Meet the City: San Francisco

Almost every 20-something I know has moved to the Bay Area in the last couple of years.

They moved for college and grad school, boyfriends and girlfriends, cooperative living, farmer's markets, and good weather. But mostly they came to work. Certainly at Google and Facebook, but also at tiny startups in stealth mode, startups with unlimited free snacks and champagne-heavy happy hours, and startups that prompt the question, “When do we stop calling it a startup, because it's just a company?" 

San Francisco is hiring—and offering equity—and it's changing the city. That’s one of the factors driving the gentrification of many neighborhoods. One of the hotspots of the debate is the Mission, where many techy 20-somethings are moving, and where rising rents are displacing many long-time residents.

The Mission offers a good snapshot of San Francisco today. Most locals will also recommend it for the shopping and the eating. Walk along Mission and Valencia streets, where unreasonably large burritos and fancy grilled cheese sandwiches sit side by side, and grab a bite. Trust me, you’ll spend a lot of your time in San Francisco eating. But there is plenty of nature--and frankly, an excess of hills--that will have you walking it off in between dim sum and ice cream.

I think it’s always OK to be a bit of a tourist, and San Francisco’s sights are worth it. And in a city of so many recent and not-so-recent transplants, most appreciate that it’s kind of cool to see windy Lombard Street for the first time. (Skip Fisherman’s Wharf.) But once you’ve covered the guidebook highlights, these city guides will also give you a taste of some very ordinary things in this city: a good hike, a homey bookstore, a warm loaf of bread. It’s not what brought them here, but these are the things that make the transplants stay.

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I recommend...

READ

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“Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco” by Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, March 2016

"Shrimp Boy's Day in Court," by Elizabeth Weil, The New York Times Magazine, October 2015

"The Story of an Eyewitness," by Jack London, Collier's, May 1906

GO

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Visit the East Bay:

Drinks at Mad Oak (Oakland)

Pizza at Rotten City Pizza (Emeryville)

Hike at Tilden Regional Park (Berkeley)

Eat and Drink

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Go out in SoMa at Butter, where you can order drinks like the Tiki Trash, made of coconut rum and Hawaiian Punch. Then, buy a bacon-wrapped "dirty dog" from a street vendor.

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The City Guides You'll Meet

Window shop with Jed in the Mission, where you'll find quirky stores that sell pirate gear and stuffed birds.

See the tourist sights worth seeing with Holly, who thinks you should take the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf for the view, but give the tourist trap a miss.

Brunch with Nicole on a lazy weekend morning at a music venue that's also a brunch spot and coffee bar.

Visit Leo's favorite places to eat and drink in San Francisco, and talk your way into his favorite speakeasies.

Hang out with Trevor at a historic lesbian bar in Bernal Heights.

Eat dim sum with Marcus in San Francisco's "real Chinatown," before finding a book to read at Golden Gate Park. (Marvel about how he and Jed have the same perfect SF day, even though they're complete strangers.)

Get out of the city with Yu-Sung, before returning for the perfect sunset at Sutro Baths.

Party on a weeknight with Mariella at the Academy of Sciences.

On a Mission with Jed

In addition to great coffee, Ritual offers a long table for working in the back, and a little parklet outside.

One of my wife and my favorite things to do is go to this place in the Inner Richmond called Green Apple Books. We're both bibliophiles, so we'll go there and spend a lot of time.

There's a great dim sum place nearby called Good Luck Dim Sum. Good Luck is the kind of place where two people can spend $15, and you're incredibly full, and then you still have a thing of leftovers. You can pick it up and take it to the park and eat it there. If you're not into dim sum, there's a place called Bunn Mi that I think is the best banh mi in the city.

Cozy, not creepy, Paxton Gate feels like the museum gift shop you'd find if you turned your eccentric explorer grandfather's attic into a museum.

One of our other favorite places is a place in the Mission called Wise Sons Deli. You can't go wrong with the Reuben there. They make their own pastrami, and it's the best I've ever had.

If we're in the Mission, we'd walk up and down Mission and Valencia, and just window shop. On Valencia, you can't go wrong with Ritual. That's quality coffee. Borderlands Books is an amazing place for sci-fi, fantasy type books. Paxton Gate has great quirky nature stuff and jewelry. It's really interesting and a fun place to browse. They have some weird taxidermy.

Right next to Paxton Gate, there's a pirate store. I think the deal is they wanted to open a tutoring center and couldn't get it zoned, so they opened up a pirate store. There's tutoring in the back.

The sights worth seeing with Holly

North Beach is full of traditional bakeries, and many will have strong opinions about where to find the best tiramisu.

Down by Crissy Field, you can drive down Marina Blvd. That’ll put you at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. If you go a block down from the water there's the Palace of Fine Arts. The first time I saw it, I went around the corner and it's like, “Oh my god!” You just wouldn't expect it to be there. Then you drive around the bridge, and there’s a little beach.

For shopping, I like Chestnut Street in the Marina. Mainly just one-off boutiques and cute little cafes and restaurants. Then there's North Beach, which is the Little Italy neighborhood. You know, the light poles are all painted red, white, and green. Park near Washington Square and walk down Columbus Street and Green Street. It’s really cute, with so many cafes, bakeries, and coffee shops. 

Then drive down Lombard Street because that's just cool to drive down. Then park your car somewhere and ride a cable car, because it’s San Francisco. The coolest bit to do would be to get on at Union Square, where Powell Street hits Market, and then go down to the water at Fisherman’s Wharf. You get the beautiful view of Alcatraz. Fisherman’s Wharf itself is pretty touristy and really just…Well, other than just going down on the cable car and seeing the view, I think you can give it a miss.

Back Patio Brunch with Nicole

Go to Thee Parkside in the Dogpatch/Potrero Hill area for brunch, and just hang out there! It's a bar and music venue, and it's great as both. But during the day, it's just a cool place to sit and listen to music and have brunch on the back patio.

Then I'd just explore the Dogpatch neighborhood. I like the antique stores, but there are a lot of stores there, so you can shop around before or after brunch.

It may look like a dark and grungy punk venue (and it is) but it's also a pleasant place to grab Sunday brunch outdoors.

Thee Parkside's new coffee bar serves up sunny vibes.

Speakeasy Inception with Leo

Dandelion Chocolates is a Willy Wonka Factory-like space that hosts factory tours and classes, as well as educational "chocolate trips" to cacao destinations including Belize and Ecuador.

Start at noon. Get the California Gold sandwich at Mission Cheese. You will die. Did you get that? You'll die.

Next door, you've got two options. Number one. Dandelion Chocolates. I recommend the frozen hot chocolate--it's bomb. Next door to that is Craftsman and Wolves, where they have some pretty good fancy desserts. So that's lunch and a snack.

If you have a car, drive to Bernal Heights, which is...sleepy. Very sleepy. There's a park there, with a hill and a tree. I guess it's called Bernal Heights Park. Almost no one goes there, but it probably has the best view of San Francisco looking northward. Although...if you want to take that picture with the swing that people keep Instagramming, that's Billy Goat Hill.

In the evening, get dinner at Chutney, an Indian restaurant in the Tenderloin. It's my favorite restaurant. Right next to it is a speakeasy, called Bourbon and Branch. Behind a coat rack in Bourbon and Branch is another speakeasy, called Wilson and Wilson Private Detective Agency. When you knock on the door for Bourbon and Branch, it's one password. When you call to reserve, they'll give you a password. But there'd be a different password for Wilson, and you'd also get it when you reserve. Or, you can go to the library. You have to pull a book at Bourbon and Branch for the library. The password is "Books." I don't know. It's always "Books."

Tradition is one block away. It's in the same family of bars, but completely different. I recommend making a reservation. If you reserve, you can go to the back, and you get a book of cocktails with drinks separated by type--tiki bar, dive bar, etc. If you don't have a reservation, you only get a subset of that menu.

Expect incredible city views and very happy off-leash dogs at Bernal Heights Park.

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For Fisherman's Wharf, for Lombard Street.

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To eat and drink delicious things, and to wear a light jacket everwhere.

The gentrified and non-gentrified parts of the Mission, Chinese food in the Richmond, clubbing in the Castro and in SoMa, Billy Goat Hill, and that gimlet at the Interval at Fort Mason.

The Wild Side with Trevor

There's Bernal Heights. It's on the outskirts of the city, a bit. There's a lot of cool stuff there--cool bookstores, a local market. Untouched is the wrong word, but it's just like from another era. Which era? Just from a long time ago. There's a local butcher shop, a local coffee shop.

The bulletin board outside the Good Life Grocery in Bernal Heights offers harmonica lessons.

Founded in 1962 in Oakland, the Wild Side West moved to Bernal Heights in the '70s.

Bask in the sun in the garden (or even this back room) at Progressive Grounds.

There's an awesome bar there, called Wild Side West. It's one of the older lesbian bars, from the '60s. Their backyard is really cool. The bar sits on a hill, so you walk down all these flights of stairs, and there's a beautiful garden. It's nice to bring a book there and sit, even if you're not there to drink. It's just cool for a bar to have a garden--you don't see that much.

Since you're out there, go to Noe Valley. There's a great bookstore called Omnivore. The full name is Omnivore Books on Food. It's all cookbooks, food writing, food journalism. It's one of my favorite bookstores in the city, and they have good events, too.

A lot of this is a bit further out from the city, so people don't quite make it out there. In the Outer Richmond and Sunset as well, there are a lot of cool places that people who live here don't even know about, closer to the beach. There it's pretty residential. So you'll see like, a house, a house, a house, a pizza place that looks like it's in someone's living room, a house, a house.

SF's real Chinatown with Marcus

So, the Inner Richmond. The Inner Richmond is like, the real Chinatown, and I'd start there.

If it's a naughty day, I'd go to one of the fast food-y dim sum places: Good Luck Dim Sum. It's the kind of place where if you take too long, you get yelled at by the ladies, and there are like seven wobbly tables. The soy sauces comes out of ketchup bottles. It is low key. I'd be there to get the sticky rice with chicken, in lotus, which is like $2. You can have that and a cup of porridge, and it's super good and super hearty.

The original Green Apple Books on Clement St. is full of handmade signs and book recommendations.

There's a really good bookstore down the street, Green Apple Books--both new and used. There's an annex to that, which also has periodicals. They've opened up another store that's next to Golden Gate Park.

I always see people in Golden Gate Park and they're just on their phones. You know, it's like, don't sit on your phone and be in the park. Walk to Green Apple, and buy yourself a book and read it in the park. It's one of those places where they're always playing weird music, like Japanese death metal or something. I am a huge fan of all the cultural institutions in Golden Gate. The De Young is great, so if you have a friend with a membership, go with them.

After that... I don't go that often, but there are farmer's markets everywhere. Everywhere. Like, there's one in front of the Kaiser Permanente. If you don't have a chance to get out of the city around San Francisco, go to one of the farmer's markets. It's a good representation of why California people are so spoiled when it comes to food.

Day trip to Mt. Tam with Yu-Sung

According to Yu-Sung, the best place to end your day in San Francisco is the Sutro Baths, for an impressive sunset over the ocean. (Photo from YS)

Eat your toast underneath a giant rope chandelier at The Mill.

Wake up and go to The Mill. Get Four Barrel coffee and a toast. Or two toasts. They have sweet and savory, but I think sweet is better. But really, why not get both? I’d recommend their housemade Nutella.

The toast is so good! It’s not like a cake, but it has that texture between a tea cake and a toast. So dense and chewy…and almost crumbly in some sense? So good. So good! You can do this all before 9. And then I would walk to Alamo Square Park.

If you have a car, drive up to Mt. Tam. You don’t have to hike it, but the view from there is utterly gorgeous. You can see Oakland, Sausalito, SF, and all the bridges that connect the Bay Area. Just drive up to the viewpoint.

You’re probably hungry for lunch at this point. On your way down, I’d go to Sausalito. There’s apparently a really good cash-only place called Fish. Period. Just “Fish.” It’s kind of expensive, actually. Then there’s people who live in floating houses. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can rent a kayak and take pictures of the houses. There’s this one really cool geometric one, and apparently it’s on Airbnb. It’s super modern—really, really neat.

Then come back to SF. Maybe you could go to Tartine. The best time to visit Tartine is after 4:30 pm, because then you can get freshly made bread. Just beware that the lines are long on weekends. Bring a friend and share some Bi-Rite ice cream sandwiches for the line.

Definitely go to the Sutro Baths in the afternoon. Watch the sunset there. And if you have a little more time you can even walk the Land’s End trail. You can walk from the Legion of Honor to the Sutro Baths. There’s also a cool little tunnel next to it that you can duck into, and you can hear the waves crashing in a super cool way.

Once the world's largest indoor swimming pool complex, complete with multiple pools, water slides, and a high dive, the Sutro Baths shuttered and then burned down in the '60s.

NightLife with Mariella

I'd start in North Beach, on Columbus Street, because it's great for gelato--and people-watching. You can get an Irish coffee at The Buena Vista Cafe, which is kind of their thing. 

From there, walk along the water at Crissy Field. I'd recommend seeing the Palace of Fine Arts and the Conservatory of Flowers.

If it's a Thursday night, I'd go to Nightlife at the Academy of Sciences, which goes on from 6pm until 10pm. You have to go early, though, to get planetarium passes. It's every Thursday, and you can just grab a glass of wine and walk around. They have food, but I'd recommend getting dinner nearby at Sushi Bistro, on Balboa and 5th.

Crissy Field offers close-up views of the Golden Gate bridge.