Timecapsule: February 1852

We love personal accounts of the goings-on in our little town more than just about anything. The sights, the smells, the daily routine ... We want the nuts and bolts of what it was like to live here THEN!

It's even better when the eyeballs taking it all in belong to an outsider, a visiting alien to whom everything's an oddity.

For our birthday a couple of years ago we received a book that's packed to the gills with this kind of first-person account. It's called -- aptly enough -- San Francisco Memories. And because we're kind of a dope, it's only just occurred to us that this stuff is the absolute epitome of what a timecapsule should be -- and that we really ought to be sharing some of this early San Francisco gold with you.

Ahem. So share it we will.