San Francisco Self-Tour Guide

 by Bill Woodcock

Tourist stuff to do
Drive across the Golden Gate Bridge. Once you're on the north side, in Marin, you can turn off to the right, and there's a little "scenic vista" parking-lot where all the tourists take photos of each other. On the other hand, you can take the underpass under the highway, and go west up into the Marin Headlands, where locals take photos of each other. That way you get the person you're taking a picture of in the foreground, the Golden Gate Bridge in the midground, and downtown San Francisco in the background. Like this: 

    www.woodynet.net/photos/2003/03.09-Amsterdam/Golden-Gate.jpg
Alternatively, you could make a pilgrimage to Fry's. This may be a less attractive proposition, now that there are Fry's stores in other parts of the U.S. 
    www.frys.com/localframe.html
The Sunnyvale one is the main one. Not the original, but where the original moved to, a few blocks away, when it outgrew its first building.

Among tourists, San Francisco is known for sourdough french bread, but among foodies, it's known for chocolate. Scharffenberger is just across the bay in Berkeley, and Ghirardelli, Joseph Schmidt, and XOX are in San Francisco. 

    www.scharffenberger.com/
    www.ghirardelli.com/
    www.jschmidtconfections.com/
    www.xoxtruffles.com/framepage.htm
Alcatraz probably isn't worth the time it takes to get out there and back. It's exactly what you think it is... a rock with some old concrete buildings on it.

The Mission
The Mission is, in a sense, San Francisco's oldest neighborhood, since it's the location of the Spanish Mission San Francisco, the first western settlement on the San Francisco peninsula. They also founded Mission San Rafael and Mission Dolores, as part of their colonialist competition with the Russians who were, at the same time, coming down the coast from the north. The mission building itself dates from 1776, and can be found at 3321 16th Street. The Mission neighborhood remains largely Spanish-speaking, and is probably the most vibrant and fun part of the city.

An amusing recent song about the Mission by Los Mocosos, a local group: 

    www.woodynet.net/woody/Mi%20Barrio%20Loco.mp3
The Mission is also where quite a few of San Francisco's best restaurants are located. Of particular note, in order of my personal preference:

Ti Couz (3108 16th Street at Valencia) is an excellent French creperie, and of historical interest, since it's where all the business meetings of The Little Garden, which was the west coast's first commercial ISP, were held. TLG's offices were one block south, at 16th and Mission, in a, um, _distinctively colored_ salmon-and-turquoise office building.

Bruno's (2389 Mission at 20th) is both San Francisco's best jazz nightclub and also a reasonably good restaurant (www.brunoslive.com/ though their calendar doesn't yet show who'll be playing there in May).

Foreign Cinema (2534 Mission at 21st) is an interesting combination of outdoor beer-garden, outdoor movie theater, and indoor restaurant. (www.foreigncinema.com/film/) They show _foreign_ films because they have subtitles which can be read above the noise of the beer-garden. The kitchen is open late. It's back in the middle of the block, with only a narrow doorway onto the street, so look out carefully, or you'll miss finding it.

Butterfly (1710 Mission at Duboce) is slightly annoying Asian fusion food, but has excellent people-watching, an indoor koi pond for really drunk people to fall into, and the kitchen is open late.

Luna Park (694 Valencia at 18th) is a bar and restaurant, with above-average pub-grub.

Mitchell's Ice Cream(688 San Jose between Valley and 29th) is a bit further out of the way, but is one of the things San Francisco is famous for. Really extrordinarily good ice cream, made right there, with unusual flavors as well as the ordinary ones. Lots of tropical fruit and so forth, with a bit of a Pacific-island and Mexican slant to it.

Timo's (842 Valencia at 19th) is a good Spanish tapas restaurant.

La Rondalla (901 Valencia at 20th) is a very low-brow Mexican-American restaurant, the sort of place that keeps the Christmas decorations up year-round, but is a bit of a local favorite, or at least has a lot of local apologists. And it's open really late.

Bombay Ice Creamery (552 Valencia) is an Indian ice cream shop, which makes its own ice cream on the premises, in really odd flavors. If you're not up to making the trip out to Mitchell's, this is a distant second.

You can get to the Mission from the hotel by cab, or by taking BART (the subway, "Bay Area Rapid Transit") to the 16th & Mission stop. You could walk, but it's not a very interesting walk, and would take a while.

The Castro
The Castro is, after the Mission, probably the second most interesting neighborhood in San Francisco. It plays host to San Francisco's Halloween celebration every year, which is probably the largest holiday event on the west coast. It has San Francisco's oldest and nicest movie theater. It has a several all-night diners, which the rest of the city is notably lacking. A few restaurants, again in order of my own preference:

Tin-Pan (2251 Market between Noe and Sanchez) is an excellent pan-Asian restaurant, without falling too far into the fusion trap. Be sure to have the dark-chocolate won tons for dessert. Also, they have the best pad Thai I've had anywhere, mostly due to the wide chewy rice noodles.

Mecca (2029 Market between 13th and 14th) is about as close to a New-York-style don't-get-in-if-you-aren't-dressed-pretty glam nightclub. But they also have a pretty good menu, okay wine list, and sometimes good music. If your visit to the Castro isn't going to be complete without seeing a big hairy-chested transvestite in a latex mini-skirted nurse's uniform and eight-inch platform heels, this is where you probably need to be.

Sweet Inspirations (2239 Market between Noe and Sanchez) is a really popular dessert shop and cafe, where they serve slices of cake (many, many different kinds of cake) as big as your head. They also often have interesting flavors of gelato.

La Mediterranee (288 Noe at Market) is a pretty good, though also pretty informal, Mediterranean restaurant, with a range of Greek and middle-eastern food.

South of Market (SoMa)
South of Market is the neighborhood where most of the dot-coms you've heard of were, or perhaps still are. It's where the Museum of Modern Art is. It's where the Moscone convention center is. It was all warehouses and garment factories (the original Levi Strauss factory, for instance) until yuppies started colonizing in the eighties, and now it's mostly high-tech and marketing and media companies.

It's also home to a few good restaurants, my very favorite San Francisco restaurant among them (and first on the list):

Bacar (448 Brannan between 3rd and 4th) is an excellent nouvelle cuisine restaurant, has probably the largest and best wine list of any restaurant in San Francisco, has two sets of live jazz every night, and the kitchen is open late. What more could you ask? Oh, _really, really good_ desserts, cheeses, and tea for dessert. (www.bacarsf.com/) There's no sign, but you'll recognize it by the big windows and light spilling out onto the street in a row of buildings otherwise dominated by warehouses.

Basil (1175 Folsom between 7th and 8th) is probably San Francisco's best Thai restaurant. Excellent food, and not terribly expensive.

Lulu (816 Folsom at 4th) is a pseudo-French restaurant, and has been trendy for a decade, now... Food is good but not spectacular, and the peoplewatching can be a lot of fun.

The Metreon Theater, which is not San Francisco's best movie theater, but is certainly the largest, is also south of Market, on top of the Moscone Convention Center, at 4th and Mission.

Fillmore
Fillmore Street, between Geary Street (location of the famous Fillmore Theater of the hippie days, still there) and Pacific, is probably the best shopping area in San Francisco. Not so interesting at night, but great for an afternoon walk. Lots of good lunch places and cafes, and a zillion little shoe-stores and dress shops and trendy furniture places and so forth.

Japan Town is at the south end of that part of Fillmore, anchored by the Kabuki movie theater and the Japan Center, which is full of mostly quite good Japanese import shops and some truly awful Japanese restaurants aimed at clueless tourists.

Fillmore goes uphill as you head north, peaking at Pacific, and the Pacific Heights neighborhood, which is San Francisco's most expensive residential neighborhood, home to Larry Ellison and Danielle Steele and Gordon Getty, largely because of its spectacular northward view of the Golden Gate Bridge, the entrance to the bay, Marin, and Angel Island and Alcatraz.

If that hasn't exchausted your shopping urge, keep right on going north on Fillmore down the steep hill until you get to Union Street, in the Marina neighborhood, another street full of shops and shoppers with twee dogs on little leashes.

North Beach
This is the old Italian neighborhood, where Joe DiMaggio was from, for instance. It's pretty touristy, and doesn't have much of interest other than a few fairly touristy restaurants and some nightclubs. The Blue Bar is among San Francisco's better jazz nightclubs, and Pearl's, which is right on Columbus Avenue (North Beach's main drag) has been recently sold and renovated and is supposed to be a reasonably good nightclub now, though I haven't been there since that happened, yet.