Chris Carlsson

Chris Carlsson, is a writer, San Francisco historian, “professor,” bicyclist, tour guide, blogger, photographer, book and magazine designer. He’s lived in San Francisco since 1978 and has been self-employed in various capacities since the early 1980s. He has written three books: Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes, and Radical Histories, After the Deluge and Nowtopia, edited six others and co-authored the expanded second edition of Vanished Waters: The History of San Francisco’s Mission Bay.

Chris helped co-found Critical Mass in September, 1992, and has ridden with Critical Mass rides in a dozen cities on three continents since then. His book Nowtopia, along with his role in Critical Mass, has propelled him into extended world travels since 2002, and he has had three of his books translated and published in Italy and one in Brazil. His frequent public appearances are well-represented online at Youtube and in various radio and audio archives.

He has directed Shaping San Francisco since its inception in the mid-1990s, and continues to be co-director of the archive of San Francisco history at FoundSF.org. He also conducts award-winning bicycle history tours and walking tours a dozen times a year, and hosts an ongoing Public Talks series in San Francisco. Beginning just before the Coronavirus pandemic, he began hosting Bay Cruises, and hopes they will resume later. Since 2011 he has been an intermittent “road scholar” in his capacity as an adjunct professor at the San Francisco Art Institute, the California Institute of Integral Studies and most recently, the University of San Francisco.

Read more about Chris and his work at http://www.chriscarlsson.com.