Unique, inch-by-inch walking tours by appointment

Contact me at gary.kamiya@gmail.com

I offer unique walking tours by appointment. I give two different tours. One covers the Jackson Square Historic District, Chinatown's Portsmouth Square, and the Barbary Coast. The second covers North Beach and Telegraph Hill. No other walking tours will take you as deep into the bewitching past and turbulent present of this city as these do, or offer as many weird and wonderful facts you will not find anywhere else. You will learn about everything from the great Colombian mammoths and giant sloths that roamed North Beach 25,000 years ago, to the native Yelamu people who lived here for millennia, the strange era when this was the last, end-of-the-world outpost of the dying Spanish empire, the charmed, moth-eaten Yerba Buena village years under Mexican rule, the psychotic eruption of the Gold Rush, the days when bibulous businessmen would make their daily pilgrimage down the Cocktail Route, the ingrown, more-Italian-than Italy community of 19th century North Beach, the horror and devastation wrought by the great 1906 earthquake and fire, the WPA era of the 1930s with its majestic Coit Tower murals, the 1950s heyday of the neighborhood's transgressive gay bars, the exhilarating delirium of the Beats, and their tragi-comic battle with the SFPL’s two-man “Beatnik Squad” and its unpleasant leader, Officer Bigarani. I draw on an unsurpassed wealth of knowledge gleaned from the voluminous research I did for my bestselling books Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco and Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City, and the more than 320 "Portals of the Past" history columns I have written during the last 10 years for the San Francisco Chronicle and now the San Francisco Examiner. Along the way, I'll throw in a wealth of personal anecdotes from my 50-plus years in the city, covering almost every building and every corner we'll pass. Whether you're a longtime resident or a visitor, you'll never see the city the same way after this tour. The cost is $500 per tour, with a maximum of ten people per tour. To make a reservation or for more information, contact me at gary.kamiya@gmail.com.

I am also an experienced and first-rate public speaker. I have given dozens of entertaining, informative and funny talks and presentations to a wide range of corporate and civic organizations, including Goodreads, LoveFrom, City Guides, the Commonwealth Club, the City Club, the Pacific-Union Club, the Bohemian Club, the Cypress Lawn Heritage Foundation, and many other convention groups, libraries, schools and private parties. Please contact me at gary.kamiya@gmail.com to book me as a speaker.