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Ina Coolbrith Park
On the San Francisco literary scene, all roads eventually lead to Ina Coolbrith, California's first poet laureate, colleague of Mark Twain and Ansel Adams, mentor of Jack London, Isadora Duncan, George Sterling and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and definitively lapsed Mormon (she kept the fact that her uncle was Mormon prophet Joseph Smith a secret from her Bohemian crowd).
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Jack Hanley Gallery
Furious scribblers and meticulous daydreamers will see their worlds reflected on the wall in Chris Johansen's crowds of shy hipsters, Sean O'Dell's snowy owls caught up in narratives not of their own making, and Simon Evans' fragile mental maps of Bohemian utopias held together with Scotch tape. This is a rare chance to see cutting-edge work in its natural habitat - collectors and museums snap up these works.
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Jack Kerouac Alley
Fans of On the Road and Dharma Bums will appreciate how fitting it is that Kerouac's namesake alleyway offers a poetic and slightly seedy shortcut between Chinatown and North Beach via favorite Kerouac haunts City Lights Bookstore and Vesuvio - Kerouac took his books, Buddhism and drink to heart.
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Jack Kerouac's Love Shack
This modest house on a quiet alley was the source of major literature and major drama from 1951 to 1952, when Jack Kerouac shacked up here with Neal and Carolyn Cassady and their baby daughter to pound out his 120-ft-long-scroll draft of On the Road . Jack and Carolyn became lovers at her husband Neal's suggestion, but Carolyn frequently kicked them both out - though Neal was allowed to move back for the birth of their son John Allen Cassady.
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James Flood Building
A solid citizen, this 1904 stone building survived the 1906 quake and still retains much of its original character, notwithstanding the ground-level Gap flagship store. Upstairs are long, labyrinthine halls lined with frosted glass doors, just like in a noir movie - and that's no coincidence. Back in 1921 the San Francisco office of the infamous Pinkerton National Detective Agency hired a young PI named Dashiell Hammett.
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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 a day since the mall's grand opening in 1968. If not for the anachronistic Tare Panda cell-phone charms and Fruits books displayed at the Kinokuniya stationary shop and bookstore, Japan Center would be a total time warp.
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Japanese Tea Garden
Have your moment of Zen in the Zen Garden, or while enjoying green tea under a pagoda, watching kids ogle doll-sized bonsais that are pushing 100. This garden was the devoted work of generations of the Hagiwara family, who returned from WWII Japanese American internment camps to discover their prized bonsai had been sold. The family tracked down the trees over two decades, and returned the bonsai grove to its rightful home.
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Justin Herman Plaza
The plaza across from the Ferry Building may not be much to look at - what is Vaillancourt Fountain supposed to be, anyway, a Cubist large intestine? - but for years Justin Herman has been popular with lunchtime concert-goers, Critical Mass protesters, ice-skaters at the outdoor rink in winter, and internet daters screening their dates from behind the fountain's wall of water.
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Konko Temple
Inside the low-roofed, high-modernist temple, you'll find a handsome blond-wood sanctuary with a lofty beamed ceiling, vintage photographs of Konko events dating back 70 years, and a friendly minister in an Aloha shirt who will greet you, answer any questions about the temple or its Shinto-based beliefs, and then leave you to your contemplation.
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Legion Of Honor
Never doubt the resolve of a nude model. The Legion was a gift to San Francisco from Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, a sculptor's model who married well and decided to create a fitting artistic tribute to Californians killed in France in WWI. Today, the Legion still 'honors the dead while serving the living' with groundbreaking exhibitions, including a retrospective for folk-art visionary Howard Finster and crowd-pleasing shows.
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Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Pride Parade
Hands down, the biggest party in town. Pirates in pink and giant-winged fairies toss candy and condoms from overflowing fanny packs, while pit bulls in rainbow-hued tutus trot alongside happily. There are stilt-walkers and glitter, trannies on unicycles and queens on roller skates, and for every inch that's fantastical, the next isn't left to the imagination. Crowds pour from BART and Muni, climbing streetlight posts for better views, and float-dancers eat it up, strutting their stuff atop moving stages. Growing almost every year since 1971, Pride now stands proud at about one million participants and sidewalk supporters, running the gamut from sweater queens to granola dykes to polyamorists, bondage masters to GLBT seniors. Same-sex marriage advocates and queer families all show the love, as does PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). Hotel rooms can be hard to come by. The night before the parade, check out the Dyke March through the Castro and the Mission District, and the Pink Saturday party on Castro St. Ongoing controversy reigns about whether the creeping corporate presence and sponsorship is 'acceptance' or intervention - check out the floats and decide for yourself.
Read more about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Pride Parade
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Lincoln Park
John McLaren took time out from his day job as Golden Gate Park's superintendent for 56 years to establish the lovely Lincoln Park. There's a fine walking path that covers a surprisingly rugged, bucolic stretch of coast from the Cliff House to the Legion of Honor, part of the nine-mile Coastal Trail. This path offers terrific views of the Golden Gate from Lands End, and it takes about half an hour to the Legion - and it's worth it, fog or no fog.
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Lisa Dent Gallery
The smart old money is on Lisa Dent Gallery, purveyor of cosmopolitan sophistication and meticulous attention to craft. Dent is a bona fide curatorial star, who ditched the Whitney and the New Museum to return to her hometown, and take risks on international and local talent. Look here for major intrigue in minor details: Marcia Kure's spindly figures painted with kola-nut pigment, Jason Middlebrook's mirror-mosaic car parts, Jeong Im-yi's fastidious trompe l'oeil recreations of her studio walls.
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Lombard Street
And you thought the Bush Administration was crooked: the 1000 block of Lombard St zigzags downhill with eight switchbacks. The tourist board has dubbed this 'the world's crookedest street,' which is both cloyingly grammatically and factually incorrect. Vermont St in Potrero Hill deserves these street creds, but Lombard is more scenic, paved with red brick and lined with flowerbeds.
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Lotta's Fountain
Lotta Crabtree made a killing as San Francisco's diminutive opera diva, and 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 - a useful gift indeed during the 1906 fire, when it became the sole source of water downtown.
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Luggage Store Gallery
A dandelion pushing up through cracks in the sidewalk, this plucky nonprofit gallery has brought signs of life to one of the toughest blocks in the Tenderloin for more than 20 years. The art that sprawls out across the spacious 2nd-floor gallery rises above the street without losing sight of it - this space was the launching pad for renowned graffiti satirists.
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Macondray Lane
This scenic route down from Ina Coolbrith Park via a steep stairway and gravity-defying wooden cottages is so charming, it looks like something out of a novel. And so it is: Armistead Maupin used this as the model for Barbary Lane in his Tales of the City series.
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Masonic Auditorium
Conspiracy theorists, jazz aficionados and anyone exploring immigrant roots should know about Masonic Auditorium, that sprawling white marble radiator atop Nob Hill. Built as a temple to freemasonry in 1958, the building regularly hosts top jazz acts, such as Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Every other Tuesday morning here you can witness citizenship mass swearing-in ceremonies.
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MH De Young Memorial Museum
The latest, greatest addition to the park is the sleek, sensational copper-clad de Young, cleverly treated by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron to rapidly oxidize green to blend into the park. Herzog & de Meuron won a Pritzker Prize (the architecture equivalent of a Nobel) for the repurposed industrial Tate Modern and showed a similar appreciation for building environment with the 2005 de Young, whose perforated facade pattern is drawn from aerial photography of the park.
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Mission Dolores
The city's oldest building and its namesake, the Missión San Francisco de Asis was founded in 1776 and rebuilt in 1782 with conscripted native Ohlone labor in exchange for a meal a day - anyone caught trying to escape and resume their previous lives were severely punished. The distinguishing feature of the original mission structure remains its painted-wood ceiling, patterned after Ohlone native baskets.
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Mission Dolores Park
The site of quasi-professional Castro tanning contests, free performances by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a small kids' playground, free movies on summer nights and Hunky Jesus Contests every Easter, this sloping park is still best beloved for its nonstop political protests and other favorite local sports. Flat patches are reserved for soccer games and ultimate Frisbee, and the tennis courts and basketball hoops are open to all.
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Mission High School
The most spectacular tower in San Francisco is the churrigueresque tiled tower of this 1925-7 high school, built in the mission revival style. This is one place where you might actually want to see a high school musical - the theater has a glorious gold-leafed dome with deco chandeliers. The student body here is mostly African American and Latino, with famous alumni that include Maya Angelou and Carlos Santana.
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Musée Mechanique
Sinister, freckle-faced Laughing Sal has been creeping out kiddies for a hundred years, but don't let this manic mannequin deter you from the best arcade west of Coney Island. A few quarters lets you start bar brawls in coin-operated Wild West saloons, peep at belly-dancers through a vintage Mutoscope, feed the insatiable Ms Pacman and get your fortune told by an eerily lifelike wooden swami.
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Museum Of Craft & Folk Art
Vicarious hand cramps are to be expected from a trip to this museum, where amazing handiwork comes with fascinating back stories. Recent shows explored historic handmade ukuleles, four generations of African American quilt makers, and parallel lines in Scandinavian and Californian modernist furniture.
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Museum Of The African Diaspora
A three-faced divinity by Ethiopian icon painter Qes Adamu Tesfaw, a stereotype in silhouette by American Kara Walker, a regal couple by British sensation Chris Ofili: this museum has assembled a standout international cast of characters to tell the epic story of diaspora. Memorable recent shows include selections from the Bamako photography biennial and 'Africa.Dot.Com,' a show of digital technology in traditional African arts.
