"Best cruise through the past!" — SF Bay Guardian "Best of the Bay" 2007
NEW! Walking Tour of SOMA
Dunes, Trains, and Beer:
The Buried History of SOMA
- Saturday, July 21: Meet at SOMARTS 943 Brannan, 1 pm
A walking tour with Chris Carlsson and LisaRuth Elliott of Shaping San Francisco (and San Francisco's best history website: FoundSF.org), wherein you'll discover lost layers of history, from flattened sand dunes, buried wetlands, and a navigable river, to the successive uses of the area including slaughterhouses, steel mills, and breweries.
Bicycle Tours
4-hour social, historical, and critical tours through San Francisco.
Shaping San Francisco co-director Chris Carlsson conducts 4-hour historical tours of San Francisco by bicycle. Bring a snack and water — we don't stop for food!
Spring 2012 Tours:
- Sun. May 20: Dissent
- Sat. May 26: Food Politics
- Sat. July 7: Labor History
- Sun. Oct. 28: Halloween Tour of Colma Cemeteries!
- Fall 2013: Ecological History North
- Fall 2013: Ecological History South
- Fall 2013: Transit
Tours start at 12 noon at CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission (at 9th Street) in San Francisco.
Sliding scale $15-50, benefitting Shaping San Francisco
More info: 415.608.9035
Need to Rent a Bike? Go to Pier 40 to the Bike Hut!
Labor history
Saturday, July 7, noon
From the pre-urban history of Indian Slavery to the earliest 8-hour day movement in the U.S., the ebb and flow of class war is traced. SF's radical working class organizations are shaped in part by racist complicity in genocide and slavery, but from the 1870s to the 1940s there are dozens of epic battles between owners and workers, culminating in the 1934 General Strike and its aftermath. This is an entirely different look, during a four hour bike tour, at San Francisco labor history.
Ecological History (north)
Fall 2013
This trip through San Francisco's lost sand dunes, ponds, creeks and coastline will focus on the city from downtown north, covering the heart of the city, the waterfront and Yerba Buena cove, Telegraph Hill, Black Point, and Crissy Field in the Presidio... It's a social, historical and critical 4-hour tour through the city's ecological past and present.
Dissent
Sunday, May 20, noon
Covering everything from literary dissenters to urban riots and protests, this tour examines sites of conflict and unrest, the social movements and upheavals, that have shaped San Francisco since its origins. It's a social, historical and critical 4-hour tour through the city's contrarian past and present.
Food politics
Saturday, May 26, noon
We'll go towards North Beach to explore the old Italian food industries, before turning south to explore the multiple food histories of the Mission and with luck, making it to Alemany Farm for our final stop.
Special food stops all the way!
Halloween Tour of Colma Cemeteries!
Sunday, October 28, noon
We meet at the COLMA BART STATION at 12 noon, and then take a spirited tour of several massive cemeteries where famous San Franciscans are buried. We'll visit Woodlawn, Home of Peace and Hills of Eternity, Cypress Lawn, and Holy Cross.
Awards and Testimonials
“BEST CRUISE THROUGH THE PAST”
“While in principle we'd be the first to advocate sitting at home with a good history book on weekends, we'd also be the first to admit that such studious discipline can be hard to maintain on those rare summer afternoons when the sun is shining. Thanks to local activist Chris Carlsson's Bicycle History Tours, which depart regularly from CounterPULSE in SoMa, you can get your fun in the sun while simultaneously learning loads about San Francisco's various social, political, and ecological histories. As director and curator of the ambitiously far-reaching Shaping San Francisco history preservation project, Carlsson has amassed a wealth of local archival information regarding such absorbing topics as the subterranean waterways flowing beneath our streets and the Bay Area's long-standing penchant for protest. Usually the bike ride turns out to be the least strenuous activity of the day, but the great gray muscle that is your brain will definitely get a workout.”
— San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of the Bay 2007
“A REAL CHARACTER AND A HILARIOUS GUY”
Last weekend I had the fortune to spend four hours in the company of Chris Carlsson, maybe the most knowledgeable man around when it comes to all things San Francisco. Seriously. He offers six more tours this year, ranging in subject from food history (the one I opted for) to dissent to ecological history. Best of all, the tours are in no way obnoxious. Carlsson is a real character and a hilarious guy. You can tell he cares about his city as much as he cares about the people who live in it. And his tours are punctuated with tasty snacks. I was joined by about fifteen other folks (including two friends on an obscenely large tandem bicycle with whom I got lost afterwards in a pretty bad neighborhood…needless to say, heads were turning). Carlsson steered us around the sites of factories I didn’t even know had existed in San Francisco – mayonnaise, Twinkie, coffee – and way beyond.
—Lucy Schiller, Broke-Ass Stuart Destitute Dispatcher, Oct. 19, 2011
“A GREAT BIKE RIDE / SAN FRANCISCO”
Labor History Tour
“Explore the colorful history of the labor movement here in San Francisco with CounterPULSE and Shaping San Francisco director Chris Carlsson on this four-hour bicycle tour. You will visit Pier 38 where the 1877 riots almost burned the Pacific Mail docks (and led to the Workingmen’s Party) and the foot of Market Street where many labor marches began. Get off at the Civic Center BART/Muni Station — remember you can bring your bike on BART —and meet up with new friends at Mission and 9th streets. Do not forget your high-energy snack and some H2O. $15-50 sliding scale.”
—San Francisco Examiner
“TREMENDOUS NARRATIVE SKILL”
“I recently rode on the Shaping San Francisco 'Labor History' bike tour led by Chris Carlsson, a cycling encyclopedia of the many layers of SF history. With tremendous narrative skill, Chris point out visible urban features and architecture I'd passed by countless times without a notice, to bring the lived experience of the past into perspective. Upcoming tours include Ecological History, Dissent, and Food Politics. I hope to go on more these and suggest both visitors and long-time residents check them out as well. There's pretty much no better way of spending a beautiful day and getting a deeper look at the city we live in.”
“UNRIVALED”
“The bike tours are unrivaled for their information to minute ratio. Chris Carlsson = top 5 people in SF.”
— Yelp Review