CALIFORNIA'S SAN FRANCISCO: 

EVERYONE'S FAVORITE CITY

by Lee Foster

No other American city evokes such images of romance, including sweeping hills studded with pastel Victorians, the clanking of cable cars, the wail of the foghorns, the glow of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, the way-stop to the Gold Rush, and the meeting of sea, fog, and hills.

San Francisco, sitting on the edge of a peninsula separating the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco Bay, is a city of neighborhoods where diverse cultures and lifestyles cooperatively exist side-by-side. You can immerse yourself in worlds as different as Chinatown, Italian North Beach, and the Mexican-American Mission District.

Two major airports serve San Francisco, both an easy half-hour drive to downtown. San Francisco International Airport lies 13 miles south of San Francisco off Highway 101. From the airport, take the Airporter bus shuttle into the city. Across the bay, the Oakland International Airport offers easy access by frequent bus and BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, the light rail underground). Travel into and within the city is easy without a car.

One mode of transportation, the cable cars, is a major part of the San Francisco experience for many travelers. The famous cable cars have been entirely restored. Some cars on the three branches of the line are painted in the original 1870s colors, maroon with cream and blue trim. The cars can be boarded at any place along the routes: Powell Street to Fisherman's Wharf, Powell to Hyde, and California Street from Market to Van Ness. The waiting line for a chance to ride the cable cars is sometimes long, unfortunately. Remember that you can board the cable cars anywhere along the line, where the wait may be less. Leave some time in your schedule for a visit to the Cable Car Museum, Washington and Mason streets, where you can see historic paraphernalia about the system and glimpse the innards at work.

SAN FRANCISCO'S HISTORY

San Francisco began with the tranquillity of the Spanish-Mexican era from 1776 to the 1840s. Then came the exhilarating shock of the Gold Rush, in 1848, followed by the reflective gentility of the late 19th century. All this was shattered by the Quake and Fire of 1906. (The Quake of 1989, fortunately, did not possess the destructive force of the 1906 Quake.)

In 1776, Juan Bautista de Anza established a Spanish fort, the Presidio, and settlement. Soon after, Junipero Serra founded Mission San Francisco de Asis, his sixth in California. Popularly known as Mission Dolores, the restored structure at 16th and Dolores streets still stands, one of the oldest buildings in San Francisco.

The Gold Rush of 1848 transformed the face of San Francisco. Within a few years, the pastoral scattering of Spanish-Mexican dwellings with a population of 100 became a restless prospecting region of 250,000. Statehood came in 1850. By 1852 an estimated $200 million in gold had been mined.

To witness this early American era in San Francisco's history you can visit the brick fortification called Fort Point, located immediately below the south anchor of the Golden Gate Bridge. This was where Juan Bautista de Anza first planted a cross in 1776 and the Spaniards erected a crude stockade by 1794. Today the Civil War era fort remains a prime example of 19th-century military architecture.

The Great Earthquake shook San Francisco on April 18, 1906, but the Great Fire that followed caused the most damage. Fed by broken natural gas lines and unchecked because the city's water mains were destroyed, the fire raged for three days, destroying 28,000 buildings. Thereafter, San Francisco developed a certain fondness for firemen, most noticeably expressed in Lillie Hitchcock Coit's fire-nozzle-shaped Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. (A fireboat in the Bay made a substantial contribution to dousing the fire in the Marina district after the Quake of 1989.)

San Francisco's circa 1860 to 1900 Victorian houses that survived the 1906 earthquake have become a symbol of the city as much as the cable cars or the Golden Gate Bridge. You can tour one of the most striking and best preserved of these dwellings, the Haas-Lilienthal House, 2007 Franklin Street, built in 1886. The classic Queen Anne building with its gables, bay windows, and turret tower, still houses much of the original decor, with mahogany walls, marble hearths, and fine tapestries. Other prominent Victorians include the Spreckels mansion, 2080 Washington, and 2090 Jackson streets. Streets adjacent to Lafayette Square offer many examples of Victorians.

At 1000 California Street stands the James Flood Mansion, built in 1886 by the Comstock silver lode millionaire. Today the Flood Mansion is the last of the great mansions from the baronial days of the mining and railroad kings. Other mansions in the neighborhood were swept away in the fires that followed the Quake.

SAN FRANCISCO'S MAIN ATTRACTIONS

Even a selective list could not omit Golden Gate Park, Telegraph, Russian, and Nob hills, Chinatown, North Beach, Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the scenic 49-Mile Drive (which takes you through all of the above).

In 1887, Golden Gate Park was comprised of 730 acres of dunes and 270 acres of arable land scattered with oak trees. Today, Golden Gate Park stretches over lush meadows, lakes, dense stands of Australian eucalyptus, and encompasses more than 6,000 varieties of shrubs, flowers, and trees.

The park is both a cultural and recreational center of the city. Within its boundaries is the Japanese Tea Garden, the California Academy of Sciences, including the Steinhart Aquarium and the Morrison Planetarium, the 60-acre Strybing Arboretum, and the Conservatory of Flowers.

For recreation in Golden Gate Park you can rent a bicycle or put on your running shoes and join the multitude of joggers and walkers.

Climb the famous hills of San Francisco and you will be rewarded with spectacular views of the city and surrounding bay. Atop Telegraph Hill sits Coit Tower, the memorial built in 1934 to honor the city's volunteer firemen. Russian Hill lies to the west. Here you'll find Lombard Street, the city's crookedest street. The third famous hill is Nob Hill, once the site of mansions, today the home of famous hotels, including the Mark Hopkins and the Fairmont. Both offer panoramic views of the city from cocktail lounges on the top floor.

San Francisco's Chinatown is one of the largest Chinese communities outside of the Orient. The community is best experienced on foot, enabling you to browse through shops and explore side streets. Grant Avenue is the main street for general shopping. Stockton, between Washington and Broadway, is where you'll find the largest concentration of markets, exhibiting an amazing array of vegetables and meats. For a spicy Chinese meal, try the Hunan Restaurant (924 Sansome Street). The Chinese New Year occurs in late January or early February, complete with parade and firecrackers.

North Beach is the Italian district of the city, located between Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf. Here you'll find many Italian restaurants, bakeries, cafes, and Italian groceries, all within a few blocks of Washington Square, the heart of North Beach.

An excellent bakery to consider is the Italian-French Balery at 1501 Grant Street. For a cappuccino or glass of wine, stop in at Mario's, on the corner of Columbus and Union. Some dining options are long established, sich as seafood at Caffe Sport at 574 Green Street. Others are newer, such as movie director Francis Ford Coppola's Cafe Zoetrope, 916 Kearney, located in his lovely and historic Zoetrope Building, once known as the Sentinel Building. The restaurant is elegant but casual, featuring Coppola's selection of fine wines by the glass, with pizza, pasta, and calzone dishes.

The birthplace of the Beat movement, North Beach is the home of bookstores, cafes, galleries, small theatres, and nightclubs. City Lights Books at 261 Columbus Street still thrives as a bookstore, publisher of local poets, and gathering place of writers.

Once the center of the fishing and canning industry in the city, Fisherman's Wharf today attracts tourists with a wide variety of shops, galleries, and restaurants. Nearby Ghirardelli Square, first a woolen works, then a chocolate factory, was remodeled into a shopping and restaurant complex. Pier 39 entrances millions of visitors with its shops and resident sea lions.

Attractions within the Golden Gate Recreation area (35,000 acres of land and water) include Alcatraz, Aquatic Park, and the Golden Gate Promenade. Guided tours of Alcatraz Island, a federal prison until 1963, leave from Pier 41. The boat ride out to the "rock" offers a fine view of The City. Aquatic Park includes the National Maritime Museum, plus several historic vessels you can explore. The Golden Gate Promenade is a walk from the Marina to the Golden Gate Bridge, passing through the restored Crissy Field military airport, now a tidal marsh and open public area. This three-mile path along the waterfront is a popular strolling and jogging area.

San Francisco is a city for walking, but for an overview of the major attractions, the scenic 49-Mile Drive is recommended. The Visitor Information Center at Hallidie Plaza, Powell and Market streets, can assist you with a map. Allow half a day for the drive, well marked by blue and white seagull signs.

In San Francisco the arts and entertainment life is thickly textured. For one Saturday each July an "Only In San Francisco" event occurs. On that day comedians gather at the bandstand in Golden Gate Park, braving a bright sunlight that seldom penetrates their nightly comedy clubs. During an all-day marathon of mirth, called the Comedy Celebration Day, the comedians give a collective annual thank you to their audiences. As many as 30,000 appreciators of humor gather for this annual free event. The superstar of American humorists, local resident Robin Williams, has guided the event in the past as the twilight filters over San Francisco.

Comedy is but one thread of the arts and entertainment life of San Francisco, but the degree of vitality in the local comedy club and comedy theater scene is unique. Start a comedy evening at Punch Line (444 Battery Street) and perhaps move on to Cobb's Comedy Club (The Cannery). If comedy appeals to you, several additional clubs in San Francisco can be perused.

(For full listings applicable to comedy or other arts/entertainment pursuits at the time of your visit, consult the Sunday DATEBOOK section of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.)

To many past visitors San Francisco has meant topless. It was in North Beach, at the corner of Broadway and Columbus, that one Carol Doda began a revered tradition. Carol Doda descended on a white piano with her bare, silicon-injected figure to titillate a generation of travelers. Similar clubs within view of the Columbus-Broadway intersection promise such events as the He And She Love Act. There was a time when Carol Doda needed a phalanx of lawyers to keep her free of city jail, but the tastes of the modern era have dealt an even crueler fate by declaring such acts passe, vice gone boring.

One refreshing North Beach entertainment is the music and comedy review called Beach Blanket Babylon (at Club Fugazi, 678 Beach Blanket Boulevard). Year after year this theater-musical performance, originally created by the talented Steve Silver, plays to packed houses, partly because the material is constantly updated to parody the current political or sitcom scene.

A spectrum of theater can present either a diverting or thoughtful evening in San Francisco, depending on your wishes. The major company to watch for is the American Conservatory Theater (415 Geary Avenue), but there are also a dozen smaller and more experimental groups. Other theaters whose offerings you might check during your visit would include Theater on the Square and Marines Memorial.

Ever since 1848, when the first lucky prospectors brought their gold nuggets out of the Sierra foothills to San Francisco, certain elements of the population have generously supported the crowns of established culture, the opera and the symphony. In San Francisco there is one element that defines the good life as an evening pubbing around the North Beach jazz joints and refers to San Francisco with passionate familiarity as Frisco. But there is also another high-tone element given to black ties, designer gowns, and limousines. These carriage-trade patrons tend to congregate at the Opera House (Van Ness Avenue and Grove Street) for an evening with Marilyn Horne and other great divas. If you don't fancy taking in an opera, you might want to stop by Max's Opera Cafe (601 Van Ness Avenue), a classical music bar where the waiters and waitresses aspire to be opera singers and will regale you with arias. The San Francisco Symphony ranks among America's finest.

What a visitor needs to comprehend, when thinking of the arts and entertainment world of San Francisco, is that there are many San Franciscos, and each is as authentic as the others. How would one classify such events as the annual Bay to Breakers run in May (about 100,000 participants each year, with many in costume) or the annual Gay Pride Parade in late June (another 100,000 participants, led by Dikes on Bikes)? Not all the theater and performers in this city can be confined indoors.

San Francisco enjoys its share of art museums. South of Market Street on Third, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (151 Third Street) has never been accused of lagging behind its audience. This museum also makes a special effort to show modern photography. The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park has been rebuilt to display its diverse collection more adequately. The Palace of the Legion of Honor (Lincoln Park, near 34th Avenue) hosts European and American shows. Many of the major modern art galleries in San Francisco are located downtown around Union Square. If you want to browse them, walk along Post and Sutter streets.

If you want to engage in the art of conversation with an agreeable San Franciscan, one place to locate the natives is the Buena Vista (2765 Hyde Street). The proprietors claim this is where Irish Coffee was invented. This is a fitting drink for San Francisco, a city of brisk weather, a fact that the American writer, Mark Twain, noted when he reportedly said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was my first summer in San Francisco." Drink and food are taken seriously in San Francisco, a city that helped invent the notion of the celebrity chef. Try Wolfgang Puck's Postrio (545 Post Street). There are so many restaurant styles to explore. Restaurant Lulu (816 Folsom Street) lures patrons with its country-style Southern French/Northern Italian ambiance, where the rosemary rotisserie chicken is a favorite.

San Franciscans with a decided interest in art and entertainment also tend to argue passionately that the canvas of greatest interest here is the cityscape itself. The symphony with the most soothing sounds is the assembled foghorns, strategically placed around the bay, each with its own instrumentation. The laser light show that dazzles most in this urban disco is the sight of sunlight breaking through the fog bank. And the fitting center stage place for you, the traveler, to witness all this is an evening cruise out on the Bay, with the Red and White Fleet (Pier 41) or the more posh Hornblower Yacht (Pier 31-33). The cruises amount to floating cocktail parties, some with a full dinner, music, and dancing, plus a display of one of the most glorious works of U.S. urban architecture, San Francisco, bathed in the setting sun, framed with curls of fog.

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SAN FRANCISCO: IF YOU GO

The overall San Francisco information source for travelers is the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, 900 Market Street, Lower Level, Hallidie Plaza, San Francisco, CA 94102-2804, 415/283-0177, www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com.

This article was written by Lee Foster of Foster Travel Publishing. Contact him at his website www.fostertravel.com or via email lee@fostertravel.com. Copyright Lee Foster.

Lee Foster's most recent travel guidebooks are Northern California History Weekends (Globe Pequot), which won a Lowell Thomas Award, and Adventure Guide to Northern California (Hunter Publishing).

Lee Foster's new literary book is Travels in an American Imagination: The Spiritual Geography of Our Time.

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