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The Bold Italic

@thebolditalic.bsky.social
347 followers 15 following 578 posts

A publication celebrating the spirit of the Bay Area. Our newsletter: tbi.fyi/newsletter

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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 5h
Which Muni line have you given up on entirely?
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 9h
Mary Ellen Pleasant was born in Georgia in 1814, most likely into slavery, and worked the underground railroad before she ever reached San Francisco. The city's smallest park carries her name.
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This Is San Francisco’s Smallest Official Park
But next time you do: stop and explore it — which won’t take too long.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
A man read an actual physical book at a crowded bar for two hours, alone, unbothered, and I have thought about his confidence every day since.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The Farnsworth Lane Steps in Parnassus Heights are a passageway most people walk past for years without once looking up them.
thebolditalic.com
The secret lives of San Francisco’s miniature parks
San Francisco is a treasure chest of undiscovered gems. These mini parks are the city’s quiet rebellion against the chaos of urban life.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Lombard is not the crookedest street in the city. Vermont Street on Potrero Hill is tighter, and nobody lines up to photograph it unless it's Bring Your Own Big Wheel day.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Filbert, Jones, 22nd Street. There is a definitive ranking of which blocks are actively trying to end you, and now it exists in one place.
thebolditalic.com
The Essential Guide to San Francisco’s Steepest Streets
A data-backed list of the city’s most treacherous slopes.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Everyone in the sauna is discussing a Series A. There is no escape. The heat is not the problem.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
No special gear. No hydration tube. Gym sneakers are entirely acceptable. Six trails within reach of a car and a free morning.
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Six Hidden Bay Area Hikes You Might Not Know
“New to you” still counts as new.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Ina Coolbrith was the first poet laureate of California, ran the Oakland library, mentored Jack London, and has a park on Russian Hill barely anyone visits.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Hills are what this city is known for. Underneath them there is still a waterworld of ponds, creeks and streams that got built over and kept running.
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The Best Hidden Waterways in San Francisco
Where creeks used to thrive, and what still remains.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The trolley problem comes from the philosopher Philippa Foot. We gave it a cable car and a set of San Francisco things you would rather not lose.
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The San Francisco Trolley Problem: A Game
The trolley problem is a famous ethical thought experiment. This game is a version that's more uniquely San Francisco.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A woman jogged past me on the Embarcadero going uphill, on the phone, having a totally coherent work conversation.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The Cleveland Cascade was a cascading fountain in 1923, styled after old Italian architecture. The water was shut off in the 1950s and it sat dry until neighbors came back for it in 2004.
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The Best Hidden Staircases in the East Bay
These secret climbs are worth the hike.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A neighbor rang the doorbell with a bouquet a few days after she let slip that her mom had died. There is a guy named Earl on the block who bakes bread and gives it away.
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When Does a Neighborhood Become Your Home?
At what point do you become an insider, and not an outsider, on your street?
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The cross on Mount Davidson is 103 feet of concrete because arsonists kept burning down the wooden ones. Since 1997 it has been a memorial to the Armenian Genocide.
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Hidden San Francisco Gems Best Experienced by Bike
Get on a bike and off the beaten path.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
A whole train car once dropped their phones at the same moment to help a woman who had passed out.
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We Asked Bay Area Commuters to Give Us Their Best BART Stories
Tales from the train.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
We are the Winchester Mystery House of cities. Bricked-up passageways, sunken ships, railcar tracks that end in a parking lot, and a park paved with graves.
thebolditalic.com
The Gutters in Buena Vista Park are Made Out of Old Headstones
San Francisco is a city of secrets. Hidden tunnels and bricked-up passageways, sunken ships and rebuilt palaces.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
You have probably eaten this family's food without knowing it. Sweet Maple, Kitchen Story, the boba shops, the Millionaire's Bacon. Now there is a cafe in the Central Sunset.
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The Sunset's hottest new cafe is called Jandii
The business model focuses on three things: coffee, matcha, and scones. The scones arrive warm and split, spread with housemade jam and cream.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Six eucalyptus trees and a plaque on Octavia Street, just over an acre, sitting behind a cast-iron fence you have walked past a hundred times.
thebolditalic.com
This Is San Francisco’s Smallest Official Park
But next time you do: stop and explore it — which won’t take too long.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
A separation, a crashed startup, and a garage full of old computers he could not persuade himself to dump. The fire settled the question.
thebolditalic.com
The Fire at My North Beach Apartment Freed Me From an Awful Year
It felt like a new beginning.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
They were part of a migration most San Franciscans have never heard of: Russians who fled the 1917 revolution east into Manchuria, then had to leave a second time.
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What It's Like at Cinderella Bakery in San Francisco's Richmond District
The location is busy and small, but quite honestly, it’s not that hard to get a table outside. The weather is a surprisingly pleasant microclimate. And the bread that comes with most meals is fucking phenomenal.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Coppola bought the tower in 1973 with Godfather money and put a cafe on the ground floor in 1999. There is a machine by the door that prints you a story.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like at Café Zoetrope in San Francisco's North Beach
People love the room and argue about the food, the spaghetti and meatballs gets named more than anything else, and the prices draw the most complaints.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Jack Early Park is a flight of stairs between two apartment buildings leading to a plant-lined platform with room for three people. Four if you are good at Tetris with human bodies.
thebolditalic.com
The secret lives of San Francisco’s miniature parks
San Francisco is a treasure chest of undiscovered gems. These mini parks are the city’s quiet rebellion against the chaos of urban life.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
A dog who can weave through legs and catch a frisbee farther than a baseball field will eventually draw a crowd. Then the crowd needs somewhere to sit.
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How I Created a Fake Dog Park in SF
The untold story behind Patrick’s Park.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
He bought Andy's Donuts at 22, a 24-hour Castro spot that Harvey Milk used to haunt. When he opened his own place the name was taken, so he added the other half of his story.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like at Orphan Andy's in Castro
The neon, the red vinyl booths, the counter stools and the jukebox are all still there, and so are the chicken fried steak and the Monte Cristo.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Tartine took over a corner on Guerrero that had already been a neighborhood bakery twice before. Two people from culinary school, one on pastry and one on bread.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like in Tartine, San Francisco
Today the country loaf runs $14.95, probably the single most argued-about number in San Francisco baking.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Public Works has grade calculations for nearly every street in the city and has never once put them in order. Somebody else did the collating.
thebolditalic.com
The Essential Guide to San Francisco’s Steepest Streets
A data-backed list of the city’s most treacherous slopes.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A two-month-old kitten in a harness, with the energy of a freshly awoken three-year-old on espresso. The Richmond District never stood a chance.
thebolditalic.com
What Happened When I Tried to Walk My Cat in San Francisco
A few months ago, in the midst of a difficult breakup, I did what any emotionally stable, newly single girl in my situation normally does: I marched over to the animal shelter and adopted a cat.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Every gay bar in America had blacked-out windows, because being seen leaving one could cost you your job, your apartment or your family. Two women changed that on the corner of Castro and 17th.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like at Twin Peaks Tavern in Castro
Twin Peaks is generally credited as the first known gay bar in America with full-length open plate glass.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Order the Bloody Mary. It arrives with a Guinness float and bacon from the shop across the street, and you drink it ten feet from an actual fire.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like at The Riptide in the Outer Sunset
High ceilings, brick floor, knotty pine, taxidermy, and a fire going. The Riptide is the townie bar you want to visit.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
San Bruno Mountain State Park sits a five-minute drive past the city limits, and the parking lot is somehow never full.
thebolditalic.com
Six Hidden Bay Area Hikes You Might Not Know
“New to you” still counts as new.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Sit near the front. The driver has some sense of what is going on around them, which is more than you will have in about ninety seconds.
thebolditalic.com
An Expert’s Guide to Napping on Public Transit
We’re all so busy all the time. You wake up, go to the gym, go to work, go out with friends, day in and day out in this city.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The dramatic corner everyone pictures when they think of Zuni was a cactus shop called the Red Desert until about 1987. The restaurant started in one narrow storefront next door.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like at Zuni Café in Hayes Valley
The chicken takes about 75 minutes and the menu says so. It's $75 and it feeds two.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
What is a San Francisco tourist thing that is genuinely worth it?
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Islais Creek appears on some of the first maps ever drawn of this place, and by 1850 its water was irrigating crops. Then the Gold Rush put a railroad trestle over it.
thebolditalic.com
The Best Hidden Waterways in San Francisco
Where creeks used to thrive, and what still remains.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
A cute cable car is coming and it is going to end something you love. You have to pick. Play it in the header.
thebolditalic.com
The San Francisco Trolley Problem: A Game
The trolley problem is a famous ethical thought experiment. This game is a version that's more uniquely San Francisco.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Someone got on the J with a surfboard at Church Street. He just stood there holding it like a very large tray.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
After the 1906 quake, people left the city for the Oakland and Berkeley hills and built houses nowhere near a streetcar. The staircases they cut to reach transit are still there.
thebolditalic.com
The Best Hidden Staircases in the East Bay
These secret climbs are worth the hike.
000
The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The gutters and retaining walls in Buena Vista Park are built out of headstones. Hundreds of them. You have probably walked over the names.
thebolditalic.com
The Gutters in Buena Vista Park are Made Out of Old Headstones
San Francisco is a city of secrets. Hidden tunnels and bricked-up passageways, sunken ships and rebuilt palaces.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A rider since 1978 watched a couple move car to car, calmly pouring gasoline on the floor of each one.
thebolditalic.com
We Asked Bay Area Commuters to Give Us Their Best BART Stories
Tales from the train.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Is it when you finally remember to swerve around the pothole on Third and Thornton, after months of forgetting?
thebolditalic.com
When Does a Neighborhood Become Your Home?
At what point do you become an insider, and not an outsider, on your street?
000
The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Two sisters opened Cinderella on Balboa Street in 1953 after arriving from Harbin, China. Seventy-three years later it is still there, making the same things.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like at Cinderella Bakery in San Francisco's Richmond District
The location is busy and small, but quite honestly, it’s not that hard to get a table outside. The weather is a surprisingly pleasant microclimate. And the bread that comes with most meals is fucking phenomenal.
000
The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Seven years of files from a failed startup, kept in the garage because the IRS said so. Then the building burned and took the boxes with it.
thebolditalic.com
The Fire at My North Beach Apartment Freed Me From an Awful Year
It felt like a new beginning.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Jandii is named for the Korean word for a lush patch of grass, which is a bold thing to call a cafe on Taraval in the fog.
thebolditalic.com
The Sunset's hottest new cafe is called Jandii
The business model focuses on three things: coffee, matcha, and scones. The scones arrive warm and split, spread with housemade jam and cream.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Orphan Andy's is named after a donut shop that no longer exists and a man who was orphaned at birth, and both of them are Dennis Ziebell.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like at Orphan Andy's in Castro
The neon, the red vinyl booths, the counter stools and the jukebox are all still there, and so are the chicken fried steak and the Monte Cristo.
011
The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
There is a patch of grass at Bay and Franklin that is technically not Fort Mason and has no name on any map. So it went onto Google Maps as Patrick's Park.
thebolditalic.com
How I Created a Fake Dog Park in SF
The untold story behind Patrick’s Park.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The Sentinel Building was still going up when the 1906 earthquake hit. The frame survived, and the copper-green flatiron tower was finished a year later.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like at Café Zoetrope in San Francisco's North Beach
People love the room and argue about the food, the spaghetti and meatballs gets named more than anything else, and the prices draw the most complaints.
010
The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
When Twin Peaks reopened in 1972 for a gay clientele, the new owners put clear glass in the windows. It is generally credited as the first gay bar in America with full-length open plate glass.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like at Twin Peaks Tavern in Castro
Twin Peaks is generally credited as the first known gay bar in America with full-length open plate glass.
010
The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The first attempt at a cat harness produced a kitten dragging herself across the floor like a broken slinky, then lying down in total defeat.
thebolditalic.com
What Happened When I Tried to Walk My Cat in San Francisco
A few months ago, in the midst of a difficult breakup, I did what any emotionally stable, newly single girl in my situation normally does: I marched over to the animal shelter and adopted a cat.
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The Bold Italic @thebolditalic.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Chad Robertson pulled his bread out of the oven at five in the afternoon, so regulars learned to build their whole day around it.
thebolditalic.com
What It's Like in Tartine, San Francisco
Today the country loaf runs $14.95, probably the single most argued-about number in San Francisco baking.
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