Neighborhoods Offer Old-Fashioned Diversity

“One day if I go to heaven,” the late San Francisco columnist Herb Caen wrote, “I’ll look around and say, ‘It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco.’ ”

APA members arriving there for this year’s annual meeting may feel the same way before they leave. And they may find there isn’t only one San Francisco situated between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific—every one of “The City’s” diverse neighborhoods has a distinct feel and unique history and offers attractions all its own.

Here are a few of the neighborhoods and landmark districts highlighted by Bay Area Traveler at www.sfgate.com/traveler/ that members may want to visit.

• Union Square: The area around Post, Stockton, Geary, Powell, and Sutter streets is San Francisco’s shopping, gallery, and theater district and a center for haute couture with names like Dior, Armani, Marc Jacobs, and Yves Saint Laurent all opening boutiques in the area. (Others have moved out, leaving some vacant storefronts, a sign of the times.)

Sutter, Post, and Geary streets are filled with fine art galleries. San Francisco’s only Frank Lloyd Wright building, built in 1949 and currently housing the Xanadu Gallery, is located at 140 Maiden Lane and features the same circular interior as the famed Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Powell Street adds a local touch. Views of the Union Square area are best from Harry Denton’s Starlight Room in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel and from some of the second- and third-floor galleries and shops surrounding the square. This is also San Francisco’s main theater district, where traveling Broadway and off-Broadway shows come to town, usually for limited runs. Some of the theaters present local productions as well.

• Pacific Heights: People who can afford to live anywhere in America’s most expensive housing market often choose Pacific Heights above—far above—other prestigious neighborhoods. Rising steeply above the unique shops, cafés, and art galleries of Union Street, Pacific Heights is replete with large, beautifully restored Victorian homes, many certainly qualifying as mansions. The streets here rise and fall so dramatically that some sidewalks have stairs cut into them to prevent less-than-sure-footed pedestrians from tumbling downhill. And descending the streets in a car can induce an anxiety attack or unquestioning faith in the technology of brakes. Of course, the views are spectacular, and photo opportunities reveal themselves at almost every turn. Alta Plaza Park, high atop the heights, is a particularly awe-inspiring vantage point. Unknown even to most San Franciscans is the existence in Pacific Heights of the Fire Department Museum on Presidio Avenue. It is open Sunday through Thursday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and displays early fire-fighting equipment and objects associated with several of the devastating fires that swept the city’s mostly wooden houses from the mid-1850s through the ultimate conflagration following the 1906 earthquake.

• North Beach: North Beach manages to be a perennial hit with tourists while also remaining beloved by natives. It’s best known as San Francisco’s Little Italy, with its high density of restaurants with checkered tablecloths, cafés, and Old World delicatessens. It’s also a popular pilgrimage for fans of the Beat movement seeking the old haunts of Kerouac and Ginsberg.

This vital neighborhood is home to some of the liveliest nightclubs and bars in town. Small boutiques carrying handmade clothing and imported goods dot the streets, particularly on upper Grant Avenue. Though Italian restaurants appear to dominate the dining scene, there are plenty of other good spots to try once you’ve had your fill of lasagna, with menus featuring Japanese, French, and contemporary fusion cuisine. City Lights, original publisher of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” is still one of the best bookstores in San Francisco. Then there’s Broadway, buzzing with neon and strip clubs.

Whether prowling for historic landmarks, sampling house-roasted espressos, shopping, clubbing, or chowing down, APA members are bound to find that North Beach has plenty to offer for both a leisurely afternoon visit and a night on the town. But a word to the wise: avoid driving or plan to use a parking garage, as street parking in the area is notoriously scarce.

• The Mission: Visitors will notice plenty of cafés, thrift shops, and used-book stores that cater to the college students, artists, and activists who until recently were drawn to the Mission for its cheap rents.

The 24th Street area in the midst of the Mission district has a profusion of taquerias, pupuserias, produce markets, Salvadoran bakeries, salon de bellezas (beauty salons), auto-repair shops, and check-cashing centers that post rates for wiring money to Guatemala and Nicaragua—all evidence of the Central American and Mexican families who have been settling in the Mission en masse since the 1950s.

The Mission has always been home to different ethnic and socioeconomic groups. After the 1906 quake destroyed several blue-collar neighborhoods, Irish and Italians relocated to the quickly expanding Mission. The neighborhood was far enough from downtown and becoming populous enough to support a large number of stores, restaurants, and bars.

Since the turn of the century there’s been a steady trickle of Central American immigrants to the Mission, in part because of San Francisco’s trade links with Central America. Since the 1950s, the Latino population in the Mission has doubled every 10 years, lending the neighborhood much of its current flavor.

Generally, the 24th Street area is the culturally rich heart of the Mission. The stretch from Dolores Street through Valencia Street is young and upscale, the area around 16th and Valencia hops with nightlife, and the industrial area near Bryant Street is full of trendy new restaurants.

• The Castro: If only the Mexican land barons and European homesteaders who built the Castro district could see it—and the price of its real estate—today. Irish, German, and Scandinavian immigrants came to the outskirts of San Francisco in search of cheap land, which became bona fide suburbs after 1887 when the Market Street Cable Railway linked Eureka Valley (as it was then called) with the rest of the city. The area remained a quiet, working-class neighborhood until the postwar era, when large numbers of people started fleeing the city for the “suburbs.”

Finally, in the 1960s and ’70s, gay men began buying the charming old Victorians at relatively low prices, and the neighborhood was soon named for its busiest thoroughfare, Castro Street. Once word got out that this was one of the rare neighborhoods that not only welcomed gay people but in fact where they constituted a majority of residents, more and more gays decided to migrate to the unique neighborhood where they could feel at home. Today, the Castro’s gay identity is itself a tourist attraction, beckoning throngs of pilgrims and revelers from all over the world to the world’s largest mostly gay neighborhood. For decades gay and lesbian visitors have cruised up and down festive Castro Street and surrounding blocks with their unique shops, bars, and restaurants catering primarily to gays and lesbians. Despite the increasing commercialism of the Castro district, there remain monuments to a long and dynamic history as a mecca for gay men and lesbians, like the Twin Peaks bar, The Mint bar, and the crown jewel of the neighborhood, the venerable Castro Theatre.

• Chinatown: San Francisco has the largest Asian population outside of Asia, which lends to the authentic air of the neighborhood. In America, it’s the closest you’ll ever get to China. The area draws more visitors annually than the Golden Gate Bridge.

APA members won’t need an itinerary to tackle Chinatown. Wandering aimlessly, weaving between the local residents, and ducking into shops is enough of a plan. The main artery for tourists is Grant Avenue, which is more about cheap and kitschy plastic trinkets than the long heritage of Chinatown. It should definitely be seen, but moving on to the next block can be more rewarding.

For the real Chinatown, visitors are advised to check out the produce and live markets that line Stockton Street (between Columbus and Broadway) on a Saturday afternoon. That is where the locals do their shopping, and Saturday is the busiest day. Some Western eyes may find the sight of live turtles, chickens, and other animals unusual, but the markets are definitely interesting. Coupled with the clogged streets and the shouting matches over bok choy, they make for an all-day attraction. ▪