Driving Downtown Neighborhoods - Chinatown - San Francisco California USA - Episode 15.\r
Starting Point: Grant Avenue - . Neighborhood: Chinatown - .\r
The oldest and largest Chinatown outside of Asia. The Chinatown in San Francisco, California, (Chinese: 唐人街) is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese community outside Asia. It is the oldest of the four notable Chinatowns in the city. Since its establishment in 1848, it has been highly important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that continues to retain its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. There are two hospitals, numerous parks and squares, a post office, and other infrastructure. While recent immigrants and the elderly choose to live in here because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture, the place is also a major tourist attrion, drawing more visitors annually than the Golden Gate Bridge.\r
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San Francisco\r
San Francisco (SF), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the most densely settled large city in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City.\r
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A popular tourist destination, San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fishermans Wharf, and its Chinatown district. San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Reddit, Square, Inc., Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, and Craigslist. It has several nicknames, including The City by the Bay, Fog City, San Fran, and Frisco, as well as older ones like The City that Knows How, Baghdad by the Bay, The Paris of the West, or simply The City. As of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings.\r
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The last 20 years have seen two booms driven by the internet industry. First was the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once-poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified. Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district. By 2000, the citys population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid 2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a popular place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.\r
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Economy\r
San Francisco has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including financial services, tourism, and (increasingly) high technology.\r
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Sports\r
Major League Baseballs San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) were the longest-tenured major professional sports franchise in the city until moving in new. \r
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Culture and Contemporary Life\r
Although the Financial District, Union Square, and Fishermans Wharf are well-known around the world, San Francisco is also charerized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk.\r
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Beaches and Parks\r
Several of San Franciscos parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13 million visitors a year.\r
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Top Attrions:\r
Alcatraz Island\r
Golden Gate Bridge\r
San Francisco Bay\r
AT&T Park\r
Golden Gate Park\r
Lands End\r
The Exploratorium\r
Palace of Fine Arts\r
Twin Peaks\r
Cable Cars\r
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