Growing up in a North Bay suburb, I always referred to San Francisco as “the city,” as if there were no others. This Californian cultural hub is where I snuck off to see 1980s new wave bands or drink coffee in cafes once frequented by Beat poets.
A week after graduating from college, I moved into a Victorian flat in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury district, where Summer of Love devotees, clad in tie-dye with flowers in their hair, still congregate.
In subsequent years as a journalist in and around San Francisco for Reuters and other news organizations, the high tech hub – also the headquarters of the largest appellate court in the U.S., the Ninth Circuit – has been a perch for me to cover local and national legal issues.
Here are some things I’ve learned about San Francisco along the way.
Biggest rookie mistake: Going anywhere without a coat. In San Francisco, the fog has a name. It’s Karl, and Karl the Fog has more than 358,000 followers on X. That’s because when Karl rolls in, the temperature can go from 75 Fahrenheit (24 Celsius) and sunny to feeling like March in Wisconsin. (As Mark Twain apocryphally said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”) A puffer coat or leather jacket is a year-round must. Shorts are always risky.
Transportation: Cable cars are whimsical and old-school. For the latestway to get around San Francisco, take a Waymo driverless robotaxi. Owned by Google parent Alphabet, the white cars topped with spinning lidar sensors have become near-ubiquitous since they started ferrying passengers without safety drivers in 2022.
Once you get over the uncanny feeling of being in a moving car with no one behind the wheel, the ride feels almost staid, with the cars coming to a full stop at every stop sign and never exceeding the speed limit.
Foodie mecca: San Francisco has a reputation for taking food seriously, with more than two dozenMichelin-starred restaurants featuring rarified fare such as golden nugget oysters and shiso leaf tempura.
To my mind, though, San Francisco’s greatest culinary contribution is the Mission burrito. Taquerias in the city’s Mission district began serving super-sized tortillas stuffed with grilled meat, rice, beans, cheese, salsa, sour cream and guacamole in the 1960s, according to Bon Appetit magazine.
Although Mission-style burritos are now widely imitated, there’s no substitute for the original, available for $10-$15 at taquerias throughout the city. I’m a fan of the no-frills Taqueria El Farolito, a longtime late-night favorite for hungry San Franciscans after nearby Mission district bars close at 2 a.m.
Pride: Dubbed “the gay capital of America” in 1964 by Life magazine, San Francisco has long been known for its vibrant LGBTQ community. The city’s annual Pride celebration, held in late June, is a major event that organizers say attracts nearly one million attendees. It’s a raucous, welcoming, rainbow-filled festival that takes over the city for the weekend.
Not-so-petty annoyance: Parking. San Francisco is compact – about 47 square miles (122 square kilometers), or less than one-tenth the size of Los Angeles – and densely populated, which often makes parking a challenge. When I lived on Nob Hill, I once hosted a potluck dinner party. One friend drove around for 90 minutes looking for parking before finally buzzing my door, handing me the pie she’d baked and marching back to her double-parked car to go home.
Let’s say you do manage to find a spot. If it’s on a slope (it probably will be – San Francisco has more than 40 named hills and dozens more without monikers) it’s imperative that you point your wheels toward the curb, in case your parking brake fails. If you don’t, it’s a $63 fine.
Favorite weekend activity: A visit to Golden Gate Park. Stretching 3.5 miles from the middle of the city to the Pacific Ocean, the 1,000-acre park has museums, meadows, forests, lakes – even a herd of bison.
I love the Japanese Tea Gardens, where you can stroll meticulously landscaped grounds, then stop at the tea house for a Japanese-inspired snack. And when my kids were young, they couldn’t get enough of the California Academy of Sciences, with its colony of penguins, butterfly-filled rainforest and lagoon of stingrays.
Security: In the past couple of years, San Francisco has been the subject of considerable media attention focused on the city’s homeless population and public drug use. No question, these are major problems. But some coverage also seems to suggest the city is overrun by drug-zombie encampments.
In reality, most of San Francisco, with its colorful “painted lady” Victorian houses, sweeping vistas and iconic bridges, is as lovely as ever.
DATA POINTS
Population: 808,988
Popular place to see a sunset: Ocean Beach
Price of an ice cream scoop: $6
Price of a gallon of gas: $4.69
Largest university: San Francisco State, 22,000 students
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; Koolfi Creamery; Arco; San Francisco State University (Jenna Greene/Reuters)
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