The Symposium (Presented by Big Brain and DFT) | Dec 4, 2025

THE SYMPOSIUM at DFT
🧠 🪩 Presented by and

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Take a break from big beats in the streets during DFT, with Big Brain at The Symposium —a space for minds to connect, learn, and explore cool topics.

🎟️ RSVP Required for Entry!
This is a FREE ticketed event with limited capacity. Tickets are required for entry, and space is available on a first-come, first-served basis. A ticket does not guarantee entry. Doors open at 7PM.

WHERE: Hawthron SF (21+ venue)
WHEN: 7-9PM

Dec 4th Featured Speaker:

Author, Speaker and SF Historian
"Boom, Bust, and Reinvention: The Story of San Francisco"

San Francisco has always lived at the edges—of empires, of imagination, of boom and bust. Few cities swing as wildly between extremes, or reinvent themselves as completely, as this one.

Join us at Hawthorn SF for an evening with Gary Kamiya, award-winning author, historian, and longtime chronicler of the city’s soul. In this sweeping narrative journey, Gary traces San Francisco from its ragged beginnings as a remote outpost of a fading Spanish empire to the dreamlike era of Yerba Buena, the explosive Gold Rush that created an “Instant City,” the notorious Barbary Coast, the grandeur of the Gilded Age, the devastation and rebirth after 1906, the rise of the Beats and the hippies, and the city’s latest transformation into a global tech capital.

With the storytelling of a journalist and the insight of a historian, Gary reveals how San Francisco’s past continues to shape its identity today—its restlessness, its contradictions, its magnetism, and its refusal to be anything but itself. This is a chance to see the city anew: not just as a place, but as an unfolding story.

What's a "Symposium?"
a: A friendly party (as after a banquet in ancient Greece) with music and conversation
b: A social gathering at which there is free interchange of ideas
c: A really cool drop in with drinks and fun people; part lecture, part party with smarties.

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Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at: @bigbrainsf, @dftsanfrancico

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About Big Brain:
Big Brain is a lecture series hosted in SF's coolest spaces. Welcome to the nerd club.

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DFT is presented by Into The Streets and Civic Joy Fund in partnership The East Cut CBD, Yerba Buena Partnership, Natoma Cabana, and 111 Minna Gallery.

By registering for and attending this event, you authorize Big Brain SF & DFT to use any photographs or video recordings of your participation in this event for any and all purposes.

DFT is made possible by the generous contributions of Battery Powered, Bob and Randi Fisher, Chris Larsen, Crankstart, Friend Family Philanthropic Fund, GAP Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Levi Strauss & Co., and Salesforce.

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