Next Three Events:
Download the Fall 2026 calendar as a pdf here.
Wednesday, November 11, 7:30 pm
Central America Solidarity Revolts
Public Talk at 518 Valencia
Panelists Eddie Yuen and Josie Caroline Pike present archival documentation of the Bay Area's social movements during the 1980s Cold War revival, with a focus on the revolt against U.S. intervention in Central America, using selections of photographs, audio, and ephemera from the H.K. Yuen Archive.
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Surveillance in Plain View
Saturday, November 14, Noon-2 pm
Led by Hugh D'Andrade, longtime friend of Shaping San Francisco and the creative director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We will cycle around on a mini-scavenger hunt to identify a variety of surveillance devices that populate our everyday environment in San Francisco.
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Wednesday, December 2, 7:30 pm
San Francisco: Capital of the Nerd Reich?
Public Talk at 518 Valencia
A few years ago Gil Durán launched his blog titled The Nerd Reich and now he has a popular book of the same title. He was once press spokesperson for Kamala Harris and other California politicians before he returned to his journalistic roots and became the scourge of the local billionaires and their nefarious plans for San Francisco. Mission Local editor Joe Eskenazi has been in the City Hall trenches for several years, and is perfectly perched to help explore the themes Durán has done so much to bring to the forefront.
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Explore Shaping San Francisco:
Rethinking Memorialization
Shaping San Francisco, from March 2025–March 2026, was chosen as a Community Engagement Consultant by the San Francisco Arts Commission for the "Shaping Legacy: San Francisco Monuments and Memorials" project. For this case study, we examined memory and memorialization in relation to the Padre Junipero Serra monument (one of several public monuments toppled on Juneteenth 2020 in the wake of the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd) by facilitating artist activations, community history circles, and public events exploring this history. Four other monuments were explored by local community organizations: Christopher Columbus by California Migration Museum, Dewey Monument by SOMA Pilipinas, Francis Scott Key by Youth Speaks, and Ulysses S. Grant by American Indian Cultural District.
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 out our full roster of interviews on Foundsf.org
"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.
Shaping San Francisco is fiscally sponsored by Independent Arts & Media, a California non-profit corporation.