Mike Hirshland sent me a story on Valley Wag about Industry Standard pre burst (that is post bubble). It is interesting and you can read it here. It caused me to reflect on another time in this history of the bay area, the 1949 Gold Rush. Here can read about that here if you do not remember the stories (which are great). Gold was discovered in 1849 North of SF. Sailors abandoned their “secure” jobs to go prospect for Gold. Boats where abandoned in the bay. Well most of the people trying to prospect for gold made nothing but there was a clear group of people that sold provisions and tools to these people for a while. Some of them made real money and some of them like Sutro invested that money into land in SF (which became a very large city at the time). Even members of my family arrive in 1872 to sell leather goods, tobacco and clothing but they were not as smart as Levi Strauss. My family is still in SF by the way and I even have a great great grandfather buried here. So out of the chaos of the gold rush came a real city with a real economy. Thank God for greed or I might have been born in the Ukraine (which was not the best place at the time to bring up a Jewish boy).