Lots of them. In this new mag I just learned about – Obit. A magazine choc full of well, obits. It’s actually very good. For instance, I just learned this about Colma, south of San Francisco.

People come to Colma mainly to be buried. On San Francisco’s south flank, sharing a fog bank, Colma has 17 cemeteries to San Francisco’s none. Long ago San Francisco booted out the cemeteries and moved most of the graves to this little necropolis.

Colma calls itself a necropolis (“city of the dead” in Greek) despite its 1,500 live residents. It is commonly listed as the country’s only necropolis, incorporated in 1924 to protect the cemeteries that now occupy 73 percent of Colma’s 2.2 square miles.

The necropolis business started with the California Gold Rush in 1849. As people rushed in, so did disease and death, and San Francisco’s 26 cemeteries were mostly filled in the late 1880s. Soon state law forbade backyard burials, or internment anywhere except in an established cemetery. By 1900, land already was too valuable for low-revenue uses like graves, so the noose tightened on San Francisco cemeteries and burials were banned…

You can also go shopping in Colma. I think the necropolis might be more interesting…