What's That Smell? A Walking Tour of the Northeast Mission Industrial Zone by Shaping San Francisco - (SF International Arts Festival)

Shaping San Francisco, enjoying its 27th year in 2025, is a participatory community history project documenting and archiving overlooked stories and memories of San Francisco. The group does this in a variety of ways. They have a vast digital archive at foundsf.org where they invite everyone to contribute to our shared history. They hold Public Talks regularly at 518 Valencia; during the pandemic they came up with a new preferred activity: the Urban Forum: Walk 'n' Talk, where they explore little visited hilltops, neighborhoods, stairways, and more all over the city. They conduct walking and bicycle history tours at least a half dozen times each season. And they often partner with local university classes, helping students to produce new historical research that is incorporated into the online archive.

The project's roots lie in the "new social history" which emerged in the Annales School in the 1930s and was further developed in the 1960s as a way to go beyond the traditional history of "great men" which many of us were spoon-fed in public school.  The project has produced three anthologies (published by City Lights Books) offering grassroots perspectives on social movements, significant events, and decisions that have led to the San Francisco that we see and experience today. Chris Carlsson's book, Hidden San Francisco, was published by Pluto Press in February 2020; a new expanded second edition is being published in late April 2025.  

For Shaping San Francisco, history is a participatory, creative act in the present. On this walk we will be literally makinghistory together. Come and expand your sense of your own historical agency.