There is a direct connection between BART and Caltrain at Millbrae station. Just saying.
I moved to San Francisco 45 years ago. My absolutely favorite spot for San Francisco views is from Battery Spencer ▲ 37.8277, -122.4814. Those are lat/long coordinates. Just paste the numbers into the map and it’ll take you to the spot. I’ve been going there since December 1978, when nobody, and I mean NOBODY, went there. But the secret’s been out for decades, and on a sunny day that place is packed. But it’s well worth it. Go early to beat the crowds. Or better yet if you ride a motorcycle you can go anytime, blow past all the traffic, and park easily even if the parking area is packed.
From Battery Spencer ▲ 37.8277, -122.4814, the bridge is so close it’s almost like you can reach out and touch it.
San Francisco from Battery Spencer. Web pic.
Getting a sunrise pic from this spot is ideal because you’ll get the sun rising behind Oakland and reflecting on the bay waters.
Battery Spencer sunrise. Web pic.
Yes there is the common Vista Point ▲ 37.8324, -122.48 where all the tour buses go and the view from there is nice, but at Battery Spencer you get the Golden Gate Bridge framing the bay and The City. Unique and picturesque, especially in the setting sun that catches and accentuates the orange of the bridge.
Still a treasure and usually not that crowded is Kirby Cove ▲ 37.827, -122.49. You can hike down for free any time. It’s only 1 mile down a gentle slope. Or you can contact the GGNRA office and purchase (only a modest fee) a day access pass which gives you the combo to the gate lock and you can easily drive down. It is very quiet there, and the views are fantastic from a sea level perspective. You can even camp there, at the handful of primitive spots.
San Francisco from Kirby Cove. Web pic.
At Oracle Park (and it will always be Pac Bell Park to me), the gates open 2 hours before first pitch. I’ve been to 29 of the 30 ballparks and one unique and fun thing to do here is to be atop the right field wall during batting practice. All the left handed power hitters try to put the ball into the bay and it’s fun to watch the ball approaching you, fly over your head by not that much, and see it splash into the bay behind you. No other ballpark offers that experience. And your chances of getting a ball from there during BP is actually pretty good. From that spot you can talk to the fielders below you, not far from you. But you have to get there when the gates open. BP doesn’t last that long. When BP ends, walk the Promenade Deck and take in the views of the bay, the Bay Bridge, and the East Bay Hills. Some of the best views in all of baseball. Pittsburgh’s PNC Park also offers a similar view experience.
Take the Powell and Hyde cable car ride from Market Street and Powell. Not the Powell and Mason line. Let others board before you so that you wait to catch the next one when you can be the first to board. Get to the very front right of the cable car. Ideally, for the best experience be standing on the outside and holding onto the hand grab. But if you don’t feel safe doing that then sit at the very front right. Make SURE you’re at the very front. When it stops at Lombard Street, don’t get off, and your feet a nice view down Lombard and off Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill. But then the dramatic drop downhill as it goes down Hyde Street, especially on a bright sunny day, gives you a view and experience you won’t soon forget.
A nice experience is to book a San Francisco Love Tour ➜ https://sanFranciscoLoveTours.com. We did it once and we loved it. You get some nice history and you get to see many nice spots, without the hassle of driving and parking.
This is my wife and niece on our tour, with Bob our hippie tour guide. It was a fun time, and Bob was great.
Yes The City, as we here call it, has really gone downhill in terms of the profligate crime, homeless camps, open defecation, used needles, and dirt since Mayor Willie Brown left office, but its gems are still there and you can avoid the crappy places. But sadly there are many crappy places in The City. We need you Willie!
Thieves are typically not going to break in unless they have reason to believe there’s something of value there. Don’t give them any reason to think that. Especially, don’t pull up to a place, park, and get out to put your valuables in the trunk while someone can see you do that and then you go in to the store / restaurant / whatever place.
Sorry. Disagree. The City was much, much safer and cleaner up through Willie Brown’s mayoral term. After Willie left it got significantly worse. It’s gone downhill significantly in recent years, sad to say.
You’re the local, not me. I defer to your experience.
I lived there for 10+ years. Now I’m an hour south. I don’t get up to The City that often these days.
That’s my take on things but others might see things differently. Not saying you are incorrect. Your experience is valid for you.
It’s not much worse than other cities. Just take precautions against the were-seals, velociraptors, and vampire cats and you should be ok.
Wear garlic.
Are you saying that SF is less safe than it was in 2004? That appears to be false:
I need to apologize for my post. First, it only goes to 2018 and there was definitely a jump in crime everywhere during the pandemic and I don’t know if SF is back to 2018 levels.
Second, it certainly was worse when you left in 2014 than it was in 2004.
I get annoyed by the-sky-is-falling claims about cities, but that’s my problem, not yours.
On that subject, @PastTense, are you coming back to defend your statements?
I was in SF in June, 2022. I did notice several signs to lock your vehicle and not leave anything valuable inside. I also saw some parked vehicles with windows rolled down.
(Do we still say rolled down?)
Finally, I saw a few parking spots with shattered glass on the pavement.
That said, I loved San Francisco and would go back there without hesitation.
My photo from Battery Spencer as mentioned by @Bullitt (we also took the Love Tour on the VW bus):
mmm
Just because there has been a rise in crime that doesn’t make the right wing horror stories any less false. Saying “crime (mainly property crime) has risen a bit* in San Francisco, and there is a serious homelessness problem” is not the same thing as “liberal policing policies have resulted in a dystopian anarchy and you shouldn’t go anywhere near the city or you’ll get murdered the moment you set foot in it”.
San Francisco is a amazing beautiful city, that has some issues. If the OPer believes the horror stories and doesn’t visit, it would be a huge shame.
* - also I was in SF during that crime rise and a lot of it was caused by the SFPD basically going on strike and refusing to enforce laws because they disagreed with policies like Prop 47. Apparently this got worse when SF appointed a liberal DA, and the police just refused to do there job at all, though I had left by then.
And Caltrain, which isn’t as convenient as BART (one downtown San Francisco terminal rather than BART’s multiple stations) on as frequent but does connect San Francisco to San Jose and other points in the Silicon Valley.
Oops, someone already brought up Caltrain. I can add that their schedule looks a lot less like a relic of the 1950s than many of Metra’s (Chicago commuter rail) schedules. Now there’s a system that looks like a '50s leftover! And Caltrain seems to be doing more about it (electrification would be really nice in Chicago!) than Metra.
They’re starting to test the electric Caltrains on some stretches of tracks. So it’s really happening:
San Francisco is definitely beautiful. But I’ve witnessed people needing to openly defecate in recent years, and believe me, those sights will leave quite an impression on you.
There are some sights that you just cannot unsee ➜ https://is.gd/gyXYkh
I’ve never been convinced that this is actually more of a problem in San Francisco than it would be elsewhere.
Yes, I know there are volunteer groups tracking daily poop levels across the city on their special little website. Which certainly explains why they keep finding human poop. But I haven’t seen a comparable database for New York, or Chicago, or Dallas.
This is way overblown, IMO. I’m in San Francisco a lot. Dirt? Absolutely. Homeless people? Lots. But human feces? I’ve never seen it.
I’m generally a defender of SF against the overblown propaganda garbage spewed by the RW professional haters.
OTOH I also spent a lot of nights in hotels downtown near Union square and therefore near the Tenderloin. There are areas where the homeless and their piles of smelly equipment are spaced every 5-10 feet all but blocking the wide sidewalks. In those areas it’s difficult to walk a couple blocks first thing in the morning without encountering human feces. And the telltale smell of stale human urine is everywhere all day long.
OTOH, walk a couple blocks in a different direction and that nuisance is simply absent.
Does SF have a homeless problem? Yes. Is it worse than other climatically similar places? Certainly in spots.
But the “solution” to that is not for the entire US traveling public to avoid the Bay Area as some kind of post-apocalyptic hellhole.
Other than shooting or incarcerating all of them the “problem” can’t be solved. It can only be dispersed to more and different elsewheres. And none of those options is very practical.
Yeah but that’s nothing to with safety. Absolutely the homelessness problem around downtown SF and The Mission is genuinely disturbing on a bunch of levels, and should not exist in the richest country in the world. But that doesn’t make the rightwing horror stories about SF being an unsafe anarchy, where you are taking your life in your hands by even stepping foot in the place, any less bullshit. SF is a safe city, and if you have the chance you should really visit, don’t listen to the RW horror stories.
Which is why California often ends up with the homeless of many other states. Easy enough to drive them off somewhere, at least unless you happen to be the mayor of Somewhere.