Join our list:

Next Three Events:

Bicycle and Walking tours, Public Talks, plus Bay Cruises!

Download our new Spring 2024 calendar as a pdf here.

Saturday, March 30, 10 am-3 pm

Beholding SF's Birds Pedal by Pedal

Meet at 10 AM at McLaren Lodge, Stanyan and JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park.

RSVP required: shaping@foundsf.org.

Tour ends at Cliff House

A special bicycling field trip with Habitat Potential's Josiah Clark covering Golden Gate Park and the northern shoreline. Expect to see 80-100 bird species, overlooked habitats, trees where they never were, water where there was no water… Explore challenges and opportunities for sustainable urban ecology in SF.

RSVP  or donate now!

Wednesday, April 10, 7:30 pm

Life and Death in a Great American City

at 518 Valencia

Cities grow, cities change. Some businesses and institutions thrive, while others die off and are replaced. In this joint presentation of words and images, Lorri Ungaretti (Vanished San Francisco), and Alec Scott (Oldest San Francisco) speak to the history of our great, sometimes troubled city, what's been lost over the years, what's stuck around. Expect the discussion to range widely, from science to religion, from food to drink, from sports to shopping, from sex to death.


This is a free event, but we gladly accept donations. donate now!

Saturday, April 13, 11-4:45 pm

Island Hopping!
Mare Island: A Century and a Half of Naval History on the Bay

by BICYCLE! Ferry to and from Vallejo together!

Join us for a bicycling tour of Mare Island, the nation's first naval station and shipbuilding yard on the West Coast which began operations in 1854. On a 4-mile slow loop of the island, we will discover the rich history attached to each site: the Historic Core with the building ways where over 500 ships were built and the original Dry Dock constructed in the late 1800s; St. Peter's Chapel with its 25 Tiffany stained glass windows; Old 84, the Navy's first land-based prison built in 1863; the "Pink Palace," which was the site of CIA work during the Cold War; the Naval Cemetery located in the Preserve; Alden Park with its many naval artifacts, and more. It's a fascinating ride through 143 years of history!

Tours are FREE, but each participant pays their own round trip ferry passage. Attendance limited. RSVP required to shaping@foundsf.org.

This is a free event, but we gladly accept donations. donate now!

Explore Shaping San Francisco:

Ecology Emerges poster art by Mona Caron

Ecology Emerges

Discussions and reflections on the history of Bay Area ecological activism, based on oral histories documenting the past 50 years.

Ecology Emerges is an oral history gathering project to explore the past 50 years of ecological activism in the Bay Area and the role that individual and institutional memories play in the development, policy proposals, and interrelationships that together make up the existing networks of ecological politics.  We document the living ecological activist movement, in their own words, but also in a larger context of urban growth and globalization.

Read more…

Oral Histories

Oral Histories

Shaping San Francisco, as part of our ongoing work, sits down with people who have stories to tell and conducts oral history interviews.

Check them out here.

"Editor's Pick Tour" from FoundSF.org

Comprised of over 1,400 pages, and 2,500 historical photos, the wiki-based archive FoundSF.org is the product of hundreds of contributors, regular people who were compelled by the chance to investigate some piece of this City's past.

See the latest highlights…