00:00:01.340 - 00:00:37.530

Yeah, yeah. Moving on. Mhm, Mhm! Go home. San Francisco was a city in recovery as it entered the 19 nineties. The Loma Prieta earthquake had jolted the city just 2.5 months earlier, killing 68 people, injuring thousands. The nightmarish images of collapsed freeways and burning buildings were

00:00:37.530 - 00:00:55.260

still fresh in people's minds, but it was time to move on. There was work to be done, and I could feel the pressure of our city. Of the people who cared about our city loved ones around the world who are worried about family in the city,

00:00:56.340 - 00:01:24.000

drilling down right on me, saying Okay, you're the leader. What are you gonna do? How do we get out of this? The task of rebuilding and reinforcing the city was tremendous. 10 homes and apartments were destroyed or damaged. Portions of five freeways were closed. Many public

00:01:24.010 - 00:01:42.810

buildings were shut down or shored up with wooden braces to get projects moving and money flowing. Mayor Art Agnos declared a state of emergency that lasted almost a year. Then he looked for help. This is a cantankerous city. Everybody's got an opinion about everything. And when

00:01:42.810 - 00:02:03.160

you're the mayor, you get them off. But during that time, everybody said, Tell us what to do and we'll do it. Mhm, Mhm. The hardest hit area of the city was the marina, but it was also the first to recover. Two years after the quake, it

00:02:03.160 - 00:02:27.130

was almost completely rebuilt, but sometimes it was simply better to start over. Oakland's Cyprus Structure Freeway, where 42 died, was torn down. Its replacement was built in a different location. San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway was also demolished two years after the quake, creating light and views where

00:02:27.130 - 00:02:46.070

concrete once stood, freeing the waterfront for Renaissance. But amidst all the damage, the years of rebuilding and the close to the surface fears about the next big one was the spirit of the people of San Francisco. Our city has always had this kind of image of

00:02:46.070 - 00:03:10.460

a kind of kooky, off beat city. But during that time the people of this city show we were made of the right stuff, and that's what I take with me All my life. The city struggled to rebuild itself. People in the Bay Area faced another unforgiving

00:03:10.460 - 00:03:31.210

force of nature. Drought 1991 the fifth year of the drought was parching the landscape. People rationed water and allowed their lawns to turn brown. By mid October that year, a real Indian summer had set in. Temperatures were rising. Hot, dry wind was blowing out of the

00:03:31.210 - 00:03:50.900

Northeast. It was nature's perfect recipe for disaster. On the morning of October 19th, a small brush fire broke out near the Caldecott Tunnel. Oakland firefighters knew the situation was serious. They called in five alarms to fight the blaze. By Saturday night, they thought everything was under

00:03:50.900 - 00:04:16.680

control. But Sunday morning the fire exploded back to life, fanned by winds gusting up to 50 miles an hour, fueled by bone, dry eucalyptus trees and wood frame homes. The firestorm had begun the whole fire. Yeah, the fire raced up the hillsides of North Oakland and

00:04:16.680 - 00:04:37.680

southeastern Berkeley, blowing over Highway 13 to Upper Rockridge, wiping out home after home, neighborhood after neighborhood. When this fire started coming, it was you could smell it. I mean, it was overwhelming smell, horrible smell, and it got to the point where it was difficult to see

00:04:37.680 - 00:04:54.060

and to breathe because of the smoke in the air and because of the I felt really scared, really frightened. And then the clouds of smoke were so thick and it started to feel dangerous physically. And that's why I really wanted to get the the animals out

00:04:54.060 - 00:05:12.850

and my child out. You're going down. Come on. Robert and Bonny Bruce were among thousands of people who literally ran for their lives from the racing Inferno. Evacuate the area. Let's go. The analogy for me was like war. I was never in combat, but it was

00:05:12.850 - 00:05:28.480

very much like that because you were facing an irresistible enemy and you had very little power to do anything about it. You felt guilty about leaving things behind about not being able to do things for other people. Um, so it was very much like a war

00:05:28.480 - 00:05:48.250

situation for us at that time. More than 1000 firefighters from as far away as Fresno were called in to fight the fire, but they were overwhelmed. This extraordinary fire, reported at times to be in excess of 100 ft. Flames took out power lines to 17 pumping

00:05:48.250 - 00:06:14.940

stations in the Oakland water system. Antiquated water lines were too narrow to supply adequate water pressure. Firefighters in some areas simply ran out of water. It's like a cemetery, and the chimneys are. Are the headstones mhm? It wasn't until the next morning that the extent of

00:06:14.940 - 00:06:35.960

the devastation would be known. Block after block of homes, belongings and memories turned to ash. Many people underestimated the speed and fury of the fire and waited too long to escape. 25 people died, people trapped by narrow roads blocked by fallen power poles and exploding cars.

00:06:37.140 - 00:07:01.120

148 people were hurt. 3000 homes were destroyed. The price tag of the 15 hour firestorm. $2 billion. People return to their neighborhoods with mixed emotions. They were grateful to be alive, but filled with sorrow for the huge part of their lives that had vanished. No clothing,

00:07:01.510 - 00:07:21.560

no dishes, no wedding pictures, no baby shoes. The Bruces returned home only to find a pile of smoking rubble. There were a lot of tears. I mean tears and hugs, and we're more shocked. You just don't believe when you live in a nice sort of upper

00:07:21.560 - 00:07:33.530

middle class neighborhood like this. That disaster is going to hit you. I mean, like, there's not gonna be a tidal wave coming through the Golden Gate. Um, the Earth is not going to open up and swallow you up. You just don't think these things are going

00:07:33.530 - 00:08:03.960

to happen. Mhm. In the days following the fire, there were stories of bravery and scenes of reunion. Sam, Hey, all right, what was going through your mind here? Thought that we weren't having the house anymore. That sandwich there. But Sam's not dead. That's right. One of

00:08:03.960 - 00:08:25.560

your better now Happy and Sam's alive. As people began rebuilding their homes in the Oakland and Berkeley Hills, Robert Bruce began publishing a small newspaper for fire victims called the Phoenix Journal. It became his emotional outlet after the fire. It was very painful, and it became.

00:08:26.140 - 00:08:41.730

It took several years, five or six years before I could drive up Highway 24 look at the hills without, you know, really having a strong emotions about it, really feeling. You know, I was about to cry or feeling a lot of pain. It was It's something

00:08:41.730 - 00:09:02.300

that just didn't go away for a long, long time. And you would remember something that you had lost in the fire every day. You would remember something. Yeah, 1996 5 years after the fire, nearly half of the gutted homes were rebuilt, including the Bruces neighbors, forever

00:09:02.300 - 00:09:22.560

linked by the disaster lit a tree of hope to celebrate 1999. The fire landscape was looking lush again, and although the majority of the homes had been rebuilt, life would never be the same. It was probably the most defining time for me in my life. It

00:09:22.560 - 00:09:41.750

really stopped me kind of in my tracks to make me realize that you know the things of getting possessions and working towards a better life with possessions and didn't really mean as much anymore. So I think it helped me to become more realistic about what life's

00:09:41.750 - 00:10:12.460

about and what and what's more important, rioting in our streets and the Internet in its infancy. When we return to San Francisco in the nineties, we now return to San Francisco. In the nineties, we've just seen the launch of two people in an anti missile missiles.

00:10:13.340 - 00:10:30.830

Please get us up. Hello, New York, This is Saudi Arabia. This is not a drill. January 17th, 1991. More than a million people in the Bay Area are riveted to these images on their TV screens. Iraqi Scud missiles were responding to an air attack by the

00:10:30.830 - 00:10:54.840

United States and its allies. America was going to war in the Middle East, and we were watching it live on TV for the first time in history. It was day one of Operation Desert Storm. It was unlike any war that we've experienced before. We actually saw

00:10:54.850 - 00:11:08.190

the technology that we had only been able to imagine before. The military described the Tomahawk missile to us, but we never saw one below us going right down the street and making a left hand turn on oak, you know, I mean, we actually saw that out

00:11:08.190 - 00:11:28.100

of the out of the windows of hotels in downtown Baghdad, mhm home, thousands of Bay Area men and women, from tank gunners to doctors to reservists headed to the Persian Gulf from Travis Air Force Base and four door. They left their families behind to wait, worry

00:11:28.650 - 00:11:55.680

and watch the war live on TV. The attack on Saddam Hussein's forces was short lived. A ceasefire was announced just six weeks later, my party at home. The war sparked a tired economy, at least temporarily. Stocks closed at a record high that April, just above 3000.

00:11:55.690 - 00:12:17.280

But people were talking about recession, worried about layoffs, The slump extended to Silicon Valley, where the personal computer revolution was old news. The Valley needed a break through a new revolution to rocket technology into the next millennium. That wish was granted. The revolution was the Internet.

00:12:17.290 - 00:12:37.170

This, I think, is the ultimate story. It has got every possible theme you can imagine. It is the greatest economic story this nation and probably the world has ever seen. In the early nineties, the Internet was the tool of scientists and researchers. But all that changed

00:12:37.170 - 00:12:56.390

when Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim Clark hired Mark Andresen, a young engineer, to develop software to browse through the Internet's vast information stores. They called their company, Netscape. Before Netscape. The Internet was a very difficult thing to maneuver. You had to know where you were going. You

00:12:56.390 - 00:13:14.670

had to know how to get there. Netscape made the Internet a point and click kind of thing. Netscape went public just 16 months after it was founded. By the close of the first day of trading, the company was worth over $2 billion. That success story was

00:13:14.670 - 00:13:33.050

only the beginning of the Internet steam roller that would change the face of the entire Bay Area. The Bay Area may have been rocketing into the high tech future, but some very old issues came back to haunt us in the nineties. In March 1991 television again

00:13:33.050 - 00:13:51.110

brought national events home. As we watched this scene, a black man being brutally beaten by a group of white Los Angeles police officers. Rodney King was stopped by the officers after a high speed car chase, an onlooker videotaped beating from his apartment balcony. The racism felt

00:13:51.120 - 00:14:12.020

by many African Americans was now on display for the world to see. Finally, somebody has it on tape. Finally, somebody has it so it can't be denied. Finally, maybe somebody will do something. And I think that's what made the second stage of Rodney King Um mm

00:14:12.660 - 00:14:29.750

entitled Action so vivid for most of us, not guilty of the crime of assault by force likely to produce that second stage of Rodney King happened a year later. Los Angeles erupted into riots as a jury with no black members acquitted the officers except for a

00:14:29.750 - 00:14:50.860

deadlock on one charge two days and two nights of arson and violence left 53 people dead, almost 2000 hurt. It was America's deadliest riot of the century. I was called early that morning, following the the first night of riots, and I was told to go down

00:14:50.860 - 00:15:08.100

to Los Angeles on the first shuttle. It was like I've never seen anything like this before. There were fires in the middle of the street. It was total chaos. And for the first time in my life, I really felt scared for my personal safety and that

00:15:08.100 - 00:15:29.820

of my crew. Rage in Los Angeles was shared by many people in the Bay Area. Rioters swept through downtown San Francisco, setting fires, breaking store windows and carting off stolen goods. Over 1000 people were arrested. Mayor Frank Jordan declared a state of emergency and shut down

00:15:29.820 - 00:15:50.550

the city and curfew. Cable cars were sent to the barn. Some bus lines were stopped. Police patrolled the streets. A lot of people of color felt betrayed. A lot of people saw it as an opportunity to act out on anger that they had felt for a

00:15:50.550 - 00:16:11.520

very long time. So much happened that just underscored that we are a divided nation and that we cannot thrive as a divided nation bleeding unconscious in the street. I mean, can't people realize what they're doing is wrong? Suddenly, I realized, What am I doing here? Um,

00:16:11.530 - 00:16:32.830

a lot of the anger was directed not only towards whites, but specifically towards Koreans who were the shopkeepers and mom and pop shop keepers in South Central. And here I am, an Asian Asian American reporter. In the midst of all of this, um, I said, Oh

00:16:32.830 - 00:16:50.970

my God, you know, I may be, uh, even more of a specific target of their hatred and anger. This is not the way to overcome racism. A shaken Rodney King tried to stop the anger that had overtaken our cities. Can we can we all get along?

00:16:51.340 - 00:17:14.340

Can we? Can we get along? It was a sad chapter in the nineties because the nineties really has been a decade of materialism. In retrospect, when when I think about what happened there, it happened at a time when people were getting richer. Politicians said this country

00:17:14.350 - 00:17:35.750

was better off that race relations were at a height. But what the Rodney King riots showed in a week or two during the during that time was that all of that was wrong. There may have never been a more widely watched car chasing history than the

00:17:35.750 - 00:17:55.620

one that happened on June 17th, 1994 people all over the Bay Area and all over the nation were mesmerized as a white Bronco carrying O. J. Simpson led Los Angeles police on a 60 mile slow speed chase. I can tell you that this is the most

00:17:55.630 - 00:18:11.630

bizarre scene. He's still alive, and he's got a gun to his head. When it finally ended, Simpson was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife, Nicole, and friend Ronald Goldman. The arrest came as a blow to many people in San Francisco, where O. J.

00:18:11.630 - 00:18:28.860

Simpson was considered a hometown hero. He grew up in a portrayal. Hill housing Project first impressed coaches with his athletic ability at Galileo High School. Simpson spent two years at City College at the beginning of his football career and two years with the San Francisco 49

00:18:28.870 - 00:18:49.390

ers at his career's end there, would you please stand and face the jury? When the jury announced its verdict the morning of October 3rd, crowds gathered around television sets all over the Bay Area to hear O. J. Simpson's fate. Jury selection find the defendant, James Simpson,

00:18:49.390 - 00:19:14.940

not guilty. Reactions to the verdict were clearly split down racial lines. I think what the response to the O. J verdict really demonstrated is that the experiences that people have in America based on their race cause them to view things in different ways, that if you're

00:19:14.940 - 00:19:32.430

African American walking through the same streets, the white person might walk through speaking to the same people. Bumping into the same uh, stranger will cause you at the end of that stroll to have a very different analysis and take on what just happened the year of

00:19:32.430 - 00:19:54.650

the woman and the heartbreak of the Poly glass kidnapping when we returned to San Francisco in the nineties, we now return to San Francisco in the nineties. When we get to the top, we're gonna knock on the door, the doors are gonna open and you're thank

00:19:54.650 - 00:20:13.620

you for the Bay Area helped California make history in 1992 two local Democrats, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, were elected to the U. S Senate as the Cagney and Lacey team from California. It was the first time that any state had elected to women senators. San

00:20:13.620 - 00:20:29.290

Francisco made history of its own that year, electing a female majority on the Board of Supervisors. It was truly the year of the woman. You talk a lot about role models, but I don't think quite often we take it as serious as we should. When people

00:20:29.290 - 00:20:50.000

see what can be done, then they can dream it for themselves. And I think having that year of the woman when women peaked has open the doors for many other women to see themselves in that position. There was cheering in other corners as well. San Jose

00:20:50.000 - 00:21:08.320

welcomed a brand new professional hockey team, the Sharks. The team sold out every seat his first season. The struggling San Francisco Giants nearly became the Tampa Bay Giants in 1992 until a group of local investors bought the team to keep it in the city. They hired

00:21:08.320 - 00:21:38.000

Dusty Baker as the new manager. Barry Bonds was signed to a record six year, $43 million contract. Please. Yeah, yeah, July 1st, 1993 3 o'clock, A beautiful summer afternoon in the city. Ambulance 911 Operators begin to get frantic calls. There's a madman with a gun inside

00:21:38.000 - 00:21:55.680

one oh, one California street and I got there before the SWAT team, and while paramedics and the fire engines were pulling up, there was a sense of panic fear, because people started coming and saying, Oh my God, my brother works. There are my daughters there. Are

00:21:55.680 - 00:22:11.270

they all out? And my answer is, I don't know. That's He came around the corner. We had already heard that there was someone shooting. We were trying to call security, and he came around the corner and I looked at him and I was trying to determine

00:22:11.270 - 00:22:27.290

whether he was an employee and he started shooting and we ran. But for some, there was no escape. He said, Dave, Dave, I've been shot. I've been shot. There's a madman on 34. Please call 911 Police struggled to figure out how many gunmen they were up

00:22:27.290 - 00:22:45.930

against, but there was only one gunman, Gian Luigi Ferri, a man with a grudge against Pettit and Martin, A law firm in the building ferry believes the firm had mishandled his real estate dealings very calmly took the elevator to the 34th floor, strapped on to semi

00:22:45.930 - 00:23:05.770

automatic rifles and 250 rounds of ammunition and began stalking the hallways, shooting through glass walls and wooden doors. In the next 15 minutes, Ferry gunned down eight people. It would be the worst mass killing in San Francisco history. At four o'clock, police found Ferry dead in

00:23:05.770 - 00:23:21.420

a stairwell. He had apparently turned one of his guns on himself for the very few brief moments you get when you're covering something like that, you do sit down and wonder what is going on. What is going on in this world? I can't believe this. I

00:23:21.420 - 00:23:44.450

can't believe I'm counting dozens of gurneys coming out with wounded people and knowing that there are bodies in there that they're running over as they're trying to escape. Yeah, you think about it and think, you know, how could this happen today? Mm. People had assumed they

00:23:44.450 - 00:24:01.230

were safe at work before the killings at 101 California and people assumed they were safe at home in small towns like Petaluma before October 1st, 1993. That was the night 12 year old Polly Klass was kidnapped from her bedroom at knifepoint during a slumber party with

00:24:01.240 - 00:24:24.030

two friends. It was every parent's worst nightmare. I would say that this child is the is the light of our lives and that if we get her back safely, that's just the best possible thing that could happen. I was sent there the morning that had happened,

00:24:24.030 - 00:24:42.050

actually, and there were probably half a dozen reporters standing there, and I remember thinking that this is an impossible scenario. It's a prank. It was inconceivable that somebody would come in and take a little girl from her own bedroom. Inconceivable. The police had a million different

00:24:42.050 - 00:25:03.800

scenarios. So did the reporters covering the story, and none of them were as terrible as the reality. None of them, Yeah, yeah times this guy together. Within days of Polly's kidnapping, the town of Petaluma sprang into action staffing of volunteer centre mailing and faxing millions of

00:25:03.800 - 00:25:26.130

flyers making phone calls. Hanging posters. Days became weeks, weeks turned into a month. Polly's parents and volunteers struggled to keep an optimistic outlook. I've got kids, and I came home and looked at them and got a little teary eyed and I think I think everybody involved

00:25:26.130 - 00:25:48.630

in the story got depressed about it. Everybody. But there was no break in the case until two months after Polly was kidnapped. A woman who lived in rural Santa Rosa called police after finding suspicious items on her property. A sweatshirt, a roll of duct tape, strips

00:25:48.630 - 00:26:12.200

of white cloth, women's tights. The items were linked to the kidnapping and to a man named Richard Allen Davis, a career criminal who had twice been convicted of kidnapping. Davis confessed to strangling Poly Class. She's not. She's going to live, know where she is. Basically, it

00:26:12.210 - 00:26:32.560

was very sad because even though you knew the reality was most likely that she was never going to come back alive, carrying it is hard for anybody a reporter, a cop, an FBI agent or a mom or a dad. Davis led police to Polly's body at

00:26:32.560 - 00:26:53.000

an abandoned sawmill near Cloverdale. It's time, goddamn it, We've had enough of this. We've had enough of this as a country. It's time to make change. It's time to protect our Children. The grief felt by Polly's family was shared by the town that had tried so

00:26:53.000 - 00:27:16.090

hard to find her for two months. I was there every day. Um, and you felt inspired that so many people would be involved and committed and optimistic about finding her and when it finally ended, I've never seen so many people cry. Never find the defendant. Richard

00:27:16.090 - 00:27:34.960

Allen Davis Richard Allen Davis was convicted on all counts in the kidnapping and murder of Polly Class. He was sentenced to death. The murder of Polly Class and the killings at 101 California street inspired changes in the criminal justice system. This is what the votes about.

00:27:35.640 - 00:28:13.010

Republicans want this and the people want. This 1994 families of the high rise tragedy helped push through the Brady bill, which makes background checks more thorough for people buying handguns. Polly's death helped pass California's three strikes sentencing law. The military moves out. Hollywood moves in next

00:28:13.010 - 00:28:40.190

on San Francisco in the nineties. We now return to San Francisco in the nineties. By 1996 the Bay Area was in the midst of a new love affair with the Internet. A million people here were logging on regularly, some from home, some from work, some from

00:28:40.190 - 00:29:05.660

cyber cafes that offered Web surfing along with cappuccino. Cyberspace opened a whole new world of endless possibilities. Every major communications revolution since the Telegraph has been accompanied by a certain kind of utopian glee. There's something about new information technologies that draw up some of our deeper

00:29:05.670 - 00:29:23.990

inclinations and hopes that now we have a tool that can help us build a genuinely better world. People use the new technology to form virtual communities online, gathering places to chat and share ideas with others around the globe. One of the pioneering communities was started in

00:29:23.990 - 00:29:42.820

Sausalito. It was called the Well. There was an incredible excitement that this feeling that we were building a new kind of culture, a new way of relating a new way of building community, the Internet was like a town hall meeting, a cocktail party, a coffee klatch.

00:29:42.830 - 00:30:00.530

It gave everyone a voice. What the Internet makes possible is everyone can have a printing press and a broadcasting station. If you're on the net, not only can you get information from everywhere, you can send information out to everywhere that's very attractive. Also attractive was the

00:30:00.530 - 00:30:19.240

money making potential of the Internet, which was just then being realized a new California gold rush was right around the corner. But though the boom town feeling was mounting in some parts of the Bay Area, the doors were being bolted and people were moving on. 12

00:30:19.250 - 00:30:39.760

Northern California military bases were closed in the 19 nineties. Landmarks like Treasure Island, Alameda Naval Air Station and the Presidio of San Francisco, all victims of military downsizing. Thousands of military and civilian jobs were lost. Although many mourned the loss of the bases as the end

00:30:39.760 - 00:31:04.000

of an era, there was new life ahead. When the military moved out, Hollywood moved in. Yeah, action. The bases became location studios, where entire movies could be shot from start to finish. 1999 when George Lucas won the right to move his special effects and sound companies

00:31:04.000 - 00:31:19.110

into the Presidio, there was no longer any doubt that the Bay Area was serious about becoming Hollywood North. Oh, welcome to the Rock. When I first moved to the Bay Area and started working in the film scene here in the early 19 seventies, Uh, I was

00:31:19.110 - 00:31:37.420

told by a number of people Oh, stand by. There's about to be an incredible, uh, shift towards making films in northern California. Well, 25 years later, I think I'm starting to see that shift happen to hold the Office of Mayor of San Francisco. One of the

00:31:37.420 - 00:31:55.860

biggest boosters of San Francisco's Tinseltown image was the city's new mayor, Willie Brown. Brown loved movies, movie making and Hollywood style parties like the one he threw for the people of the city when he was elected in 1996. He certainly brought excitement. Willie Brown has always

00:31:56.210 - 00:32:16.270

known how to play politics as a form of theater. Brown was one of the most powerful politicians in the state Before becoming mayor, he spent 15 years in Sacramento as the self described Ayatollah of the Assembly speaker of the House. And no matter what people thought

00:32:16.270 - 00:32:37.380

about the city's clogged streets, high rents, orm uni troubles everybody had an opinion of the stylish Mayor Brown, a person who has an ego that's a mile big that gets him into trouble a lot. An absolutely brilliant politician, because he's better than most politicians because he's

00:32:37.380 - 00:32:58.090

more interesting than most politicians because he's willing to say things that most politicians won't say. AIDS was one of the issues on Mayer Brown's agenda, as it had been for every mayor of San Francisco since the mid eighties. Mm hmm. The worst moments of the epidemic

00:32:58.090 - 00:33:23.940

hit the city in 1992 and 93. 3600 people died from AIDS. In those two years alone, 1996 brought a breakthrough. Revolutionary drugs known as protease inhibitors. For the first time, AIDS could be paralyzed. This is really incredible. You know, I really may survive. We saw what

00:33:23.940 - 00:33:42.440

was really going to be the new kind of the new face of this epidemic, which was controlling the virus, recovery of the immune system and basically recovery of health in a number of our patients. Cheers. The protease inhibitors were combined with other drugs in a therapy

00:33:42.440 - 00:33:56.920

people called AIDS cocktails. Within a few years, the new drugs have dramatically reduced the number of AIDS deaths in the city. All of a sudden, you get to the point of telling somebody you're on protease inhibitors and you find out they are too, and it's like,

00:33:56.920 - 00:34:13.010

yes, the story that I like the best is a minister and one of the churches in the Castro Lutheran Church in the Castro, who said at the height of the epidemic in 93 they lost 10% of their congregation every year and in the past year. In

00:34:13.010 - 00:34:33.550

this I saw him a few months ago. They hadn't lost any person to AIDS. No doubts. But as hopeful as the new AIDS cocktails were, they had major shortcomings. The therapy was grueling, as many as 50 pills a day for some people for the rest of

00:34:33.550 - 00:34:52.030

their lives. Most frightening was what happened. If the medication was taken incorrectly, the virus would return, and this time it would be drug resistant. We better be investing, developing better drugs, newer drugs, newer classes of drugs, simpler drugs for patients to take. And we should really

00:34:52.030 - 00:35:19.480

keep some optimism for curing this infection. Because if we don't, I think probably still most people will die of AIDS. The winter that wouldn't end and the new gold rush. When we return to San Francisco in the nineties, we now return to San Francisco in the

00:35:19.480 - 00:35:47.690

nineties. No thanks very much. See you later. Great. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it seemed that Mother Nature gave the Bay Area more than its fair share of trouble. in the 19 nineties, starting with a drought and catastrophic fire ending with the wettest year of the century.

00:35:47.690 - 00:36:09.480

In San Francisco. It was part of a weather phenomenon known as El Nino, which caused a seemingly endless winter in 1997 98. Yeah, San Francisco got more than 47 inches of rain. Marin County got more than 91 inches. That's over 7 ft of rain. Phenomenon. But

00:36:09.480 - 00:36:32.140

as bad as winter was, spring was worse. Temperatures stayed low and rain continued to fall. Saturated soil all over the Bay area began to slide. Mudslides damaged homes from San Leandro to Mill Valley, cracking foundations sweeping away decks. What if we get another downpour? Is it

00:36:32.140 - 00:36:49.690

going to shift? Is it gonna be rapid? Is it going to be gradual, or is it just gonna be the whole canyon down? But perhaps the most dramatic victims of El Nino were seven homes perched on Esplanade Avenue in Pacifica. The saturated cliff simply crumbled beneath

00:36:49.690 - 00:37:12.250

them, taking along kitchens, sun rooms, furniture. The city ordered the homes to be demolished. I really loved this house. I lost it after it for 10 years, and I lived in it for six, and it's hard to let go. Almost anything can happen in Northern California.

00:37:12.630 - 00:37:32.190

Fire, flood, landslide, tornado, mudslide, sinkholes, earthquakes. Certainly tornadoes. Sometimes it can all happen. And there's really no red flags you can put up at the beginning of the year to say this is going to be an especially bad year for anything it can all happen. La

00:37:32.190 - 00:37:54.700

Nina, El Nino. No Nino, No Ninos are the works. But despite all the powerful forces of nature that hit the Bay Area in the nineties, it was the incredible force of technology that would have the greatest impact on our lives. The Internet has had just an

00:37:54.710 - 00:38:18.270

absolutely profound effect on not just technology, not just people who use computers, but lifestyles, riches, expansion, growth, creativity, innovation. All of those things can be traced right back to one single kind of technology, and that's the Internet. The Internet was no longer a novelty. It was

00:38:18.270 - 00:38:36.810

now part of daily life. It was used to share moments of joy, the first online birth of a baby. I misled you and moments of crisis, the downfall of a president. I deeply regret that, but the most seductive part of the Net was the shopping 24

00:38:36.810 - 00:38:54.200

hours a day, seven days a week. You could buy everything from groceries to cars to mortgages. The new global communications medium had gone commercial, and it brought a flood of cash to Silicon Valley. It was a new culture there. The error of the geek is over,

00:38:54.200 - 00:39:14.530

and it's the era of commerce. 1998. A dozen new technology companies were springing up every week, fueled by venture capital firms hungry for anything Internet related. Young people from around the globe flocked to the Valley, dreaming that their idea would be the next big one. Younger

00:39:14.530 - 00:39:35.520

people who like excitement who like radical change will come here not just because they're going to get rich for because they're interstate technology. They come here for the adventure. Work is nothing less than a sport here in Silicon Valley. Yeah, every sport needs its legends, and

00:39:35.520 - 00:39:54.040

one of them on the Internet field was Joe Kraus. Kraus had barely graduated from Stanford when he and a group of friends started an Internet search company called excite dot com. They're working capital was a $15,000 loan from their parents, their office space was a garage.

00:39:55.020 - 00:40:09.590

We, um, basically borrowed computers from Stanford. I won the fax machine from Office Depot. You couldn't run the dryer and the washing machine, which were in the garage at the same time. Because the circuits would blow out, you'd lose your work on your computers. It was

00:40:09.590 - 00:40:31.270

a classic garage operation. They're classic. Garage operation was worth $16 billion. By 1999 the college friends had become part of the new breed of Silicon Valley millionaires. At age 28 Joe Kraus was worth $17 million and weighs. The money is just there to keep score, and

00:40:31.270 - 00:40:49.890

I just want to win. They don't actually covet the money itself. They don't actually covet the toys that might come with money, but they covet truly is freedom that covered the opportunity to never have to worry about money again. 58 13. So it wasn't only the

00:40:49.890 - 00:41:04.590

company founders who got their pot of gold. Silicon Valley had become the land of stock options. You know, I have roughly 50 options, and that's 50,000 shares. Once that goes up to $15 which is just about I think we were planning on going public. That's gonna

00:41:04.590 - 00:41:25.090

be worth something when it hits 33 I take a year off. You didn't have to live in the Valley to feel the effects of the Internet boom. You just had to own stock. Internet euphoria sent the stock market soaring 375% between 1990 and 1999. People have

00:41:25.090 - 00:41:48.300

said that the Internet Silicon Valley is like the steam engine powering the new economy. That's not all true. It's like a steam roller. It is flattening every economic paradigm that this country has ever seen. Money made from Internet stock fueled a red hot housing market in

00:41:48.300 - 00:42:05.770

the South Bay. Home sales in the million dollar category were breaking records in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, But in some ways the Valley was becoming a victim of its own success. By 1998 the average price of a home in Cupertino had reached $600. The

00:42:05.770 - 00:42:25.970

average home in Los Altos cost $830. It is obscene what's happening to the housing market, but what do you do? I mean, there's just there's such a crush of people in a very finite place, that there's really not much more that can be done. What companies

00:42:25.970 - 00:42:40.970

are doing is they're just paying their employees more. They're just giving a more stock. Well, that doesn't help the rest of us try to afford homes in this area. It's a very serious problem. Skyrocketing housing prices were also plaguing San Francisco, where the average home price

00:42:40.970 - 00:42:57.120

was close to a half a million dollars. By 1998 the city was having its own technology boom in an industrial area south of Market Street that came to be known as Multimedia Gulch businesses. They're focused on the more artistic aspects of the Internet, Web page design

00:42:57.120 - 00:43:17.970

and computer animation. Multimedia became a $2 billion industry in the city by 1999 employing nearly 30,000 people and pushing San Francisco into an aggressive new era of gentrification. What that really did is it brought in a lot of young, creative and relatively or extremely well paid

00:43:18.300 - 00:43:37.360

individuals into an area that had been rather rather depressed, and it really is one of the main engines behind the transformation of San Francisco that we've seen in the last few years by the close of the 19 nineties, the Bay Area had been transformed by technology.

00:43:37.900 - 00:43:55.030

It was a new age of information, moving at a speed that was sometimes overwhelming. A lot of people feel they can't afford not to be connected. They have to be involved in knowing what's happening and being able to communicate 24 hours a day. More and more

00:43:55.030 - 00:44:14.240

messages faster and faster to more and more people. The dot com culture could be complicated and intimidating. An ever changing network of information with an ever growing racial and economic divide. The digital divide is real. There is a gap between people who have access to technology

00:44:14.240 - 00:44:36.530

and people who don't. And it is widening the technology haves and have nots. A speeded up, impersonal world. On the doorstep of the 21st century have we created a cyber nirvana filled with endless possibilities or an economy so inflated it's doomed to crumble. As San Francisco

00:44:36.530 - 00:45:31.990

and the rest of the Bay Area head towards the next millennium, there is only a wild, uncharted future. I don't know. Uh huh. Mm hmm. Yeah, Well, yeah, yeah, yeah Mhm, yeah, yeah, yeah