FINDING THE REAL CITY Adventure Guide to San Francisco BILL BUCK Copyright © 2013 by Bill Buck All Rights Reserved. DEDICATION n Italian kid from New York City sailed through the Golden A Gate in 1969 as a merchant marine and decided to jump ship. A revolutionary, a rock and roller, and an accomplished sailor, he began a new life here and become a San Franciscan. The uncle of my high school friend, Denis operated a sailboat charter service from a wooden sloop named Molly. On weekends he gave sailing lessons to many groups of students. On the bay many days, Molly’s dark maroon sails and jet black hull would appear out of the fog like a pirate ship. Denis resided on a custom-made houseboat in San Francisco’s oldest yacht harbor. It was a teenage dream pad with a deck overlooking Alcatraz, two cats, many hanging plants and a vast collection of rock and jazz CDs on a stereo with surround sound. During my first year in the city, Denis left for New York to visit his ailing father and asked me to stay on-board to cat-sit. After a week I was hooked and, inspired by Uncle Denis, I bought myself a classic wooden boat down the dock, worked hard to restore it, and lived aboard in the marina for many years thereafter. There are always resourceful kids who come to town and find a way to make it all work. Thanks to Denis I had a unique foothold in the city, a headquarters from which to explore San Francisco. In Memoriam: Denis Francis Belfortie 1946 - 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 MEET THE NEIGHBORHOODS Chapter 2 North Beach Chapter 3 The Waterfront Chapter 4 Presidio Chapter 5 Mission/Valencia Street Chapter 6 The Avenues Chapter 7 More Areas to Visit Chapter 8 ONE DAY/FOUR BLOCKS Chapter 9 RESTAURANTS Chapter 10 CAFES Chapter 11 BARS/CLUBS Chapter 12 GETTING AROUND Chapter 13 ACCOMMODATIONS Chapter 14 CULTURAL ACTIVITIES Chapter 15 PARKS/OUTDOORS Chapter 16 ECOLOGY OF THE CITY Chapter 17 HISTORY OF THE CITY Chapter 18 MORE RESOURCES Chapter 19 AFTERWORD Chapter 20 APPENDIX PREFACE few weeks before the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, I moved to A San Francisco. As a native Californian I’d experienced plenty of quakes but not like this one. It was part of my welcome to the city. Growing up in a small town between Los Angeles and San Francisco, I thought my destiny was in one of these two cities. I didn’t have to deliberate for long: L.A. had the beaches and the weather, but San Francisco had soul… and my girlfriend! Stepping off a Greyhound bus at the Transbay Terminal, I became the newest arrival to walk up Haight Street with high hopes in a pair of high-top Converse sneakers. My girlfriend was in her mid-twenties and she had a good foothold in the city already. When I moved into her small bungalow near Golden Gate Park and began attending college, I became a student of the city as well. The window of our living room looked out on a small courtyard with a fountain, a flower garden and a huge Victorian house next door. This ornate building had once been part of the Good Earth commune, whose members formed the upstart Diggers collective and used to cook meals and distribute them for free in the park. It was one of many lively stories we learned about our neighborhood. We were told that Janis Joplin had even crashed in our bedroom once as a struggling young musician. Janis had probably crashed in many bedrooms in the neighborhood but the mystique was real. Emerging from eight-foot tall iron gates that protected our tiny fortress, I stepped out into the city and began exploring a place I had dreamed of since I was a kid. It didn’t take long to realize the layers of history were so extensive here, it would take lifetimes to uncover them all. Some friends and I spent two days walking a loop around the entire city, fourteen miles each day; it was a whole weekend of walking yet we had just scratched the surface. The earthquake in 1989 came as a shock. We made it through without serious incident but what happened later that night really stuck with me. As the sun disappeared and night fell on a powerless city, residents in our neighborhood began directing traffic and huge crowds gathered on the side- walks to share stories of the quake late into the balmy night. It was a window into the strength of the city’s community that I haven’t seen since. An eerie quiet took hold in neighborhoods like the Marina district following the quake as an exodus began: earthquake-weary residents decided this wasn’t the place for them. On the other hand, I was committed to the city for better or for worse — and in spite of potential quakes. No urban area is perfect and I have a few complaints but I’ve been to cities all over the world and after 25 years, San Francisco is still my favorite. I wrote this guide in part to acknowledge this Silver anniversary and I hope it helps you discover this special place, to find the real city… HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE inding the Real City is for locals and visitors alike. It’s designed to be Fused “in the field” — download it to an e-book reader like a Kindle, a tablet, laptop or other mobile device. During your visit you can use the hyperlinks included throughout the guide which lead to photos, reviews and helpful sites. Internet access will open up the capabilities of the book. The guide’s companion website — www.adventureguideSF.com — has resources like maps, addresses, and a list of links for the establishments and attractions profiled in the guide. Neighborhood maps are also available on the site, augmenting the book’s One Day-Four Blocks challenge. Watch for Adventure Alerts listed throughout the guide which provide more ways to explore the city. Check out the Table of Contents to orient yourself with all the sections and use the search function to find keywords related to topics or questions. This guide celebrates the historically rich, authentic and rewarding parts of the city that many books exclude. All five of the neighborhoods profiled offer memorable experiences but inevitably some neighborhoods and worthy destinations were left out. Depend on this guide of course, but also be sure to follow your whims! *For more information, please see www.adventureguideSF.com * Time to... MEET THE NEIGHBORHOODS! MEET THE NEIGHBORHOODS an Francisco is made up of many small neighborhoods — there are S at least 40 and a whole lot more if you include the city’s micro-hoods. Finding the Real City narrows down all the choices to five great destinations: Destination #1 – North Beach Long serving as a playground for sailors and swashbucklers, North Beach became prosperous for Italian-American families who helped make the neighborhood famous for its great restaurants and spunky nightlife. Today North Beach has lost some of that verve but, along with nearby Chinatown, it’s a spectacular place to find historic San Francisco. Destination #2 – The Waterfront Beginning in 1849, as ships filled the city shoreline, the once wild waterfront was filled in, transforming into a place of hulking piers and busy fishing docks. From the Presidio to Mission Bay, this guide celebrates the water- front, a thin slice curving southward along the city for miles, offering unique glimpses of the Bay, maritime history and the city’s modern downtown. Destination #3 – Presidio Transferred to San Francisco by the U.S. Army in 1994, the national park- lands of the Presidio feature forests, beaches, museums, historic architec- ture and recreation. Site of the city’s original Spanish fort, this is a truly historic element of San Francisco and preserves natural areas that would look familiar to the early settlers who arrived here in the 1700s. Destination #4 – Mission/Valencia Street For years, Valencia has been known as one of the city’s culturally vibrant streets. It’s a good place to visit for restaurants, bars and one-of-a-kind shopping experiences. At the edge of the Mission district, this street mixes a long-standing Latino culture with a new hipster culture. Nearby Mission Dolores provides a window into the city’s Spanish and Mexican influences. Destination #5 – The Avenues The sprawling Richmond and Sunset districts, long derided as merely nondescript outlying areas with an overabundance of fog in the summer- time, feature some of today’s most interesting restaurants and shops in the city. Golden Gate Park provides a focal point for this area and its two key streets—Clement and Irving—each get in-depth coverage in this guide. More sections of this guide: *ONE DAY/FOUR BLOCKS* RESTAURANTS CAFES BARS/CLUBS GETTING AROUND ACCOMMODATIONS CULTURAL ACTIVITIES PARKS/OUTDOORS HISTORY OF THE CITY MORE RESOURCES AFTERWORD APPENDIX North Beach “The cultural revolution first came to North Beach, where cheap saloons and fleabag hotels and old Barbary Coast bohemianism beckoned the Beats in the 1950s.” –David Talbot Season of the Witch orth Beach and its good neighbor Chinatown earn high honors Namong San Francisco’s historic neighborhoods: they preserve elements of their mid-19th Century look and feel. Walk down impossibly narrow alleys, climb up historic stairways, hunker down with a friend in a tiny saloon – it’s all a good taste of the old days. Entertainment trends may come and go but this section of the city still provides a spectacle like it always has.