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San Francisco

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architecture

California Academy of Sciences Reopens in an Orgy of Ecotechture

Over the weekend, the newly-revamped ecotechtural marvel known as the California Academy of Sciences opened its doors to the general public in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Packed with new, high-tech exhibits and massive tanks showing off slices of the coastal ecosystem, the museum is a monument to eco-consciousness on every level. From its living roof (pictured above), to its "flooded rainforest" walk-in tank, it's a must for visiting. Or just gawking at. We've got some photos of the most breathtaking parts. More »

7:00 AM on Mon Sep 29 2008
By Annalee Newitz
2,227 views, 10 comments

Latest by Grey_Area: @Grey_Area: Don't get me wrong, the new stuff absolutely rules! more »

architecture

A Museum Whose Shape Defies Geometry

This weekend marks the opening of San Francisco's new Contemporary Jewish Museum, but locals have been gawking at the building's mesmerizing shape for months. Todd Lappin of awesome blog Telstar Logistics snapped some images of this shiny, weird cube that is actually a room in the museum, even though it looks like precisely the wrong shape for everything. Maybe it's completely ordinary-looking inside? Nope. Check out the interior, below. More »

7:00 AM on Fri Jun 6 2008
By Annalee Newitz
4,035 views, 29 comments

Latest by butchie: Personally I'm partial to the more "traditional" aspects of the building. I've been putting together a site to document all more »

nerd salon

Drink with io9ers Tonight at Nerd Salon in San Francisco

Tonight in San Francisco the nerds can rejoice at Nerd Salon, an event where you can chat or flirt without fear about comic books, computers, bioengineering, and Battlestar Galactica. Convened by myself, and Electronic Frontier Foundation legal geek Jennifer Granick, Nerd Salon is a place where people will help you with your homework. While drinking. And playing with humanoid robots, supplied by the excellent David Calkins and Simone Davalos of Robogames. Come out between 6-9 PM to the Makeout Room in San Francisco and say hi to your fellow io9ers and sundry nerds.

11:41 AM on Wed Apr 23 2008
By Annalee Newitz
556 views, 41 comments

Latest by PadreFaustus: Hi, Annalee. Any plans to make this a regular event? Fortunately, I do live here in SF, and would love more »

world without cars

The Public Transit Projects that Should Have Been

Urban history is littered with the dead bodies of scrapped public transit projects. When eager commuters and car companies turned the automobile into the most popular form of transit in the world in the twentieth century, many cities set aside plans for expanding their public transit systems, such as the electric tram system planned for regions feeding into Melbourne, Australia. In some cases, city planners actually ripped out existing transit systems like Los Angeles' once-enormous cable car network. What would these cities and others look like if their public transit systems had continued to thrive and we lived in a world without cars? We've got five alternate urban histories of public transport for you below. More »

5:15 PM on Wed Apr 16 2008
By Annalee Newitz
5,304 views, 66 comments

Latest by Byronotron: @Freddie Freelance: pretty fucking high! haha. but yeah all of san diego proper would be pretty screwed. north county might more »

mega disasters

Earthquake in Progress: Your Laptop Can Save You!

The Quake Catcher Network is the latest effort in distributed computing that aims to turn your computer into a node in a vast, distributed earthquake detection network. Developed by University of California seismologists and computer scientists, Quake Catcher uses accelerometers already built into many laptops to detect shaking. If several nodes produce consistent hits at once, the word goes out across the internet in real time: Earthquake in Progress. Once there are enough nodes in active fault zones, the researchers think they can pick up seismic waves on the Network and transmit a warning to populated areas with somewhere between 10 and 20 seconds of warning. After the break, we take a look at three of the most dangerous places on Earth that are most likely to need Quake Catcher. More »

9:33 AM on Fri Apr 4 2008
By Michael Reilly
1,275 views, 6 comments

Latest by Airport_Whiskey: A working, or so they say, version of this tech went online last October here in Japan. It is more »

entropist

Google Maps of Sci-Fi

It's another installment of Entropist, a sci-fi culture column by futurist design maven Geoff Manaugh, author of BLDG BLOG. The British branch of Penguin Books recently premiered a new website called - a bit lamely - We Tell Stories. The basic idea is that six authors will tell six stories over a period of six weeks. More interesting, however, is the fact that story #1, "The 21 Steps" by Charles Cumming, was told using Google Maps. So combine this same strategy with today's urban sci-fi, add a few more cities - and you've got a way to map science fiction across the planet. Could there someday be a Google Maps of Sci-Fi? More »

Feature

9:30 AM on Fri Mar 28 2008
By Geoff Manaugh
8,901 views, 20 comments

Latest by LeeAdephagia: Nothing to do with sci-fi, but this blog posting got me interested and I am currently researching a similar topic for more »

concept art

The Alien Warships That Took San Francisco

These paintings from the PS3 game Resistance: Fall of Man 2 make mayhem and alien invasions look downright gorgeous. We aren't sure if that's meant to be the Golden Gate Bridge in the image above, since the structure of the supports looks somewhat different, but if it is... San Francisco looks like it might take a pounding in this sequel. We've got a whole gallery of this beautiful art below. More »

4:30 PM on Wed Feb 27 2008
By Kevin Kelly
3,247 views, 20 comments

Latest by PadreFaustus: I'd LOVE to see those serrated Zeppelins over the bay bridge whilst taking my morning constitutional. more »

architecture

Scallion-Shaped High Rises Dominate SF Skyline by 2108

If you think San Francisco is pretty now, wait till you see it in the future. Local architecture firm Iwamoto Scott proposes this curvy, colorful cityscape for the city by the bay, to accommodate a population that's slated to double by 2108. Some more details and pics after the jump. More »

8:20 AM on Fri Feb 15 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
1,279 views, 16 comments

Latest by vortekxt: The point of this design competition was to be provocative, with a speculative vision of 100 years from now, and more »

The WonderCon Schedule Is Now Online For those of you who will be out here in lovely San Francisco for the fangasm-inducing WonderCon (Feb 22-24), good news awaits. You can while away the afternoon perusing the online schedule, and planning what you'll be doing that weekend. Don't forget to pencil in the io9 meetup for Friday, Feb. 22 from 7-9 PM — location TBA. What's in store? A ton of awesome stuff, including a preview of the new X-Files movie and a chance to meet awesome artist Ben Templesmith. Here's the schedule: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. [WonderCon]

12 comments

sf bookstore fetish

O Beloved Local Scifi Bookstore

Every town has one. It's the local scifi or comic book store that's much more than a place to buy books. It's a meeting spot, a salon, and a cruising joint for people who want to hang out and talk scifi with other bookish types. The store proprietors should be legendary — Crabby Heinlein Guy is really mean and elitist, but Goth Girl is super nice and will always recommend good books even if you don't know Star Wars from The Star Fraction. Every week, we're going to feature one beloved local scifi or comic book store here on io9. We begin the love this week with a natty bookstore in San Francisco called Borderlands, which is full of unusual books and home to one hairless cat named Ripley. More »

4:00 PM on Wed Jan 9 2008
By Annalee Newitz
2,004 views, 50 comments

Latest by tiviander: We love this place. Ripley has a cousin that visits once in a while, so it seems like they are more »