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This John King -- one of many -- is the author of "Portal: San Francisco's Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities." First published by W.W. Norton in 2023, "Portal" now is in paperback with an afterword that brings the saga up to date.
I'm also the San Francisco Chronicle's former urban design critic, a gig that allowed me to explore the city's physical transformation in this unsettled century, seeking to convey how buildings and spaces around us reflect larger histories and cultures. That's the spark for "Portal," and why it ranges into such realms as vintage postcards, "Somebody Feed Phil" and the Bay Area's foodie culture.
"Portal" received praise from such publications as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times while spending a dozen weeks on the bestseller list of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Alliance (Caliba). This March, Caliba also honored me with a Golden Poppy Award as booksellers' top choice among five nominees for "California Lifestyle."
Since retiring in October of 2024, I'm proud to have been the latest recipient of the San Francisco Press Club's Lifetime Achievement Award, and one of 20 writers honored at the Berkeley Public Library Foundation's annual author's dinner. On the national scale, I'm an honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and was the first recipient of the Gene Burd Urban Journalism Award from the Urban Communication Foundation, an honor since shared with Pulitzer Prize-winners Inga Saffron, Blair Kamin and Paul Goldberger. I've been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism myself, twice, and in 2018 spent four months as a Mellon Fellow in Urban Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C.
Basically, I'm an ink-stained wretch who entered the fray at the right time and had breaks aplenty along the way. With a great topic, the San Francisco Bay Area, that never grows old.