San Francisco has an energy and excitement about itself that is constantly being renewed by an endless stream of new residents. The city is a magnet to the young and adventurous. San Francisco has always been a melting pot, especially since international fortune hunters flooded in to exploit the gold rush of the mid-19th century.

At the moment the largest single ethnic group in the city is Chinese, though every culture in the world seems to be represented here. It is a city that seems to attract dreamers, romantics and visionaries and is seen as a kind of a mecca to Gays of all ages. San Francisco has a significantly higher proportion of never married people under the age of 35 in its population than most other major cities in the U.S. Many people come here to begin their lives and follow their ambitions. Often when their ambitions have been realized or they begin a family they will move as the cost of living in the city is among the highest in the US.

One of the things that makes San Francisco so unique and famous is its hills; there are 43 in all, the more famous being Nob, Russian, Telegraph and Twin Peaks. It was actually an Irish surveyor, Jasper O'Farrell, who helped in the layout of the city. In 1847 he was given the job of extending the plan of the town. He invented Market Street and the much bigger blocks to the south. As a planner he was much more interested in theory than in practice, which is why the city's long straight streets go over the tops of hills instead of circling around them.

San Francisco is not a city without problems. It has a growing number of homeless people; at the moment estimated to be between 11,000 to 16,000. There have been various attempts to organize city programs that provide health care and temporary shelter but the thousands of people who still haunt the parks and the streets show that the problem still exists. Furthermore, the city' s deeply held ideals about tolerance and democracy often clash with programs that aim to sweep the homeless off the street.

A more pressing problem in the city, however, is the AIDS crisis. As a center of gay life, San Francisco has inevitably been at the center of dealing with AIDS. The AIDS infrastructure developed by the city has served as a model for the rest of the US. The hospitals provide the world' s most comprehensive and sensitive care for people with AIDS. There is also a huge amount of support groups, alternative medicine healers, volunteer organizations and counselors who help those affiliated with the disease.