Ferry Building

An Australian man fired from his job at a ferry-building company learned hours later that he had won the $4.5-million jackpot in a nationwide lottery. In a statement through Tattersall's lottery agency, the man--whose identity was not released--said he and 99 colleagues were to be laid off by Incat, a company that makes wave-piercing catamaran ferries.

NEW narrated boat tours of San Francisco, using wireless technology, are scheduled to begin May 24, departing from the city's Ferry Building. Passengers on the 90-minute cruises will don wireless headsets and choose among three recorded programs on the city's architecture, natural history and Native Americans.

The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, one of the largest institutions in the Western Hemisphere devoted to Asian art, will reopen in a roomier home March 20: a 1917 Beaux Arts-style building that once housed the city's main library. The price tag for the project is more than $160 million in public and private funds. It's part of the ongoing investment in the City by the Bay, which has just begun running an in-airport train system and will soon reopen its renovated Ferry Building.

Watch fireworks bursting above San Francisco Bay during a Fourth of July special at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. The deal: The Red, White and Blue Independence Day package, available Sunday through July 7, is $169 a night and includes a deluxe room and valet parking.

San Francisco When the developers restoring the landmark Ferry Building set out to reincarnate it as a dazzling food hall, they meant business. They recruited nearly 20 of the Bay Area's leading artisanal producers of cheese, chocolate, bread, olive oil, oysters, meat and organic fruits and vegetables. They signed up Peet's Coffee & Tea, the local roasters, and the Imperial Tea Court from Chinatown, and the cookware chain Sur la Table.

The signs are all here: Hard hats milling in the morning fog, chain-link stretched across upended pavement, pale blue portable toilets dotting the Embarcadero. This graceful city's waterfront is ground zero in a massive construction explosion, San Francisco's first building boom in 15 years. More than a score of projects--from a humble fishing pier and a face lift for tacky Fisherman's Wharf to the nation's first privately funded baseball stadium--dot the 7.5 miles of stunning shoreline.

Quick, where's the lone Civil War museum in Southern California, the third-largest suspension bridge in the state and L.A.'s original ferry building? Meet the LA Waterfront. That's the new name and website branded by the Port of Los Angeles to attract visitors to places such as the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum in Wilmington, the Vincent Thomas Bridge and the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro.  The new website provides an interactive map with more than 50 points of interest, a calendar of events and an update on new projects coming to the area.

There are lots of people who want San Francisco Bay to look more like it used to--teeming with ferries that shuttled passengers back and forth before bridges did the job. On Wednesday, a back-to-the-future plan will be launched, envisioning ferries crisscrossing the bay again to ease gridlock left in the wake of the earlier fleet's demise.