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San Francisco, California NEIGHBORHOODS Author: Barbara Hayo www.TrustedTours.com |
Although once-clear distinctions between neighborhoods have become somewhat blurred by demographic changes and gentrification, exploring the 
interesting streets, bayfront promenades, and remarkable stairsteps of San Francisco neighborhoods on foot is the best way to experience the ambience of this special city. Use the public transportation options to get to a neighborhood of interest, but once there, walk to really take it all in.
UNION SQUARE
Named for the park at its center, the Union Square area is a central crossroad of the city, busy, day and night. This is the city's mercantile heart, filled with luxury boutiques, fine department stores, upscale specialty retailers, art galleries, and color-splashed flower stands. Here, too, is the largest number of the city's hotels. Restaurants are everywhere, of every ambience - from the over-the-top undersea d�cor of Farallon to the intimate surroundings of numerous wonderful Italian trattorias and French bistros - and covering the culinary spectrum. Tapas are tasty at Bocadillos, vegan creations, extraordinary at Millennium, classic French cuisine, very formal at Fleur de Lys.
To the west of the park, named for the pro-Union rallies held there during the Civil War, is San Francisco's Theatre District, anchored by two landmark stages, the 1909 Geary Theater and the 1922 Curran Theater. Maiden Lane is a narrow, charming, pedestrian-only street, lined with restaurants, sidewalk cafes, and elegant boutiques. A few blocks down, at the corner of Powell and Market Street, is the cable car turnaround, a good spot to jump on for a ride down to Fisherman's Wharf.
SOUTH OF MARKET (SOMA)
Once an undesirable industrial area, and still home to light industry, warehouses in this trendy neighborhood have been transformed into museums, restaurants and nightclubs. The Moscone Convention Center is here, as is the sleek San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, exhibiting the second largest collection of modern art in America. Spacious lawns, grassy knolls, fountains, a collection of public sculpture, and a place for tea on a terrace overlooking the Esplanade at Yerba Buena Gardens are a nice change of pace from the surrounding brick and mortar. Nearby, theaters, interactive games and restaurants in the high tech Sony Metron, and the interactive exhibits at Zeum, a remarkable place for children, provide interesting activities for the whole family. Other museums celebrate diversity and popular culture - photography at Ansel Adams Center, compelling images in the Museum of African Diaspora, outsider art in the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, pop art in the Cartoon Art Museum. SOMA dining choices include some of the finest and trendiest restaurant experiences in the city, many located in glamorously renovated warehouses.
FINANCIAL DISTRICT
High-rise, high-tech, high-power, the Financial District is the most conservative of San Francisco's neighborhoods. It's all business, with suited people attached to their cell phones moving quickly down concrete canyons, maintaining the legacy of the banking, real estate and shipping industries that turned the frontier gold rush town into a cosmopolitan city. It is here that the city's tallest buildings form a skyline made up of both historic and contemporary commercial architecture. Many of the historic architectural gems were built by financiers during the Gilded Age following the 1906 fire which destroyed most of the original buildings. Some are elaborately pillared banking temples: Wells Fargo Bank, the imposing Bank of California, the neo-classical Old Federal Reserve Building. Others were built in the technologically advanced Chicago School architectural style: the Merchants Exchange Building, the Russ Building, the first all-steel frame structure in the city. The 1910 pencil-thin, terracotta Shell Building and the 1917 glass-walled Halladie Building are interesting departures from the stoic commercial architecture of the time. Structures built in the 20th century compete for sleekness, and shine - the black granite Bank of America, the green tinted Crown Zellerbach Building, the light-catching, faceted Transamerica Pyramid Building.
While admiring the streetscape, stop for signature seafood cioppino in Tadich Grill, the oldest restaurant in the city; discover the little French restaurants on Belden Street, an alley lined with outdoor tables; stop in Sam's Grill, a neighborhood institution, where deals have been transacted in curtained booths; have a drink with a view at the Carnelian Room on top of the Bank of America Building. See a real stagecoach in the Wells Fargo History Museum, gold nuggets in the Bank of California Museum. The restaurants, gourmet foods, wine shops and fresh produce found in the weekly Farmers' Market in the distinctive clock-towered Ferry Building Marketplace at the end of Market, the hub of transportation in pre-bridge times, are a wonderful, entryway to the Embarcadero.
FISHERMAN'S WHARF
The Embarcadero curves up along the northern shore of San Francisco, along Fisherman's Wharf, one of the world's most popular tourist destinations. Bay views, docks lined with what remains of the once-vast commercial fishing fleet, seals sunning on K-Dock, shops, many with nautical themes, seafood restaurants, sidewalk carts brimming with crab and steaming chowder served in hollowed-out sourdough bowls, historic ships, and Pier 39, an open-air shopping area, are major tourists draws.
Sample the famous sourdough bread (without the chowder) at Boudin Bakery, baking the signature bread since 1849. Lunch at Fishermen's Grotto No. 9, the oldest seafood restaurant in the area, or in one of the restaurants in the Cannery, the old Del Monte peach canning factory, restored into a complex of shops, entertainment venues, galleries and restaurants. Indulge in a world-famous sundae at the soda fountain in Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop in Ghirardelli Square, site of the original chocolate factory. Excellent free exhibits and artifacts in the Maritime Visitors Center, the Art Deco building shaped like a ship, depict the stories of seafarers, traders and whalers that passed through the important port. The remarkable fleet of 19th century ships, including the Balclutha, an 1886 square rigger, moored along Hyde Street Pier, provides a close-up look at ships of another era. The Aquarium of the Bay offers a glimpse into the sea life of the surrounding waters, and in the Wax Museum, see the famous and infamous as close to in-person as possible.
CHINATOWN 
Pass through the much photographed Chinatown Gateway Arch and be transported into the hustle and bustle of a Chinese city. Congested, vibrant, and colorful, sidewalks are packed with Chinese of all ages, from the very young to the very old, going about their daily business. Goods of every kind - tubs of fish, curative herbs, clothing, jade jewelry, kites, toys, just plain stuff - spill out haphazardly from shops lining streets and alleyways. Tasty dim sum is served from steaming carts, the art of tai chi is practiced in St. Mary's Square, the clacking sound of mah jong tiles comes from open doorways.
San Francisco's Chinatown did not always look as it does. Prior to 1906, it was a sinister place, an enclave of alleyways lined with gambling and opium dens, and brothels. Threatened with relocation in the clean-up after being destroyed by the earthquake and fire, entrepreneurial Chinese businessmen quickly and cleverly rebuilt in the colorful pagoda-style architecture to create a community with the look of the American perception of Chinese, in the hopes of erasing past stereotypes and to attracting valuable tourists.
Today, brightly painted Waverly Place is one of the most visited of the alleys. Nearby, four stories of stairs lead to the Tim How Temple, the oldest Chinese temple in the U.S. The story of the Chinese experience in San Francisco, from the days of their gold rush arrival, is told inside the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, and the Chinese Culture Center exhibits Chinese art. Cart after cart of steaming dim sum roll by in the huge Gold Mountain Restaurant; hand-made fortune cookies are rolled in the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company; the Canton Bazaar sells everything from silks to chopsticks; intriguing jars of herbs line shelves in the Great China Herb Shop.
NOB HILL
Nob Hill, the best known of San Francisco's famous hills, is where San Francisco's first elite, ordinary people who made vast fortunes in the transcontinental railroad and in Comstock silver mines, chose to build their lavish mansions. While all these mansions, except for the brownstone Flood Mansion, home of one of the "Bonanza King" silver baron, James Flood, were destroyed in the calamity of 1906, magnificent structures, themselves architectural specimens, were quickly built in their place, all prior to 1925. Today the neighborhood is a mix of city's grand luxury hotels, elegant apartments, intimate fine restaurants in charming, cozy places, delis, bakeries and small groceries.
Here, as in many of San Francisco hill communities, steep streets end in stairways and footpaths, which make for great walking, although perhaps not for the not-so-active. Find the sidewalk stairway on Taylor Street, and from the top of California, between Taylor and Powell, get a great view of grand hotels built on the sites of former mansions built with the railroad fortunes of the "Big Four," whose names they bear: the Mark Hopkins Hotel, on the site of the former Hopkins mansion; the Huntington Hotel, overlooking Huntington Park, site of the former Huntington mansion; the Stanford Court Hotel, built on the site of the Stanford mansion. Lovely, Gothic Grace Cathedral, whose interior is bathed in the blue-hued light of magnificent stained-glass windows, rises from the site of the former Crocker mansion. The Fairmont Hotel, the first hotel on Nob Hill, was built on property once owned by "Bonanza King," James Fair, and the private Pacific Union Club is the former James Flood Mansion.
The one-of-a- kind Cable Car Museum is also in Nob Hill. Home of the cable cars at night, it is a free museum by day, complete with exhibits and a chance to see the moving cable cars being pulled along the street. If walking the steep hills is daunting, see Nob Hill from the cable car which crisscrosses it, east-west along California to the Financial District and north-south on Powell between Market and Fisherman's Wharf.
RUSSIAN HILL
A particularly curvy and hilly area of the city, many streets in residential Russian Hill dead end in stairways, steps and footpaths which lead past garden spaces, shady cul-de-sacs and terraced gardens. It's a wonderful place to walk.
Its best known landmark, zigzagging Lombard Street, is beautifully landscaped, with stairsteps leading down to the bottom. A must see is the Diego Rivera fresco in the San Francisco Art Institute, where you can also have a great lunch with a wonderful view at the caf� inside. Seek out the twelve historic buildings on Green Street, all survivors of the 1906 fire and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
PACIFIC HEIGHTS
A neighborhood of choice for the wealthy since those who lost their Nob Hill mansions in 1906 decided to build there, it is the place to see some of San Francisco's splendid late 19th and early 20th century residential architecture.
Open to the public are the Haas-Lilienthall House (1886), in Stick style and Queen Anne Tower style architecture with original Victorian furnishing, and the Colonial Dames Octagon House (1861). The latter is open only on certain days for limited hours. Beautifully preserved private homes can be appreciated by walking by. Notable are the Spreckles Mansion (1913), a chateau in French Baroque style, currently the home of author Danielle Steele; the Italian Baroque "Jennie" Flood Mansion (1901), a private secondary school for girls; the James Leary Flood Mansion (1915), a masterpiece modeled after a 16th century Roman palazzo, and home of Sacred Heart High School. Beginning in the 1920s, elegant apartment buildings became the favored residence, and they now dominate the skyline.
NORTH BEACH
Italian caff�s, bakeries, wonderful restaurants, aromatic delicatessens, friendly neighborhood groceries, lively nightclubs and bars, and little shops cluttered with antiques, clothing, and hardware, give North Beach its ambience, a legacy from its days as an Italian immigrant enclave. Enjoy coffee with opera in the Caffe Trieste, open since 1956; grab a sandwich in Molinari Delicatessen, brimming with salami, cheese, olives and wine; enjoy a cappuccino, not a cigar, at Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store. Visit the white, Gothic Revival, spired Church of Saints Peter and Paul, where traditional Italians marry.
In the 1950s, it was in North Beach coffee houses that the Beat Generation found its voice, and vestiges of the "Beats" can be found in coffee houses, historic bars, and vintage clothing shops on Upper Grant. Succumb to nostalgia in Vesuvio, enjoy a poetry reading at City Lights Booksellers, a good laugh at Purple Onion.
Climb the stairway footpath for a spectacular view from the fluted Coit Tower on top of Telegraph Hill, overlooking North Beach. Have dinner with a view at the cliff-hanging landmark, Julius Castle Restaurant. Find antiques around historic Jackson Square, where several flatiron commercial buildings survived the 1906 fire. One of the most beautiful of the flatirons, Columbus Tower, is headquarters of Frank Ford Cuppola's film company, and in the ground floor Caf� Zoetrope, enjoy a glass of Cuppola wine.
MARINA DISTRICT
A community with great views of the Golden Gate, the Marina District was built on land filled in for the 1915 Pan Pacific Exposition. A favorite residential area of young professionals, its Mediterranean pastel-hued homes with barrel tile roofs give it a definite mainstream ambience not usually found in San Francisco. Chestnut Street, particularly between Divisadero and Filmore, is a popular upscale dining and shopping area.
Enjoy the open space, sea breezes and interesting sites, historic and man-made, on a stroll along the north shoreline of the peninsula adjacent to the Marina District. Visit museums and galleries at Fort Mason Center, within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, try creative vegetarian cuisine with a panoramic view in the art-filled Green's Restaurant, grab a picnic lunch at Green's To Go. Further west, paths lead to a great stretch of grass, Marina Green, with fabulous views of the activity on the bay. Spend time in the interactive Exploratorium, one of the best science museums in the world, located in the Palace of Fine Arts, a stunning remnant of the Pan Pacific Exposition.
THE CASTRO
San Francisco's gay community, an influential political force in the city since the 1970s, has congregated in the urban gay village, "The Castro," at the foot of the famous Twin Peaks. Rainbow banners fly over boutiques, stores, restaurants and bars. Picturesque, brightly painted, beautifully restored Victorian homes line block after block, with a particularly notable row on Liberty Street. The crown jewel of the Castro is the Castro Theatre, an old-fashioned movie palace dating to 1922, and treasured by all San Franciscans, gay or straight, for presenting a mix of independent films, classics, and even silent films accompanied by the house organ.
HAIGHT-ASHBURY
Nostalgia seekers come, hoping to find a trip back in time to the 1960s "Summer of Love," only to find aging hippies, a mix of people seeking something, and commercial imitations of what once was. The Red Victorian Inn has recreated the era with rooms decorated with beads, macram� and psychedelic posters. As a fitting memento, be sure to take a photo of the street sign at the intersection of Haight and Ashbury.
Trust us, we've been there!
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