25.8.08

F I R S TP R E V837NEXTLAST

Little Boxes on the Hillside, Daly City
In 1962 San Francisco-born folk singer, Malvina Reynolds wrote Little Boxes, an ode to Daly City a town just south of San Francisco. The song took aim at the popularity of suburban living and its bourgeois conformity. While Little Boxes remains Reynold's most well-known song, she wrote a number of others that were recorded by The Searchers, Joan Baez, and Harry Belafonte.

Daly City had once been a dairy community considered to be on the far outskirts of San Francisco but after World War II three factors led to its surburban rebirth. Those developments were the popularity of the automobile, the development of the nation's highways and the availability of inexpensive new homes marketed to returning GIs.

One famously mysterious event happened in Daly City in August of 1942 when a huge U.S. L-8 Navy blimp crashed on Bellevue Avenue. The two-man crew had vanished from the airship's undamaged, closed-cabin gondola. The engines of the airship were still switched in the 'ON' position and crew's parachutes and life jackets were untouched. The mystery has never been solved.

Today Daly City is one of only a few majority-Asian cities in the continental United States. The city is known for its large Filipino American population.
[ MAP S-7 ]


1 comments