Bill Elias

My family goes back several generations in the San Francisco Bay Area. I love history, museums, genealogy, theater, and pre-cable American television pop culture.

I love the melting pot that is San Francisco - and it’s always been this way. My great-grandmother had Eastern European Jewish roots when she was born in San Francisco in 1880. She fell in love with an Irish constable. They eloped because their families disapproved, but it’s an example of the melding of cultures that thrives here. And we’ve been getting more diverse along the way.

While I grew up in San Jose suburbia, we visited San Francisco often. One of my favorite family photos is one of my grandparents standing before the Palace of Fine Arts in the 1930s. They lived in Oakland at the time but were married at San Francisco City Hall, as my grandfather worked in the city.

Decades and decades later, I was also married there, to a businessman from Virginia who had fallen in love with the city on a business trip and never left.

After a career in television and the Internet space, I now find myself reinventing my next era as a widower in this amazing place I call home. Reinvention is really the heart of San Francisco. Even when we’re down, we’re never out.