It looks like I’m going to be spending my summer in San Francisco, doing the legal intern thing and riding the cable cars. Other than the aforementioned cable cars, what should I make sure I see? In particular, what are the best:
1.) Bookstores?
2.) Cheap restaurants?
3.) Bars?
4.) Movie theaters?
Are there any good think-tanks? (I’m enough of a nerd to enjoy Brookings, Heritage et al lectures.)
How easy is it to get to other parts of the state via public transportation?
Thanks!
My advice to you is: dress warmly. Summer in San Francisco is cool and foggy, and at night often downright cold. Like, see-your-breath cold.
It’s been too long since I was a Bay Area girl to recommend anything too specific. For lectures, though, you should poke around UC Berkeley’s webpage. It’s very easy to get to Berkely via BART. Public transit is doable, but gets pretty iffy once you leave San Francisco proper. Unless you’re going somewhere really on the BART line, plan your route ahead of time. You can take the train to LA, if you’re so inclined, but once you get there you’ll be stuck unless you rent a car, cause public transit in LA is really lousy.
TroyMcClureSF is working on a plan to visit every bar in San Francisco, so he can probably provide you with some good information on that one.
Thanks, Kyla!
“summer in San Fransisco-what to see”
Your question is mistaken from the beginning. There is no summer in San Fransisco.
A down-filled parka will not be necessary every day, but it would sure be smart to bring one with you.
Make your way across the bridge and go hiking in Muir Woods. If you don’t have a car, you can take a ferry to Sausalito and from there take the Muir Woods shuttle.
Even if you’re not big into hiking, it’s awe-inspiring. Breathtakingly beautiful.
Tommy’s Joynt combines items two and three on your list: it’s a cheap (by SF standards) restaurant, and a cheap (as in “tawdry”) bar. I make it a point to stop there whenever I’m in the Bay area, but it’s decidedly not to everyone’s taste.
Well, it can be perfect during the day- shorts and short-sleeved shirts- but then yes, it often drops rapidly as dusk comes on. Get some very comfortable walking shoes (and high quality socks, like Smartwool)and break them in. It’s a walking town. Wear a hat.
Bistro Burger (mini-chain) has some of the best burgers in CA, and is not expensive. Many many “salad and other foods by the pound” places around where the local workers eat. Good coffee.
See Ghirardelli Square, the Old Ships pier right off it (the Balcuth an iron sailing ship and many others, there’s also a Liberty ship and a WWII sub nearby), Union Square (huge Borders), Ferry Building (good bookstore there). See the Exploratorium.
Make sure you travel south to Monterey and see Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Best in the World, I kid you not.
It’s not cool in midsummer in SF – it’s COLD! At night at least.
But it’s still a great city to visit. It’s hard to go wrong – just wandering through neighborhoods is fun for looking at lots of interesting architecture and landscaping. For someone like me raised in the pancake-flat midwest, the streets themselves are interesting.
The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
Sweet! These guys should be absolutely capable of giving me my RDA of nerdliness. And here I thought I’d have to cut back while I was in San Fran.
I was there about a month ago, after asking for advice on the Dope. Search my name under threads I started, and you’ll be able to draw from the wealth of information Dopers gave me.
I can definitely vouch for the City Lights Bookstore:
The Farmers’ Market at the Ferry Building on Saturday morning is paradise for foodies:
http://www.ferryplazafarmersmarket.com/markets/days/saturday.php
I thought Ghirardelli Square was a bit of a waste. It’s just a nice-ish outdoor mall, and the majority was under construction when I was there. You can buy Ghirardelli chocolates at Target and get good ice cream almost anyplace (I would have preferred authentic gelato in San Francisco’s Italian neighborhood, the North Beach), so my advice would be to skip it.
As for dining, you have hundreds of options. If you like garlic, check out the world-famous Stinking Rose:
But you can’t go wrong with any of the Italian joints in the North Beach (which just happens to be next to Chinatown).
Chinatown itself was a disappointment to me, but I was expecting all kinds of street vendors with food and cheap imported bootleg goods, like you see in some movies. It was just more of a normal neighborhood.
Definitely bring a jacket, and get used to relying on taxis! My girlfriend has a disability so we weren’t able to take the cable cars and streetcars, but you may want to try them. Cabs ended up being cheaper for us than the cable cars would have been anyway. YMMV, no pun intended.
Darryl’s Tour of San Francisco Dive Bars.
Start out at the Gold Dust just off of Union Square, open since the day after prohibition. Have a $2.75 Irish Coffee. It’s at 247 Powell St (Cross Street: Geary Street).
The next 3 bars are old school Chinatown, and you may get some shifty looks by Chinese locals, but ignore them and take in the ambiance. You can also catch some cheap Chinese food here, but I’ll leave it up to others for recommendations.
Stroll up market to Grant and go into Chinatown. Second stop, the Buddha Lounge (901 Grant Ave) with it’s iconic doorway and classic shitty Chinese mural.
Li Po has a ghastly stucco facade which probably covers gorgeous Chinese architecture. 916 Grant Ave (Cross Street: Washington Street).
Red’s Place is reportedly chinatown’s oldest bar. It’s at 672 Jackson St. just off of Grant. It has a great view of the Transamerica building as you walk up.
Continue of Grant and enter Little Italy. Cross Columbus and enter San Francisco’s oldest bar, The Saloon at 1232 Grant Ave. Quite often, they’ll have a pretty decent blues band playing (evenings, mostly).
Before or after this bar, take a hike up to Coit Tower and marvel at the beautiful little neighborhood surrounding it. Take in the gorgeous WPA murals on the ground floor. Pay the fee and take the elevator to the top for a fantastic view.
Bike Tour to Sausalito
Rent a bike anywhere near Fisherman’s Wharf. Ride along side the bay towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Stop at the Buena Vista Cafe for an Irish Coffee. Ride across the Golden Gate Bridge for a friggen’ unbelievable view. Continue riding along side the bay (I think there’s a bike path the whole way) to Sausalito. Stop at a bar or two anywhere along the way. Take a ferry (I’m almost positive you can take your bike on it) back to San Francisco and you’ll end up at the San Francisco ferry terminal. On the way back to Fisherman’s wharf, stop at the Pier 23 Cafe for a beer.
Golden Gate Park and Dim Sum
San Francisco’s cheapest Dim Sum can probably be had at the Good Luck Restaurant in the Richmond District, just north of Golden Gate Park at 736 Clement St. Not only is it ridiculously cheap, it is really good. For the uninitiated, go for the pork siu mai, shrimp dumplings, chicken and sausage rice, or steamed pork buns. Try to get there before 10:30AM or so to beat the gnarly lunch rush. I can never eat more than $5 worth. I think it might be closed on Tuesday. Afterwards, head to Golden Gate Park and check out the DeYoung Museum. Make sure you go up the tower for another awesome San Francisco view, plus you are far enough west so that you can see the Marin headlands. Right next to it is the awesome Japanese Tea Garden, which is completely worth checking out.
Castro District
If you are in the Castro, check out Zeitgist, San Francisco’s premier biker bar. Make sure it’s a sunny afternoon first. It’s friendly to every different San Francisco demographic. Try to not look too much like a tourist here. Wander aimlessly through the weirdness of the Castro District and then maybe over to the Haight for some hippy nostalgia (it’s overun by homeless skate punks these days).
Zeitgeist is not really in the Castro - it’s in the Duboce Triangle area, which is the far-western end of SOMA. (SOuth of MArket)
It’s not impossible to walk there from the Castro area (or vice-versa) but it will be a fair hike over reasonably flat land. Zeitgeist is in a somewhat iffy area amid and under the freeways. I wouldn’t necessarily consider it dangerous, but all the usual suggestions of being alert to the surroundings and not looking lost apply.
Similarly, Castro to the Haight is going to be a hike and a climb, - about 15 blocks and a good hill or two to get to Haight and Ashbury.
Getting around - www.511.org links up all the regional transit. SF’s Muni can get you to within two blocks of 98% of the city, eventually, for $1.50. BART gets you to the East Bay, as well as SFO and OAK airports and Daly City. Transit connections in the East bay are a mixed bag - there might well be a bus going where you want to go, but only once an hour and not at all on weekends. You may want to plan ahead and get some taxi numbers for the cities you’ll be visiting - not all BART stations will have cabs standing, so you either have to call for a pickup or wait and hope one shows up to drop someone off.
Samtrans and Caltrain will get you from SF to San Jose and points along the Peninsula. Golden Gate Transit is what you’d want to head north across the Golden Gate to places like Santa Rosa or Marin.
Getting out of the region on transit is iffy - Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor goes to Sacramento, and there are Amtrak lines to LA - both of these are not direct - you have to take an Amtrak bus to get to the train station, and transit at the destination city will be anything from crummy to nonexistent.
We should really think of developing a list of things to do in SF, this seems to come up every so often.
Here’s one of the threads:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=316144&page=1&pp=50&highlight=Francisco
Just to speak out on my favorite aspect: cheap restaurants: King of Thai Noodle House (there’s two on Clement St. in the Richmond) is good, as is Burger Meister (there’s one near the Castro, one in Cole Valley, and one in North Beach). For a while I was on a mission to explore everywhere you could eat a meal for $10 or less in the city.
“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
Asian Art Museum. This has got to be the largest collection of Asian stuff outside of Asia. It’s sublime.
-k-
I always thought the Duboce Triangle was defined by Castro, Duboce and Market. You’re right about Zeitgeist being in a sketchy neighborhood. I’ve always felt pretty safe during the afternoon, but I’d take a cab at night. Like I said, Zeitgeist is best experienced on a sunny afternoon. I’ll have to admit it is a bit of a hike over to the Upper Haight. You can always hop on the N-Judah Muni Line to the Haight if the hike gets to you. I still like the walk over Haight as it’s a cool example of San Francisco Victorian architecture.
You mean the “train that never comes” down in the “dark dank subway with creepy dudes”? No thanks. I have stood down there and waited for 35 minutes for an N-Judah train while over eight Embarcero trains went by. Trapped and weirded out. Muni is weird and bad most places but the worst is the N-Judah line.
Well, you shouldn’t have to wait for Embarcadero trains if you’re going towards the Haight. 
Muni is spotty, but you know you can call 511 to get train arrival times, right? This used to save a bunch of time when I worked near the Van Ness station (not far from Zeitgeist, in a place that isn’t quite the Mission, or SoMa, or the Castro).
As for more suggestions -
Bookstores (both of these are for used books) : Moe’s in Berkeley is still around (on Telegraph), but with used-to-be-nearby Cody’s gone, it’s not quite as good a trip. Still, it’s a pretty good store and Berkeley’s worth a visit.
Green Apple Books (in SF, in the Richmond) is decent if you’re out in that area sometime.
Make sure to head out to the beach at some point. It’ll be windy and foggy in the daytime, but as often as not you can still get a nice sunset. The Beach Chalet (at the end of Golden Gate Park) brews some great beer but the food is merely decent. You can go there just to drink if you like, though.
The Palace of the Legion of Honor is another good museum to see, walking a bit around the grounds gives a nice view from the west of the Golden Gate.
Since you’re here for longer, if you can get a car for a day, skip Muir Woods and head down to Big Basin Redwoods State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. After the visit you can head down to Santa Cruz or out to the beach - it’s a great drive up the coast.