Things to do in San Francisco
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Union Square
Louis Vuitton is more top-of-mind than the Emancipation Proclamation, but this plaza, bordered by brand-name retailers, 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 prison exercise yard. Redeeming features include Emporio Rulli Caffè, the half-price theater-ticket booth and 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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Escape from New York Pizza
The Haight’s obligatory mid-bender stop for a hot slice. Pesto with roasted garlic and potato will send you blissfully off to carbo-loaded sleep, but the sundried tomato with goat cheese, artichoke hearts and spinach will recharge you to go another round.
reviewed
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Golden Gate Park
Kid heaven: buffalo, a carousel, playgrounds, miniature trees and paddle boats.
reviewed
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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 bay and even Marin County, depending how far you’re prepared to hike up the steep hill. When SF went up in flames in 1906, this was the safe spot 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. Technically the park closes at sunset, but the romantic views sometimes inspire after-hours cruising.
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Swan Oyster Depot
Superior flavor without the superior attitude of most seafood restaurants. The downside is an inevitable wait for the few counter seats, but the upside of the high turnover is unbelievably fresh seafood. On sunny days, place an order to go, browse Polk St boutiques, then breeze past the line to pick up your crab salad with Louie dressing and the obligatory top-grade oysters with mignonette (wine/shallot) sauce. Hike or take a bus up to Sterling Park for superlative seafood with ocean views.
reviewed
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Chef Jia's
All three of the sauces on the menu here make nostrils flare in eager anticipation: spicy black bean sauce, tangy brown vinegar sauce, and savory-salty oyster sauce. Mix and match your choice with standbys of chicken, pork, and squid and/or green beans, eggplant, or yams. Dishes are generous to the point of embarrassing, but don't neglect the sublime onion cakes with peanut sauce.
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Dottie’s True Blue Café
Consider yourself lucky if you stand in line less than an hour and get hit up for change only once – but fresh baked goods come to those who wait at Dottie’s. Cinnamon pancakes, grilled cornbread, scrambles with whiskey fennel sausage and anything else off the griddle are tried and true blue.
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DSW
The basement clearance section is where recovering shoe hounds come once they’ve sworn that they’ve bought their last pair for the season. Diligent research has uncovered 40% to 60% off Marc Jacobs flats, Betsy Johnson wedges and an inexplicable bonanza of limited-edition Pumas.
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Noc Noc
Who’s there? Nearsighted graffiti artists, anarchist bike messengers moonlighting as electronica DJs, and other characters straight out of an R Crumb comic, that’s who. The sake cocktails will knock you off your stool.
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.
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House of Nanking
Meekly suggest seafood, nothing deep-fried, perhaps some poultry - and your server nods, snatches the menu, and returns within minutes with meltaway scallops, minced squab lettuce cups and a tea ball that blossoms in water. Come prepared to wait, and bearing cash.
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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 Gerha…
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California Academy of Sciences
Finally the California Academy of Sciences has a museum suited to its fascinating collection of 38,000 natural wonders and the occasional freak of nature. Under the wildflower-covered ‘living roof’ of Renzo Piano’s LEED-certified green building, butterflies flutter through a four-storey glass rainforest dome, a rare white alligator stalks a swamp, and Pierre the Penguin paddles his massive new tank in the African Hall. In the basement aquarium, kids duck inside a glass bubble to enter an eel forest, find Nemos in the tropical-fish tanks and squeal to pet starfish in an aquatic petting zoo. The views here are sublime: you can glimpse into infinity in the Planetarium or rid…
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San Francisco Giants
April to October, you can catch one of the 81 home games of SF’s National League baseball team in this intimate ballpark, which changes its name with every telecom merger. The Giants pack in huge crowds and often make the playoffs, but haven’t won the baseball big tomato, the World Series, since 1954 (the team called New York home in those days). Games are frequently sold out, but season-ticket holders often sell unwanted tickets through the team’s Double Play Ticket Window on the website; it’s also worth checking internet auctions like eBay.com and craigslist.org. A behind-the-scenes tour (415-972-2400; tickets $12.50; nongame days at 10:30am & 2:30pm) includes v…
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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 cres…
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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 (www.patriciasweetowgallery.com) and shaken up on the 2nd floor by the political art of Togonon Gallery (www.togonongallery.com). For beauty with brains, see Marx & Zavattero (www.marxzav.com) 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 (www.renabranstengallery.com), featuring shows such as Hung Liu’s mir…
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Alamo Square
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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Fleur de Lys
Long before celebrity chef Hubert Keller took his show on the road to Vegas and Top Chef Masters, this was the ultimate over-the-top SF destination. There’s nothing subtle about the swanky sultan’s tent interiors, but it’s oddly suited to princely repasts involving gnocchi graced with chanterelles and hazelnut-encrusted scallops and halibut crowned with rhubarb coulis and truffle, and a king’s ransom of foie gras on every other dish. Prix-fixe options for omnivores begin at $70 for three courses, while vegetarians are entitled to a five-course feast for a surprisingly reasonable $68.
reviewed
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Crissy Field
The Presidio's coastal airstrip has been stripped of asphalt and reinvented as Crissy Field, a haven for coastal birds, kitefliers and urban beachgoers. Take a hike for spectacular views of Golden Gate Bridge: see it from below like Alfred Hitchcock for a thrilling case of Vertigo at Fort Point, or see it au naturel on the Presidio's west side at clothing-optional Baker Beach. When the fog rolls in, the Warming Hut serves Fair Trade coffee and organic pastries within walls insulated with old denim.
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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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La Mar Cebicheriá
Business lunches here could lead to some very untoward office behavior: the key ingredient in these collaged plates of Peruvian cebiche is leche de tigre, the ‘milk of the tiger, ’ a marinade of lime, chili and brine that ‘cooks’ the fish without a fire, and is said to have aphrodisiac properties. Sunny days are prime for seats by the bay and a plate of pristine, spicy cebiche classico of California halibut, habañero, Peruvian corn and yam – or go with the Pacific Rim flair of cebiche chifa, with peanuts, daikon, ginger and mango.
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Baker Beach
Down craggy bluffs, past wind-sculpted Monterey pines and cypress trees, beckons a mile-long stretch of sandy beach, with fishing spots galore and full-frontal nudity at the north end (gay men and straight girls). The views of the Golden Gate are spectacular, but huge crowds come weekends. The all-gay local beach is further north, at Marshall’s Beach (aka Marcia’s Beach), immediately before the bridge. Ask around for directions, but never climb the dangerous rugged cliffs north from Baker to reach it. Take pathways, and find the stairs.
reviewed
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Northwestern Usa
22 days (ex San Francisco)
by Intrepid
Relax seaside in Mendocino, Be dwarfed by giant redwood trees, Stare into the abyss of Crater Lake, Take the chance to explore the massive Oregon Dunes by buggy…Not LP reviewed
from USD$3,045
