In the end, Kamiya has written a fitting ode to an exceptional city. Also impressive is the author’s uncanny grasp of the bay’s natural history and the way that the landscape continues to shape the lives of current San Franciscans. It is the other stories that truly impress-including the historical ones about the city’s founding and its original Native American inhabitants. 'Chicago is the great American city, New York is one of the capitals of the world, and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic San Francisco is a lady.' Norman Mailer 'I love San Francisco. Though Kamiya puts his own spin on these tales, they seem all too familiar. Kamiya's symphony of San Francisco is a grand pleasure.' -New York Times Book Review The bestselling love letter to one of the world's great cities, San Francisco, by a life-long Bay Area resident and co-founder of Salon. He includes chapters about the AIDS crisis, the Beat Generation, dive bars, and theaters, sprinkling in references to the city’s counter-culture revolution, literary legacy, and dot-com booms and busts. 13.99 Publisher Description 'A kaleidoscopic homage both personal and historical. It doesn’t come as much surprise that Kamiya, a former culture critic and book editor at the San Francisco Examiner and cofounder of, writes insightfully about San Francisco’s cultural and artistic heritage. In the introduction, Kamiya calls this work “a love letter to the place in the world that means the world to me.” It’s an apt description, because these 49 vignettes are written in a confessional first-person tone that invokes a conversation between two old friends: Kamiya and the city he has called home for over 40 years. Recently a friend came to join us to watch the Blue Angels perform over the skies of San Francisco.We talked about San Francisco, the changes weve seen, and a book I was currently reading, Cool Gray City of Love, by Gary Kamiya.

The cool gray city of love