San Francisco

A handyman repaints a window frame next to a mural-covered building in San Francisco. The city has more than 600 murals, or wall paintings, and the Mission District has the greatest concentration of them. Find out the story behind this mural.

Billie Jean Kanion: "I've been homeless for quite some time in San Francisco. Just yesterday I was given a gift of a new apartment. It's a second start to my life. So I'm very grateful right now. There are some great people working for the homeless. I just got lucky."

People weren't the only ones who wanted to hear what was being said at this event at San Francisco City Hall. A tropical bird was there, too. Do you know the English name of this bird, which is usually green and often repeats what's said around it?

A boat approaches the Golden Gate Bridge on its way into San Francisco Bay. The Golden Gate had the longest span of any suspension bridge in the world when it was completed in 1937.

The richest marine region on the Pacific coast from Mexico to Alaska lies around San Francisco. Sunlight fills the mineral-rich waters, causing huge numbers of plankton to be born. Shrimp and anchovies are then attracted to the plankton-filled bay.

The Golden Gate Bridge is fitted with suicide hotline telephones, and police patrols look for people who appear to be planning to jump. It takes four seconds to fall from the bridge. Jumpers hit the water at 122 km/h. Most die on impact. 

The beta version is just a few months old, but it's already reshaping how many cyclists travel. Covering more than 200 US cities — and soon to be rolled out internationally — Google Biking maps are based on a mash-up of data.

Muscle Beach is just south of the Santa Monica Pier. Its role in the culture of bodybuilding dates back to the 1930's. If offers a free gymnastics training area equipped with chinning bars, parallel bars and a small jungle gym for children.

The first recorded use of roller skates was in 1743 in London. Since then, roller skating has become a fitness hobby, a sport and a way of getting around cities. Today, skates come in two basic varieties: quad rollers and inline blades.