1.   “In the end, people are people, and love is love, whatever size, shape, or guise it comes in.” So wrote this San Francisco novelist, author of One Day at a Time, on her official website:

      a. Merla Zellerbach

      b. Danielle Steel

      c. Maya Angelou

2.   True or false: Pope Street commemorates English poet and satirist Alexander Pope, whose unquenchable longing to visit the city of his dreams provoked him to set sail from his Twickenham Villa on the River Thames all the way to this jewel of a city by the Bay.

3.   Andrew Smith Hallidie, inventor of the cable car, immigrated to SF with his father from their native England. A one-time miner, blacksmith, and builder of suspension bridges, Hallidie had to leave a bridge across the Klamath River unfinished because:

      a. the long-awaited materials never arrived from San Francisco

      b. his crew walked off the job in protest of inhumane working conditions

      c. of an uprising by Native Americans

4.   Korla Pandit appeared on KGO-TV in 1957:

      a. demonstrating yoga exercises exclusively designed for homebound housewives

      b. wearing a turban and playing lounge music on the organ with one hand

      c. cooking Indian dishes viewers could easily prepare at home

5.   Name the former San Francisco Warriors basket-ball star who runs a Folsom and 12^th Street BBQ.                                     

      a. Rick Barry

      b. Wilt Chamberlain

      c. Nate Thurmond

6.   The Haight-Ashbury psychedelic craze of the 1960s was fueled by LSD, peyote, and mescaline. These mind-altering elixirs were not touted by:

      a. Governor Ronald Reagan

      b. Aldous Huxley

      c. Dr. Albert Hofmann

7.   An amusement park specialist, George K. Whitney, Jr., had helped Walt Disney design Disneyland. In San Francisco, Whitney is affectionately remembered for the ocean-side layout of:

      a. The Sutro Heights Gardens

      b. The San Francisco Zoo

      c. Playland at the Beach

8.   This pair of ballet stars was apprehended by the police in a 1960s drug bust in the Haight:

      a. Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland

      b. Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn

      c. Allegra Kent and Jacques d’Amboise

9.   The Academy Award–winning movie The Nun’s Story (1959) was based on a best-selling book written by this WWI–era graduate of erstwhile Polytechnic High School on Frederick Street:

      a. Kathyrn Hulme

      b. Helen MacInnes

      c. Rebecca West

10.  Name the Chicago-based engineer who spear-headed the design and construction of the Golden Gate Bridge:

      a. Michael M. O’Shaughnessy

      b. Joseph Strauss

      c. Irving F. Morrow

Answers:

1. b (Steel is prolific writer of popular fiction.)

2. False (Pope [1688–1744] lived well before the metropolis of San Francisco was born. Pope Street was named for Civil War General John Pope.)

3.  c

4.  b (Pandit had been a longtime resident of Santa Rosa.)

5.  c (Big Nate’s Barbeque)

6.  a

7.  c

8.  b (“You’re all children!” Nureyev is said to have snapped at reporters upon being bailed out of jail.)

9.  a (class of June 1918)

10. b (The Golden Gate Bridge opened for business in 1937. Toll was fifty cents one way.)

 

Victor Turks grew up in San Francisco and lives in the Richmond with his wife, Michiko, their three boys, a pug, a cat, and a tankful of goldfish. He teaches English at City College.