan's song "Tell Me All the Things You Do" from "Kiln House" was included in the set of the 2018–19 An Evening with Fleetwood Mac tour.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: On 28 May 2020, Neil Finn, featuring Nicks and McVie with Campbell on guitar, released the song "Find Your Way Back Home" for the Auckland homeless shelter Auckland City Mission.


title: Fleetwood Mac

text: In October 2020, "Rumours" again entered the "Billboard" top 10. The album received 30.6 million streams on streaming platforms the week of 15 October, in part due to a viral video featuring the song "Dreams".


title: Gal Gadot

text: Gal Gadot-Varsano ( ; born 30 April 1985) is an Israeli actress and model. At age 18, she was crowned Miss Israel 2004. She then served in the Israel Defense Forces for two years as a combat fitness instructor, whereafter she began studying at IDC Herzliya while building her modeling and acting careers.


title: Gal Gadot

text: Her first international film performance was as Gisele Yashar in "Fast & Furious" (2009), a part she reprised in subsequent installments of "The Fast Saga". Gadot went on to achieve global stardom for her portrayal of Wonder Woman in the DC Extended Universe, including in "" (2016) and "Wonder Woman" (2017). She has since starred in the Netflix action-comedy film "Red Notice" (2021) and the mystery film "Death on the Nile" (2022).


title: Gal Gadot

text: Dubbed the "biggest Israeli superstar" by local media outlets, Gadot was included on the list of the 100 most influential people in the world by "Time" in 2018, and has placed twice in annual rankings of the world's highest-paid actresses.


title: Gal Gadot

text: Gadot was born on 30 April 1985 in Petah Tikva, Israel, where she first lived; she was later raised in the city of Rosh HaAyin. In Hebrew, her given name means "wave" and her surname means "riverbanks". Her father is Michael Gadot, an engineer, and her mother is Irit Gadot (), a physical education teacher. Prior to her birth, her parents had Hebraized their surname from "Greenstein" to "Gadot"; her father is a sixth-generation Sabra (i.e. Israel-born Jew). She has a younger sister named Dana. Gadot has stated that she was brought up in a "very Jewish, Israeli family environment" and is of Ashkenazi descent. Her maternal grandparents were born in 20th-century Europe; her grandfather survived the Holocaust following his imprisonment at the Auschwitz concentration camp during Nazi Germany's occupation of Czechslovakia, while her grandmother managed to escape the continent before the outbreak of World War II.


title: Gal Gadot

text: Growing up in Israel, Gadot learned and danced jazz and hip-hop for 12 years, and her first jobs were working at a local Burger King as well as babysitting. She graduated from Begin High School in Rosh HaAyin, majoring in biology. As Jewish high schools in Israel often take their sophomores on trips to Holocaust memorial sites, Gadot went to Poland to gain a first-hand understanding of two Nazi concentration camps: Auschwitz and Majdanek. About the experience, she reminisced: "I stood there on top of a mountain of ashes. I, an entitled child, felt the suffering the Muselmann experienced back then. When it was time to give my speech at the memorial ceremony, my eyes filled up with tears, and I could not control the shivering. I returned home more mature and cried with my grandfather about that, coming a full circle from his childhood to mine."


title: Gal Gadot

text: At age 18, Gadot entered the national beauty pageant Miss Israel under the impression that it would be a "fun" experience, and stated in a "Glamour" interview: "I never thought I would win." At age 20, she enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces as a combat fitness instructor as part of her mandatory two years of military service. She has said that her military background helped her to win the role of Gisele Yashar in the 2009 film "Fast & Furious", stating: "I think the main reason was that the director Justin Lin really liked that I was in the military, and he wanted to use my knowledge of weapons." After her military service, Gadot studied law at IDC Herzliya in Israel.


title: Gal Gadot

text: At age 18, Gadot won the 2004 Miss Israel beauty pageant, and subsequently competed for Israel in the Miss Universe 2004 pageant that took place that year in Ecuador.


title: Gal Gadot

text: She has led international campaigns as a model for Miss Sixty, Huawei smartphones, Captain Morgan rum, Gucci fragrances, Vine Vera skincare and Jaguar Cars. In 2015, she became the face of Gucci's Bamboo perfume brand. She has been featured as the covergirl on "Cosmopolitan", "Glamour", "Bride Magazine", "Entertainment Weekly", "UMM", "Cleo", "Fashion", "Lucire", "FHM". Gadot was the main model for fashion brand Castro from 2008 to 2016. In 2013, her combined annual modeling and acting salary was estimated at NIS 2.4 million.


title: Gal Gadot

text: In 2007, a then 21-year-old Gadot was in the "Maxim" photo shoot "Women of the Israel Defense Forces" and was then featured on the cover of the "New York Post".


title: Gal Gadot

text: In 2018, Gadot became a brand ambassador for Revlon and Reebok. She appeared in advertisements for Revlon's "Live Boldly" campaign and Reebok's "Be More Human" campaign.


title: Gal Gadot

text: After Gadot had completed her first year of college, a casting director contacted her agent to have Gadot audition for the part of Camille Montes in the James Bond film "Quantum of Solace". Although she lost the part to Olga Kurylenko, a few months later, Gadot starred in the 2008 Israeli drama "Bubot". Three months later, the casting director from her "Quantum of Solace" audition chose Gadot over six other actresses for the role of Gisele Yashar in the action film "Fast & Furious", the fourth film in the "Fast & Furious" franchise. Gadot performed some of her own stuntwork in those films.


title: Gal Gadot

text: In 2010, she had small roles in the action comedy "Date Night" and the action-adventure comedy "Knight and Day". 2011 brought her back to the "Fast & Furious" franchise, reprising her role as Gisele in "Fast Five"; she played the character again in 2013's "Fast & Furious 6".


title: Gal Gadot

text: Gadot portrayed Wonder Woman in the superhero film "" (2016). Gadot received swordsmanship, Kung Fu, kickboxing, capoeira and Brazilian jiu-jitsu training in preparation for the role. Gadot's performance as the superhero, which was the character's first appearance in film, was singled out as one of the best parts of the film.


title: Gal Gadot

text: Gadot, fellow "Wonder Woman" actress Lynda Carter, DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson, "Wonder Woman" director Patty Jenkins and U.N. Under-Secretary-General Cristina Gallach appeared at the United Nations on 21 October 2016, the 75th anniversary of the first appearance of Wonder Woman, to mark the character's designation by the United Nations as its "Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls". The gesture was intended to raise awareness of UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 5, which seeks to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030. The decision was met with protests from UN staff members who stated in their petition to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the character is "not culturally encompassing or sensitive" and served to objectify women. As a result, the character was stripped of the designation, and the project ended on 16 December.


title: Gal Gadot

text: Also in 2016, she had a small role in John Hillcoat's crime-thriller "Triple 9", where she starred along with Kate Winslet and Aaron Paul. Later that year, she co-starred in the action crime thriller film "Criminal", as the wife of Ryan Reynolds' character, alongside Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, and Tommy Lee Jones. Her final film of 2016 was the action comedy "Keeping Up with the Joneses", in which she played a secret agent, alongside Zach Galifianakis, Jon Hamm, and Isla Fisher.


title: Gal Gadot

text: In 2017, Gadot starred in a solo film for her character, "Wonder Woman". She reprised the role in the ensemble film "Justice League", which was released in November 2017, and was her third DC Extended Universe installment. That same year, Gadot was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.


title: Gal Gadot

text: In 2018, "Time" magazine named Gadot one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and "Forbes" ranked her as the tenth highest-paid actress in the world, with annual earnings of $10 million. In the same year, Gadot voiced Shank in the Walt Disney Animation Studios film "Ralph Breaks the Internet".


title: Gal Gadot

text: In 2020, "Forbes" ranked Gadot as the third highest-paid actress in the world, with annual earnings of $31.5 million. On 11 October 2020, Gadot was confirmed to be reuniting with "Wonder Woman" director Patty Jenkins on "Cleopatra", an epic film centered on Cleopatra produced by Paramount Pictures. Later, Jenkins moved to produce the project with Kari Skogland set to direct. In December, Gadot was cast in the spy thriller "Heart of Stone".


title: Gal Gadot

text: In 2021, Gadot starred alongside Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds in the Netflix action comedy film "Red Notice", written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber. The following year, she co-starred with Kenneth Branagh, Armie Hammer, Ali Fazal, Tom Bateman, and Annette Bening in the 2022 mystery film "Death on the Nile", which was also directed by Branagh.


title: Gal Gadot

text: Gadot is slated to play the Evil Queen in a live-action adaptation of Disney's 1937 animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and she will also produce and star in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 film "To Catch a Thief".


title: Gal Gadot

text: In October 2019, Gadot formed a production company, Pilot Wave, with her husband Jaron "Yaron" Varsano, and said she will star in and co-produce an Apple TV+ limited series about actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr, as well as the Warner Bros. historical thriller film "Irena Sendler", following the life of WWII humanitarian Irena Sendler.


title: Gal Gadot

text: In 2020, Gadot co-produced, as well as starred, in the sequel film "Wonder Woman 1984" and will reprise her role in "Wonder Woman 3".


title: Gal Gadot

text: In 2008, Gadot participated in "Tfos Ta'Festigal – Harpatka BaMetzulot" ("Festigal 2008"), the highest-grossing annual Israeli musical show for kids during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, where Gadot took part as one of the local Israeli celebrities; and she acted, sang and danced – dressed as a mermaid.


title: Gal Gadot

text: Gadot was named as celebrity endorser for Smartwater in 2020, replacing Jennifer Aniston, who had served in that role since 2008.


title: Gal Gadot

text: In March 2020, Gadot and a number of other celebrities, including her "Wonder Woman 1984" co-star Kristen Wiig, performed an online version of the song "Imagine" by John Lennon, intended to raise morale during the COVID-19 pandemic. The video received backlash with critics dismissing it as an ineffective response to the pandemic; Jon Caramanica of "The New York Times" called it "an empty and profoundly awkward gesture". Gadot later acknowledged the video did not garner the positive reaction that had been intended, but was unapologetic in explaining the thinking behind it. In a 2022 interview with "InStyle" magazine, Gadot admitted that the video was done in "poor taste", but still maintained that it had "pure intentions".


title: Gal Gadot

text: Gadot married Israeli real estate developer Jaron "Yaron" Varsano in 2008. They have three daughters, born in 2011, 2017, and 2021. The two formed their own film-television production company, Pilot Wave, in 2019. Gadot and Varsano owned a boutique hotel in Tel Aviv, Israel, which she helped run, that eventually was sold to Roman Abramovich in 2015 for $26 million.


title: Gal Gadot

text: Gadot is a black belt in both karate and krav maga and an avid martial artist. She served as a trainer and combat instructor for the IDF. Her martial arts helped land her the role of Wonder Woman.


title: Gal Gadot

text: During the 2014 Gaza War, Gadot posted on Facebook a picture of herself and her daughter praying in front of Shabbat candles in support of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), accompanied by a comment that quickly accumulated over 200,000 likes as well as more than 15,000 comments of both support and criticism:


title: Gal Gadot

text: I am sending my love and prayers to my fellow Israeli citizens. Especially to all the boys and girls who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas, who are hiding like cowards behind women and children ... We shall overcome!!! #weareright #freegazafromhamas #stopterror #coexistance #loveidf


title: Gal Gadot

text: During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, Gadot called for peace between the two territories in a statement that drew backlash for expressing support for Israel and referring to the Palestinians as "neighbors" rather than by name. After that, many people called her Zionist.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco (; Spanish for "Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include "SF", "San Fran", "The ", "Frisco", and "Baghdad by the Bay".


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area are a global center of economic activity and the arts and sciences, spurred by leading universities, high-tech, healthcare, FIRE, and professional services sectors. As of 2020, the metropolitan area, with 6.7 million residents, ranked 5th by GDP ($874 billion) and 2nd by GDP per capita ($131,082) across the OECD countries, ahead of global cities like Paris, London, and Singapore. San Francisco anchors the 13th most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States with 4.6 million residents, and the fourth-largest by aggregate income and economic output, with a GDP of $669 billion in 2021. The wider San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area is the fifth most populous, with 9.5 million residents, and the third-largest by economic output, with a GDP of $1.25 trillion in 2021. In the same year, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $236.4 billion, and a GDP per capita of $289,990. San Francisco was ranked seventh in the world and third in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of March 2022.


title: San Francisco

text: As of June 2022, the Bay Area was home to four of the world's fifteen largest companies by market capitalization, and the city proper is headquarters to companies such as Wells Fargo, Salesforce, Uber, First Republic Bank, Airbnb, Twitter, Block, Levi's, Gap, Dropbox, PG&E, Lyft, and Cruise, although the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the exodus of business from downtown San Francisco. The city is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the University of San Francisco (USF), San Francisco State University (SFSU), the de Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, the SFJAZZ Center, the California Academy of Sciences, the San Francisco Giants, and the Golden State Warriors. A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its steep rolling hills and eclectic mix of architecture across varied neighborhoods, as well as its cool summers, fog, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, Alcatraz, and Chinatown and Mission districts.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established the Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for Francis of Assisi. The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, transforming an unimportant hamlet into a busy port making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time; between 1870 and 1900, approximately one quarter of California's population resided in the city proper. In 1856, San Francisco became a consolidated city-county. After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, it was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, it was a major port of embarkation for naval service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. It then became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945. After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, the rise of the "beatnik" and "hippie" countercultures, the sexual revolution, the peace movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. More recently, statewide droughts in California have strained the city's water security.


title: San Francisco

text: The earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party (led by Don Gaspar de Portolá) arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay.


title: San Francisco

text: The first European maritime presence occurred on August 5, 1775, when the Spanish "San Carlos" commanded by Juan Manuel de Ayala became the first ship to anchor in the bay. Soon after, on March 28, 1776, the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza established the Presidio of San Francisco. On October 9, Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores) was founded by Padre Francisco Palóu. In 1804, the province of Alta California was created, which included San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: In 1821, the Presidio and the Mission were ceded to Mexico by Spain. The extensive California mission system gradually lost its influence during the period of Mexican rule. Agricultural land became largely privatized as ranchos, as was occurring in other parts of California. Coastal trade increased, including a half-dozen barques from various Atlantic ports which regularly sailed in California waters.


title: San Francisco

text: Yerba Buena (after a native herb), a trading post with settlements between the Presidio and Mission grew up around the "Plaza de Yerba Buena". The plaza was later renamed Portsmouth Square (now located in the city's Chinatown and Financial District). The Presidio was commanded in 1833 by Captain Mariano G. Vallejo.


title: San Francisco

text: In 1834, Francisco de Haro became the first Alcalde of Yerba Buena. De Haro was a native of Mexico, from the west coast city of Compostela, Nayarit. A land survey of Yerba Buena was made by the Swiss immigrant Jean Jacques Vioget as prelude to the city plan. The second Alcalde José Joaquín Estudillo was a Californio from a prominent Monterey family. In 1835, while in office, he approved the first land grant in Yerba Buena: to William Richardson, a naturalized Mexican citizen of English birth. Richardson had arrived in San Francisco aboard a whaling ship in 1822. In 1825, he married Maria Antonia Martinez, eldest daughter of the Californio Ygnacio Martínez.


title: San Francisco

text: Yerba Buena began to attract American and European settlers; an 1842 census listed 21 residents (11%) born in the United States or Europe, as well as one Filipino merchant. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, and Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, and Mexico officially ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war in 1848. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. Its 1847 population was said to be 459.


title: San Francisco

text: The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers (known as "forty-niners", as in "1849"). With their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons, and hotels; many were left to rot, and some were sunk to establish title to the underwater lot. By 1851, the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870, Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land. Buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings.


title: San Francisco

text: California was quickly granted statehood in 1850, and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and a fort on Alcatraz Island to secure the San Francisco Bay. San Francisco County was one of the state's 18 original counties established at California statehood in 1850. Until 1856, San Francisco's city limits extended west to Divisadero Street and Castro Street, and south to 20th Street. In 1856, the California state government divided the county. A straight line was then drawn across the tip of the San Francisco Peninsula just north of San Bruno Mountain. Everything south of the line became the new San Mateo County while everything north of the line became the new consolidated City and County of San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: Entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush. Silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, bootlegging, and gambling. Early winners were the banking industry, with the founding of Wells Fargo in 1852 and the Bank of California in 1864. Development of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern U.S. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support) helped make the Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Chinese immigrants made the city a polyglot culture, drawn to "Old Gold Mountain", creating the city's Chinatown quarter. By 1880, Chinese made up 9.3% of the population. The first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast. By 1890, San Francisco's population approached 300,000, making it the eighth-largest city in the United States at the time. Around 1901, San Francisco was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene. The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904.


title: San Francisco

text: At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across the city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks. More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core. Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people died, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands. More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless. Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay.


title: San Francisco

text: Rebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed. Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association or SPUR was founded in 1910 to address the quality of housing after the earthquake. The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights, where many of the city's wealthy rebuilt their homes. In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose again in splendid Beaux Arts style, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915.


title: San Francisco

text: During this period, San Francisco built some of its most important infrastructure. Civil Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy was hired by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph as chief engineer for the city in September 1912 to supervise the construction of the Twin Peaks Reservoir, the Stockton Street Tunnel, the Twin Peaks Tunnel, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the Auxiliary Water Supply System, and new sewers. San Francisco's streetcar system, of which the J, K, L, M, and N lines survive today, was pushed to completion by O'Shaughnessy between 1915 and 1927. It was the O'Shaughnessy Dam, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct that would have the largest effect on San Francisco. An abundant water supply enabled San Francisco to develop into the city it has become today.


title: San Francisco

text: In ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed. Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone, and Robert Franklin Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz. 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.


title: San Francisco

text: During World War II, the 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. The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The United Nations Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco re-established peaceful relations between Japan and the Allied Powers.


title: San Francisco

text: 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. The onset of containerization made San Francisco's small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to the larger Port of Oakland. The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy. 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. From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population.


title: San Francisco

text: Over this period, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture. Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s. Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love. In 1974, the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead. In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement, with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and his assassination, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.


title: San Francisco

text: Bank of America completed 555 California Street in 1969 and the Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972, igniting a wave of "Manhattanization" that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown. The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood.


title: San Francisco

text: The two recent decades have seen booms driven by the internet industry. During the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. 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. Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000, the city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. 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.


title: San Francisco

text: The Ferry Station Post Office Building, Armour & Co. Building, Atherton House, and YMCA Hotel are historic buildings among dozens of historical landmarks in the city according to the National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several picturesque islands—Alcatraz, Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island, and small portions of Alameda Island, Red Rock Island, and Angel Island—are part of the city. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The mainland within the city limits roughly forms a "seven-by-seven-mile square", a common local colloquialism referring to the city's shape, though its total area, including water, is nearly .


title: San Francisco

text: There are more than 50 hills within the city limits. Some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Potrero Hill, and Russian Hill.


title: San Francisco

text: Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks, a pair of hills forming one of the city's highest points, forms an overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, is high and is capped with a tall cross built in 1934. Dominating this area is Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio and television transmission tower reaching 1,811 ft (552 m) above sea level.


title: San Francisco

text: The nearby San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, although neither physically passes through the city itself. The San Andreas Fault caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on a regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city constructed an auxiliary water supply system and has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction. However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage. USGS has released the California earthquake forecast which models earthquake occurrence in California.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina, Mission Bay, and Hunters Point, as well as large sections of the Embarcadero, sit on areas of landfill. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from the excavation of the Yerba Buena Tunnel through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes. The resulting soil liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Most of the city's natural watercourses, such as Islais Creek and Mission Creek, have been culverted and built over, although the Public Utilities Commission is studying proposals to daylight or restore some creeks.


title: San Francisco

text: The historic center of San Francisco is the northeast quadrant of the city anchored by Market Street and the waterfront. It is here that the Financial District is centered, with Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district, and the Tenderloin nearby. 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. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street; North Beach, the city's Little Italy and the former center of the Beat Generation; and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower. Abutting Russian Hill and North Beach is San Francisco's Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in North America. The South of Market, which was once San Francisco's industrial core, has seen significant redevelopment following the construction of Oracle Park and an infusion of startup companies. New skyscrapers, live-work lofts, and condominiums dot the area. 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.


title: San Francisco

text: West of downtown, across Van Ness Avenue, lies the large Western Addition neighborhood, which became established with a large African American population after World War II. The Western Addition is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods including Hayes Valley, the Fillmore, and Japantown, which was once the largest Japantown in North America but suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. The Western Addition survived the 1906 earthquake with its Victorians largely intact, including the famous "Painted Ladies", standing alongside Alamo Square. To the south, near the geographic center of the city is Haight-Ashbury, famously associated with 1960s hippie culture. The Haight is now home to some expensive boutiques and a few controversial chain stores, although it still retains some bohemian character.


title: San Francisco

text: North of the Western Addition is Pacific Heights, an affluent neighborhood that features the homes built by wealthy San Franciscans in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. Directly north of Pacific Heights facing the waterfront is the Marina, a neighborhood popular with young professionals that was largely built on reclaimed land from the Bay.


title: San Francisco

text: In the southeast quadrant of the city is the Mission District—populated in the 19th century by Californios and working-class immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia. In the 1910s, a wave of Central American immigrants settled in the Mission and, in the 1950s, immigrants from Mexico began to predominate. In recent years, gentrification has changed the demographics of parts of the Mission from Latino, to twenty-something professionals. Noe Valley to the southwest and Bernal Heights to the south are both increasingly popular among young families with children. East of the Mission is the Potrero Hill neighborhood, a mostly residential neighborhood that features sweeping views of downtown San Francisco. West of the Mission, the area historically known as Eureka Valley, now popularly called the Castro, was once a working-class Scandinavian and Irish area. It has become North America's first gay village, and is now the center of gay life in the city. Located near the city's southern border, the Excelsior District is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. The predominantly African American Bayview-Hunters Point in the far southeast corner of the city is one of the poorest neighborhoods and suffers from a high rate of crime, though the area has been the focus of several revitalizing and controversial urban renewal projects.


title: San Francisco

text: 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.


title: San Francisco

text: The northwestern quadrant of the city contains the Richmond, a mostly middle-class neighborhood north of Golden Gate Park, home to immigrants from other parts of Asia as well as many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Together, these areas are known as The Avenues. These two districts are each sometimes further divided into two regions: the Outer Richmond and Outer Sunset can refer to the more western portions of their respective district and the Inner Richmond and Inner Sunset can refer to the more eastern portions.


title: San Francisco

text: Many piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building, while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as a gourmet marketplace.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen "Csb") characteristic of California's coast, with moist, mild winters and dry summers. San Francisco's weather is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the city, and the water of San Francisco Bay to the north and east. This moderates temperature swings and produces a remarkably mild year-round climate with little seasonal temperature variation.


title: San Francisco

text: Among major U.S. cities, San Francisco has the coolest daily mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures for June, July, and August.


title: San Francisco

text: During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low-pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, which creates the city's characteristic cool winds and fog. The fog is less pronounced in eastern neighborhoods and during the late summer and early fall. As a result, the year's warmest month, on average, is September, and on average, October is warmer than July, especially in daytime.


title: San Francisco

text: Temperatures reach or exceed on an average of only 21 and 23 days a year at downtown and San Francisco International Airport (SFO), respectively. The dry period of May to October is mild to warm, with the normal monthly mean temperature peaking in September at . The rainy period of November to April is slightly cooler, with the normal monthly mean temperature reaching its lowest in January at . On average, there are 73 rainy days a year, and annual precipitation averages . Variation in precipitation from year to year is high. Above-average rain years are often associated with warm El Niño conditions in the Pacific while dry years often occur in cold water La Niña periods. In 2013 (a "La Niña" year), a record low of rainfall was recorded at downtown San Francisco, where records have been kept since 1849. Snowfall in the city is very rare, with only 10 measurable accumulations recorded since 1852, most recently in 1976 when up to fell on Twin Peaks.


title: San Francisco

text: The highest recorded temperature at the official National Weather Service downtown observation station was on September 1, 2017. During that hot spell, the warmest ever night of was also recorded. The lowest recorded temperature was on December 11, 1932. The National Weather Service provides a helpful visual aid graphing the information in the table below to display visually by month the annual typical temperatures, the past year's temperatures, and record temperatures.


title: San Francisco

text: During a normal year between 1991 and 2020 San Francisco would record a warmest night at and a coldest day at . The coldest daytime high since the station's opening in 1945 was recorded in December 1972 at .


title: San Francisco

text: As a coastal city, San Francisco will be heavily affected by climate change. , sea levels are projected to rise by as much as , resulting in periodic flooding, rising groundwater levels, and lowland floods from more severe storms.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco falls under the USDA 10b Plant hardiness zone, though some areas, particularly downtown, border zone 11a.


title: San Francisco

text: Historically, tule elk were present in San Francisco County, based on archeological evidence of elk remains in at least five different Native American shellmounds: at Hunter's Point, Fort Mason, Stevenson Street, Market Street, and Yerba Buena. Perhaps the first historical observer record was from the De Anza Expedition on March 23, 1776. 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." 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.


title: San Francisco

text: The 2020 United States census showed San Francisco's population to be 873,965, an increase of 8.5% from the 2010 census. With roughly one-quarter the population density of Manhattan, San Francisco is the second-most densely populated large American city, behind only New York City among cities greater than 200,000 population, and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, following only four of the five New York City boroughs.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco forms part of the five-county San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 4.7 million people (13th most populous in the U.S.), and has served as its traditional demographic focal point. It is also part of the greater 14-county San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, whose population is over 9.6 million, making it the fifth-largest in the United States as of 2018.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has a majority minority population, as non-Hispanic whites comprise less than half of the population, 41.9%, down from 92.5% in 1940.


title: San Francisco

text: As of the 2020 census, the racial makeup and population of San Francisco included: 361,382 Whites (41.3%), 296,505 Asians (33.9%), 46,725 African Americans (5.3%), 86,233 Multiracial Americans (9.9%), 6,475 Native Americans and Alaska Natives (0.7%), 3,476 Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders (0.4%) and 73,169 persons of other races (8.4%). There were 136,761 Hispanics or Latinos of any race (15.6%).


title: San Francisco

text: In 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population; other large Asian groups include Filipinos (5%) and Vietnamese (2%), with Japanese, Koreans and many other Asian and Pacific Islander groups represented in the city.


title: San Francisco

text: The population of Chinese ancestry is most heavily concentrated in Chinatown, Sunset District, and Richmond District, whereas Filipinos are most concentrated in the Crocker-Amazon (which is contiguous with the Filipino community of Daly City, which has one of the highest concentrations of Filipinos in North America), as well as in SoMa. The Tenderloin District is home to a large portion of the city's Vietnamese population as well as businesses and restaurants, which is known as the city's Little Saigon.


title: San Francisco

text: The principal Hispanic groups in the city were those of Mexican (7%) and Salvadoran (2%) ancestry. The Hispanic population is most heavily concentrated in the Mission District, Tenderloin District, and Excelsior District. The city's percentage of Hispanic residents is less than half of that of the state.


title: San Francisco

text: The population of African Americans in San Francisco is 6% of the city's population. The percentage of African Americans in San Francisco is similar to that of California. The majority of the city's black population reside within the neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, and in the Fillmore District. The city has long been home to a thriving and growing Jewish community, today Jewish Americans make up 10% (80,000) of the city's population as of 2018. The Jewish population of San Francisco is relatively young compared to many other major cities, and at 10% of the population, San Francisco has the third-largest Jewish community in terms of percentages after New York City, and Los Angeles, respectively. The Jewish community is one of the largest minority groups in the city and is scattered throughout the city, but the Richmond District is home to an ethnic enclave of mostly Russian Jews. The Fillmore District was formerly a mostly-Jewish neighborhood from the 1920s until the 1970s, when many of its Jewish residents moved to other neighborhoods of the city as well as the suburbs of nearby Marin County.


title: San Francisco

text: According to a 2018 study by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, Jews make up 10% (80,000) of the city's population, making Judaism the second-largest religion in San Francisco after Christianity. A prior 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, the largest religious groupings in San Francisco's metropolitan area are Christians (48%), followed by those of no religion (35%), Hindus (5%), Jews (3%), Buddhists (2%), Muslims (1%) and a variety of other religions have smaller followings. According to the same study by the Pew Research Center, about 20% of residents in the area are Protestant, and 25% professing Roman Catholic beliefs. Meanwhile, 10% of the residents in metropolitan San Francisco identify as agnostics, while 5% identify as atheists.


title: San Francisco

text: , 55% (411,728) of San Francisco residents spoke only English at home, while 19% (140,302) spoke a variety of Chinese (mostly Taishanese and Cantonese), 12% (88,147) Spanish, 3% (25,767) Tagalog, and 2% (14,017) Russian. In total, 45% (342,693) of San Francisco's population spoke a language at home other than English.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has several prominent Chinese, Mexican, and Filipino neighborhoods including Chinatown and the Mission District. Research collected on the immigrant clusters in the city show that more than half of the Asian population in San Francisco is either Chinese-born (40.3%) or Philippine-born (13.1%), and of the Mexican population 21% were Mexican-born, meaning these are people who recently immigrated to the United States. Between the years of 1990 and 2000, the number of foreign-born residents increased from 33% to nearly 40%. During this same time period, the San Francisco Metropolitan area received 850,000 immigrants, ranking third in the United States after Los Angeles and New York.


title: San Francisco

text: Of all major cities in the United States, San Francisco has the second-highest percentage of residents with a college degree, second only to Seattle. Over 44% of adults have a bachelor's or higher degree.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco had the highest rate at 7,031 per square mile, or over 344,000 total graduates in the city's .


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has the highest estimated percentage of gay and lesbian individuals of any of the 50 largest U.S. cities, at 15%.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco also has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco ranks third of American cities in median household income with a 2007 value of $65,519. Median family income is $81,136.


title: San Francisco

text: An emigration of middle-class families has left the city with a lower proportion of children than any other large American city, with the dog population cited as exceeding the child population of 115,000, in 2018.


title: San Francisco

text: The city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major U.S. city.


title: San Francisco

text: There are 345,811 households in the city, out of which: 133,366 households (39%) were individuals, 109,437 (32%) were opposite-sex married couples, 63,577 (18%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 21,677 (6%) were unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 10,384 (3%) were same-sex married couples or partnerships. The average household size was 2.26; the average family size was 3.11. 452,986 people (56%) lived in rental housing units, and 327,985 people (41%) lived in owner-occupied housing units.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, and city officials strengthened the stance in 2013 with its 'Due Process for All' ordinance. The law declared local authorities could not hold immigrants for immigration officials if they had no violent felonies on their records and did not currently face charges." The city issues a Resident ID Card regardless of the applicant's immigration status.


title: San Francisco

text: 8,035 homeless people were counted in San Francisco's 2019 point-in-time street and shelter count. This was an increase of more than 17% over the 2017 count of 6,858 people. 5,180 of the people were living unsheltered on the streets and in parks. 26% of respondents in the 2019 count identified job loss as the primary cause of their homelessness, 18% cited alcohol or drug use, and 13% cited being evicted from their residence.


title: San Francisco

text: The city of San Francisco has been dramatically increasing its spending to service the growing population homelessness crisis: spending jumped by $241 million in 2016–17 to total $275 million, compared to a budget of just $34 million the previous year. In 2017–18 the budget for combatting homelessness stood at $305 million. In the 2019–2020 budget year, the city budgeted $368 million for homelessness services. In the proposed 2020–2021 budget the city budgeted $850 million for homelessness services.


title: San Francisco

text: In January 2018 a United Nations special rapporteur on homelessness, Leilani Farha, stated that she was "completely shocked" by San Francisco's homelessness crisis during a visit to the city. She compared the "deplorable conditions" of the homeless camps she witnessed on San Francisco's streets to those she had seen in Mumbai. In May 2020, San Francisco officially sanctioned homeless encampments.


title: San Francisco

text: In 2011, 50 murders were reported, which is 6.1 per 100,000 people. There were about 134 rapes, 3,142 robberies, and about 2,139 assaults. There were about 4,469 burglaries, 25,100 thefts, and 4,210 motor vehicle thefts. The Tenderloin area has the highest crime rate in San Francisco: 70% of the city's violent crimes, and around one-fourth of the city's murders, occur in this neighborhood. The Tenderloin also sees high rates of drug abuse, gang violence, and prostitution. Another area with high crime rates is the Bayview-Hunters Point area. In the first six months of 2015 there were 25 murders compared to 14 in the first six months of 2014. However, the murder rate is still much lower than in past decades. That rate, though, did rise again by the close of 2016. According to the San Francisco Police Department, there were 59 murders in the city in 2016, an annual total that marked a 13.5% increase in the number of homicides (52) from 2015. The city has also gained a reputation for car break-ins, with over 19,000 car break-ins occurring in 2021.


title: San Francisco

text: During the first half of 2018, human feces on San Francisco sidewalks were the second-most-frequent complaint of city residents, with about 65 calls per day. The city has formed a "poop patrol" to attempt to combat the problem.


title: San Francisco

text: Several street gangs have operated in the city over the decades, including MS-13, the Sureños and Norteños in the Mission District. In 2008, a MS-13 member killed three family members as they were arriving home in the city's Excelsior District. His victims had no relationship with him, nor did they have any known gang or street crime involvement.


title: San Francisco

text: African-American street gangs familiar in other cities, including the Bloods, Crips and their sets, have struggled to establish footholds in San Francisco, while police and prosecutors have been accused of liberally labeling young African-American males as gang members. However, gangs founded in San Francisco with majority Black memberships have made their presence in the city. The gang Westmob, associated with Oakdale Mob and Sunnydale housing project gangs from the southeast area of the city, was involved in a gang war with Hunters Point-based Big Block from 1999 to the 2000s. They claim territory from West Point to Middle Point in the Hunters Point projects. In 2004, a Westmob member fatally shot a SFPD officer and wounded his partner; he was sentenced to life without parole in 2007.


title: San Francisco

text: Criminal gangs with shotcallers in China, including Triad groups such as the Wo Hop To, have been reported active in San Francisco. In 1977, an ongoing rivalry between two Chinese gangs led to a shooting attack at the Golden Dragon restaurant in Chinatown, which left 5 people dead and 11 wounded. None of the victims in this attack were gang members. Five members of the Joe Boys gang were arrested and convicted of the crime. In 1990, a gang-related shooting killed one man and wounded six others outside a nightclub near Chinatown. In 1998, six teenagers were shot and wounded at the Chinese Playground; a 16-year-old boy was subsequently arrested.


title: San Francisco

text: According to academic Rob Wilson, San Francisco is a global city, a status that pre-dated the city's popularity during the California Gold Rush. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the exodus of business from the downtown core of San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including financial services, tourism, and (increasingly) high technology. In 2016, approximately 27% of workers were employed in professional business services; 14% in leisure and hospitality; 13% in government services; 12% in education and health care; 11% in trade, transportation, and utilities; and 8% in financial activities. In 2019, GDP in the five-county San Francisco metropolitan area grew 3.8% in real terms to $592 billion. Additionally, in 2019 the 14-county San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area had a GDP of $1.086 trillion, ranking 3rd among CSAs, and ahead of all but 16 countries. As of 2019, San Francisco County was the 7th highest-income county in the United States (among 3,142), with a per capita personal income of $139,405. Marin County, directly to the north over the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Mateo County, directly to the south on the Peninsula, were the 6th and 9th highest-income counties respectively.The legacy of the California Gold Rush turned San Francisco into the principal banking and finance center of the West Coast in the early twentieth century. Montgomery Street in the Financial District became known as the "Wall Street of the West", home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Wells Fargo corporate headquarters, and the site of the now-defunct Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. Bank of America, a pioneer in making banking services accessible to the middle class, was founded in San Francisco and in the 1960s, built the landmark modern skyscraper at 555 California Street for its corporate headquarters. Many large financial institutions, multinational banks, and venture capital firms are based in or have regional headquarters in the city. With over 30 international financial institutions, six Fortune 500 companies, and a large support infrastructure of professional services—including law, public relations, architecture and design—San Francisco is designated as an Alpha(-) World City. The 2017 Global Financial Centres Index ranked San Francisco as the sixth-most competitive financial center in the world.


title: San Francisco

text: Beginning in the 1990s, San Francisco's economy diversified away from finance and tourism towards the growing fields of high tech, biotechnology, and medical research. Technology jobs accounted for just 1 percent of San Francisco's economy in 1990, growing to 4 percent in 2010 and an estimated 8 percent by the end of 2013. San Francisco became a center of Internet start-up companies during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the subsequent social media boom of the late 2000s (decade). Since 2010, San Francisco proper has attracted an increasing share of venture capital investments as compared to nearby Silicon Valley, attracting 423 financings worth US$4.58 billion in 2013. In 2004, the city approved a payroll tax exemption for biotechnology companies to foster growth in the Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second campus and hospital of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Mission Bay hosts the UCSF Medical Center, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, and Gladstone Institutes, as well as more than 40 private-sector life sciences companies.


title: San Francisco

text: The top employer in the city is the city government itself, employing 5.6% (31,000+ people) of the city's workforce, followed by UCSF with over 25,000 employees. The largest private-sector employer is Salesforce, with 8,500 employees, as of 2018. Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and self-employed firms make up 85% of city establishments, and the number of San Franciscans employed by firms of more than 1,000 employees has fallen by half since 1977. The growth of national big box and formula retail chains into the city has been made intentionally difficult by political and civic consensus. In an effort to buoy small privately owned businesses in San Francisco and preserve the unique retail personality of the city, the Small Business Commission started a publicity campaign in 2004 to keep a larger share of retail dollars in the local economy, and the Board of Supervisors has used the planning code to limit the neighborhoods where formula retail establishments can set up shop, an effort affirmed by San Francisco voters. However, by 2016, San Francisco was rated low by small businesses in a Business Friendliness Survey.


title: San Francisco

text: Like many U.S. cities, San Francisco once had a significant manufacturing sector employing nearly 60,000 workers in 1969, but nearly all production left for cheaper locations by the 1980s. , San Francisco has seen a small resurgence in manufacturing, with more than 4,000 manufacturing jobs across 500 companies, doubling since 2011. The city's largest manufacturing employer is Anchor Brewing Company, and the largest by revenue is Timbuk2.


title: San Francisco

text: As of the first quarter of 2022, the median value of homes in San Francisco County was $1,297,030. It ranked third in the US for counties with highest median home value, behind Nantucket and San Mateo.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco became a hub for technological driven economic growth during the internet boom of the 1990s, and still holds an important position in the world city network today. Intense redevelopment towards the "new economy" makes business more technologically minded. Between the years of 1999 and 2000, the job growth rate was 4.9%, creating over 50,000 jobs in technology firms and internet content production.


title: San Francisco

text: 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. Since then, tech employment has continued to increase. In 2014, San Francisco's tech employment grew nearly 90% between 2010 and 2014, beating out Silicon Valley's 30% growth rate over the same period.


title: San Francisco

text: The tech sector's dominance in the Bay Area is internationally recognized and continues to attract new businesses and young entrepreneurs from all over the globe. San Francisco is now widely considered the most important city in the world for new technology startups. A recent high of $7 billion in venture capital was invested in the region. These startup companies hire well educated individuals looking to work in the tech industry, which helps the city have a well educated citizenry. Over 50% of San Franciscans have a four-year university degree, thus the city ranks high in terms of its population's educational level.


title: San Francisco

text: Tourism is one of the city's largest private-sector industries, accounting for more than one out of seven jobs in the city. The city's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. In 2016, it attracted the fifth-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the United States. More than 25 million visitors arrived in San Francisco in 2016, adding US$9.96 billion to the economy.


title: San Francisco

text: With a large hotel infrastructure and a world-class convention facility in the Moscone Center, San Francisco is a popular destination for annual conventions and conferences.


title: San Francisco

text: Some of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco noted by the Travel Channel include the Golden Gate Bridge and Alamo Square Park, which is home to the famous "Painted Ladies". Both of these locations were often used as landscape shots for the hit American televisionsitcom "Full House". There is also Lombard Street, known for its "crookedness" and extensive views. Tourists also visit Pier 39, which offers dining, shopping, entertainment, and views of the bay, sunbathing California sea lions, the Aquarium of the Bay, and the famous Alcatraz Island.


title: San Francisco

text: The new Terminal Project at Pier 27 opened September 25, 2014, as a replacement for the old Pier 35. Itineraries from San Francisco usually include round-trip cruises to Alaska and Mexico.


title: San Francisco

text: A heightened interest in conventioneering in San Francisco, marked by the establishment of convention centers such as Yerba Buena, acted as a feeder into the local tourist economy and resulted in an increase in the hotel industry: "In 1959, the city had fewer than thirty-three hundred first-class hotel rooms; by 1970, the number was nine thousand; and by 1999, there were more than thirty thousand." The commodification of the Castro District has contributed to San Francisco's tourist economy.


title: San Francisco

text: 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. Because of these characteristics, San Francisco is ranked the "most walkable" city in the United States by Walkscore.com. Many neighborhoods feature a mix of businesses, restaurants and venues that cater to the daily needs of local residents while also serving many visitors and tourists. Some neighborhoods are dotted with boutiques, cafés and nightlife such as Union Street in Cow Hollow, 24th Street in Noe Valley, Valencia Street in the Mission, Grant Avenue in North Beach, and Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. This approach especially has influenced the continuing South of Market neighborhood redevelopment with businesses and neighborhood services rising alongside high-rise residences.


title: San Francisco

text: Since the 1990s, the demand for skilled information technology workers from local startups and nearby Silicon Valley has attracted white-collar workers from all over the world and created a high standard of living in San Francisco. Many neighborhoods that were once blue-collar, middle, and lower class have been gentrifying, as many of the city's traditional business and industrial districts have experienced a renaissance driven by the redevelopment of the Embarcadero, including the neighborhoods South Beach and Mission Bay. The city's property values and household income have risen to among the highest in the nation, creating a large and upscale restaurant, retail, and entertainment scene. According to a 2014 quality of life survey of global cities, San Francisco has the highest quality of living of any U.S. city. However, due to the exceptionally high cost of living, many of the city's middle and lower-class families have been leaving the city for the outer suburbs of the Bay Area, or for California's Central Valley. By June 2, 2015, the median rent was reported to be as high as $4,225. The high cost of living is due in part to restrictive planning laws which limit new residential construction.


title: San Francisco

text: The international character that San Francisco has enjoyed since its founding is continued today by large numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. With 39% of its residents born overseas, San Francisco has numerous neighborhoods filled with businesses and civic institutions catering to new arrivals. In particular, the arrival of many ethnic Chinese, which began to accelerate in the 1970s, has complemented the long-established community historically based in Chinatown throughout the city and has transformed the annual Chinese New Year Parade into the largest event of its kind in its hemisphere.


title: San Francisco

text: 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. The Democrats and to a lesser extent the Green Party have dominated city politics since the late 1970s, after the last serious Republican challenger for city office lost the 1975 mayoral election by a narrow margin. San Francisco has not voted more than 20% for a Republican presidential or senatorial candidate since 1988. In 2007, the city expanded its Medicaid and other indigent medical programs into the Healthy San Francisco program, which subsidizes certain medical services for eligible residents.


title: San Francisco

text: Since 1993, the San Francisco Department of Public Health has distributed 400,000 free syringes every month aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users, as well as providing disposal sites and services.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco also has had a very active environmental community. Starting with the founding of the Sierra Club in 1892 to the establishment of the non-profit Friends of the Urban Forest in 1981, San Francisco has been at the forefront of many global discussions regarding the environment. The 1980 San Francisco Recycling Program was one of the earliest curbside recycling programs. 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. SF Greasecycle is a program to recycle used cooking oil for conversion to biodiesel.


title: San Francisco

text: The Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, completed in 2010, installed 24,000 solar panels on the roof of the reservoir. The 5-megawatt plant more than tripled the city's 2-megawatt solar generation capacity when it opened in December 2010.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has long had an LGBT-friendly history. It was home to the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, Daughters of Bilitis; the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States, José Sarria; the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk; the first openly lesbian judge appointed in the U.S., Mary C. Morgan; and the first transgender police commissioner, Theresa Sparks. 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. Survey data released in 2015 by Gallup places the proportion of LGBT adults in the San Francisco metro area at 6.2%, which is the highest proportion of the 50 most populous metropolitan areas as measured by the polling organization.


title: San Francisco

text: One of the most popular destinations for gay tourists internationally, the city hosts San Francisco Pride, one of the largest and oldest pride parades. San Francisco Pride events have been held continuously since 1972. The events are themed and a new theme is created each year. In 2013, over 1.5 million people attended, around 500,000 more than the previous year.


title: San Francisco

text: The Folsom Street Fair (FSF) is an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair that is held in September, capping San Francisco's "Leather Pride Week". It started in 1984 and is California's third-largest single-day, outdoor spectator event and the world's largest leather event and showcase for BDSM products and culture.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco's War Memorial and Performing Arts Center hosts some of the most enduring performing-arts companies in the country. The War Memorial Opera House houses the San Francisco Opera, the second-largest opera company in North America as well as the San Francisco Ballet, while the San Francisco Symphony plays in Davies Symphony Hall. Opened in 2013, the SFJAZZ Center hosts jazz performances year round.


title: San Francisco

text: The Fillmore is a music venue located in the Western Addition. 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.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has a large number of theaters and live performance venues. Local theater companies have been noted for risk taking and innovation. The Tony Award-winning non-profit American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a member of the national League of Resident Theatres. Other local winners of the Regional Theatre Tony Award include the San Francisco Mime Troupe.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco theaters frequently host pre-Broadway engagements and tryout runs, and some original San Francisco productions have later moved to Broadway.