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Downtown
San Francisco's densely populated downtown is
squeezed into the hilly northeastern corner of the peninsula. The often dramatic
cityscape came about because the streets were laid out as if their planners had
never so much as glanced at the city's topography. They simply dropped a grid
pattern onto the steeply undulating terrain, and the result is that streets
often climb or drop at ridiculously steep gradients. It makes parking hazardous,
breeds bicycle messengers of superhuman strength and provides a hairy setting
for car chase scenes in movies.
Union Square is San Francisco's downtown tourist center. It's a mishmash of
glitzy shops and hotels, flower vendors and homeless people. Cable cars rumble
down the west side of the square; try looking down Hyde St towards Aquatic Park,
down Washington St to Chinatown and the Financial District, or down California
St from Nob Hill. And if you're in Nob Hill, you've just got to ride the
elevator to the Top of the Mark, the famous view bar at the top of the Mark
Hopkins Hotel. SoMa ('South of Market St') is a combination of lofty office
buildings spilling over from the Financial District, fancy condos along the
Embarcadero, a touristy gallery and museum precinct around Yerba Buena Gardens
and the late night entertainment scene along Folsom and 11th Sts.
Chinatown
A few blocks north of Union Square is Chinatown,
the most densely packed pocket of the city and one of its most colorful. The
tacky curio shops along Grant Avenue are monuments to the role tourism plays in
the neighborhood, but the 30,000 Chinese - most of whom speak Cantonese as their
first language - live in a tightly knit, distinctly un-Western community. It's a
great place for casual wandering through narrow alleys, where on quiet
afternoons you can hear the clack of mahjong tiles from behind screen doors. The
most colorful time to visit Chinatown is during the Chinese New Year in late
January or early February, with a parade and fireworks and other festivities.
North Beach
North Beach is sandwiched between Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf. It's a lively
stretch of strip joints, bars, cafes and restaurants that started as the city's
Italian quarter and gave birth to the Beats in the 1950s - City Lights Bookstore
is here, at the corner of Columbus Ave and Jack Kerouac Alley. The neighborhood
is hemmed in on the east by Telegraph Hill, which features tree-shaded stairways
that ramble down the steep eastern face of the hill, and Coit Tower. One of the
city's most famous landmarks, the tower is a prime spot to let loose your
postcard-vista voyeurism. The 360° views from here are superb.
Fisherman's Wharf
The much-maligned but massively popular
Fisherman's Wharf is directly north of Russian Hill. There's no getting away
from the Wharf's unspeakable kitschiness, but it's still fun. Packed with
shopping centers, hokey museums and countless accommodations, it's also the
gateway for several top attractions (Alcatraz, the Maritime Museum and the
Historic Ships Pier). Pier 39 is the area's focal point - it's become as popular
with a colony of sea lions as it is with tourists.
Haight-Ashbury
Keep on truckin' southwest of downtown and
you'll hit Haight-Ashbury ('the Haight'), the locus of San Francisco's brief
fling as the home of flower power in the late 1960s. Today, the Haight is still
colorful, but its pretty Victorian houses and proximity to Golden Gate Park have
prompted increasing gentrification. The compact Castro, to the southeast, is the
gay center of San Francisco and one of the best neighborhoods for strolling and
watching the streetlife.
Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park
stretches almost halfway across the 6mi-wide (10km-wide) peninsula, from the
Pacific Ocean to the Haight's Panhandle. Apart from gardens (including a flower
conservatory and a charming Japanese tea garden), lakes (rowboats, pedal boats
and motorboats can all be rented), sporting facilities (including horse riding,
archery, softball, golf, lawn bowling, horseshoe pitching and petanque), the
park also has a host of museums and an aquarium, making it a useful escape even
when the fog rolls in and the temperature plummets.
The city has plenty of other wide open spaces. Lincoln Park Coastal Trail is an
interesting walk from the ruins of the Sutro Baths at Ocean Beach to the
northwestern tip of the city, known as Lands End; there are some great views of
the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge. South of Golden Gate Park, the city's
hilly terrain makes its final skyward lunges at Twin Peaks and Mt Sutro. The
900ft (270m) summit of Twin Peaks offers a superb viewpoint over the whole Bay
Area, especially at night. There are viewpoints at both ends of the Golden Gate
Bridge, but Vista Point, the northern one, not only gives you the bridge, but
the San Francisco skyline as well.
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco's bay is curiously shy. It always
seems to be around the corner, glimpsed in the distance, seen from afar. It is
spanned by bridges, surrounded by cities and suede hills, dotted with sails and
crisscrossed by fast-moving ferries. The bay is the largest inlet on the
California coast, stretching about 60mi (100km) in length and up to 12mi (20km)
in width.
The beautiful Golden Gate Bridge crosses the 2mi (3km) mouth of the bay.
Completed in 1937, the bridge remains the symbol of the city despite competition
from modern constructions. At the time of its completion, it was the longest
suspension bridge in the world and the 746ft (224m) suspension towers were
higher than any structure west of New York City. The Bay Bridge, connecting San
Francisco and Oakland, is five times as long as the Golden Gate Bridge, carries
far more traffic and predates it by six months, but it's never had the same
iconic fame.
The bay's other attractions include Alcatraz Island, which operated as an 'escape-proof'
prison from 1933 to 1963. Al Capone, 'Machine Gun' Kelly and Robert Stroud, the
'birdman of Alcatraz,' were among the prison's unsavory residents. North of
Alcatraz, Angel Island served as an internment camp during WWII; it's now a
popular place for walking, hiking, biking, picnics and camping. Both islands are
accessible by ferry from Fisherman's Wharf and the Embarcadero.