For 22 years, Monarch — the last California grizzly bear in captivity — never stopped trying to escape from his cage. He had been snared in the San Gabriel Mountains and shipped to San Francisco for the entertainment of the moneyed magnates, robber barons, and kings of capitalism atop Nob Hill. He wanted out.

Lately, I can better imagine the same wildness that the bear may have felt, with my feet pacing my now too-familiar floors of my apartment, the days and weeks having passed with irrelevant chronology. A long footnote in an already difficult year.

Monarch’s face is the…

No two streets of San Francisco look the same, and we love it. Take a trip through the history of the city through the various architectural styles of San Francisco homes with this piece by Christopher Radcool Reynolds and illustrated by Eli Myers:

Italianates used to be all over the city, but most burned down in 1906. There are still a few west of Divisadero and south of 20th Street in the Mission.

In 2015, Berkeley-based design journalist Roman Mars delivered a TED Talk (now at 6.3 million views) about city flags. The video went viral and introduced a national audience to ideas about good flag design that he’d been discussing for several years on his podcast and radio show 99% Invisible.

Mars’ message: A great city should have a great flag — but the flags of most cities aren’t so great. Exhibit A was his example of how not to design a city flag: the flag of San Francisco.

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The Golden Gate Bridge is thought to be many things. To engineers, it’s a wonder; to photographers, a dream. To the poet, it’s an emblem—“the western bookend to the Brooklyn Bridge,” as Michiko Kakutani once wrote. To the troubled, it’s a provocation, an intolerable curiosity.

To all, it’s a source of awe, lending from every vantage the sense that what you’re looking at is not just beautiful, or impressive, but historic. John van der Zee, author of The Gate, called it “the most successful combination of site and structure since the Parthenon.”

To locals, of course, the bridge is essential…

Seeing Papyrus get dragged on SNL inspired me to write this friendly guide detailing the only appropriate situations in which to use fonts that everyone hates.

But some complained that I’d skipped some of the most loathed fonts. And I didn’t actually include Papyrus, presuming that everyone knew already. Well, in case you missed the memo, here’s the only establishment that has the OK to use Papyrus on signage:

[Read Part II here.]

Tensions flared in the typography fandom when Saturday Night Live featured a sketch mocking the Papyrus typeface; in particular, its appearance in the title for James Cameron’s Avatar.

As a typography enthusiast, I must object to this round dismissal of Papyrus.ttf. Every typeface has its time and its place — even Papyrus. Even Wingdings. Yes, even Comic Sans. Sure, that time and place might be on the signage for a preschool in a suburban Wisconsin strip mall. But though coastal elites deny it, that is, indeed, a real place.

Hence, I’ve assembled a quick guide…