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"headTitle": "Stairways Crisscross the Hills of San Francisco. Here’s Why People Love Them | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> is widely considered \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/CITY-OF-HILLS-With-50-plus-hills-it-s-no-2676064.php\">one of the hilliest cities in the world.\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003cbr>\nBut all this elevation gain comes with a price: stairs. The city boasts more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/201107221000/urban-stairs-of-the-bay-area\">900 public stairways\u003c/a> — everything from winding wooden paths to mosaiced climbs. It’s a charming urban feature that’s given rise to a community of stair enthusiasts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week’s question asker, George Krause, is one of many San Francisco stair admirers. He’s a photographer, and he stumbled upon the stairways during his work trips to the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Between shoots in San Francisco … [I’d] ride public transportation to a neighborhood that I had not been to before, and then just walk the streets with my camera doing street photography,” Krause said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every neighborhood in San Francisco has got these hidden stairway walks, Castro and Potrero Hill and Excelsior and you name it … they’re everywhere. So it’s like a free, fun thing to do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053514\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053514\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The twists and turns of Oakhurst Lane snake up the hillside, offering one of San Francisco’s longest and most hidden climbs on July 30, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All this got him wondering. What’s the shortest stairway in San Francisco? What’s the longest? What’s the steepest?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Shortest Stairway\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When it comes to measuring the city’s stairways, there’s a lot more debate than data. I sat down with one of the city’s leading stair enthusiasts, Alexandra Kenin, to try to get to the bottom of it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kenin claims to have walked 99.99% of all the city’s stairs. She’s also compiled a \u003ca href=\"https://www.urbanhikersf.com/sfstairmap\">digital stairway map.\u003c/a>[aside postID=news_11907457 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/garden-from-above-1020x574.jpeg']According to Kenin, San Francisco’s shortest stair is a single step in the city’s Financial District. It’s on Sansome Street, between Broadway and Pacific.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s literally railings like you would have on a multi-step stairway, yet there is just one stair,” Kenin said. “So it kind of looks like a stairway, because there’s stairway infrastructure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people would not call this one step a stairway; others would swear that it is. San Francisco Public Works, which maintains public rights of way, including stairs, offers an alternative. They list the city’s shortest stair as a five-stepper at \u003ca href=\"https://maps.app.goo.gl/yTWf4T9d8a7XXxHD6\">14th Avenue and Fanning Way.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Longest Stairway\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you ask most San Franciscans to name the city’s longest stairway, they’ll probably point you towards \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11907457/how-the-filbert-steps-came-to-be-an-oasis-in-san-francisco\">the famous Filbert or Greenwich steps\u003c/a>. Located in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood, they both offer scenic climbs up to Coit Tower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s a catch: those stairways are broken up by roads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053513\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053513\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alex Kenin pauses at the top of Oakhurst Lane, the longest staircase in San Francisco, on July 30, 2025. The staircase winds through the Forest Knolls neighborhood. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“So we should debate, is it the longest continuous stairway?” Kenin queried. Or is it the most total steps?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Public Works, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfstairways.com/stairways/oakhurst-lane/\">Oakhurst Lane stairs\u003c/a> are actually the longest. They’re on the sloping hillside of Mount Sutro near Laguna Honda Hospital. Unlike the Telegraph Hill steps, Oakhurst Lane is uninterrupted — a steady climb that amounts to an estimated 290 feet. That’s roughly 10 feet higher than the Filbert and Greenwich steps.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Steepest Stairway\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Nailing down San Francisco’s steepest staircase is even trickier. Public works doesn’t track the steepest stairways, and it’s hard to pull together accurate data about the city’s stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But based on some Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping endeavors and Kenin’s real-life experience, here are a few top contenders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Filbert Street Steps:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThese steps are scenic and punishing, climbing through lush gardens up Telegraph Hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11907460\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11907460\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized.jpg\" alt=\"A man in a red t-shirt, sunglasses and backpack poses on a set of wooden steps with a lush garden to his right.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Curious listener Eric Johnson poses on the Filbert steps. \u003ccite>(Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Normandie Terrace Steps:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThis little-known but dizzying flight of stairs connects one street to a cul-de-sac far above.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12056079\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12056079\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stairs connect Vallejo Street between Divisadero and Scott streets to the north end of Normandie Terrace in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood on Sept. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>22nd Street and Vicksburg Steps:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThis block is one of the steepest streets in the city. The grade? An estimated 31.5%. The sidewalk is a stairway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12056076\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12056076\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A man makes his way up the staircase at 22nd and Vicksburg streets on Sept. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Iron Alley Steps:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThis steep stairway is no joke. One stair \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfstairways.com/stairways/iron-alley-clayton-street-to-corbett-avenue/\">database \u003c/a>lists measurements that amount to a 51% grade slope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12056078\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12056078\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wooden stairs connect Clayton Street near Market Street to Corbett Avenue at Iron Alley in San Francisco’s Upper Market/Twin Peaks neighborhood on Sept. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Why People Love San Francisco’s Stairs\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For Kenin, stairway walks aren’t just about exercise or views. They’re about connecting with the city in a more mindful way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You get a visceral experience,” she said. “It all of a sudden becomes quieter. You can see beauty with your eyes. You might smell a jasmine plant that is blooming in someone’s lawn right next to the stairway. … You could hear a hummingbird float by.”[aside postID=news_11185731 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2016/11/2924064112_df11d9e7ec_o-1180x785.jpg']The stairs also offer a link to San Francisco’s history. Back in the day, when people got around on horseback, stairs were a practical pedestrian solution. Some streets were just too steep for horse-drawn carriages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of a cool connection to the past because people have been going up and down these stairways, probably some of them since the 1800s,” Kenin said. “So I like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re interested in walking some of San Francisco’s most iconic stairs, \u003ca href=\"https://www.urbanhikersf.com/sfstairmap\">check out Kenin’s stairway map to chart out a route of your own.\u003c/a> And, October happens to be \u003ca href=\"https://sanfranciscoparksalliance.org/our-work/programs-events/sf-stairway-month/\">“SF Stairway Month,”\u003c/a> a new thing that started in 2024. So, it’s the perfect time to get out and explore!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Almost every day when I get home from work I strap on a baby carrier and take my one year old daughter, Esme, out for a walk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>So, Esme and I are walking up the Franconia Street Steps in Bernal Heights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Esme humming\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Look at that, Esme, you can see the fog comin’ in. Isn’t it beautiful?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Esme babbling sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Some of the stairways we take have swings on them. Others are beautifully cared for, with terraced gardens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Hello. We love your steps, they’re so beautiful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>All have sweeping views.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Phew, at the top of the hill now\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Esme sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>San Francisco has countless winding pathways like this, from simple wooden stairs to mosaiced climbs and utilitarian concrete steps. It’s incredibly charming and a delightful surprise to many visitors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>George Krause: \u003c/strong>Every neighborhood in San Francisco has got these hidden stairway watch Castro and Potrero Hill and Excelsior and you name it. You know, there’s, they’re everywhere. So it’s like a free, fun thing to do, you know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Our question asker this week, George Krause, is a photographer. He often comes to the city for work and likes to spend time on the stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>George Krause: \u003c/strong>When I wasn’t shooting, you know, between shoots in San Francisco. That’s basically what I did — ride public transportation to a neighborhood that I had not been to before, and then just walk the streets with my camera, doing street photography.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>San Francisco is one of the hilliest cities in the world — and stairs are often the most direct way to get from A to B.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this got George wondering. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>George Krause:\u003c/strong> What is the longest stairway in San Francisco? What is the shortest? What is the steepest?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>George’s question won a Bay Curious voting round, so we know many of you are stair-curious too!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, we’re devoting the show to walking San Francisco’s iconic stairways. We’ll meet some stair lovers and see what’s powering their uphill devotion. Then we’ll talk with a map expert to try and answer some basic questions about the city’s stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Katrina Schwartz, you’re listening to Bay Curious. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>With more than 900 public stairways, it’s safe to say that San Francisco is a city of stairs. But when it comes to measuring them, there’s a lot more debate than data. Pinpointing the longest, the shortest, and the steepest stairways turned out to be a bigger challenge than we imagined, but Bay Curious producer Gabriela Glueck was up to the job. She met up with one stair fanatic to get some answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck:\u003c/strong> Alexandra Kenin is a quintessential stair enthusiast. She claims to have hiked 99.99% of all the city’s stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s an obsession that started back in 2007, when she first moved to San Francisco and started leafing through some guidebooks her dad had given her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> So he gave me, at the time, what was popular, which was a Zagat guide for restaurants, and he gave me Stairway Walks in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>\u003cem>Stairway Walks in San Francisco \u003c/em>was written by Adah Bakalinsky, the so-called Queen of San Francisco’s stairs. It’s got step-by-step directions to find hidden stairways, gives background info on neighborhood history and generally celebrates this unique side of San Francisco life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Alex, that book became a lifesaver when the coronavirus pandemic hit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> You know, we were stuck at home, and I was kind of going stir crazy. My partner and I found ourselves juggling a one and a half year old between meetings, and it was really stressful, and we needed a stress release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>So, she started walking, following Adah’s directions. Her quest? Walk \u003cem>all\u003c/em> of the city’s stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> You get a visceral experience …It all of a sudden becomes quieter. You can see beauty with your eyes. You might smell a jasmine plant that is blooming in someone’s lawn right next to the stairway. You could hear a hummingbird float by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The stairs also offer a window into the city’s past. Back in the day, when people got around on horseback, stairs were a practical pedestrian solution. Some streets were just too steep for horse-drawn carriages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin: \u003c/strong>And it’s kind of a cool connection to the past, because people have been going up and down these stairways, probably, some of them, since the 1800s, so I like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But Alex has also brought stair walking into the 21st century with an online map that features many of Adah’s favorites as well as some new ones. If there’s anyone who can help me figure out the longest, shortest and steepest stairway — it’s Alex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll start with the shortest. Sansome Street, between Broadway and Pacific\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> There is literally a random one step, which makes me laugh. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Sansome Street step is on the edge of the city’s Financial District, with a nice view of the Transamerica Pyramid in the background. And then, the single stair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin: \u003c/strong>There’s literally railings like you would have on a multi-step stairway, yet there is just one stair. So it kind of looks like a stairway, because there’s stairway infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> So here I am at the shortest staircase in San Francisco. It is just one step. For the sake of journalism, I’m gonna walk it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of taking a step\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>I feel like this is a good place to talk about the definition of a stairway. Some people would \u003cem>not\u003c/em> call this one-step a staircase … others would swear that it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> It really depends on your definition of a stairway. So I didn’t know if I should put that in there, but it is a stair. So I did want to include it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Many people define a stairway as two or more steps. Alex says there are plenty of two-steppers throughout the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But according to San Francisco Public Works — which maintains public rights of way, including stairs — the shortest stair is a five-stepper at 14th Avenue and Fanning Way. Do with that what you will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, the longest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> So I think it’s either the Filbert or Greenwich Street steps going up to Telegraph Hill. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Filbert and Greenwich Street steps are many people’s first guesses. They both offer scenic climbs up to Coit Tower. The lush Filbert Street steps are also home to a famous flock of parrots featured in film, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Parrot sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But — and this is where things started to get even trickier — how do you define “the longest?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin: OK\u003c/strong>, so we should debate, is it the longest continuous stairway? So when you do the Filbert or Greenwich Street steps, you are crossing various roads. So does that count?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Or is it the most total steps?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> Those two stairways, Greenwich Street steps, Filbert Street steps, are around 380 to 390.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>According to Public Works, the Oakhurst Lane stairs — on Mount Sutro near Laguna Honda Hospital — are actually the longest. That’s because, unlike Filbert and Greenwich, the lane is a continuous stairway; there aren’t roads in the middle breaking it apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It has fewer total steps, but climbs an estimated 290 feet. Making it the longest continuous stairway in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, Alex and I headed to Mount Sutro to check it out for ourselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> Alright, here we go. We’re climbing the first flight of stairs. We’ve got some concrete steps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of climbing stairs\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> It’s a foggy day. The eucalyptus trees are swaying. It’s a very atmospheric day. And if you take a look, it’s kind of funny. There’s moss growing on the stairs. I’m pretty sure it’s foggy here a lot of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As we make our way up the steps, the city kind of fades away. It feels like an isolated residential path, sandwiched between houses. And, like many San Francisco stairs, it’s cared for by community members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rick:\u003c/strong> I’m just clipping the poison oak so people can walk up and down Oakhurst Lane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This is Rick, Alex and I ran into him on our walk. He lives in the neighborhood and has been walking the lane for 30 years. He’s seen all kinds of people on these steps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rick: \u003c/strong>There was one guy, he was training to go up Mount Whitney, and he put on this really heavy pack, and I think he went up and down like 15 times. But this guy was sweating, and he was just like, step by step by step. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>OK, we’ve been to the shortest and longest stairways and my legs are officially warmed up. Time for part three of the question. What is the steepest stair? Or, as our question asker George reframed it, what’s the most challenging one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is where I started to run into some \u003cem>real\u003c/em> trouble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin: \u003c/strong>This is a thing that people debate. What is the steepest Street in San Francisco? I can find 10 articles on the internet right now telling me different streets are the steepest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>There are a lot of close contenders and not a lot of accurate measuring going on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I asked Public Works about the steepest stairway, one representative said that quote, “We don’t track the steepest but likely will capture that in a longer-term asset management initiative.” Translation: they don’t know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this seemed like the kind of problem you could answer, if only you had a digital mapping specialist in your corner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>OK, the analysis question that I’m trying to answer is, which San Francisco City staircase is the steepest?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>David Medeiros is a geospatial reference and instruction specialist at Stanford. Basically, a map expert.Which is why I sent him a city data set dedicated to structures in the public right-of-way, including stairs. Then I asked him for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>So, from a technical standpoint, the process is not difficult. So, you just need one other piece of data, and that’s an elevation model for the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>David’s plan? Take a map of all the stairs and overlay it on a map of the city’s peaks and valleys and boom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>OK, I have QGIS open, and I’m going to add the data sets now. … I’m going to bring in the 1-meter digital elevation model for San Francisco. \u003cem>(Fades under)\u003c/em> First, I’m going to go grab the SF stairs, or the stairs structures, line features and overlay them on the digital elevation model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>I’m fast forwarding here, but once he’s got the two maps, it’s a simple slope calculation. Rise over run.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>So now I have a list or a table of the slope, the percent slopes for all of these things that the city has in this structures data set, that includes stairs and viaducts and retaining walls and that sort of stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> And what is the steepest stair? What did you find?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If you thought this was gonna be the payoff moment — so did I. But no.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we started looking at our top steep contenders on Google Street View, many of them just didn’t look that steep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>The more difficult part of it is the data itself. It’s the staircase data is a mess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>David says the lengths weren’t precise enough. That the public right-of-way info is more like a rough sketch. Not the kind of picture you could build a case on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>So I feel like, I feel like I failed a little bit, in a sense, like the all the work that we did, all the information it, the the actual workflow is fine. It works. The underlying elevation data is a good resource. It’s just that we don’t have good data for the stairs, the real stairs, what they really look like in the real world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>According to David, this data-to-real-world gap is a pretty common digital mapping challenge. Sometimes there’s no substitute for just going to see for yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> So I’m at the first stop on the steepest stair tour, and we are at the Glendale street stairs, and they look pretty, pretty steep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>With the help of David’s data, Alex’s real-world experience, and countless internet searches, I compiled a list of top five \u003cem>potentially\u003c/em> — and I emphasize potentially — steepest stairs in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, I devoted an entire day to \u003cem>walking all of them.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first one? Glendale street stairs in Twin Peaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> They’re kind of boring. …They’re in between two apartment buildings, and below it is this really steep road.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of walking\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> OK, so I’m at the second stair stop on this steep stairs journey, and I’m at the Normandy terrace stairs in Pacific Heights. They’re very grand, they kind of zigzag up a vertical wall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of walking up steps\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene, out of breath:\u003c/strong> You can see the bay and kind of the whole expanse of the city stretching out before you. And it is a pretty good view. And recommend you\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> All right, I’m walking over to our next stair stop, and it’s 22nd Street and Vicksburg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>These stairs are in Noe Valley… a small stretch of the 22nd street incline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene: \u003c/strong>So these are pretty amazing. It’s on an extremely steep San Francisco street, and the … basically, the sidewalk is a staircase. They’ve carved out stairs in the concrete because it’s just … it’s just too steep to walk by yourself. So here goes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This block is one of the steepest streets in the city. The grade? An estimated 31.5%. As local resident Laura tells me, it’s enough to make drivers change their plans. Also, she says it’s a prime spot for shenanigans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura: \u003c/strong>Halloween? People roll pumpkins down the hill. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> So I’m here at the Iron Alley stairways in the Twin Peaks neighborhood, and this one looks pretty steep, not gonna lie, goes straight down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Iron Alley is no joke. Averaging numbers from one stair website and my own online mapping endeavors, I’m estimating something around a 46- to-51% grade slope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene and out of breath: \u003c/strong>\u003cem>1.2.3.4.5.6. …\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Given the information available and my experience walking them, I think Iron Alley might be the steepest stairway. Some neighborhood gardeners I met on the stairs seemed to agree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Neighbor: \u003c/strong>Man, you take a tumble, you could be going all the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>I have to say that defining the longest, shortest, and steepest stairs in San Francisco ended up being a lot harder than I’d imagined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in some ways, besides the point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>First stair love note:\u003c/strong> Really, I love stairs because they are a vital part of urban infrastructure, they are beautiful, they are a great workout, they give you a sense of accomplishment when you climb them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Second stair love note: \u003c/strong>It feels like I’m living in a game or story universe where I’m discovering new pieces of the map\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Third stair love note:\u003c/strong> My favorite hike is starting in the Forest Knolls neighborhood. The stairs are green and floating and surrounded by eucalyptus trees\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fourth stair love note:\u003c/strong> they are so beautiful and surprising and mysterious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Those were stair love notes from Bay Curious listeners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That story was brought to you by producer Gabriela Glueck. If you were listening closely, you may have noticed that Gabriela said she was going to walk the five steepest stairways, but she only talked about 4. You’re right! The fifth contender was the Filbert Street steps, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11907457/how-the-filbert-steps-came-to-be-an-oasis-in-san-francisco\">we have an entire episode about the history of that stairway \u003c/a>and the beautiful garden that runs next to it. I’ll put a link in our show notes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is produced at member-supported KQED in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Gabriela Glueck, Christopher Beale and me, Katrina Schwartz.\u003cbr>\nWith extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening. Have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "San Francisco neighborhoods are known for steep hills and stairways to help residents navigate. Whether it’s Bernal Heights, Mount Sutro, Noe Valley or Telegraph Hill, we went on an adventure to find the shortest, longest and steepest stairways.",
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"title": "Stairways Crisscross the Hills of San Francisco. Here's Why People Love Them | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> is widely considered \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/CITY-OF-HILLS-With-50-plus-hills-it-s-no-2676064.php\">one of the hilliest cities in the world.\u003c/a>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cbr>\nBut all this elevation gain comes with a price: stairs. The city boasts more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/201107221000/urban-stairs-of-the-bay-area\">900 public stairways\u003c/a> — everything from winding wooden paths to mosaiced climbs. It’s a charming urban feature that’s given rise to a community of stair enthusiasts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This week’s question asker, George Krause, is one of many San Francisco stair admirers. He’s a photographer, and he stumbled upon the stairways during his work trips to the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Between shoots in San Francisco … [I’d] ride public transportation to a neighborhood that I had not been to before, and then just walk the streets with my camera doing street photography,” Krause said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every neighborhood in San Francisco has got these hidden stairway walks, Castro and Potrero Hill and Excelsior and you name it … they’re everywhere. So it’s like a free, fun thing to do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053514\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053514\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0008_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The twists and turns of Oakhurst Lane snake up the hillside, offering one of San Francisco’s longest and most hidden climbs on July 30, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All this got him wondering. What’s the shortest stairway in San Francisco? What’s the longest? What’s the steepest?\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Shortest Stairway\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When it comes to measuring the city’s stairways, there’s a lot more debate than data. I sat down with one of the city’s leading stair enthusiasts, Alexandra Kenin, to try to get to the bottom of it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kenin claims to have walked 99.99% of all the city’s stairs. She’s also compiled a \u003ca href=\"https://www.urbanhikersf.com/sfstairmap\">digital stairway map.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>According to Kenin, San Francisco’s shortest stair is a single step in the city’s Financial District. It’s on Sansome Street, between Broadway and Pacific.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s literally railings like you would have on a multi-step stairway, yet there is just one stair,” Kenin said. “So it kind of looks like a stairway, because there’s stairway infrastructure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some people would not call this one step a stairway; others would swear that it is. San Francisco Public Works, which maintains public rights of way, including stairs, offers an alternative. They list the city’s shortest stair as a five-stepper at \u003ca href=\"https://maps.app.goo.gl/yTWf4T9d8a7XXxHD6\">14th Avenue and Fanning Way.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Longest Stairway\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>If you ask most San Franciscans to name the city’s longest stairway, they’ll probably point you towards \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11907457/how-the-filbert-steps-came-to-be-an-oasis-in-san-francisco\">the famous Filbert or Greenwich steps\u003c/a>. Located in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood, they both offer scenic climbs up to Coit Tower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s a catch: those stairways are broken up by roads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053513\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053513\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250730_BAY-CURIOUS_-STAIRS_-0005_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alex Kenin pauses at the top of Oakhurst Lane, the longest staircase in San Francisco, on July 30, 2025. The staircase winds through the Forest Knolls neighborhood. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“So we should debate, is it the longest continuous stairway?” Kenin queried. Or is it the most total steps?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Public Works, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfstairways.com/stairways/oakhurst-lane/\">Oakhurst Lane stairs\u003c/a> are actually the longest. They’re on the sloping hillside of Mount Sutro near Laguna Honda Hospital. Unlike the Telegraph Hill steps, Oakhurst Lane is uninterrupted — a steady climb that amounts to an estimated 290 feet. That’s roughly 10 feet higher than the Filbert and Greenwich steps.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Steepest Stairway\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Nailing down San Francisco’s steepest staircase is even trickier. Public works doesn’t track the steepest stairways, and it’s hard to pull together accurate data about the city’s stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But based on some Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping endeavors and Kenin’s real-life experience, here are a few top contenders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Filbert Street Steps:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThese steps are scenic and punishing, climbing through lush gardens up Telegraph Hill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11907460\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11907460\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized.jpg\" alt=\"A man in a red t-shirt, sunglasses and backpack poses on a set of wooden steps with a lush garden to his right.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/03/Eric-Johnson-sized-1536x864.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Curious listener Eric Johnson poses on the Filbert steps. \u003ccite>(Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The Normandie Terrace Steps:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThis little-known but dizzying flight of stairs connects one street to a cul-de-sac far above.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12056079\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12056079\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0015_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stairs connect Vallejo Street between Divisadero and Scott streets to the north end of Normandie Terrace in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood on Sept. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>22nd Street and Vicksburg Steps:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThis block is one of the steepest streets in the city. The grade? An estimated 31.5%. The sidewalk is a stairway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12056076\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12056076\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0002_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A man makes his way up the staircase at 22nd and Vicksburg streets on Sept. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Iron Alley Steps:\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\nThis steep stairway is no joke. One stair \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfstairways.com/stairways/iron-alley-clayton-street-to-corbett-avenue/\">database \u003c/a>lists measurements that amount to a 51% grade slope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12056078\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12056078\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250911_BAY-CURIOUS-STAIRS-0011_GH-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wooden stairs connect Clayton Street near Market Street to Corbett Avenue at Iron Alley in San Francisco’s Upper Market/Twin Peaks neighborhood on Sept. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Why People Love San Francisco’s Stairs\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>For Kenin, stairway walks aren’t just about exercise or views. They’re about connecting with the city in a more mindful way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You get a visceral experience,” she said. “It all of a sudden becomes quieter. You can see beauty with your eyes. You might smell a jasmine plant that is blooming in someone’s lawn right next to the stairway. … You could hear a hummingbird float by.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The stairs also offer a link to San Francisco’s history. Back in the day, when people got around on horseback, stairs were a practical pedestrian solution. Some streets were just too steep for horse-drawn carriages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s kind of a cool connection to the past because people have been going up and down these stairways, probably some of them since the 1800s,” Kenin said. “So I like that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re interested in walking some of San Francisco’s most iconic stairs, \u003ca href=\"https://www.urbanhikersf.com/sfstairmap\">check out Kenin’s stairway map to chart out a route of your own.\u003c/a> And, October happens to be \u003ca href=\"https://sanfranciscoparksalliance.org/our-work/programs-events/sf-stairway-month/\">“SF Stairway Month,”\u003c/a> a new thing that started in 2024. So, it’s the perfect time to get out and explore!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Almost every day when I get home from work I strap on a baby carrier and take my one year old daughter, Esme, out for a walk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>So, Esme and I are walking up the Franconia Street Steps in Bernal Heights.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of Esme humming\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Look at that, Esme, you can see the fog comin’ in. Isn’t it beautiful?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Esme babbling sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Some of the stairways we take have swings on them. Others are beautifully cared for, with terraced gardens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Hello. We love your steps, they’re so beautiful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>All have sweeping views.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz in scene: \u003c/strong>Phew, at the top of the hill now\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Esme sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>San Francisco has countless winding pathways like this, from simple wooden stairs to mosaiced climbs and utilitarian concrete steps. It’s incredibly charming and a delightful surprise to many visitors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>George Krause: \u003c/strong>Every neighborhood in San Francisco has got these hidden stairway watch Castro and Potrero Hill and Excelsior and you name it. You know, there’s, they’re everywhere. So it’s like a free, fun thing to do, you know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>Our question asker this week, George Krause, is a photographer. He often comes to the city for work and likes to spend time on the stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>George Krause: \u003c/strong>When I wasn’t shooting, you know, between shoots in San Francisco. That’s basically what I did — ride public transportation to a neighborhood that I had not been to before, and then just walk the streets with my camera, doing street photography.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>San Francisco is one of the hilliest cities in the world — and stairs are often the most direct way to get from A to B.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All this got George wondering. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>George Krause:\u003c/strong> What is the longest stairway in San Francisco? What is the shortest? What is the steepest?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>George’s question won a Bay Curious voting round, so we know many of you are stair-curious too!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, we’re devoting the show to walking San Francisco’s iconic stairways. We’ll meet some stair lovers and see what’s powering their uphill devotion. Then we’ll talk with a map expert to try and answer some basic questions about the city’s stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m Katrina Schwartz, you’re listening to Bay Curious. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sponsor message\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/strong>With more than 900 public stairways, it’s safe to say that San Francisco is a city of stairs. But when it comes to measuring them, there’s a lot more debate than data. Pinpointing the longest, the shortest, and the steepest stairways turned out to be a bigger challenge than we imagined, but Bay Curious producer Gabriela Glueck was up to the job. She met up with one stair fanatic to get some answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck:\u003c/strong> Alexandra Kenin is a quintessential stair enthusiast. She claims to have hiked 99.99% of all the city’s stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s an obsession that started back in 2007, when she first moved to San Francisco and started leafing through some guidebooks her dad had given her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> So he gave me, at the time, what was popular, which was a Zagat guide for restaurants, and he gave me Stairway Walks in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>\u003cem>Stairway Walks in San Francisco \u003c/em>was written by Adah Bakalinsky, the so-called Queen of San Francisco’s stairs. It’s got step-by-step directions to find hidden stairways, gives background info on neighborhood history and generally celebrates this unique side of San Francisco life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Alex, that book became a lifesaver when the coronavirus pandemic hit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> You know, we were stuck at home, and I was kind of going stir crazy. My partner and I found ourselves juggling a one and a half year old between meetings, and it was really stressful, and we needed a stress release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>So, she started walking, following Adah’s directions. Her quest? Walk \u003cem>all\u003c/em> of the city’s stairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> You get a visceral experience …It all of a sudden becomes quieter. You can see beauty with your eyes. You might smell a jasmine plant that is blooming in someone’s lawn right next to the stairway. You could hear a hummingbird float by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The stairs also offer a window into the city’s past. Back in the day, when people got around on horseback, stairs were a practical pedestrian solution. Some streets were just too steep for horse-drawn carriages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin: \u003c/strong>And it’s kind of a cool connection to the past, because people have been going up and down these stairways, probably, some of them, since the 1800s, so I like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But Alex has also brought stair walking into the 21st century with an online map that features many of Adah’s favorites as well as some new ones. If there’s anyone who can help me figure out the longest, shortest and steepest stairway — it’s Alex.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll start with the shortest. Sansome Street, between Broadway and Pacific\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> There is literally a random one step, which makes me laugh. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Sansome Street step is on the edge of the city’s Financial District, with a nice view of the Transamerica Pyramid in the background. And then, the single stair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin: \u003c/strong>There’s literally railings like you would have on a multi-step stairway, yet there is just one stair. So it kind of looks like a stairway, because there’s stairway infrastructure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> So here I am at the shortest staircase in San Francisco. It is just one step. For the sake of journalism, I’m gonna walk it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sound of taking a step\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>I feel like this is a good place to talk about the definition of a stairway. Some people would \u003cem>not\u003c/em> call this one-step a staircase … others would swear that it is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> It really depends on your definition of a stairway. So I didn’t know if I should put that in there, but it is a stair. So I did want to include it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Many people define a stairway as two or more steps. Alex says there are plenty of two-steppers throughout the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But according to San Francisco Public Works — which maintains public rights of way, including stairs — the shortest stair is a five-stepper at 14th Avenue and Fanning Way. Do with that what you will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next, the longest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> So I think it’s either the Filbert or Greenwich Street steps going up to Telegraph Hill. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Filbert and Greenwich Street steps are many people’s first guesses. They both offer scenic climbs up to Coit Tower. The lush Filbert Street steps are also home to a famous flock of parrots featured in film, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Parrot sounds\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But — and this is where things started to get even trickier — how do you define “the longest?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin: OK\u003c/strong>, so we should debate, is it the longest continuous stairway? So when you do the Filbert or Greenwich Street steps, you are crossing various roads. So does that count?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Or is it the most total steps?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> Those two stairways, Greenwich Street steps, Filbert Street steps, are around 380 to 390.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>According to Public Works, the Oakhurst Lane stairs — on Mount Sutro near Laguna Honda Hospital — are actually the longest. That’s because, unlike Filbert and Greenwich, the lane is a continuous stairway; there aren’t roads in the middle breaking it apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It has fewer total steps, but climbs an estimated 290 feet. Making it the longest continuous stairway in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, Alex and I headed to Mount Sutro to check it out for ourselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> Alright, here we go. We’re climbing the first flight of stairs. We’ve got some concrete steps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of climbing stairs\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin:\u003c/strong> It’s a foggy day. The eucalyptus trees are swaying. It’s a very atmospheric day. And if you take a look, it’s kind of funny. There’s moss growing on the stairs. I’m pretty sure it’s foggy here a lot of the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As we make our way up the steps, the city kind of fades away. It feels like an isolated residential path, sandwiched between houses. And, like many San Francisco stairs, it’s cared for by community members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rick:\u003c/strong> I’m just clipping the poison oak so people can walk up and down Oakhurst Lane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This is Rick, Alex and I ran into him on our walk. He lives in the neighborhood and has been walking the lane for 30 years. He’s seen all kinds of people on these steps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rick: \u003c/strong>There was one guy, he was training to go up Mount Whitney, and he put on this really heavy pack, and I think he went up and down like 15 times. But this guy was sweating, and he was just like, step by step by step. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>OK, we’ve been to the shortest and longest stairways and my legs are officially warmed up. Time for part three of the question. What is the steepest stair? Or, as our question asker George reframed it, what’s the most challenging one?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is where I started to run into some \u003cem>real\u003c/em> trouble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexandra Kenin: \u003c/strong>This is a thing that people debate. What is the steepest Street in San Francisco? I can find 10 articles on the internet right now telling me different streets are the steepest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>There are a lot of close contenders and not a lot of accurate measuring going on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I asked Public Works about the steepest stairway, one representative said that quote, “We don’t track the steepest but likely will capture that in a longer-term asset management initiative.” Translation: they don’t know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But this seemed like the kind of problem you could answer, if only you had a digital mapping specialist in your corner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>OK, the analysis question that I’m trying to answer is, which San Francisco City staircase is the steepest?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>David Medeiros is a geospatial reference and instruction specialist at Stanford. Basically, a map expert.Which is why I sent him a city data set dedicated to structures in the public right-of-way, including stairs. Then I asked him for help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>So, from a technical standpoint, the process is not difficult. So, you just need one other piece of data, and that’s an elevation model for the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>David’s plan? Take a map of all the stairs and overlay it on a map of the city’s peaks and valleys and boom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>OK, I have QGIS open, and I’m going to add the data sets now. … I’m going to bring in the 1-meter digital elevation model for San Francisco. \u003cem>(Fades under)\u003c/em> First, I’m going to go grab the SF stairs, or the stairs structures, line features and overlay them on the digital elevation model.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>I’m fast forwarding here, but once he’s got the two maps, it’s a simple slope calculation. Rise over run.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>So now I have a list or a table of the slope, the percent slopes for all of these things that the city has in this structures data set, that includes stairs and viaducts and retaining walls and that sort of stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> And what is the steepest stair? What did you find?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If you thought this was gonna be the payoff moment — so did I. But no.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As we started looking at our top steep contenders on Google Street View, many of them just didn’t look that steep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>The more difficult part of it is the data itself. It’s the staircase data is a mess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>David says the lengths weren’t precise enough. That the public right-of-way info is more like a rough sketch. Not the kind of picture you could build a case on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Medeiros: \u003c/strong>So I feel like, I feel like I failed a little bit, in a sense, like the all the work that we did, all the information it, the the actual workflow is fine. It works. The underlying elevation data is a good resource. It’s just that we don’t have good data for the stairs, the real stairs, what they really look like in the real world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>According to David, this data-to-real-world gap is a pretty common digital mapping challenge. Sometimes there’s no substitute for just going to see for yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> So I’m at the first stop on the steepest stair tour, and we are at the Glendale street stairs, and they look pretty, pretty steep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>With the help of David’s data, Alex’s real-world experience, and countless internet searches, I compiled a list of top five \u003cem>potentially\u003c/em> — and I emphasize potentially — steepest stairs in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, I devoted an entire day to \u003cem>walking all of them.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first one? Glendale street stairs in Twin Peaks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> They’re kind of boring. …They’re in between two apartment buildings, and below it is this really steep road.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of walking\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> OK, so I’m at the second stair stop on this steep stairs journey, and I’m at the Normandy terrace stairs in Pacific Heights. They’re very grand, they kind of zigzag up a vertical wall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sounds of walking up steps\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene, out of breath:\u003c/strong> You can see the bay and kind of the whole expanse of the city stretching out before you. And it is a pretty good view. And recommend you\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> All right, I’m walking over to our next stair stop, and it’s 22nd Street and Vicksburg.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>These stairs are in Noe Valley… a small stretch of the 22nd street incline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene: \u003c/strong>So these are pretty amazing. It’s on an extremely steep San Francisco street, and the … basically, the sidewalk is a staircase. They’ve carved out stairs in the concrete because it’s just … it’s just too steep to walk by yourself. So here goes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This block is one of the steepest streets in the city. The grade? An estimated 31.5%. As local resident Laura tells me, it’s enough to make drivers change their plans. Also, she says it’s a prime spot for shenanigans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Laura: \u003c/strong>Halloween? People roll pumpkins down the hill. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene:\u003c/strong> So I’m here at the Iron Alley stairways in the Twin Peaks neighborhood, and this one looks pretty steep, not gonna lie, goes straight down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Iron Alley is no joke. Averaging numbers from one stair website and my own online mapping endeavors, I’m estimating something around a 46- to-51% grade slope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck in scene and out of breath: \u003c/strong>\u003cem>1.2.3.4.5.6. …\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Given the information available and my experience walking them, I think Iron Alley might be the steepest stairway. Some neighborhood gardeners I met on the stairs seemed to agree.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Neighbor: \u003c/strong>Man, you take a tumble, you could be going all the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>I have to say that defining the longest, shortest, and steepest stairs in San Francisco ended up being a lot harder than I’d imagined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in some ways, besides the point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>First stair love note:\u003c/strong> Really, I love stairs because they are a vital part of urban infrastructure, they are beautiful, they are a great workout, they give you a sense of accomplishment when you climb them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Second stair love note: \u003c/strong>It feels like I’m living in a game or story universe where I’m discovering new pieces of the map\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Third stair love note:\u003c/strong> My favorite hike is starting in the Forest Knolls neighborhood. The stairs are green and floating and surrounded by eucalyptus trees\u003cspan style=\"text-decoration: line-through\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fourth stair love note:\u003c/strong> they are so beautiful and surprising and mysterious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/strong> Those were stair love notes from Bay Curious listeners.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That story was brought to you by producer Gabriela Glueck. If you were listening closely, you may have noticed that Gabriela said she was going to walk the five steepest stairways, but she only talked about 4. You’re right! The fifth contender was the Filbert Street steps, but \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11907457/how-the-filbert-steps-came-to-be-an-oasis-in-san-francisco\">we have an entire episode about the history of that stairway \u003c/a>and the beautiful garden that runs next to it. I’ll put a link in our show notes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Curious is produced at member-supported KQED in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our show is made by Gabriela Glueck, Christopher Beale and me, Katrina Schwartz.\u003cbr>\nWith extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thanks for listening. Have a great week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "invasion-of-the-grub-snatchers-how-one-rich-guys-russian-boars-colonized-california",
"title": "Invasion of the Grub Snatchers: How One Rich Guy’s Russian Boars Colonized California",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wild pigs \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/quest/17488/hog-wild\">roam on the loose\u003c/a> in 56 of California’s 58 counties. Travis Mowbray of Menlo Park hasn’t seen them in the flesh here in the San Francisco Bay Area, but he’s read all sorts of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101887861/feral-pigs-rampage-bay-area\">headlines\u003c/a> about the trouble they stir up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve read that invasive wild boars present big problems for endemic wildlife, and for farmers, and for homeowners in the Bay Area. Do mountain lions or perhaps coyotes hunt these wild boars? Could they be convinced to try?” he asked.“I was thinking maybe recipe cards or a sauce?\u003cem>”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there are edge case stories of wild boars killing humans, and they opportunistically scavenge animal carcasses, many of us might be surprised to learn that boars prefer vegetables.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Primarily, we’ll see them go after grubs that are in the soil, insect larvae, acorns and bulb plants,” said David Mauk, a Natural Resource Technician at the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. Mauk took me and Mowbray on a tour of wild boar-disturbed areas in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/whats-new/mayyan-ooyakmas-rare-serpentine-soils-enchanting-find-bay-area\">Máyyan ‘Ooyákma — Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve\u003c/a>, which sits on 1,859 acres in the Diablo Range south of San Jose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The preserve used to be ranchland and still bears the marks of human development, like grasses planted for grazing. Mauk’s job is to help the native flora and fauna bounce back, but the wild boars make it difficult. The common joke is that they’re \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kf8gJzWSrw\">rototillers\u003c/a> that poop, creating excellent conditions for invasive grasses and plants that love setting up shop in disturbed soil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12051714\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12051714 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Mauk, a natural resource technician at Open Space Authority, drives through Máyyan ‘Ooyákma – Coyote Ridge, a preserve owned by Open Space Authority, in Morgan Hill on August 8, 2025. Wild Boars are an invasive species that endanger native plants and animals, as well as water sources. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The views are gorgeous in the Máyyan ‘Ooyákma — Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve, everywhere you look in these rolling, yellow hills. That is, until you look down and see soccer pitch-sized stretches of soil wild boars have turned over in their search for tasty treats underneath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Preserves like this one are special because they are some of the last protected areas for what’s called \u003ca href=\"https://protectcoyotevalley.org/serpentine-habitat-101-a-rare-world-in-our-backyard/\">serpentine habitat\u003c/a>. A very special set of plants and animals has developed over millennia to survive on this volcanic soil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the rare\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/whats-new/protecting-bay-checkerspot-butterfly#:~:text=Why%20is%20the%20Bay%20checkerspot,can%20still%20find%20the%20butterflies.\"> Bay checkerspot butterfly\u003c/a>, the official superstar species of this preserve, hangs out here because the ground hosts native flora like its favorite, the dwarf plantain. Many visitors come for the flora, too, especially during bloom season. In the spring, the fragrant fritillary’s flowers, for instance, hang down like tiny upside-down bells, and the petals also have a checkered or spotted pattern. The word “fragrant” is in its name because it gives off a sweet, gentle smell that attracts pollinators.[aside postID=news_12052988 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250804-BC-BIODIVERSITY-01-KQED.jpg']“The fragrant fritillary is one of our most sensitive species here on the ridge,” Mauk said. “There’s only a handful of spots where we have viable populations of them growing. The plant has a really short bloom window in the spring and can be sensitive to damage by, especially pigs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boar poop poses another threat. It can spread more than 30 infectious diseases, 20 of which can be transmitted to humans, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-oct-27-me-spinach27-story.html\">E. coli\u003c/a>. Something to consider, as Mawk explains that, especially in warm weather, pigs love to hang out in streams and ponds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’ll wallow in the water sources, which is one of the types of damage they do,” Mauk said. “[It] harms the sides of banks, causes a lot of erosion, damages the vegetation in those riparian areas and really destroys the habitat for other animals that want to use those, like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1941283/mark-twains-celebrated-red-legged-frogs-thriving-in-yosemite-valley\">California red-legged frog\u003c/a>.” The California red-legged frog, by the way, is another threatened species.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So … how did the pigs get here?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the early 1700s, Spanish and Russian settlers introduced domestic pigs to California as \u003ca href=\"https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Mammals/Wild-Pig#:~:text=Overview,livestock%20and%20many%20became%20feral.\">livestock\u003c/a>. Many became feral, roaming the state’s scrubby hillsides in packs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in the 1920s, a wealthy landowner with more money than sense introduced wild boar from the Ural mountains of Russia onto his property, Rancho San Carlos in the Carmel Valley south of Monterey.\u003ca href=\"https://www.ventanawild.org/news/se02/pigs.html\"> George Gordon Moore\u003c/a> wanted to start a preserve he could hunt in with his friends and business associates, as he proudly described in a letter to his neighbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12051712\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12051712 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cows graze on the hills of Máyyan ‘Ooyákma – Coyote Ridge, a preserve owned by Open Space Authority, in Morgan Hill on August 8, 2025. The preserve used to be ranchland and still bears the marks of human development, like non-native grasses planted for grazing. Cows keep those non-native grasses in check. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>“He told me that in trapping them four hounds had been killed and one helper badly wounded…The biggest boar we ever killed on the ranch, when hung, measured 9 ft. from tip to tip. The skin on his neck was three inches thick; eleven bullets were found which over the years had been embedded in the fat,” Moore wrote.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Before long, the Russian boars were mating with the Spanish domestic pigs, and they spread with abandon. Sows start breeding as early as four months old—yes, \u003cem>four months\u003c/em>—and the sows can pop out not one, but two litters a year. Most litters have four to 12 piglets, but some overachieving boars have cranked out 18. Fast forward to today, and wild pigs are now running loose in 56 of California’s 58 counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the time, people didn’t realize just how damaging it can be to bring in an animal from another ecosystem and let it loose,” Mauk lamented.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hunters want to hunt wild boars, but it’s complicated\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A young pig might be fair game for predators like coyotes and mountain lions, but adult pigs are another matter. Mature males weigh 200 pounds or more, females about 150–175 pounds. Where there’s a piglet, there’s a protective parent lurking nearby. Also, they travel in packs, called sounders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Their sounders can range from five to six, to sometimes, 10–12 pigs,” Mauk explained. “Their main predator where they originally came from in Eurasia were brown bears! We don’t really have brown bears here in the Bay Area anymore. So the job kinda falls to us.”[aside postID=news_12052889 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/9_Opt2-2000x1388.jpeg']Most coyotes and mountain lions know better than to risk an encounter with a big, fast animal that travels in packs and sports super sharp tusks. Which means, the wild pigs have the evolutionary advantage on all of us. Estimates put California’s feral pig population between 200,000 and 400,000, concentrated in central and coastal regions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wild pigs are a designated pest that can be hunted year-round without limit in California. According to the most recent Wild Pig Take Report from the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://wildlife.ca.gov/Hunting/Special-Hunts/Wild-Pig\">Department of Fish & Wildlife\u003c/a>, returned tags indicate hunters took 3,327 wild pigs \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/7773/25\">statewide\u003c/a> during the 2023–24 hunting season, a quarter of them from Monterey County alone. Because, of course, that’s where they started this party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m compassionate towards the pigs, because they are an intelligent animal. It’s not their fault they’re here. It’s not their fault that they don’t have a predator like the brown bear here. We just need to do our role in the ecosystem to make sure they don’t cause the damage that they are causing,” Mauk said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, if you like to hunt, this sounds like it’s bacon time. But it will come as no surprise to learn that local authorities have local rules governing where and how you can go after wild boars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We get lots of calls, lots of hunters. ‘Hey, what are you guys doing about your pigs? I’d love to come to your park,’” said Dana Page, a natural resource program manager for Santa Clara County Parks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in a preserve, Page explained, authorities don’t want to risk the possibility that some hiker will get shot. For another thing, if you’re close enough to shoot a boar, you’re close enough to be noticed by the sounder and attacked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Definitely, you don’t want to get close to a pig!” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12051717\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12051717 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A wild boar track indents the grass at Spreckels Hill, a protected property owned by Open Space Authority, in Morgan Hill on August 8, 2025. Wild pigs are a designated pest in California, and local agencies contract with professional outfits to trap and kill the feral creatures, which have poor eyesight and can be dangerous to humans if startled. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For a third thing, pigs are really, really clever. If they notice they’re being hunted, they’ll retreat into the night or move someplace nearby, probably across county lines just to create jurisdictional confusion. Also, they’ll breed more vigorously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Page is hopeful science will eventually offer some solves, like maybe pig birth control. Whatever the case, she figures such strategies will only reduce the wild boar population, not end them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The population has gotten to a point where we have to realize that they are here and they’re never going to be eliminated from the landscape,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area regional authorities know the local humans are getting fed up with the wild boars tearing up their lawns, defecating in their koi ponds, and treating their front yards like an all-you-can-root buffet. Multiple agencies are developing “a regional approach to feral pig management.” In plain English, officials are finally getting serious about tracking the boars’ whereabouts and even contracting with professional outfits to trap and kill boars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So if you spot wild boars, call the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/10933/636664045402970000\">local authorities\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> South Bay residents have been struggling with a weird garden invasion. Not hungry caterpillars, or cats pooping in the vegetable bed. No, think bigger. Think pigs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Clip 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wild boars are increasing their range across open spaces in the Bay Area this year. From parkland to backyards, to water district properties and hiking trails.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wild pigs travel in packs, rip up suburban lawns and mess with sensitive habitats \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Clip 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">OK, it has plagued Morgan Hill for years, the periodic pig fest, as in wild pigs feasting on neighborhood lawns and fields…\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>News Clip 3:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Look at this big clump of lawn. We talked to one homeowner who says he woke up to this this morning, after pigs turned his lawn upside down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Experts say the problem has gotten worse in recent years, especially after a series of wet winters has left moist soil teeming with grubs — a pig’s favorite food. Travis Mowbray of Menlo Park has followed these headlines. He’s never seen a boar, but he’s concerned about the effect they’re having on the natural spaces he loves.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Travis Mowbray: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve read that invasive wild boars present big problems for endemic wildlife, and for farmers, and for homeowners in the Bay Area. Do mountain lions or perhaps coyotes hunt these wild boars? Could they be convinced to try?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He’s even got some ideas to help entice predators to take on the pigs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Travis Mowbray:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I was thinking maybe recipe cards or a sauce?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All kidding aside, the boars ARE out of control. Today on the show, we’ll take a trip to see some of their destruction, learn how they got here in the first place, and gather some ideas on how to get rid of them. I’m Katrina Schwartz and you’re listening to Bay Curious. Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wild boars have been wrecking havoc in communities like San Jose, Morgan Hill and Lafayette for years. They can do a number on a lawn, but they’re also causing problems for wildland protection in some of our nature preserves. KQED’s Rachael Myrow did some rooting around to find out more.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Our question asker, Travis, and I met up for a tour of wild boar damage at the Máyyan ‘Ooyákma\u003c/span> —\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve, located in the Diablo Range south of San Jose.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Door slams sounds of driving in a truck over bumpy ground\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re with David Mauk, a Natural Resource Technician for the Santa Clara Open Space Authority, on a driving tour of this newish preserve, open to the public for only about two years. We rumbled up an old farm road in David’s truck.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of these grasses are actually non native, and these non native grasses were bred to be really hearty food for cows. So they grow a lot taller and denser than our native grasses would.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">David’s job is to help the native flora and fauna recover from this type of human intervention. The views are gorgeous everywhere you look in these rolling, yellow hills. That is…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of door slam\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Until you look down and see soccer pitch-sized stretches of soil wild boars have turned over in their search for tasty treats underneath. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Primarily we’ll see them go after, like, grubs that are in the soil, insect larva, acorns and different kinds of you know vegetative material like that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All that vigorous digging boars do creates excellent conditions for invasive grasses and plants that love setting up shop in disturbed soil.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ll also go after bulb plants. Like, our soap plant is a popular target for them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s particularly distressing here…in this preserve..special because it’s one of the last protected areas for what’s called serpentine habitat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A very special set of plants and animals have developed over millenia to survive on this volcanic soil. For example, there’s the rare\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/whats-new/protecting-bay-checkerspot-butterfly#:~:text=Why%20is%20the%20Bay%20checkerspot,can%20still%20find%20the%20butterflies.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Bay checkerspot butterfly\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the official superstar species of this preserve, with wings that look like they’re dotted with confetti in a host of harvest season colors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a host of native flora, too, like fragrant fritillary. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fragrant fritillary is one of our most sensitive species here on the ridge. There’s only a handful of spots where we have viable populations of them growing. The plant has a really short bloom window in the spring and can be sensitive to damage by, especially pigs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not just that the wild boars tear up the soil. They um — there’s no nice way to say this — they poop in the water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And their poop can spread more than 30 infectious diseases, 20 of which can be transmitted to humans. Something to consider, as David explains that, especially in warm weather, pigs love to hang out in streams and ponds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ll wallow in the water sources, which is one of the types of damage they do. Harms the sides of banks, causes a lot of erosion, damages the vegetation in those riparian areas, and really, destroys the habitat for other animals, like the California red legged frog.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which is another threatened species. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So … how did the pigs get here? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the early 1700s, Spanish and Russian settlers introduced domestic pigs to California as livestock. Many became feral. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then, in the 1920s, a wealthy land owner named George Gordon Moore introduced wild boar from the Ural mountains of Russia onto his property south of Monterey, as he proudly described in a letter to his neighbor.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice reading letter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The biggest boar we ever killed on the ranch, when hung, measured 9 ft. from tip to tip. The skin on his neck was three inches thick; eleven bullets were found which over the years had been embedded in the fat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Moore \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">apparently\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> thought it was a great idea to release wild boars onto his property—because nothing says “wholesome weekend hunting trip” like importing a literal chaos pig from the Russian wilderness.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And shocker: it went exactly how you’d expect it to go. Some of those boars broke out—\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">because of course they did\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—and started getting very friendly with the now local Spanish pigs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time, people didn’t realize just how damaging it can be to bring in an animal from another ecosystem and let it loose.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sows start breeding as early as four months old—yes, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">four months\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—and the sows can pop out not one, but two litters a year. Most litters have 4 to 12 piglets, but some overachieving boars have cranked out eighteen\u003c/span>\u003cb>.\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Fast forward to today, and wild pigs are now running loose in 56 of California’s 58 counties. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, that’s how they got here and why they’re so damaging. But our question asker, Travis, wants to know whether they have natural predators that could help keep their populations in check.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Their main predator where they originally came from in Eurasia were brown bears! We don’t really have brown bears here in the Bay Area anymore. So the job kinda falls to us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A young pig might be fair game for predators like coyotes and mountain lions. But adult pigs are another matter. Mature males weigh 200 pounds or more, females about 150-175 pounds. And where there’s a piglet, there’s a protective parent lurking nearby. Because pigs travel in packs, called “sounders.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Their sounders can range from about, you know, 5-6 pigs, to sometimes, 10-12 pigs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most coyotes and mountain lions know better than to risk an encounter with a big, fast animal that travels in packs and sports super sharp tusks. Tracking and hunting these boars is difficult for humans too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Estimates put California’s feral pig population between 200,000 and 400,000, concentrated in central and coastal regions. Wild pigs are a designated pest that can be hunted year-round without limit, but in 2023-24 hunters only reported killing around 3-thousand of them. Meanwhile, David says, they continue to devastate the delicate serpentine habitat he’s keen to protect.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m compassionate towards the pigs, because they are an intelligent animal. It’s not their fault they’re here. It’s not their fault that they don’t have a predator like the brown bear here. We just need to do our role in the ecosystem to make sure they don’t cause the damage that they are causing.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, if you like to hunt, this sounds like… it’s bacon time. But it will come as no surprise to learn local authorities have local rules governing where and how you can go after wild boars. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Page: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We gets lots of calls, lots of hunters. ‘\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, what are you guys doing about your pigs? I’d love to come to your park.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Dana Page, a natural resource program manager for Santa Clara County Parks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a park, she says, authorities don’t want to risk the possibility that some hiker photographing a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/whats-new/protecting-bay-checkerspot-butterfly#:~:text=Why%20is%20the%20Bay%20checkerspot,can%20still%20find%20the%20butterflies.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay checkerspot butterfly\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> will get shot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also, there’s a county ordinance against hunting in parks. For another thing, if you’re close enough to shoot a boar, you’re close enough to be noticed by the sounder and attacked. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Page: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Definitely, you don’t want to get close to a pig. Hahah!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For a third thing, Dana adds, pigs are really, really clever. If they notice they’re being hunted, they’ll retreat into the night, or move someplace else. Also, they’ll \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">breed more\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s hopeful science will eventually offer some solves, like maybe pig birth control. Whatever the case, she figures such strategies will only reduce the wild boar population, not end them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Page:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The population has gotten to a point where we have to realize that they are here and they’re never going to be eliminated from the landscape.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite that sobering thought, local officials are finally getting serious about dealing with the problem. Multiple agencies are teaming up to track the boars and working with professional outfits to trap and kill them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That was KQED Senior Editor Rachael Myrow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks to \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Travis Mowbray for asking this week’s question. If you’ve got a burning curiosity that you think we should investigate, head on over to baycurious.org. Right at the top of the page there’s a spot to submit your questions. And don’t forget to vote on what we should cover next while you’re there!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member supported KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our show is produced by Christopher Beale, Gabriela Glueck and me, Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening and have a great week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Originally imported to Monterey County for sport by a wealthy landowner in the 1920s, wild boars now number in the hundreds of thousands, and they are destroying sensitive habitats and suburban lawns statewide. \r\n",
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"title": "Invasion of the Grub Snatchers: How One Rich Guy’s Russian Boars Colonized California | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wild pigs \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/quest/17488/hog-wild\">roam on the loose\u003c/a> in 56 of California’s 58 counties. Travis Mowbray of Menlo Park hasn’t seen them in the flesh here in the San Francisco Bay Area, but he’s read all sorts of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101887861/feral-pigs-rampage-bay-area\">headlines\u003c/a> about the trouble they stir up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve read that invasive wild boars present big problems for endemic wildlife, and for farmers, and for homeowners in the Bay Area. Do mountain lions or perhaps coyotes hunt these wild boars? Could they be convinced to try?” he asked.“I was thinking maybe recipe cards or a sauce?\u003cem>”\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While there are edge case stories of wild boars killing humans, and they opportunistically scavenge animal carcasses, many of us might be surprised to learn that boars prefer vegetables.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Primarily, we’ll see them go after grubs that are in the soil, insect larvae, acorns and bulb plants,” said David Mauk, a Natural Resource Technician at the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. Mauk took me and Mowbray on a tour of wild boar-disturbed areas in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/whats-new/mayyan-ooyakmas-rare-serpentine-soils-enchanting-find-bay-area\">Máyyan ‘Ooyákma — Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve\u003c/a>, which sits on 1,859 acres in the Diablo Range south of San Jose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The preserve used to be ranchland and still bears the marks of human development, like grasses planted for grazing. Mauk’s job is to help the native flora and fauna bounce back, but the wild boars make it difficult. The common joke is that they’re \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kf8gJzWSrw\">rototillers\u003c/a> that poop, creating excellent conditions for invasive grasses and plants that love setting up shop in disturbed soil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12051714\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12051714 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00271_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">David Mauk, a natural resource technician at Open Space Authority, drives through Máyyan ‘Ooyákma – Coyote Ridge, a preserve owned by Open Space Authority, in Morgan Hill on August 8, 2025. Wild Boars are an invasive species that endanger native plants and animals, as well as water sources. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The views are gorgeous in the Máyyan ‘Ooyákma — Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve, everywhere you look in these rolling, yellow hills. That is, until you look down and see soccer pitch-sized stretches of soil wild boars have turned over in their search for tasty treats underneath.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Preserves like this one are special because they are some of the last protected areas for what’s called \u003ca href=\"https://protectcoyotevalley.org/serpentine-habitat-101-a-rare-world-in-our-backyard/\">serpentine habitat\u003c/a>. A very special set of plants and animals has developed over millennia to survive on this volcanic soil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, the rare\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/whats-new/protecting-bay-checkerspot-butterfly#:~:text=Why%20is%20the%20Bay%20checkerspot,can%20still%20find%20the%20butterflies.\"> Bay checkerspot butterfly\u003c/a>, the official superstar species of this preserve, hangs out here because the ground hosts native flora like its favorite, the dwarf plantain. Many visitors come for the flora, too, especially during bloom season. In the spring, the fragrant fritillary’s flowers, for instance, hang down like tiny upside-down bells, and the petals also have a checkered or spotted pattern. The word “fragrant” is in its name because it gives off a sweet, gentle smell that attracts pollinators.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“The fragrant fritillary is one of our most sensitive species here on the ridge,” Mauk said. “There’s only a handful of spots where we have viable populations of them growing. The plant has a really short bloom window in the spring and can be sensitive to damage by, especially pigs.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boar poop poses another threat. It can spread more than 30 infectious diseases, 20 of which can be transmitted to humans, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-oct-27-me-spinach27-story.html\">E. coli\u003c/a>. Something to consider, as Mawk explains that, especially in warm weather, pigs love to hang out in streams and ponds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’ll wallow in the water sources, which is one of the types of damage they do,” Mauk said. “[It] harms the sides of banks, causes a lot of erosion, damages the vegetation in those riparian areas and really destroys the habitat for other animals that want to use those, like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1941283/mark-twains-celebrated-red-legged-frogs-thriving-in-yosemite-valley\">California red-legged frog\u003c/a>.” The California red-legged frog, by the way, is another threatened species.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So … how did the pigs get here?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>In the early 1700s, Spanish and Russian settlers introduced domestic pigs to California as \u003ca href=\"https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Mammals/Wild-Pig#:~:text=Overview,livestock%20and%20many%20became%20feral.\">livestock\u003c/a>. Many became feral, roaming the state’s scrubby hillsides in packs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, in the 1920s, a wealthy landowner with more money than sense introduced wild boar from the Ural mountains of Russia onto his property, Rancho San Carlos in the Carmel Valley south of Monterey.\u003ca href=\"https://www.ventanawild.org/news/se02/pigs.html\"> George Gordon Moore\u003c/a> wanted to start a preserve he could hunt in with his friends and business associates, as he proudly described in a letter to his neighbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12051712\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12051712 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00140_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cows graze on the hills of Máyyan ‘Ooyákma – Coyote Ridge, a preserve owned by Open Space Authority, in Morgan Hill on August 8, 2025. The preserve used to be ranchland and still bears the marks of human development, like non-native grasses planted for grazing. Cows keep those non-native grasses in check. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>“He told me that in trapping them four hounds had been killed and one helper badly wounded…The biggest boar we ever killed on the ranch, when hung, measured 9 ft. from tip to tip. The skin on his neck was three inches thick; eleven bullets were found which over the years had been embedded in the fat,” Moore wrote.\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>Before long, the Russian boars were mating with the Spanish domestic pigs, and they spread with abandon. Sows start breeding as early as four months old—yes, \u003cem>four months\u003c/em>—and the sows can pop out not one, but two litters a year. Most litters have four to 12 piglets, but some overachieving boars have cranked out 18. Fast forward to today, and wild pigs are now running loose in 56 of California’s 58 counties.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At the time, people didn’t realize just how damaging it can be to bring in an animal from another ecosystem and let it loose,” Mauk lamented.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Hunters want to hunt wild boars, but it’s complicated\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A young pig might be fair game for predators like coyotes and mountain lions, but adult pigs are another matter. Mature males weigh 200 pounds or more, females about 150–175 pounds. Where there’s a piglet, there’s a protective parent lurking nearby. Also, they travel in packs, called sounders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Their sounders can range from five to six, to sometimes, 10–12 pigs,” Mauk explained. “Their main predator where they originally came from in Eurasia were brown bears! We don’t really have brown bears here in the Bay Area anymore. So the job kinda falls to us.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Most coyotes and mountain lions know better than to risk an encounter with a big, fast animal that travels in packs and sports super sharp tusks. Which means, the wild pigs have the evolutionary advantage on all of us. Estimates put California’s feral pig population between 200,000 and 400,000, concentrated in central and coastal regions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wild pigs are a designated pest that can be hunted year-round without limit in California. According to the most recent Wild Pig Take Report from the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://wildlife.ca.gov/Hunting/Special-Hunts/Wild-Pig\">Department of Fish & Wildlife\u003c/a>, returned tags indicate hunters took 3,327 wild pigs \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/7773/25\">statewide\u003c/a> during the 2023–24 hunting season, a quarter of them from Monterey County alone. Because, of course, that’s where they started this party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m compassionate towards the pigs, because they are an intelligent animal. It’s not their fault they’re here. It’s not their fault that they don’t have a predator like the brown bear here. We just need to do our role in the ecosystem to make sure they don’t cause the damage that they are causing,” Mauk said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, if you like to hunt, this sounds like it’s bacon time. But it will come as no surprise to learn that local authorities have local rules governing where and how you can go after wild boars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We get lots of calls, lots of hunters. ‘Hey, what are you guys doing about your pigs? I’d love to come to your park,’” said Dana Page, a natural resource program manager for Santa Clara County Parks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in a preserve, Page explained, authorities don’t want to risk the possibility that some hiker will get shot. For another thing, if you’re close enough to shoot a boar, you’re close enough to be noticed by the sounder and attacked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Definitely, you don’t want to get close to a pig!” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12051717\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12051717 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/250808-WILDPIGS_00515_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A wild boar track indents the grass at Spreckels Hill, a protected property owned by Open Space Authority, in Morgan Hill on August 8, 2025. Wild pigs are a designated pest in California, and local agencies contract with professional outfits to trap and kill the feral creatures, which have poor eyesight and can be dangerous to humans if startled. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For a third thing, pigs are really, really clever. If they notice they’re being hunted, they’ll retreat into the night or move someplace nearby, probably across county lines just to create jurisdictional confusion. Also, they’ll breed more vigorously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Page is hopeful science will eventually offer some solves, like maybe pig birth control. Whatever the case, she figures such strategies will only reduce the wild boar population, not end them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The population has gotten to a point where we have to realize that they are here and they’re never going to be eliminated from the landscape,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bay Area regional authorities know the local humans are getting fed up with the wild boars tearing up their lawns, defecating in their koi ponds, and treating their front yards like an all-you-can-root buffet. Multiple agencies are developing “a regional approach to feral pig management.” In plain English, officials are finally getting serious about tracking the boars’ whereabouts and even contracting with professional outfits to trap and kill boars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So if you spot wild boars, call the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sanjoseca.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/10933/636664045402970000\">local authorities\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> South Bay residents have been struggling with a weird garden invasion. Not hungry caterpillars, or cats pooping in the vegetable bed. No, think bigger. Think pigs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Clip 1: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wild boars are increasing their range across open spaces in the Bay Area this year. From parkland to backyards, to water district properties and hiking trails.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wild pigs travel in packs, rip up suburban lawns and mess with sensitive habitats \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>News Clip 2: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">OK, it has plagued Morgan Hill for years, the periodic pig fest, as in wild pigs feasting on neighborhood lawns and fields…\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>News Clip 3:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Look at this big clump of lawn. We talked to one homeowner who says he woke up to this this morning, after pigs turned his lawn upside down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Experts say the problem has gotten worse in recent years, especially after a series of wet winters has left moist soil teeming with grubs — a pig’s favorite food. Travis Mowbray of Menlo Park has followed these headlines. He’s never seen a boar, but he’s concerned about the effect they’re having on the natural spaces he loves.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Travis Mowbray: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’ve read that invasive wild boars present big problems for endemic wildlife, and for farmers, and for homeowners in the Bay Area. Do mountain lions or perhaps coyotes hunt these wild boars? Could they be convinced to try?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He’s even got some ideas to help entice predators to take on the pigs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Travis Mowbray:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I was thinking maybe recipe cards or a sauce?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All kidding aside, the boars ARE out of control. Today on the show, we’ll take a trip to see some of their destruction, learn how they got here in the first place, and gather some ideas on how to get rid of them. I’m Katrina Schwartz and you’re listening to Bay Curious. Stay with us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wild boars have been wrecking havoc in communities like San Jose, Morgan Hill and Lafayette for years. They can do a number on a lawn, but they’re also causing problems for wildland protection in some of our nature preserves. KQED’s Rachael Myrow did some rooting around to find out more.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Our question asker, Travis, and I met up for a tour of wild boar damage at the Máyyan ‘Ooyákma\u003c/span> —\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve, located in the Diablo Range south of San Jose.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Door slams sounds of driving in a truck over bumpy ground\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re with David Mauk, a Natural Resource Technician for the Santa Clara Open Space Authority, on a driving tour of this newish preserve, open to the public for only about two years. We rumbled up an old farm road in David’s truck.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most of these grasses are actually non native, and these non native grasses were bred to be really hearty food for cows. So they grow a lot taller and denser than our native grasses would.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">David’s job is to help the native flora and fauna recover from this type of human intervention. The views are gorgeous everywhere you look in these rolling, yellow hills. That is…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sound of door slam\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Until you look down and see soccer pitch-sized stretches of soil wild boars have turned over in their search for tasty treats underneath. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Primarily we’ll see them go after, like, grubs that are in the soil, insect larva, acorns and different kinds of you know vegetative material like that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All that vigorous digging boars do creates excellent conditions for invasive grasses and plants that love setting up shop in disturbed soil.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ll also go after bulb plants. Like, our soap plant is a popular target for them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s particularly distressing here…in this preserve..special because it’s one of the last protected areas for what’s called serpentine habitat. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A very special set of plants and animals have developed over millenia to survive on this volcanic soil. For example, there’s the rare\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/whats-new/protecting-bay-checkerspot-butterfly#:~:text=Why%20is%20the%20Bay%20checkerspot,can%20still%20find%20the%20butterflies.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Bay checkerspot butterfly\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the official superstar species of this preserve, with wings that look like they’re dotted with confetti in a host of harvest season colors. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s a host of native flora, too, like fragrant fritillary. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The fragrant fritillary is one of our most sensitive species here on the ridge. There’s only a handful of spots where we have viable populations of them growing. The plant has a really short bloom window in the spring and can be sensitive to damage by, especially pigs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not just that the wild boars tear up the soil. They um — there’s no nice way to say this — they poop in the water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And their poop can spread more than 30 infectious diseases, 20 of which can be transmitted to humans. Something to consider, as David explains that, especially in warm weather, pigs love to hang out in streams and ponds.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ll wallow in the water sources, which is one of the types of damage they do. Harms the sides of banks, causes a lot of erosion, damages the vegetation in those riparian areas, and really, destroys the habitat for other animals, like the California red legged frog.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Which is another threatened species. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So … how did the pigs get here? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the early 1700s, Spanish and Russian settlers introduced domestic pigs to California as livestock. Many became feral. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then, in the 1920s, a wealthy land owner named George Gordon Moore introduced wild boar from the Ural mountains of Russia onto his property south of Monterey, as he proudly described in a letter to his neighbor.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice reading letter: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The biggest boar we ever killed on the ranch, when hung, measured 9 ft. from tip to tip. The skin on his neck was three inches thick; eleven bullets were found which over the years had been embedded in the fat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Moore \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">apparently\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> thought it was a great idea to release wild boars onto his property—because nothing says “wholesome weekend hunting trip” like importing a literal chaos pig from the Russian wilderness.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And shocker: it went exactly how you’d expect it to go. Some of those boars broke out—\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">because of course they did\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—and started getting very friendly with the now local Spanish pigs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the time, people didn’t realize just how damaging it can be to bring in an animal from another ecosystem and let it loose.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sows start breeding as early as four months old—yes, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">four months\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—and the sows can pop out not one, but two litters a year. Most litters have 4 to 12 piglets, but some overachieving boars have cranked out eighteen\u003c/span>\u003cb>.\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Fast forward to today, and wild pigs are now running loose in 56 of California’s 58 counties. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, that’s how they got here and why they’re so damaging. But our question asker, Travis, wants to know whether they have natural predators that could help keep their populations in check.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Their main predator where they originally came from in Eurasia were brown bears! We don’t really have brown bears here in the Bay Area anymore. So the job kinda falls to us.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A young pig might be fair game for predators like coyotes and mountain lions. But adult pigs are another matter. Mature males weigh 200 pounds or more, females about 150-175 pounds. And where there’s a piglet, there’s a protective parent lurking nearby. Because pigs travel in packs, called “sounders.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Their sounders can range from about, you know, 5-6 pigs, to sometimes, 10-12 pigs.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most coyotes and mountain lions know better than to risk an encounter with a big, fast animal that travels in packs and sports super sharp tusks. Tracking and hunting these boars is difficult for humans too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Estimates put California’s feral pig population between 200,000 and 400,000, concentrated in central and coastal regions. Wild pigs are a designated pest that can be hunted year-round without limit, but in 2023-24 hunters only reported killing around 3-thousand of them. Meanwhile, David says, they continue to devastate the delicate serpentine habitat he’s keen to protect.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>David Mauk:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m compassionate towards the pigs, because they are an intelligent animal. It’s not their fault they’re here. It’s not their fault that they don’t have a predator like the brown bear here. We just need to do our role in the ecosystem to make sure they don’t cause the damage that they are causing.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, if you like to hunt, this sounds like… it’s bacon time. But it will come as no surprise to learn local authorities have local rules governing where and how you can go after wild boars. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Page: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We gets lots of calls, lots of hunters. ‘\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, what are you guys doing about your pigs? I’d love to come to your park.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">’\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s Dana Page, a natural resource program manager for Santa Clara County Parks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a park, she says, authorities don’t want to risk the possibility that some hiker photographing a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.openspaceauthority.org/whats-new/protecting-bay-checkerspot-butterfly#:~:text=Why%20is%20the%20Bay%20checkerspot,can%20still%20find%20the%20butterflies.\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay checkerspot butterfly\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> will get shot. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also, there’s a county ordinance against hunting in parks. For another thing, if you’re close enough to shoot a boar, you’re close enough to be noticed by the sounder and attacked. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Page: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Definitely, you don’t want to get close to a pig. Hahah!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For a third thing, Dana adds, pigs are really, really clever. If they notice they’re being hunted, they’ll retreat into the night, or move someplace else. Also, they’ll \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">breed more\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She’s hopeful science will eventually offer some solves, like maybe pig birth control. Whatever the case, she figures such strategies will only reduce the wild boar population, not end them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Dana Page:\u003c/b> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The population has gotten to a point where we have to realize that they are here and they’re never going to be eliminated from the landscape.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rachael Myrow: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite that sobering thought, local officials are finally getting serious about dealing with the problem. Multiple agencies are teaming up to track the boars and working with professional outfits to trap and kill them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That was KQED Senior Editor Rachael Myrow.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks to \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Travis Mowbray for asking this week’s question. If you’ve got a burning curiosity that you think we should investigate, head on over to baycurious.org. Right at the top of the page there’s a spot to submit your questions. And don’t forget to vote on what we should cover next while you’re there!\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member supported KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Our show is produced by Christopher Beale, Gabriela Glueck and me, Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien and everyone on team KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening and have a great week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "idora-park-and-playland-at-the-beach-bay-area-amusement-parks-of-a-bygone-era",
"title": "Idora Park and Playland-at-the-Beach: Bay Area Amusement Parks of a Bygone Era",
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"headTitle": "Idora Park and Playland-at-the-Beach: Bay Area Amusement Parks of a Bygone Era | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story originally published September 15, 2022. It has been updated to reflect that Six Flags now owns California’s Great America and in 2024 it announced that the park will close after the 2027 season.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the rest of the country cools off and settles into fall, the Bay Area has a couple of months of warm weather that seem designed for a trip to an old-fashioned amusement park. For generations Bay Area residents have sought fresh air, community and thrills. Many of these parks are gone now, and their ultimate demise was the result of a very Bay Area problem: sky-high real estate values.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriouspodcastinfo]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A center of culture in Oakland\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Oakland was a city on the move at the turn of the century. Still a few years from the automobile becoming ubiquitous, the city bustled with kinetic energy from bicycles, pedestrians and streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A group of business and property owners who called themselves the Realty Syndicate owned most of the streetcars and the land they ran over. Commuters used the trolleys on weekdays, but on the weekends there wasn’t much happening around Oakland that necessitated a streetcar ride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Realty Syndicate came up with a strategy to increase weekend ridership and the value of land it owned in North Oakland — a parcel bordered by Telegraph and Shattuck avenues to the east and west, and 58th and 56th streets to the north and south. There was already a sleepy neighborhood park there, called Ayala Park, but Realty Syndicate had big plans for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The syndicate leased Ayala Park to Ingersoll Amusements, who built a beautiful amusement park destination for Oaklanders. They named it Idora Park and opened its doors to the public in 1903. Visitors could conveniently reach it by riding the trolleys owned by the syndicate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925587\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11925587 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance-800x513.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"513\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance-800x513.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance-1020x653.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance-160x103.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The main entrance of Oakland’s Idora Park. \u003ccite>(JL/Oakland LocalWiki)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the price of admission, just $0.10, visitors could access Idora Park’s beautifully landscaped grounds with many attractions and exhibits on display.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There were a huge number of things that would get people thinking about new technologies,” said amusement park historian TJ Fisher. “They had an experience that showed you what a coal mine was like.” Concessions and some of the rides cost a little extra, and Idora Park had swings, slides, a bandstand, a scenic railway and a pool, which was segregated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recounting his life story to the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, native Oaklander and Olympic gold medalist Archie Williams remembered being barred from joining his friends at the Idora Park pool because of a sign that read “No Blacks Allowed!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925584\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11925584\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"329\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-160x66.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Idora Park in 1910. \u003ccite>(JL/Oakland LocalWiki)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After the 1906 earthquake, the Realty Syndicate used Idora Park as a home base to house and support several thousand refugees fleeing the destruction in San Francisco. In the years that followed, the park became an informal community center where demonstrations, performances and political rallies took place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was really a center of culture in Oakland before we had as many public city parks as we do today,” Fisher said. “It was something everybody would have known.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The neighborhood around Idora Park continued to grow in popularity, and land values in the area started to rise. “At the end of 1928 it was announced that the [Realty Syndicate] was going to subdivide the park, and sell it as real estate,” Fisher said. Idora Park closed and, by the end of 1929, was demolished. Homes quickly went up, the first in Oakland with underground plumbing, and many of them are still standing today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no sign there was ever an amusement park there,” Fisher said of the now quiet neighborhood just north of the 24 freeway. “Which is a real shame, because it was an important part of civic life in Oakland for so long.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>San Francisco’s very own beachside attraction\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Ocean Beach was already a popular — though hard-to-reach — destination for San Franciscans at the turn of the 20th century. The Cliff House restaurant and nearby Sutro Baths attracted people with the means to make the trip west, but when the city’s \u003cem>trolleys\u003c/em> reached the western part of the city, the makeup of the neighborhood began to shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almost immediately vendors and concessions began popping up on the beach to take advantage of the tourist traffic. Over a decade or so, a small, disorganized amusement park began to assemble at Ocean Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925590\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11925590\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-800x506.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"506\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-800x506.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-1020x646.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-1536x972.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-2048x1297.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-1920x1216.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Looff’s Hippodrome at night. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jim Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“In 1914 they actually put in the merry-go-round down there. That was the Looff’s Hippodrome,” said historian Jim Smith, author of \u003cem>San Francisco’s Playland at the Beach: The Early Years\u003c/em> and \u003cem>San Francisco’s Playland at the Beach: The Golden Years\u003c/em>. Other attractions like Shoot-the-Chutes — a primitive log flume ride — soon popped up, and the park gained popularity. Within a few years a businessman named John Friedle stepped in with financial investments and big ideas for the area now known by residents as “Chutes-at-the-Beach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Friedle wanted to make a first-rate park out of it,” Smith said. He expanded the park’s offerings, building the famous 65-foot-high Big Dipper roller coaster. He eventually stepped aside, and in 1926 George Whitney took over and gave the park the name that would stick: “Playland-at-the-Beach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925592\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11925592\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-800x620.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"620\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-800x620.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-1020x791.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-1536x1190.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Playland-at-the-Beach midway in the 1940s. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jim Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Playland-at-the-Beach becomes beloved\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Under Whitney, the various independent concessionaires began to work together. “They made it free to get in,” said Smith. “There were no gates, and if you had a dime or a quarter, you could put it toward a ride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rides like the Skyliner, the Big Dipper, Dodg ‘Em, the Scrambler, the Twister and the Diving Bell thrilled guests over the years, but one quirky attraction called the Fun House etched itself into the memory of Bay Area resident Jeanne Lawton, who would often go to Playland-at-the-Beach in the 1960s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The scariest thing about going into the Fun House when wearing a skirt was the air holes in the floor,” Lawton said, referring to something pretty unsavory: Seemingly at random, jets of air would burst up from the floor, riffling the skirts of unsuspecting women. One night, Lawton and her friends figured out what was actually going on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I happened to look up in the balcony and saw a guy that was working there grinning from ear to ear,” she said. The man would wait until women walked over the air holes, “and then he would hit the button,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawton has fond memories, too. Playland owner George Whitney invented the famous \u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10710678/its-it-the-san-francisco-treat-that-sparked-a-cult-following\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-stringify-link=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10710678/its-it-the-san-francisco-treat-that-sparked-a-cult-following\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\" data-remove-tab-index=\"true\">Its-It ice cream sandwich\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They made their own oatmeal cookies,” Lawton remembered fondly, “and then put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in between the cookies, dipped it in hot chocolate and handed it to you to eat right away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925601\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11925601\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-800x553.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"553\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-800x553.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-1020x705.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-160x111.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-1536x1062.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides.jpg 1820w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An overview showing the Skylark and the Diving Bell at Playland-at-the-Beach. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jim Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Playland’s slow decline\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>During the Great Depression, many of Playland’s independently owned concessionaires struggled to stay open as attendance at the park dwindled. George Whitney bought up many of those concessions, gaining control of much of the park. He was known as the “Barnum of the Golden Gate,” and his beachside attractions thrived until his death in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Whitneys also purchased the Cliff House, Sutro Baths and additional plots nearby for future expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whitney’s son used his experience at Playland to help Walt Disney design some of the queues on the earliest attractions at Disneyland. He was Disneyland employee No. 7 and has a window bearing his name on Main Street, U.S.A. After his father’s death, he returned to San Francisco to run Playland himself. After a few years of conflict with his mother over how the park should be run, Whitney Jr. stepped aside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1972, a developer named Jeremy Ets-Hokin bought the park, closed it and unceremoniously tore it down. “The developer wanted to build condos up there,” Smith said. “Everyone hated him in the city because, the way they saw it, he stole Playland from them. No one wanted to see Playland go, except the ones who wanted the money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925603\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11925603\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-800x1010.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1010\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-800x1010.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-1020x1288.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-160x202.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-1217x1536.jpg 1217w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-1622x2048.jpg 1622w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-1920x2424.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-scaled.jpg 2028w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Laffing Sal in the Funhouse at Playland-at-the-Beach. This item is now on display at the Musée Mécanique. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jim Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Amusement parks still struggle to survive here\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Only a few amusement parks remain in operation in the Bay Area today: Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Children’s Fairyland in Oakland and California’s Great America in Santa Clara. Six Flags, the operator of California’s Great America, announced in 2024 that they’ll close the park after the 2027 season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily, some quirky souvenirs from Playland still exist. At the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, you’ll find a rare Wurlitzer organ from Playland still in operation. At the Musée Mécanique on San Francisco’s Pier 45, you can still hear animatronic Laffing Sal’s eerie cackle. And a collector named Marianne Stevens purchased the original carousel from Looff’s Hippodrome. At 116 years old, the LeRoy King Carousel, as it’s now known, is part of the Children’s Creativity Museum in Yerba Buena Gardens. There you can still climb aboard a genuine wooden horse, and race to victory with your family and friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[baycuriousquestion]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Try to imagine the first time you saw the lights of an amusement park twinkling in the night sky…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To me those lights meant fun with my family, fried food and rides! Although to be honest, I’ve always had a little bit of a weak stomach for them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Throughout the last 100 years or so, amusement parks like Marine World, Neptune’s Beach, Great America, and Discovery Kingdom have dotted the landscape here in the Bay Area … a few are still around, but most have closed for good. In a few years, California’s Great America in Santa Clara will become the next to close its gates.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This week we remember two amusement parks that have etched themselves into the imaginations of generations of Bay Area residents….Idora Park in Oakland, and San Francisco’s Playland at the Beach. This episode first aired in 2022, but we’re bringing it back to celebrate the end of summer. I’m Katrina Schwartz. You’re listening to Bay Curious.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This week on Bay Curious, we look back at Bay Area amusement \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">parks of yesteryear. Here’s reporter Christopher Beale.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In the early 1900s, Oakland was bustling with activity. The Model-T was still a few years away so cars weren’t super commonplace yet. The streets buzzed with bicycle and trolley traffic. The main streetcar around Oakland in those days was the San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose Railway (SFOSJR), which later became the Key System. The streetcar and the land it ran on was owned by the very mob-sounding “Realty Syndicate.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An impossibly evil name for a corporation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is TJ Fisher.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the Realty syndicate was exactly what it sounded like.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> TJ grew up on the east coast. He now lives in the Castro in San Francisco and says he has loved and studied amusement parks, pretty much his entire life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I was in college, I wrote my thesis about different intersectional aspects of the way people enjoyed amusement parks over time and how that reflected other elements of culture.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The way TJ tells it, this group of wealthy businessmen…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The Realty Syndicate.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Owned the trolley system, as well as a lot of land around Oakland. The trolleys were busy on the weekdays with commuters, but on the weekends…not so much. This presented a cash flow issue for the Syndicate…they thought if they could boost weekend ridership there might be other benefits down the line. The Syndicate owned a piece of land in what is now North Oakland, just north of where the 24 freeway crosses telegraph now…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Between 56th and 58th streets and Shaddock and Telegraph.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And they leased it to this company called Ingersoll Amusements. Ingersoll set out to create a beautiful destination for Oaklanders, and the Realty Syndicate put a streetcar stop nearby. In 1904, Idora Park was born, and was an instant hit with locals.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It was just about 10 cents admission fee to get in, which would be about $3 in today’s money. That’s a fantastic bargain when you think about what it costs to get into Great America or Disneyland today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That admission got you into the more than 17 acre park where there were roller coasters, slides, swings, and all manner of concessions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You got the beautifully landscaped grounds. You got some, but not all of the rides, there were a huge number of things on display that would really get people thinking about new technologies. They had an experience that showed you what a coal mine was like. So those kinds of things would be included and then concessions like a roller coaster, a carousel would cost extra.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There was also an opera house, animals, exhibits, and a pool.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It was really a center of culture in Oakland before we had as many public city parks as we do today, you would go to Idora to get outside. It was really something that everybody would’ve known.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the Realty Syndicate…that’s the trolley company…had another motivation for making this part of Oakland a destination.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They had always hoped that the area around the park would grow and be considered desirable and they would be able to use the park for another purpose. So it was a huge shock when at the end of 1928, it was announced that the Realty trust was going to subdivide the park and sell it as real estate. And so, things were dismantled very quickly in, uh, early 1929. and now it’s a very residential neighborhood and there are no signs that there was ever an amusement park there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When Idora Park was at its most popular in the early nineteen hundreds, another amusement park popped up just across the Bay at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like Idora Park, new trolley lines played a big role…food stands and small rides greeted passengers riding all the way to the Western end of the line. Soon, the ragtag park would become a beloved getaway for young and old alike.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In 1914 they actually put in the, uh, merry-go-round there. And that was the Loof’s Hippodrome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Jim Smith.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I’m the author of, San Francisco’s Playland at the beach the early years and a second book, the golden years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Loof’s Hippodrome was this ornate carousel, shortly after it opened it this guy John Friedel bought in and brought big ideas to the area residents were calling Chutes-At-The-Beach.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Friedel decided that he wanted to make a first rate park out of it. So in 1919, he went in and started building a lot of rides and people loved it. I mean, at that time there was nothing near like it anywhere else in the west coast.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> George Whitney became the manager in 1926 and formally changed the name of the roughly three block area to Playland-at-the-Beach.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Now, one of the smart things they did was they, uh, made it free to get in the park. There were no gates. You just go down there and If you got a quarter or you got a dime, you could put those towards a ride.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of LAFFING SAL\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Laffing Sal, possibly the most iconic character to survive Playland at the Beach. More on that later. She was a sort of early animatronic…and this was way before Disneyland. She was located at the entrance to the Funhouse. Jeanne Lawton remembers visiting in the 60s.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeanne Lawton:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And always the scariest thing about going into the funhouse when wearing a skirt was the airholes in the floor that randomly would blow a shot of air as you stepped over them. We girls would scream with delight and try to jump over them before they got us, but we never succeeded.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One night she and her girlfriends discovered the secret to that gag.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeanne Lawton:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I distinctly remember the day that I happened to look up in the balcony and saw a guy that was working there grinning from ear to ear, and then he would hit the button.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The Playhouse was one of a whole selection of attractions available at the park. There were food vendors too, one of the more popular ones was actually invented by George Whitney in 1928. When he got the formula right he is said to have yelled “It’s…it!” the It’s-It was born.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeanne Lawton:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Back then they made their own oatmeal cookies, and then put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in between the cookies, and then dipped it in hot chocolate and handed it to you to eat right away.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can still buy It’s-Its at many west coast grocery stores in the freezer section. A Lot of the attractions and food stands at Playland at the Beach were independently owned and operated. Like small businesses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Bob’s roller coaster. The merry-go-round. The Whirlpool ride, which you’re sitting in a cage spinning around, was really fast. They had, uh, Dodger, it was originally, it was called Dodge him, and then it became Dodger and they didn’t ever call ’em bumper cars cuz they didn’t want you to slam ’em into each other. They had to repair ’em. The big dipper when they built that was really tall.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 65 feet…like a 7 story building.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And it had huge drops and long climbs. It was really an exciting ride and everybody wanted to ride that thing. By the way it had no seat belts, no bar, nothing to hang onto except the rail on each side. People did get hurt on that once in a while\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Like the rides weren’t very safe were they?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> No, there was no OSHA back then! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of the Diving Bell\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Diving bell was fun. It was a bell shaped thing. Once you get in, they bolt down the door, you know, tie it down, like in a, like in a submarine They had this 40 foot deep, well, and as you were going down, you’d see fish in there. I mean, it had sharks. It had, uh, Octupie. It had all kinds of different, uh, salt water animals. I think it was designed this way on purpose it leaked, and the guy was operating. It would say uh oh, uh, oh, we’re leaking here. We’re gonna sink. I’m not gonna be able to get this thing back up. He says, let’s see . If we can come up. Well, he’d pull the brakes off this thing. And it would Bob to the top, like a cork. Some people thought it was a riot and some people were scared to death.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> During the great depression in the 30s, Whitney was able to consolidate power by buying out other concessions as they failed, and through this he garnered control of much of Playland-at-the-Beach. The Whitneys even bought the land Playland sat on, and nearby plots for future expansion. But then, in 1958, George Whitney died. Without him, Playland-At-The-Beach was rudderless and began to fail.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They started pulling down the rides. They tore down the Big Dipper.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The property itself fell into disrepair, and folks stopped visiting. Then in 1972, Whitney’s widow sold Playland-At-The-Beach to a developer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They sold it to Jeremy Ets-Hokin.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Eventually the property’s new owner decided to close Playland.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> He wanted to build on it and he wanted to build these, uh, big condos up there. Everybody hated him in the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale in scene:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Wait, why did people hate him?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The way they saw it is he stole Playland from them. Nobody wanted to see a Playland go away except for the ones that wanted the money.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Ets-Hoken had the park torn down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> He had no permission or anything. And then the city fathers got all ticked off. So they put a 10 year moratorium on building on that lot. So he was stuck with this thing. He paid a fortune for it, but he couldn’t do anything with it now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The moratorium eventually ended. Today, those apartments that are various shades of pastels…and the Safeway on 48th Avenue, are where Playland-At-The-Beach… used to be. Thankfully, several important pieces of Playland survived the demolition. A pretty visible one is the big Wurlitzer organ at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Of course there is Laffing Sal, at Pier 45’s Musee Mechanique and the original carousel from Loof’s Hippodrome is still around too. Today the Leroy King Carousel, as it’s now known, is operated by the Children’s Creativity Museum at Yerba Buena Gardens. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deyvi Solorzano:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Key in the ignition. Bell time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bell rings. Overhead announcement: Welcome to the Leroy King Carousel! While the ride is in motion please remain seated facing forward.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Okay. So I heard that earlier and I thought it was a recording. I didn’t realize that was actually you saying that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deyvi Solorzano:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s me. Yeah. My name is Deyvi Solorzano. I’m the operations and events coordinator here. carousel operator, amongst many other things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is it crazy to stand here every day and operate something that is like several lifetimes older than you like that has been around all this time and people have cared for it. And now it’s in your hands?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deyvi Solorzano:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. It’s a really cool job. Um, it’s not even a job. I don’t even, I I’m, I’m literally just here. This is not a job. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Don’t, don’t tell them, you’ll do it for free though.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deyvi Solorzano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, no, I won’t say that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Idora Park closed 90 years ago…Playland has been gone almost 50 years. There are no pieces of Idora Park remaining, but these tangible memories of Playland-At-The-Beach, like organs, carousels, and weird carnival attractions like Laffing Sal will live on under the watchful eye of their caretakers. Allowing the next generation of thrill seekers, and those chasing nostalgia another trip back in time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That was reporter Christopher Beale. Thanks to David Gallagher, Mike Winslow and Carol Tang for their help with this story.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’ve got pictures galore of these old parks on our website … be sure to check them out at BayCurious.org. And while you are there, take a moment to vote in our August voting round.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here are your choices:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 1:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> How did Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and Oakland become such a hub of East African cuisine?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 2:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> What was South San Francisco “the birthplace of biotechnology,” and why is it still home to so much of the biotech industry today? Why didn’t it develop closer to universities in Palo Alto or Berkeley?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 3:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> What’s the history of the concrete ruins in American Canyon right off Highway 29?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> These three are neck and neck right now…but there’s still time to make your voice heard. Go to Bay Curious dot org to cast your vote.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our team will be off next week for Labor Day, but we’ll be back with a brand new episode on September 11th.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our show is produced by Gabriela Glueck, Christopher Beale and me, Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Journey back in time to remember two Bay Area amusement parks that have etched themselves into the imaginations of generations of residents: Idora Park in Oakland and San Francisco's Playland at the Beach.",
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"title": "Idora Park and Playland-at-the-Beach: Bay Area Amusement Parks of a Bygone Era | KQED",
"description": "Journey back in time to remember two Bay Area amusement parks that have etched themselves into the imaginations of generations of residents: Idora Park in Oakland and San Francisco's Playland at the Beach.",
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"headline": "Idora Park and Playland-at-the-Beach: Bay Area Amusement Parks of a Bygone Era",
"datePublished": "2025-08-28T03:00:16-07:00",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story originally published September 15, 2022. It has been updated to reflect that Six Flags now owns California’s Great America and in 2024 it announced that the park will close after the 2027 season.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the rest of the country cools off and settles into fall, the Bay Area has a couple of months of warm weather that seem designed for a trip to an old-fashioned amusement park. For generations Bay Area residents have sought fresh air, community and thrills. Many of these parks are gone now, and their ultimate demise was the result of a very Bay Area problem: sky-high real estate values.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003caside class=\"alignleft utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__bayCuriousPodcastShortcode__bayCurious\">\u003cimg src=https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/bayCuriousLogo.png alt=\"Bay Curious Podcast\" loading=\"lazy\" />\n \u003ca href=\"/news/series/baycurious\">Bay Curious\u003c/a> is a podcast that answers your questions about the Bay Area.\n Subscribe on \u003ca href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts\u003c/a>,\n \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR One\u003c/a> or your favorite podcast platform.\u003c/aside>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A center of culture in Oakland\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Oakland was a city on the move at the turn of the century. Still a few years from the automobile becoming ubiquitous, the city bustled with kinetic energy from bicycles, pedestrians and streetcars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A group of business and property owners who called themselves the Realty Syndicate owned most of the streetcars and the land they ran over. Commuters used the trolleys on weekdays, but on the weekends there wasn’t much happening around Oakland that necessitated a streetcar ride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Realty Syndicate came up with a strategy to increase weekend ridership and the value of land it owned in North Oakland — a parcel bordered by Telegraph and Shattuck avenues to the east and west, and 58th and 56th streets to the north and south. There was already a sleepy neighborhood park there, called Ayala Park, but Realty Syndicate had big plans for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The syndicate leased Ayala Park to Ingersoll Amusements, who built a beautiful amusement park destination for Oaklanders. They named it Idora Park and opened its doors to the public in 1903. Visitors could conveniently reach it by riding the trolleys owned by the syndicate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925587\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11925587 size-medium\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance-800x513.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"513\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance-800x513.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance-1020x653.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance-160x103.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-Entrance.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The main entrance of Oakland’s Idora Park. \u003ccite>(JL/Oakland LocalWiki)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the price of admission, just $0.10, visitors could access Idora Park’s beautifully landscaped grounds with many attractions and exhibits on display.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There were a huge number of things that would get people thinking about new technologies,” said amusement park historian TJ Fisher. “They had an experience that showed you what a coal mine was like.” Concessions and some of the rides cost a little extra, and Idora Park had swings, slides, a bandstand, a scenic railway and a pool, which was segregated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recounting his life story to the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, native Oaklander and Olympic gold medalist Archie Williams remembered being barred from joining his friends at the Idora Park pool because of a sign that read “No Blacks Allowed!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925584\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11925584\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"329\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Idora-Park-160x66.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Idora Park in 1910. \u003ccite>(JL/Oakland LocalWiki)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After the 1906 earthquake, the Realty Syndicate used Idora Park as a home base to house and support several thousand refugees fleeing the destruction in San Francisco. In the years that followed, the park became an informal community center where demonstrations, performances and political rallies took place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was really a center of culture in Oakland before we had as many public city parks as we do today,” Fisher said. “It was something everybody would have known.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The neighborhood around Idora Park continued to grow in popularity, and land values in the area started to rise. “At the end of 1928 it was announced that the [Realty Syndicate] was going to subdivide the park, and sell it as real estate,” Fisher said. Idora Park closed and, by the end of 1929, was demolished. Homes quickly went up, the first in Oakland with underground plumbing, and many of them are still standing today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s no sign there was ever an amusement park there,” Fisher said of the now quiet neighborhood just north of the 24 freeway. “Which is a real shame, because it was an important part of civic life in Oakland for so long.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>San Francisco’s very own beachside attraction\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Ocean Beach was already a popular — though hard-to-reach — destination for San Franciscans at the turn of the 20th century. The Cliff House restaurant and nearby Sutro Baths attracted people with the means to make the trip west, but when the city’s \u003cem>trolleys\u003c/em> reached the western part of the city, the makeup of the neighborhood began to shift.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Almost immediately vendors and concessions began popping up on the beach to take advantage of the tourist traffic. Over a decade or so, a small, disorganized amusement park began to assemble at Ocean Beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925590\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11925590\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-800x506.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"506\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-800x506.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-1020x646.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-1536x972.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-2048x1297.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Hippodrome-1920x1216.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Looff’s Hippodrome at night. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jim Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“In 1914 they actually put in the merry-go-round down there. That was the Looff’s Hippodrome,” said historian Jim Smith, author of \u003cem>San Francisco’s Playland at the Beach: The Early Years\u003c/em> and \u003cem>San Francisco’s Playland at the Beach: The Golden Years\u003c/em>. Other attractions like Shoot-the-Chutes — a primitive log flume ride — soon popped up, and the park gained popularity. Within a few years a businessman named John Friedle stepped in with financial investments and big ideas for the area now known by residents as “Chutes-at-the-Beach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Friedle wanted to make a first-rate park out of it,” Smith said. He expanded the park’s offerings, building the famous 65-foot-high Big Dipper roller coaster. He eventually stepped aside, and in 1926 George Whitney took over and gave the park the name that would stick: “Playland-at-the-Beach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925592\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11925592\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-800x620.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"620\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-800x620.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-1020x791.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-160x124.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1-1536x1190.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/PlayLand-At-the-Beach-1.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Playland-at-the-Beach midway in the 1940s. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jim Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Playland-at-the-Beach becomes beloved\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Under Whitney, the various independent concessionaires began to work together. “They made it free to get in,” said Smith. “There were no gates, and if you had a dime or a quarter, you could put it toward a ride.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rides like the Skyliner, the Big Dipper, Dodg ‘Em, the Scrambler, the Twister and the Diving Bell thrilled guests over the years, but one quirky attraction called the Fun House etched itself into the memory of Bay Area resident Jeanne Lawton, who would often go to Playland-at-the-Beach in the 1960s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The scariest thing about going into the Fun House when wearing a skirt was the air holes in the floor,” Lawton said, referring to something pretty unsavory: Seemingly at random, jets of air would burst up from the floor, riffling the skirts of unsuspecting women. One night, Lawton and her friends figured out what was actually going on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I happened to look up in the balcony and saw a guy that was working there grinning from ear to ear,” she said. The man would wait until women walked over the air holes, “and then he would hit the button,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lawton has fond memories, too. Playland owner George Whitney invented the famous \u003ca class=\"c-link\" href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10710678/its-it-the-san-francisco-treat-that-sparked-a-cult-following\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-stringify-link=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/10710678/its-it-the-san-francisco-treat-that-sparked-a-cult-following\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\" data-remove-tab-index=\"true\">Its-It ice cream sandwich\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They made their own oatmeal cookies,” Lawton remembered fondly, “and then put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in between the cookies, dipped it in hot chocolate and handed it to you to eat right away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925601\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11925601\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-800x553.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"553\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-800x553.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-1020x705.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-160x111.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides-1536x1062.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Playland-Rides.jpg 1820w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An overview showing the Skylark and the Diving Bell at Playland-at-the-Beach. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jim Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Playland’s slow decline\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>During the Great Depression, many of Playland’s independently owned concessionaires struggled to stay open as attendance at the park dwindled. George Whitney bought up many of those concessions, gaining control of much of the park. He was known as the “Barnum of the Golden Gate,” and his beachside attractions thrived until his death in 1958.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Whitneys also purchased the Cliff House, Sutro Baths and additional plots nearby for future expansion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whitney’s son used his experience at Playland to help Walt Disney design some of the queues on the earliest attractions at Disneyland. He was Disneyland employee No. 7 and has a window bearing his name on Main Street, U.S.A. After his father’s death, he returned to San Francisco to run Playland himself. After a few years of conflict with his mother over how the park should be run, Whitney Jr. stepped aside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1972, a developer named Jeremy Ets-Hokin bought the park, closed it and unceremoniously tore it down. “The developer wanted to build condos up there,” Smith said. “Everyone hated him in the city because, the way they saw it, he stole Playland from them. No one wanted to see Playland go, except the ones who wanted the money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11925603\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-scaled.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11925603\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-800x1010.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1010\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-800x1010.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-1020x1288.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-160x202.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-1217x1536.jpg 1217w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-1622x2048.jpg 1622w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-1920x2424.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/09/Laffing-Sal-scaled.jpg 2028w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Laffing Sal in the Funhouse at Playland-at-the-Beach. This item is now on display at the Musée Mécanique. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Jim Smith)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Amusement parks still struggle to survive here\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Only a few amusement parks remain in operation in the Bay Area today: Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, Children’s Fairyland in Oakland and California’s Great America in Santa Clara. Six Flags, the operator of California’s Great America, announced in 2024 that they’ll close the park after the 2027 season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily, some quirky souvenirs from Playland still exist. At the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, you’ll find a rare Wurlitzer organ from Playland still in operation. At the Musée Mécanique on San Francisco’s Pier 45, you can still hear animatronic Laffing Sal’s eerie cackle. And a collector named Marianne Stevens purchased the original carousel from Looff’s Hippodrome. At 116 years old, the LeRoy King Carousel, as it’s now known, is part of the Children’s Creativity Museum in Yerba Buena Gardens. There you can still climb aboard a genuine wooden horse, and race to victory with your family and friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Try to imagine the first time you saw the lights of an amusement park twinkling in the night sky…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To me those lights meant fun with my family, fried food and rides! Although to be honest, I’ve always had a little bit of a weak stomach for them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Throughout the last 100 years or so, amusement parks like Marine World, Neptune’s Beach, Great America, and Discovery Kingdom have dotted the landscape here in the Bay Area … a few are still around, but most have closed for good. In a few years, California’s Great America in Santa Clara will become the next to close its gates.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This week we remember two amusement parks that have etched themselves into the imaginations of generations of Bay Area residents….Idora Park in Oakland, and San Francisco’s Playland at the Beach. This episode first aired in 2022, but we’re bringing it back to celebrate the end of summer. I’m Katrina Schwartz. You’re listening to Bay Curious.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sponsor message\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This week on Bay Curious, we look back at Bay Area amusement \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">parks of yesteryear. Here’s reporter Christopher Beale.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In the early 1900s, Oakland was bustling with activity. The Model-T was still a few years away so cars weren’t super commonplace yet. The streets buzzed with bicycle and trolley traffic. The main streetcar around Oakland in those days was the San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose Railway (SFOSJR), which later became the Key System. The streetcar and the land it ran on was owned by the very mob-sounding “Realty Syndicate.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An impossibly evil name for a corporation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is TJ Fisher.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the Realty syndicate was exactly what it sounded like.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> TJ grew up on the east coast. He now lives in the Castro in San Francisco and says he has loved and studied amusement parks, pretty much his entire life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I was in college, I wrote my thesis about different intersectional aspects of the way people enjoyed amusement parks over time and how that reflected other elements of culture.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The way TJ tells it, this group of wealthy businessmen…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The Realty Syndicate.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Owned the trolley system, as well as a lot of land around Oakland. The trolleys were busy on the weekdays with commuters, but on the weekends…not so much. This presented a cash flow issue for the Syndicate…they thought if they could boost weekend ridership there might be other benefits down the line. The Syndicate owned a piece of land in what is now North Oakland, just north of where the 24 freeway crosses telegraph now…\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Between 56th and 58th streets and Shaddock and Telegraph.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And they leased it to this company called Ingersoll Amusements. Ingersoll set out to create a beautiful destination for Oaklanders, and the Realty Syndicate put a streetcar stop nearby. In 1904, Idora Park was born, and was an instant hit with locals.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It was just about 10 cents admission fee to get in, which would be about $3 in today’s money. That’s a fantastic bargain when you think about what it costs to get into Great America or Disneyland today.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That admission got you into the more than 17 acre park where there were roller coasters, slides, swings, and all manner of concessions.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You got the beautifully landscaped grounds. You got some, but not all of the rides, there were a huge number of things on display that would really get people thinking about new technologies. They had an experience that showed you what a coal mine was like. So those kinds of things would be included and then concessions like a roller coaster, a carousel would cost extra.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> There was also an opera house, animals, exhibits, and a pool.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It was really a center of culture in Oakland before we had as many public city parks as we do today, you would go to Idora to get outside. It was really something that everybody would’ve known.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the Realty Syndicate…that’s the trolley company…had another motivation for making this part of Oakland a destination.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>TJ Fisher:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They had always hoped that the area around the park would grow and be considered desirable and they would be able to use the park for another purpose. So it was a huge shock when at the end of 1928, it was announced that the Realty trust was going to subdivide the park and sell it as real estate. And so, things were dismantled very quickly in, uh, early 1929. and now it’s a very residential neighborhood and there are no signs that there was ever an amusement park there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> When Idora Park was at its most popular in the early nineteen hundreds, another amusement park popped up just across the Bay at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like Idora Park, new trolley lines played a big role…food stands and small rides greeted passengers riding all the way to the Western end of the line. Soon, the ragtag park would become a beloved getaway for young and old alike.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In 1914 they actually put in the, uh, merry-go-round there. And that was the Loof’s Hippodrome.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Jim Smith.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I’m the author of, San Francisco’s Playland at the beach the early years and a second book, the golden years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Loof’s Hippodrome was this ornate carousel, shortly after it opened it this guy John Friedel bought in and brought big ideas to the area residents were calling Chutes-At-The-Beach.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Friedel decided that he wanted to make a first rate park out of it. So in 1919, he went in and started building a lot of rides and people loved it. I mean, at that time there was nothing near like it anywhere else in the west coast.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> George Whitney became the manager in 1926 and formally changed the name of the roughly three block area to Playland-at-the-Beach.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Now, one of the smart things they did was they, uh, made it free to get in the park. There were no gates. You just go down there and If you got a quarter or you got a dime, you could put those towards a ride.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of LAFFING SAL\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That’s Laffing Sal, possibly the most iconic character to survive Playland at the Beach. More on that later. She was a sort of early animatronic…and this was way before Disneyland. She was located at the entrance to the Funhouse. Jeanne Lawton remembers visiting in the 60s.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeanne Lawton:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And always the scariest thing about going into the funhouse when wearing a skirt was the airholes in the floor that randomly would blow a shot of air as you stepped over them. We girls would scream with delight and try to jump over them before they got us, but we never succeeded.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> One night she and her girlfriends discovered the secret to that gag.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeanne Lawton:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I distinctly remember the day that I happened to look up in the balcony and saw a guy that was working there grinning from ear to ear, and then he would hit the button.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The Playhouse was one of a whole selection of attractions available at the park. There were food vendors too, one of the more popular ones was actually invented by George Whitney in 1928. When he got the formula right he is said to have yelled “It’s…it!” the It’s-It was born.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jeanne Lawton:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Back then they made their own oatmeal cookies, and then put a scoop of vanilla ice cream in between the cookies, and then dipped it in hot chocolate and handed it to you to eat right away.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can still buy It’s-Its at many west coast grocery stores in the freezer section. A Lot of the attractions and food stands at Playland at the Beach were independently owned and operated. Like small businesses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Bob’s roller coaster. The merry-go-round. The Whirlpool ride, which you’re sitting in a cage spinning around, was really fast. They had, uh, Dodger, it was originally, it was called Dodge him, and then it became Dodger and they didn’t ever call ’em bumper cars cuz they didn’t want you to slam ’em into each other. They had to repair ’em. The big dipper when they built that was really tall.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 65 feet…like a 7 story building.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> And it had huge drops and long climbs. It was really an exciting ride and everybody wanted to ride that thing. By the way it had no seat belts, no bar, nothing to hang onto except the rail on each side. People did get hurt on that once in a while\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Like the rides weren’t very safe were they?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> No, there was no OSHA back then! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sound of the Diving Bell\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Diving bell was fun. It was a bell shaped thing. Once you get in, they bolt down the door, you know, tie it down, like in a, like in a submarine They had this 40 foot deep, well, and as you were going down, you’d see fish in there. I mean, it had sharks. It had, uh, Octupie. It had all kinds of different, uh, salt water animals. I think it was designed this way on purpose it leaked, and the guy was operating. It would say uh oh, uh, oh, we’re leaking here. We’re gonna sink. I’m not gonna be able to get this thing back up. He says, let’s see . If we can come up. Well, he’d pull the brakes off this thing. And it would Bob to the top, like a cork. Some people thought it was a riot and some people were scared to death.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> During the great depression in the 30s, Whitney was able to consolidate power by buying out other concessions as they failed, and through this he garnered control of much of Playland-at-the-Beach. The Whitneys even bought the land Playland sat on, and nearby plots for future expansion. But then, in 1958, George Whitney died. Without him, Playland-At-The-Beach was rudderless and began to fail.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They started pulling down the rides. They tore down the Big Dipper.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The property itself fell into disrepair, and folks stopped visiting. Then in 1972, Whitney’s widow sold Playland-At-The-Beach to a developer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> They sold it to Jeremy Ets-Hokin.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Eventually the property’s new owner decided to close Playland.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> He wanted to build on it and he wanted to build these, uh, big condos up there. Everybody hated him in the city.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale in scene:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Wait, why did people hate him?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> The way they saw it is he stole Playland from them. Nobody wanted to see a Playland go away except for the ones that wanted the money.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Ets-Hoken had the park torn down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jim Smith:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> He had no permission or anything. And then the city fathers got all ticked off. So they put a 10 year moratorium on building on that lot. So he was stuck with this thing. He paid a fortune for it, but he couldn’t do anything with it now.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The moratorium eventually ended. Today, those apartments that are various shades of pastels…and the Safeway on 48th Avenue, are where Playland-At-The-Beach… used to be. Thankfully, several important pieces of Playland survived the demolition. A pretty visible one is the big Wurlitzer organ at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Of course there is Laffing Sal, at Pier 45’s Musee Mechanique and the original carousel from Loof’s Hippodrome is still around too. Today the Leroy King Carousel, as it’s now known, is operated by the Children’s Creativity Museum at Yerba Buena Gardens. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deyvi Solorzano:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Key in the ignition. Bell time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bell rings. Overhead announcement: Welcome to the Leroy King Carousel! While the ride is in motion please remain seated facing forward.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Okay. So I heard that earlier and I thought it was a recording. I didn’t realize that was actually you saying that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deyvi Solorzano:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That’s me. Yeah. My name is Deyvi Solorzano. I’m the operations and events coordinator here. carousel operator, amongst many other things.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is it crazy to stand here every day and operate something that is like several lifetimes older than you like that has been around all this time and people have cared for it. And now it’s in your hands?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deyvi Solorzano:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. It’s a really cool job. Um, it’s not even a job. I don’t even, I I’m, I’m literally just here. This is not a job. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Yeah. Don’t, don’t tell them, you’ll do it for free though.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Deyvi Solorzano: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yeah, no, I won’t say that. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Christopher Beale:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Idora Park closed 90 years ago…Playland has been gone almost 50 years. There are no pieces of Idora Park remaining, but these tangible memories of Playland-At-The-Beach, like organs, carousels, and weird carnival attractions like Laffing Sal will live on under the watchful eye of their caretakers. Allowing the next generation of thrill seekers, and those chasing nostalgia another trip back in time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That was reporter Christopher Beale. Thanks to David Gallagher, Mike Winslow and Carol Tang for their help with this story.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We’ve got pictures galore of these old parks on our website … be sure to check them out at BayCurious.org. And while you are there, take a moment to vote in our August voting round.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here are your choices:\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 1:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> How did Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and Oakland become such a hub of East African cuisine?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 2:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> What was South San Francisco “the birthplace of biotechnology,” and why is it still home to so much of the biotech industry today? Why didn’t it develop closer to universities in Palo Alto or Berkeley?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Voice 3:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> What’s the history of the concrete ruins in American Canyon right off Highway 29?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katrina Schwartz:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> These three are neck and neck right now…but there’s still time to make your voice heard. Go to Bay Curious dot org to cast your vote.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our team will be off next week for Labor Day, but we’ll be back with a brand new episode on September 11th.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our show is produced by Gabriela Glueck, Christopher Beale and me, Katrina Schwartz.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With extra support from Maha Sanad, Katie Sprenger, Jen Chien, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on team KQED. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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},
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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},
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"info": "Inside Europe, a one-hour weekly news magazine hosted by Helen Seeney and Keith Walker, explores the topical issues shaping the continent. No other part of the globe has experienced such dynamic political and social change in recent years.",
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},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
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"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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},
"live-from-here-highlights": {
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"title": "Live from Here Highlights",
"info": "Chris Thile steps to the mic as the host of Live from Here (formerly A Prairie Home Companion), a live public radio variety show. Download Chris’s Song of the Week plus other highlights from the broadcast. Produced by American Public Media.",
"airtime": "SAT 6pm-8pm, SUN 11am-1pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Live-From-Here-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.livefromhere.org/",
"meta": {
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"link": "/radio/program/live-from-here-highlights",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/a-prairie-home-companion-highlights/rss/rss"
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"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
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"order": 13
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 12
},
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
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},
"our-body-politic": {
"id": "our-body-politic",
"title": "Our Body Politic",
"info": "Presented by KQED, KCRW and KPCC, and created and hosted by award-winning journalist Farai Chideya, Our Body Politic is unapologetically centered on reporting on not just how women of color experience the major political events of today, but how they’re impacting those very issues.",
"airtime": "SAT 6pm-7pm, SUN 1am-2am",
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"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/our-body-politic",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9feGFQaHMxcw",
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},
"perspectives": {
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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"planet-money": {
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"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"order": 6
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5Nzk2MzI2MTEx",
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"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
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