San Francisco Discovery Guide
Why Visit San Francisco the Smart Way
San Francisco is seven miles by seven miles, built on more than forty hills, and wrapped in fog for a good part of the year.
The Golden Gate Bridge is the obvious reason and it genuinely is one of the great structures — best walked or cycled across, with the fog pouring through the strait underneath.
Alcatraz sits in the bay; the cable cars are a working nineteenth-century transport system rather than a ride; and Chinatown is the oldest in North America and still a functioning neighbourhood.
The city is also improbably dense in cultural terms for its size — the Beats, the Summer of Love, the gay rights movement and the technology industry all happened within these seven miles, and each left something behind.
And the food, from the Mission’s taquerias to the Ferry Building, is very good indeed.
How to Experience San Francisco
The bridge and the coast
Walk or cycle the Golden Gate Bridge and continue down into Sausalito for the ferry back. The Marin Headlands on the far side give the classic view. Lands End and the Presidio’s coastal trail are the quieter equivalents.
Alcatraz
The island prison, reached by a ferry that must be booked weeks ahead. The audio tour is narrated by former guards and inmates and is genuinely good.
Neighbourhoods
Chinatown for the alleys off Grant and the produce shops on Stockton; the Mission for murals, burritos and Dolores Park; North Beach for City Lights bookshop and the Italian cafes; the Castro for the history and the Harvey Milk sites.
Cable cars
Ride the Powell-Hyde line over the hill and down to the bay, ideally early before the queues.
Parks and museums
Golden Gate Park, with the de Young and the Academy of Sciences inside it; SFMOMA downtown; and the Ferry Building market on a Saturday.
Where to Find Authentic Cultural and Historical Character
San Francisco has spent 175 years being a place people come to in order to be something they could not be at home.
Successive waves
The gold rush, Chinese immigration, the Beats in North Beach, the Summer of Love in the Haight, the gay migration to the Castro, and the technology boom — each arrived, transformed the city, and was partly displaced by the next. The result is a place with an unusually strong sense of its own history and an unusually short memory for any particular version of itself.
Tolerance and its cost
The city’s liberalism is genuine and long-standing, and it coexists with some of the most extreme inequality in the United States. Median house prices are among the highest anywhere, and the same block can hold a venture fund and a tent encampment.
Technology
The industry dominates the economy and the conversation, and local feeling about it is considerably more ambivalent than the outside view suggests.
Neighbourhood identity
Strong and specific. Which district someone lives in says a great deal, and residents will tell you so.
Responsible Travel Tips
Homelessness and visible drug use are a genuine crisis here, concentrated in the Tenderloin and parts of the Mission and SoMa. Treat people with ordinary courtesy, do not photograph them, and consider giving to an organisation rather than on the street.
Do not leave anything in a parked car. Not in the boot, not under a seat. Vehicle break-ins run into the tens of thousands a year and visitors’ hire cars are specifically targeted.
Use transit. Muni, BART and the cable cars cover the city; parking is scarce, expensive and a liability.
In the neighbourhoods — Chinatown, the Mission, the Castro — remember people live and work there. Buy from the shops rather than only photographing them.
Water: California drought cycles are real, and the city asks for restraint.
Coastal wildlife: keep distance from seals and sea lions, and stay off closed dunes.
When to Visit San Francisco
September and October are the best months, and this surprises people: the fog retreats, the air is warm and clear, and this is the city’s real summer.
June to August is the foggy season. Inland California bakes, pulling cool marine air through the Golden Gate, and the city sits at 15 to 18°C under grey cloud for weeks. Bring a jacket; the line about the coldest winter being a summer in San Francisco, usually misattributed to Mark Twain, is unfair but not wrong.
April and May are mild, green and clear, before the fog establishes itself.
November to March is the wet season, cool and rainy in bursts, with clear bright spells between storms and the lowest prices of the year.
Late June is Pride, the largest event in the city’s calendar.
Travel Cost Levels in San Francisco
What a day costs, by how you travel
Relative cost across the city
Lowest — the Richmond and Sunset districts, Bernal Heights and out toward Daly City
Average — the Mission, Hayes Valley, North Beach and most of the eastern neighbourhoods
Highest — Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, the Embarcadero and anywhere with a bridge view
San Francisco is among the most expensive cities in the United States. Sales tax and a hotel tax are added on top of quoted prices, and tipping of 18 to 20 per cent is expected, so the real cost of a meal is roughly a third above the menu.
