Sights in San Francisco
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Union Square
Louis Vuitton is more top-of-mind than the Emancipation Proclamation, but Union Square – bordered by department stores and mall chains – was named after pro–Union Civil War rallies held here 150 years ago. A misguided renovation paved the place and installed benches narrow enough to keep junkies from nodding off, turning this once-lovely park into a fancy prison exercise yard. Redeeming features include Emporio Rulli, the half-price theater-ticket booth and the stellar people-watching.
reviewed
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Alcatraz
Alcatraz: for almost 150 years, the name has given the innocent chills and the guilty cold sweats. Over the years it’s been the nation’s first military prison, a forbidding maximum-security penitentiary and disputed territory between Native American activists and the FBI. No wonder that first step you take off the ferry and onto ‘the Rock’ seems to cue ominous music: dunh-dunh-dunnnnh! It all started innocently enough back in 1775, when Spanish lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala sailed the San Carlos past the 12-acre island he called Isla de Alcatraces (Isle of the Pelicans). In 1859 a new post on Alcatraz became the first US West Coast fort, and soon proved handy as…
reviewed
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Golden Gate Bridge
Imagine a squat concrete bridge striped black and caution yellow spanning the San Francisco Bay – that's what the US Navy initially had in mind. Luckily, engineer Joseph B Strauss and architects Gertrude and Irving Murrow insisted on a soaring art-deco design and International Orange paint of the 1937 Golden Gate Bridge. Cars pay a $6 toll to cross from Marin to San Francisco; pedestrians and cyclists stroll the east sidewalk for free.
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Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park includes the following sights: MH de Young Museum, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco Botanical Garden, Japanese Tea Garden, Conservatory of Flowers and Stow Lake.
reviewed
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Sea Lions at Pier 39
Beach bums took over San Francisco’s most coveted waterfront real estate in 1990 and have been making a public display of themselves ever since, canoodling, belching, scratching their naked backsides and gleefully shoving one another off the docks. Naturally these unkempt squatters became San Francisco’s favorite mascots, and since California law requires boats to make way for marine mammals, yacht owners have to relinquish valuable slips to accommodate as many as 1300 sea lions who ‘haul out’ onto the docks between January and July, and whenever else they feel like sunbathing.
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Buena Vista Park
True to its name, this park founded in 1867 offers sweeping views of the city beyond century-old cypresses to the Golden Gate Bridge as rewards for hiking up the steep hill. When SF went up in flames in 1906, this was where San Franciscans found refuge and watched the town smolder; on your way downhill, take Buena Vista Ave West to spot Victorian mansions that date from that era. Hanging around after the park closes at sunset for boozing or cruising is risky, given recent criminal activity at night.
reviewed
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Coit Tower
Up the Filbert Street steps at Coit Tower, you'll find 360-degree views of downtown and wrap-around 1930s murals glorifying SF workers - once denounced as Communist, but now a landmark.
reviewed
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San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) was destined from the start in 1935 to be an eclectic, unconventional museum. But when it moved into architect Mario Botta’s light-filled brick box in 1995, it became clear just how far this museum was prepared to push the art world. The new museum showed its backside to New York and leaned full-tilt towards the western horizon, taking risks on then-unknowns like Matthew Barney and his poetic videos involving industrial quantities of Vaseline, and Olafur Eliasson’s outer-space installations that distort all sense of reality. Finally SFMOMA had room to launch international traveling shows by squeegee-wielding German painter…
reviewed
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California Academy of Sciences
Architect Renzo Piano's 2008 landmark LEED-certified green building houses 38,000 weird and wonderful animals in a four-story rainforest and split-level aquarium under a 'living roof' of California wildflowers. After the penguins nod off to sleep, the wild rumpus starts at kids'-only Academy Sleepovers and over-21 NightLife Thursdays, when rainforest-themed cocktails encourage strange mating rituals among shy internet daters.
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Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Pride Parade
Hands down, the year's biggest party. Pirates in pink and giant-winged fairies toss candy and condoms from overflowing fanny packs, while pit bulls in rainbow-hued tutus trot alongside. Stilt-walkers in glitter, trannies on unicycles, queens on roller skates – anything goes. Crowds pour from BART and Muni, climbing streetlight posts for better views, and float-dancers strut atop moving stages. Growing almost every year since 1971, Pride draws about a million participants and sidewalk supporters, running the gamut from sweater queens to granola dykes, bondage masters to GLBT seniors. Afterwards there's an all-afternoon festival at Civic Center. Hotels fill; book early. The…
reviewed
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Lombard Street
You’ve seen its eight switchbacks in a thousand photographs. The tourist board has dubbed this ‘the world’s crookedest street, ’ which is factually incorrect. Vermont St in Potrero Hill deserves this street cred, but Lombard is (much) more scenic, with its red-brick pavement and lovingly tended flowerbeds. It wasn’t always so bent; before the automobile it lunged straight down the hill. Don’t try anything funny. The recent clampdown on renegade skaters means that the Lombard St thrills featured in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video game will remain strictly virtual, at least until the cops get slack. Until 2008, every Easter Sunday for seven years adults had arrived at the…
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77 Geary
The most intriguing art usually appears in what looks like the wrong place, and 77 Geary's unmarked entryway is no exception. Get seduced on the mezzanine by the minimalism of Patricia Sweetow Gallery and shaken up on the 2nd floor by the political art of Togonon Gallery. For beauty with brains, see Marx & Zavattero next door for David Hevel's neo-baroque, middle-America-meets-Hollywood taxidermy sculptures and Paul Mullins' tragic-comic exploration of rural contentment. Sensitive meets sensational at Rena Bransten Gallery, featuring shows such as Hung Liu's mirage-like portraits of found ancestors and collaged stills from 'unwatchable' movies by a man who should know: …
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Alamo Square Park
The finest restaurants in town can’t provide views as spectacular as the picnic tables atop Alamo Square Park facing Steiner St’s Postcard Row, a row of pastel Victorian ‘Painted Lady’ houses with gingerbread detailing and frosting flourishes that may leave you craving dessert. The city skyline looms in the background, and from the corner of Steiner and Fulton Sts you can glimpse City Hall. On the crest of the hill, check out the old shoes creatively reused as planters. On foggy days, you may want to wear a parka – as you can guess from the wind-sculpted pines, it can get a tad blustery up here.
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Crissy Field
The Presidio's army airstrip has been stripped of asphalt and reinvented as a haven for coastal birds, kite-fliers and windsurfers enjoying sweeping views of Golden Gate Bridge.
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Clarion Alley
Trial by fire is nothing compared to Clarion Alley's street-art test: unless a piece is truly inspired, it's going to get peed on or painted over. Very few pieces survive for years, such as Andrew Schoultz's mural of gentrifying elephants displacing scraggly birds, or the silhouette of kung-fu-fighting feminists that make Charlie's Angels look like chumps. Incontinent art critics seem to have taken over the east end of the alley – pee-eew! – so topical murals like the new one honoring the Arab Spring usually go up on the west end.
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Mission Dolores Park
The site of quasi-professional Castro tanning contests, a small kids' playground (currently under reconstruction), free movies on summer nights and a Hunky Jesus Contest every Easter, this sloping park is also beloved for its year-round political protests and other favorite local sports. Flat patches are generally reserved for soccer games, candlelight vigils and ultimate Frisbee, and the tennis and basketball courts are open to anyone who's got game.
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49 Geary
Pity the collectors silently nibbling endive in austere Chelsea galleries – at 49 Geary, openings mean unexpected art, goldfish-shaped crackers and outspoken crowds. Four floors of galleries feature standout international and local works including eclectic, eye-popping photography ranging from the 19th to 21st centuries at Fraenkel Gallery to sculptor Seth Koen's minimalist pieces at Gregory Lind. Beat the crowds by coming on weekdays for quieter contemplation.
reviewed
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Japan Center
Entering this oddly charming mall is like walking onto a 1960s Japanese movie set – the fake-rock waterfall, indoor wooden pedestrian bridges, rock gardens and curtained wooden restaurant entryways have hardly aged since the mall's grand opening in 1968. If not for the anachronistic Tare Panda cell-phone charms and Harajuku fashion mags displayed at Kinokuniya Books & Stationery, Japan Center would be a total time warp.
reviewed
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Beat Museum
The Beat goes on and on – OK, so it rambles a little – at this truly obsessive collection of SF literary-scene ephemera c 1950–69. The banned edition of Allen Ginsberg's Howl is the ultimate free-speech trophy, and the 1961 check for $10.08 that Jack Kerouac wrote to a liquor store has a certain dark humor, but those Kerouac bobble-head dolls are the real head-shakers.
Enter the museum through a turnstile at the back of the museum store, grab a ramshackle reclaimed theater seat, redolent with the accumulated odors of poets, pot and pets, and watch fascinating films about the Beat era's leading musicians, artists, writers, politicos and undefinable characters.…
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Lotta's Fountain
Lotta Crabtree made a killing as San Francisco's diminutive opera diva, and she never forgot the city that paid for her trademark cigars. At the age of 28, the already-wealthy performer commissioned this cast-metal pillar thrice her size with a spigot fountain as a present to the people of San Francisco. It was a useful gift indeed during the 1906 fire, when it became the sole source of water downtown.
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Pier 39
With the notable exception of sea lions gleefully belching after fish dinners at Pier 39, most of Fisherman's Wharf is packed with landlubbers attempting to digest sourdough-bread bowls of gloppy clam chowder (don't bother: can't be done).
reviewed
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Cliff House
Populist millionaire Adolph Sutro imagined this place as a working-man's paradise, and in 1863 it was a much-needed escape from Downtown tenements. After an 1894 fire, Sutro rebuilt the Cliff House as a palatial eight-story Victorian resort with art galleries, dining rooms and an observation tower. It miraculously survived the 1906 earthquake, only to be destroyed by fire the following year. The 1909 stark neoclassical replacement built by Sutro's daughter Emma remained popular for its saloon and restaurant.
In 2004, a $19 million facelift turned the Cliff House into an upscale (read: overpriced) restaurant with all the charm of a fast-food outlet. But two popular…
reviewed
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Cartoon Art Museum
Introducing this place to comics fans would be an insult: of course you recognize John Romita's amazing Spiderman cover drawings, and you were probably raised on the alphabet from Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies, starting with 'A is for Amy who fell down the stairs/B is for Basil assaulted by bears…' But even fanboys will learn something from lectures about 1930s efforts to unionize overworked women animators, and shows on underground comics legends like Spain Rodriguez and Trina Robbins.
Founded on a grant from Bay Area cartoon legend Charles M Schultz of Peanuts fame, this bold museum isn't afraid of the dark, racy or political, including R Crumb drawings from the…
reviewed
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Exploratorium
Is there a science to skateboarding? Do robots have feelings? Do toilets really flush counterclockwise in Australia? Head to the Exploratorium to get fascinating scientific answers to all the questions you always wanted to ask in science class. Try out a punk hairdo courtesy of the static-electricity station, and feel your way – in darkness – through the maze of the highly recommended Tactile Dome (415-561-0362); admission to the Tactile Dome is extra on top of general admission, patrons must be over seven years old, and advance reservations are required. Note, in 2013, the Exploratorium is slated to move to Pier 13.
reviewed
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City Hall
That mighty beaux arts dome pretty much covers San Francisco's grandest ambitions and fundamental flaws. It was designed by John Bakewell and Arthur Brown Jr in 1915 to outdo Paris for flair and outsize the capitol building dome in Washington, DC. The dome was a little unsteady until its retrofit after the 1989 earthquake, when ingenious technology enabled the dome to swing on its base without raising alarm.
The gold leafing on the dome's exterior is a reminder of dot-com–era excess. But from the inside, the splendid rotunda has ringing acoustics, and if that dome could talk, it would tell of triumph and tragedy. Anti-McCarthy sit-in protesters were hosed off the grand…
reviewed