In the mid-1960s you could stand on California Street between the Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill and know that two different San Franciscos were being invented a hundred yards apart.
KSFO lived inside the Fairmont. KYA lived at One Nob Hill Circle, the annex that had once belonged to KSFO. They had traded rooms a few years earlier. The adult station and the kid station were living in each other’s former houses.
I listened from Westlake in Daly City. I was in high school. We had just moved from Ohio. It seemed strange, even then, that one of the voices came out of a hotel.
I was deep into ham radio then, so I studied how the stations actually worked, not just how they sounded. At the Fairmont you could see into the KSFO studios through glass walls. KYA’s transmitter sat on the hill above Candlestick. Both were 5,000 watts. Nothing special. Up on San Bruno Mountain, James Gabbert would fire up KPEN — later KIOI — licensed for 120,000 watts and the first FM stereo west of St. Louis. I knew the difference between those numbers before I knew much else about the city I’d landed in.