Hail, Sparkletack!

17Oct07

If you’ve ever read this column you know my tastes favor off-beat Bay Area topics—be they yesterday’s or today’s. Perhaps you’re as passionate about regional history and/or contemporary Bay Area stuff as me. You may share my tastes, hunger for the more conventional, or perhaps seek even weirder flavors. You haunt bookstores and libraries, catch the occasional special on KRON 4, PBS or the History Channel—but when it comes to the internet (specifically Bay Area Web sites, blogs and podcasts), you’re lost.

I know I was.

Bay Time Reporter emerged after conducting countless mainstream tours of San Francisco, Muir Woods, Monterey Peninsula, Yosemite and Wine Country. I soon tired of these cookie cutter tours and began offering more specialized and esoteric experiences (anyone up for an informative jaunt around poetic Tar Flat?) I grabbed any and every SF Bay Area title I could lay my mitts on—whether from library, bookstore or garage sale. I hunted down obscure museums, local historical societies, reading rooms, movies, television shows and leads on ephemera and historically important sites and buildings. Sure, I surfed the net for stuff, but not until launching this column did I systematically dig into the Web’s staggering array of treasures regarding our San Francisco Bay Area.

Today I’ll share a few Bay Area Internet finds your fingers can easily walk to.

General online Bay Area Guides:
Want to know what’s playing in the City? Looking for an apartment?
How about info on restaurants, tours, museums, accommodations, special events? These are nuts and bolts sites. A few of them, like Inetours, even have short history blurbs. Try SFstation.com, San Francisco Bay Yahoo directory, or Citysearchsf.com

Special Interest Sites & Blogs:
Word’N’Bass.com keeps us abreast of regional literary and musical news & happenings. At SFist.com you’ll find a lively potpourri of blogs, info and photos from an array of contributors. Friscovista.com blogs Northern California culture, history, the outdoors and news and opinion.

History Resources:
SFmuseum.org boasts nearly five thousand pages to browse through. Califoriahistoricalsociety.org publishes a magazine, has exhibits, collections and offers in-house historical programs. Sfgeneology.com serves up history links aplenty. The Online Archive of California lets you search through almost one thousand online texts, including letters, oral histories and newspapers.

Creme de la creme:
One site shines brighter than all others. Sparkletack.com is a unique supra-entertaining delight. You’ll hear podcasts of San Francisco Bay Area history from the lips of master storyteller Richard Miller. These addictive audio podcasts are complimented by exquisitely penned essays on all sorts of historical things San Francisco Bay Area.

The Sparkletack Web site is sophisticated, yet fun, informed but accessible, chock-full of engrossing text, photos, maps and drawings laid out in a friendly, professional manner. Sparkletack is not only steeped in Bay Area history, Richard Miller’s genetic branch grows from Mark Twain’s own illustrious family tree. It shows.

Old Sam Clemens had a passion for emerging communication gadgets. He toyed with telephones, typewriters, dictaphones and short-lived state-of-the-art printing presses—like one he went broke investing in. If he were with us today Mr. Clemens would no doubt podcast his many offerings. And I’ll bet they’d sound a heck of a lot like those you’ll hear on:

http://www.sparkletack.com

Filed under: Mark Twain, Richard Miller, San Francisco Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area History, San Francisco history, Sparkletack   |  Leave a Comment