An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association 2005 Annual Meeting August 7–10, 2005 San Francisco, California Come to the City by the Bay!

Theme: "The Sarbanes-Oxley Act: A Three-Year Retrospective."

Some San Francisco Trivia

A gold rush transformed a fishing village into the internationally-famous city of San Francisco almost overnight, and for 153 years it has been a magnet for fortune-seekers, immigrants, artists and poets. Guarded by the famous bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the city by the bay is famous for its diverse citizenry, Victorian architecture, cable cars and scenic views, and for its fog.

• Yerba Buena Cove was named for wild mint (good herb) growing nearby, and the first resident pitched his tent here in 1835. The first mayor changed the town's name in 1848 and San Francisco was born, its 469 residents including Ohlone Indians, Americans, Spanish Californians, Hawaiians, Europeans, South Americans and New Zealanders.
   
• James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill in 1849, and the world poured in. By 1852, the city swelled to almost 35,000. Today, San Francisco's 49 square miles are home to 801,377 people.
   
• The country's first Chinese immigrants came to San Francisco in 1848. The Hagiwara family invented "Chinese" fortune cookies at Golden Gate Park's Tea Garden, and at Chinatown's Ross Alley fortune cookie factory, a Rube Goldberg-like contraption turns them out by the dozens.
   
• A city built on 43 hills will surely have steep, curving streets. Vermont Avenue between 22nd and 23rd is "crookedest," and Filbert between Hyde and Leavenworth is steepest at 31.5 degrees, but neither fact discourages tourists from flocking to Lombard Street's seductive curves.
   
• San Francisco outlawed burials in 1901, and the Presidio and Mission have the city's only remaining cemeteries. The dead are in neighboring Colma, making it the world's only incorporated city where the dead outnumber the living. Permanent residents of its 16 cemeteries include Wyatt Earp and Joe DiMaggio.
   
• At Angel Island, the Ellis Island of the West, 175,000 Chinese immigrants and Japanese "picture brides" once waited to enter the country. Poems of hope they carved into the walls are still visible at the Immigration Museum.
   
• San Francisco cable cars are the only moving National Historic Landmark, and 9.7 million people take a nine mile per hour ride on them each year. At the Cable Car Barn Museum, 500-horsepower electric motors turn the endless cable loops.
   
• San Francisco has 215 historic landmark buildings, ten historical districts and 14,000 Victorian homes. From Alamo Square, the city skyline is a modern contrast to Victorian "postcard row."
   
• Lands End's views give The Thinker plenty to contemplate from his seat outside the Palace of the Legion of Honor, a replica of Paris' Palais de la Legion d'Honneur. The most beautiful of the city's 65 museums holds one of the world's most significant Rodin collections.
   
• John C. Fremont named the San Francisco Bay's entrance "Chrysopylae" (Golden Gate) because it resembled Istanbul's Golden Horn. The Golden Gate Bridge, with 23 miles of ladders and 300,000 rivets in each tower, was the world's longest span when it opened in 1937. Seventeen ironworkers and 38 painters constantly fight rust and renew the international orange paint on its 1.7-mile span.
   
• Alcatraz means pelican in Spanish. The rocky pelican's island was a military fort before it became a prison. Today's resident deer mice, banana slugs and California slender salamanders aren't nearly as famous as former prisoners Al Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly and Robert "Birdman" Stroud.
   
• Union Square is among the top four shopping areas in the nation. Boutiques, spas, galleries and San Francisco's only Frank Lloyd Wright building fill nearby Maiden Lane, but it wasn't always so respectable. Once home to the lowest houses of prostitution, the former Morton Street was so depraved that even policemen hesitated to enter.
   
• In 1850, gold seekers abandoned over 600 vessels in the bay. Some became landfill, now lying beneath the Jackson Square Historic District where the city's few surviving nineteenth century commercial buildings include Ghirardelli's first chocolate factory.
   
• Mission Dolores is the oldest building in San Francisco, built in 1791. Two major earthquakes couldn't topple it, but tiny powderpost beetles almost did in 2000, chewing their way to international fame before they were stopped.
   
• San Francisco's summer fog rushes in on ocean breezes as the city's cool air moves toward warmer places inland. San Franciscans make friends with the fog, and when the Coast Guard removed the bay's last foghorn, cries of protest soon brought it back.

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