San Francisco and what to do in it

There's a couple of ferry/harbor cruises that give you a great view of things. Can't recommend directly by name, however. I know, i'm useless.

City Lights bookstore? Yeah, you should hit that too.

Isotope Lounge on i think Noriega is a great comic shop, if you're into that sort of thing.

You could always go score at Golden Gate Park, too. That's good for a chuckle...

And, oddly enough, there is an excellent Japanese restaurant down at the Pier 39 (ir whatever) tourist mecca - hidden about two blocks down from the Ripley's museum - on the same side of the road - beautful - traditional service - a real treat.

And check-out Glide Memorial Church, in the tenderloin - wonderful, beautiful, a bit scary, and it's one of the few places in the U.S. that you can share your pew with TVs and prostitutes and dominatrixes and so forth - I love it!

http://www.asianart.org/ the asian musuem is wonderful, almost encyopedic and one of the best buildings in a long time.

And what's the name of that restaurant on the highway that looks right over the ocean? My mom and brother and I almost got thrown out of there for causing a drunken ruckus.

record stores:
amoeba (haight/stanyan)
aquarius (21st/valencia)
open mind (oak/divisadero)

brew brah:
toronado (haight/fillmore)
kilowatt (16th/albion)
zeitgeist (13th/valencia)
call 415-863-8350 and make a reservation for the anchor brewery tour, best deal in town (ie, free and plentiful beer).

music venues:
hemlock (polk/hemlock)
bottom of the hill (17th/missouri)
379 40th st (oakland)

music listings:
zumonline
the list

art:
the luggage store (market/6th)
5024 (fillmore/waller)
111 minna

restaurants:
el castillito (church/duboce) cheap mexican
farolito (24th/mission) cheap mexican
hotei (9th/irving) mid price ramen house
indian oven (haight/fillmore) mid price indian
kay cheung (jackson/ross) cheap dim sum
pakwan (16th/guerrero) cheap pakistani
powells (hayes/octavia) cheap soul food/fried chicken
sawa (divisadero/hayes) mid price eritrean
shimo (25th/clement) mid price japanese
thep phanom (haight/waller) mid price thai
yummy yummy (11th/irving) cheap pho house

uh... i can go on and on here...

this is a start let me know what else you want. i can get the MSP to add some east bay recommendations as he is more familiar with that area than i am...

more record stores:
grooves (1797 Market) -- all vinyl
groove merchant (687 Haight St) -- all vinyl. soul, jazz, breaks. kinda like a west coast dusty groove
street light (3979 24th St @ Noe) & (2350 Market St @ Castro)

more food:
la taqueria (mission @ 25th) -- my favorite carne asada burritos
bean bag (hayes @ divisidero) -- cheap good pasta. get the trieste
asqew grill (1607 haight) -- amazing skewers and mashed potatoes
cha cha cha (upper haight near amoeba) -- great tapas and sangria

don't miss the Exploratorium. hands on science experiments. cool shit. makes you feel like a kid again.

and i know we've named specific places where you'd go, but there are great areas to go shopping in.

obviously there's Haight. Upper Haight (from masonic to stanyan) is a 5-6 block area of commodified rebellion. record stores, food, clothing, tattoos. yada yada. Lower Haight (webster to scott) is a little less compacted, but has a few record stores (more on the dj side of stuff), restaurants, and flea market-y kindsa places.

Union Square is where all the name brand kinda stores are. lotsa department stores, nike town, mall-ish kinda stuff. but there are maybe 5-10 square blocks of shopping and eating there's also a Rasputins music and a Virgin Megastore. and Blondies, next to rasputin, is probably one of the best pizza joints in town.

the castro has a bunch of stuff to do (records, food), but i wouldn't really go shopping for clothes there unless you wanna look like you went shopping at International Male

and then in Berkeley, across the bay bridge, there's Telegraph Ave, which is kinda like upper Haight. there's an Amoeba, Rasputins and Blondies there too.

(you can see from my recomendations the only things i spend my money on are music and food)

you guys gonna rent a car? napa/sonoma are 1 hour's drive north. let me know if you want recommendations for vineyards.
(my favorite tasting room that i'd recommend for you young hipster dudes is bonny doon in santa cruz... about 90 minutes south of SF)

best pizza:
tomasso's (broadway/montgomery) - ranked top 5 pizzas in the USA by i forget who
zachary's (rockridge and n. berkeley - east bay) - unbelievable deep dish / stuffed pies

decent clothes shopping in the castro: Rolo but find a $ugar daddy first.

neighborhood guides

the mission district has decent shopping/peoplewatching between 16th and 24th streets bordered east/west by mission and valencia. bars/restaurants/shops (aquarius is here, as are some of the tacquerias mentioned above).

haight street between masonic and stanyan draws the line between hippy and hipster.

north beach (columbus between filbert and jackson and adjacent blocks) is nice on a sunny day, washington square park, st. peter/paul cathedral, italian cafes, some funny record stores: 101 records, the basement of 513 green st. @ grant is probably the only record store of it's kind in existance. there is one small block of hipsterism around powell and columbus.

more later

Frjtz on Hayes street is awesome Belgian fries, and BPM right next door is maybe the city's best dance-music specialist (smallish place, but they'll let you listen to anything in stock, CDs as well as vinyl)

Also more online listings:
flavorpill
transbay calendar

Now that I'm (kind of) a native, I can recommend a Greek restaurant called Kokkari..."something" in the Financial District, but it's not cheap.

The coffee in Berkeley all smells amazing. Try it for me, as it looks like I'm off the evil bean indefinitely, damnit.

I expect Sean to pop up and recommend Jardiniere in Hayes Valley, as he usually does. ;)

If it's a nice day, get a ferry over to Sausalito, but don't bother getting off. It's full of rats.

Nob Hill = MUST SEE: grace cathedral park (nabisco and chris v. *cry* on cue). also: fancy hotels, aristocratic history of last 150 years of SF, good views, in between union square and china town but it's a hike. the fairmont hotel has a super cheezy (but fun! or ?) tiki bar that has a decent happy hour... $5-6 but very potent drinks.

Potrero Hill:
not too much to see, but if you go to Bottom Of The Hill head up to 18th street between Connecticut and Arkansas, there is a couple good shops/restaurants/cafes... i recommend the coffee place (have no idea what it's called) and Eliza's for reasonable "gwai lo" style Hunan/Mandarin hybrid. Very good. Not sure how authentic you want your chinese food but this is good for SF-style. just west down mariposa from the bottom of the hill is the parkside another great bar that has good live music sometimes.

The Tenderloin:
The seedy underbelly of SF. Don't let it scare you, it's actually pretty mellow despite a high-profile of crime (sex/drugs). Lots of music happenings here: The Great American Music Hall (capacity 800), the Hemlock, the Edinburgh Castle (sometimes great shows/readings upstairs). Naan & Curry (o'farrell/leavenworth) is a easy/great/cheap indian. the big vietnamese place (i'm blanking on the name) on geary/larkin is not bad, the spicy shrimp appetizer will probably blow your head off if you're into that sort of thing.

inner sunset:
centered around 9th/irving lots of shops/restaurants cafes, more of a residential neighborhood. i recommended a couple asian restaurants in this area for good reason.

inner richmond:
across golden gate park from the sunset, there is some great shopping to be done on clement street... try green apple books (clement/5th), the best bookstore in SF, they have music too. there's lots of restaurants/large theatres (balboa/coronet) in this area too...

castro:
if you go to the cafe du norde for a show, head up market until it just can't get any queerer. in the mid-70s the castro replaced polk street as cruiser central and there's no turning back now. the castro theatre is the nicest theater i've set my foot in, excellent arty indie-friendly programming (i've seen yo la tengo and superchunk score silent films here)... beautiful beaux arts bronzework inside, you won't be treated to the pipe organist during matinees, but the evening program is worth coming early for the wurlitzer short performance.

[sidenote - excellent rep/revival theatres:
the red vic - haight/cole
roxie cinema - 16th/valencia [kindly note: check back on this link in two weeks]

PacBellPark
Home of your SF Giants. Even if you hate baseball, you will have a good time at PacBell Park. Sitting along the bay a short walk/Muni ride from downtown, you can get standing room tickets for $8 and sneakily find a seat and enjoy the game. Food/drink is expensive but try the bratwurst/hot dogs with grilled onions at the stand around section 104/105 ($4-$6) if that's your scene. Unless you go on Sunday, you stand a good chance of seeing the greatest player in the game (ever?) hit a homerun into the bay. (Aug 5-10;19-24)

more later

that being said, i still find some great stuff in the bargain bins at amoeba (which are bigger than most stores inventories) it's just so colossal and chaotic that it scares away most people.

(I kid, I kid - post-burst SF is actually supremely pleasant again)

i went back a few weeks later and had the worst experience in my entire life. bad service, a waitress that wispers even though the music is loud, and she has a tongue ring and has a lisp so you can't understand her even if she did speak up. they made us sit at a super small table (like 2 square feet) for 5 people. and half of the table had this artsy rock formation in the middle of it. we had to put our drinks on the ground because there wasn't enough room. the food was good, but the service was bad, which made the food kinda bad.

moral of story is, go there with gygax or don't go there at all.

well, better than smogville. i did inform you that i might be relocating , stop rubbing it in. (JasonD please treat as CONFIDENTIAL! PLEASE)

wrt "the boom"!: The boom wasn't so bothersome (so long as you ignored the establishments that catered to the boomers...) i mean really spencer, nothing says "dotcom SF" like foreign cinema:

"We were kind of the place for the chic, young, Prada-wearing, cell phone-carrying, CNBC-watching crowd, and for a while we were packed every night," explained Bruce McDonald, owner of the Foreign Cinema restaurant in San Francisco's Mission district.

Foreign Cinema, located in a spacious warehouse, complete with a wall-sized movie screen for diners' entertainment, used to serve 400 people a night. That number fell to as few as 30 late last year, as unemployment in the Internet sector mounted and surviving dot-com companies started watching their pennies.

To try to win back customers, Foreign Cinema recently revamped its pricey French Bistro menu to offer somewhat lower priced American comfort food like pork chops.

The film fare has changed, from esoteric foreign films to some cheerier all-American musicals like "Singing in the Rain." Comfort entertainment to go with the comfort food, which it is serving in increasingly large portions.

Foreign Cinema sees its moves as critical to its survival. It wants to reach out to an older, somewhat less stylish crowd that may not have money to burn but has enough to eat out from time to time.

"I do mourn the old days," McDonald said. "Life was a hell of a lot easier and you could count on a lot of money coming in. Now you have to work hard for it."

ugh.

berkeley, university ave and shattuck.

straight off the downtown berkeley bart.

modlang (www.modlang.com) - for latest uk imports. lot's of garage and psych stuff. very pop-oriented.

the comic store next to modlang rocks. i can't remember the name.

crepes a go-go... my favorite crepe place in the bay. i like it because it's not as frou frou as all those dumbass gourmet places. the (dark) chocolate, banana, coconut crepe is just perfect in semi-sweetness, texture, and fillingness.

there's a lot more in this area foodwise, etc. great china. sushiboat (or sushico). thai e sun.

if you head north on shattuck you find the gourmet ghetto where nouveau cuisine came from. the cheese board is the shit there for breads and cheeses. there's a deli next to a pegasus books that also rocks. barney's burgers is good. cha'am on shattuck is really really good thai.

berkeley... telegraph and durant

a 10 minute stroll up from downtown berkeley BART...

amoeba - the berkeley location doesn't have as good a used selection but the new stuff is just as together and it's a block down from rasputin's, which is another large store that isn't amoeba haight, but still decent. rasputins has a BUTTLOAD of seven inches. that's right. a buttload. both of these stores are also in the telegraph area of berkeley which has both moe's and cody's books, and more ... plus lot's of great food.

cafe intermezzo has awesome pbhb sandwiches...peanut butter honey and banana on big, thick wheat bread. the salads there are easily two meals and really good.

blue nile... great egyptian food.

top dog on durant is a favorite for hot dogs and stuff.

king pin donut on durant will make you fat with glee. the buttermilk donuts are pretty awesome. it's also on the end of the asian hallway... where you can pretty much get fast food asian of many different varieties. some better than others... but generally edible.

this area's also pretty well hooked up with vintage clothing stores and stuff and lot's of street vendors with all the dirty hippie hook ups you could possibly want.

Rockridge at college ave... off Rockridge Bart station.

great food... zacharay's deep dish chicago pizza is the shit.

pearl of siam is decent thai.

cactus taqueria is one of my favorite burrito joints... it's right off the bart there. it's probably not authentic enough... but it's all natural and way good.

barney's is there if you want burgers and shakes and curly fries that rock.

there's a dreyers ice cream store here. yum!

also on this stop is pendragon books... a small place that's pretty well packed... and another book store that's south on college on the right that i can't remember the name. both are very tasteful and have a great collection of the latest bits.

saturn records kicks ass. it's a small crowded place. there's a small section of spockmorgue weirdo stuff you can't find most places. it's also one of the best place in the bay area to find collector's vinyl. if you wanna tempt yourself with $30 trips to rarity heaven, saturn will probably do you right. i also like it cause they've got very condensed sections of certain types of music. pan through their punk section and you'll find the best of the best. you won't find the latest or the rare name... but there's a quality you usually don't find at most stores in the area.

i could describe a few other hoods... but but but...
m.

Also, I always eat at a Barney's whenever I'm in the Bay Area. The curly-fries are great for hangovers!

that's great, since the default online local news source, sfgate, has gotten so shitty it's barely worth looking at these days. 75% of their articles are about LA lately.

Here's COYOTE's update:

Our $80,000 initial goal is what we needed to simply launch COYOTE this summer. Now — with your support and encouragement — we’re thinking BIGGER and longer term: If we hit $150,000 by mid-July, we will be able to plan for COYOTE’s operations into the new year.


What $150,000 would provide:

More stories, more often
A bigger freelance budget. We want COYOTE to be a hub for talented writers, photographers, and creators from different communities all over the Bay!
Fair wages for our 11 worker-owners
Building journalism free from corporate control is a team effort. Can you help us get there by July 16? Please spread the word!

sfgate has gotten so shitty it's barely worth looking at these days. 75% of their articles are about LA lately.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Thursday, June 26, 2025 7:56 AM (one hour ago)

yeah that guy who was on the cover yesterday was a real dork.

Sf chronicle and sfgate are now separate entities… the SJ Mercury/East Bay Times is actually better for Oakland/Berkeley coverage tbh…

SFGate has an inordinate number of stories about some incredible new seasonal offering at Trader Joes, or to answer arcane question about Trader Joe's, or why we can never find X at Trader Joe's anymore, or the buzz and hype about mini tote bags at Trader Joes

sounds like the Trader Joe’s thread on here, where scores of ilxors claim that a glorified snack shop is “the best place to shop ever”

It is nowhere near as good as Grocery Outlet… except for cheese selection.

Grocery Outlet up in Cloverdale has been a hidden gem, at least when I was up there often pre-pandemic. My guess was that it was far enough from a Whole Foods that a lot of premium items could end up there. And the wine section had all kinds of deals from wineries that just re-branded or shut down and needed to clear their old inventory: Wind Gap (now Pax) wines for $5.99 (when they're usually $20-$40), that kind of thing.

Grocery Outlet rules

it’s great, although in the last few years their prices have started to be on par or slightly higher than Winco so we mostly shop at winco now

grocery outlet does have a pretty good snack game tho

Oh the one in Oakland is 5 blocks from WhoFo and has plenty of premium items that WhoFo carries. Grocery Outlet: it’s pumkin spice season year-round.

i got some off brand canned pintos at a local GO awhile back and they were garbage. i do like the store, just staying clear of potentially questionable canned goods after that.

yeah, that’s the deal with GO— it’s sort of like “thrifting for food.” i like it but go there mostly to see what sorts if snacky things and frozen stuff is around. they don’t sell booze at GO in Philly because of our state’s insane liquor laws.

yeah the canned stuff can be sketchy

We have really amazing deals on frozen seafood … and some produce … like avocados. It’s also an interesting place to observe cultural class differences.

I also do food “rescue” through toogoodtogo … and it’s kinda similar in that the produce quality is good but it’s closer to its end date than what you get at the supermarket.

beware the Sweet & Sour Cheerios, they're from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics

GrocOuts are not created equal.. the wine selection at the Palo Alto store is incredible, but the Oakland store has mostly wines with Snoop Dogg on the label.. and they never have sherry or vermouth of any kind

I signed up for TooGoodToGo but I have yet to actually use it. What sort of stuff do you wind up with when you ask for produce?

The fact that you have to pick it up during an extremely specific time frame -- often quite late -- is another major drawback for me.

I use it weekly here in Chicago. Every Friday night at 9: 30pm I pick up a dozen donuts at Dunkin donuts for $6 to bring to the food pantry volunteer shift. Sometimes they just give me two dozen donuts.

The produce place here that lists stuff is basically a wholesaler … so I get like a flat of strawberries or 5 lbs of mandarin oranges or 25 peaches

I also get bakery items that are usually early afternoon pick up.

Oh and half-bake pizza —- pickup between noon and 1pm. Having a car helps

I read in January that Grocery Outlet will come into the North Point Center on Bay Street in Fisherman's Wharf in a large space that Safeway abandoned, which I think is fantastic! I haven't read anything about it since then though, and knowing SF bureaucracy it probably won't become a reality for years if ever.

Board of Supes: "What we need is affordable whole grains, not affordable weird frosted cookies from Brazil..."

lol

GO actually is pretty DEI when it comes to hiring.

I had been wondering about these. They're great! (I like the city official quoted who basically goes 'uh' silently when a salient question is asked.)

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/mystery-benches-sidewalks-20418145.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2ZjaHJvbmljbGUuY29tL3NmL2FydGljbGUvbXlzdGVyeS1iZW5jaGVzLXNpZGV3YWxrcy0yMDQxODE0NS5waHA%3D&time=MTc1MTkxOTExOTI2OQ%3D%3D&rid=NWVmYzI0OGQtYWNlMi00MmVhLTk1NzUtMGViNGUwN2IwOThm&sharecount=Mg%3D%3D

those have been popping up in Oakland for a couple years now.. I think the city is mostly indifferent or unaware

yeah they mention those in that article; that guy Daryl Owens builds them with someone else for Berkeley and Oakland. There were some kind of off-base complaints from the city or cities at the time but we can't even seem to get rid of illegal dumping on the streets, let alone benches that actually do good.

some kids at Oakland High went even further and built a pretty sturdy roof over the bench on MacArthur, making it into an actual shelter

The potential issue is fire safety as well as complying with ADA … as well as whether the bespoke benches are sturdy enough…

But there were structures built in the East 12th encampment with a 2nd floor that were there for several years before the city removed them…

Are those chairs painted bronze that have been installed off and on at the N Judah station at Church St publicly approved? Always thought those were rogue installed

Could be, not sure! Always seemed to be a few random seats around in any event.

Quick Coyote Media update that they've broken 100K with a week to go for their fund-through-end-of-year goal at $150K -- and there's a match happening this week so that'll boost things further. (Someone kicked down with a $2K donation this morning!) Just nice to see it all happening, I think they'll get near that final goal at least.

Are those chairs painted bronze that have been installed off and on at the N Judah station at Church St publicly approved? Always thought those were rogue installed

― octobeard, Wednesday, July 9, 2025 11:02 AM (one hour ago)

Yep

https://kiosk.sfartscommission.org/artist-maker/info?records=60&query=Artist_Maker%3D%221526%22&artistName=Su%C3%A1rez-Wolfe,%20Primitivo

I have friends who have done public art commissions, and there’s a lot of bureaucratic stuff involved depending on the nature of the work… sculpture has more of it that is “safety related” than mural work

new tall building whee

SalesForce Tower is ~50% occupied. Why someone thinks we need another vacant building downtown is ... something.

Perhaps Daniel Lurie who was posting on IG about LaBubus while there was an ICE raid in our Federal Building knows what the true pulse of the city is.

It's funny how it works.

I disagree with progressives who fight market-rate housing in the name of fighting displacement, but I kinda get it. But where are those same people when the city approves a ton of office space? What do they think is gonna happen?

SF actually in the past year has made it easier to convert downtown office space to housing. There’s a state bill that is partially modeled after the SF directive.

Xp lukas … the progressives used to fight tall office towers … the Manhattanization crusade of the 80s

SF actually in the past year has made it easier to convert downtown office space to housing. There’s a state bill that is partially modeled after the SF directive.

Is there any indication that this is actually happening? Genuine question, not being snarky.

Xp lukas … the progressives used to fight tall office towers … the Manhattanization crusade of the 80s

Ah interesting. That seems more internally coherent to me.

Xp yes — I have seen one application in the news

Converting office space into housing is actually pretty difficult, as I understand it.. the utility columns running up the buildings (especially water & sewage) weren't meant for a bunch of individual units on each floor

that said, it CAN be done, but not cheaply

It can be done way more cheaply with streamlined permitting and … fuck, I read the whole technical document a few months back and I forget the specific things that would really save $

Isn't there also the issue that residential buildings normally are designed to get more interior light than office buildings? Not necessarily a deal-breaker but.

Okay I went back and re-read it … basically they can use alternatives for requiring natural light in all units and if they don’t modify the walls, etc too much, they can avoid doing earthquake retrofitting

Quick little update on Coyote Media that they're within $10K of their overall goal for the whole year, 93% funded. Pretty great!

https://givebutter.com/coyotemedia