I dug deep into the depths of the internet to find facts that I felt were static, meaning not info about population, demographics, economy, or other such things that change frequently, in order to give this piece a longer shelf life.

It was a lot of fun to discover some of these things too, so hopefully the readers enjoy learning along with me. I mean, what city has two songs dedicated to its honor. The story behind why there is an official song AND a ballad is so good it almost deserves an illustration of its own. Perhaps I’ll save it for another time.

My hope is that the internet has not lied to me in my effort to find factual information. If anyone has anything to contest, I’d be eager to hear your findings.

For example, I almost misrepresented Mission Dolores as the oldest structure, but luckily a good friend of mine came across an article debunking some common held SF misconceptions, saving me from publishing that error. Still felt like I had to include the Mission though as it’s such an iconic and clearly very old piece of SF history.

In the spirit of infographics, I did also try to keep things like scale consistent wherever possible. There are some places where that didn’t work out, and others where I felt it was too important to skip (the magnitude of the earthquakes, for example, since it really adds to the viewers’ understanding of the difference in severity), and I do feel rather guilty about failing to represent the information. Hopefully you don’t hold it against me too much.

I was pretty pleased to learn about the history of Wells Fargo and its relationship to American Express. History fun facts are cool.

Hope you enjoy! Keep an eye out for more. I had so much fun making this, I can’t wait to come up with another.