from Inkblot Record author Dan Farrell a look at San Francisco Sewer Air Vent Covers with a brief history--

"One "well-known" member of the elite women's California Club asked "What is the use of putting up fine houses when on stepping to your very door in the finest residence quarter you are greeted by such odors as one meets on Pacific Avenue? We must cleanse ourselves inwardly before we can have a beautiful exterior or properly enjoy it." To cleanse "inwardly" seems to refer to both moral character and one's bowels. It is common after all to refer to the "bowels" of the city when speaking of the underground. A purgative is a physical cleansing and a moral or spiritual purification. Would a new, scientific, sewer system bring a moral purification? If the social problems of the city were reduced to the dysfunction of a body, science could be relied on to cure it. A modern sewer system, like a healthy body, should carry sewage "rapidly to its outfall outside the city, so that no time would be given to decomposition . . ." and should be" . . . flushed at intervals. . . .""