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!

i remember dardardar for sure. glad to know the list still persists even though i moved away from sf bay years ago

William Basinski and Kelly Moran at Grey Area tonight... Doh, that would have been lovely

Anyone going to the Parameter Festival next weekend? I've been hitting up their events pretty regularly for the last couple years and they are absolutely delivering some amazing lineups and performances. All this stuff is in my electronic wheelhouse. Notables this year: Actress, Voices From the Lake, Clark, aya, Andy Stott, Objekt, and Octo Octa.

https://parameterpresents.com/schedule

i really really really want to go but can't unfortunately. have fun!

Yep! Friday and Saturday.

Hit me up at lukasb atgmail if you want to meet up at some point.

I would love to see Clark and Voices From the Lake but I don't think I am physically capable of being up that late in that environment at this point in my life. Not sober anyway.

Yeah I am def a bit annoyed Voices From the Lake start at 3am, might need to avoid sobriety that evening

Hm, does look interesting but I can already tell that only Thursday and Sunday would work for me. (Sorry, I just value my sleep too much.)

Anyone else going to see Colleen tonight?

Would be interested in seeing Actress … also checking out that venue which I hadn’t heard of before, but I am seeing Cabaret Voltaire the next night and I don’t have that much stamina anymore.

Where’s Colleen playing? After the very great trauma ray/Glixen show last night my plan was for an evening in.

She's playing the Lab, which is in the Mission and a venue I've never heard of before.

Oh I am in for Colleen.

I know where The Lab is but have never been in. But I have eaten many empanadas on the ground floor.

Seeing James K and Jessy Lanza in Oakland at The Loom tonight

xp The Lab is awesome! Intimate 2nd floor venue on 16th at Capp iirc. Should be a great venue for her!

Last time there I saw Croatian Amor and felt quite old as the average age of the audience was maybe 20.

oh goddamn I lost track of that Colleen show, saw it was upcoming months ago and then never saw anything about it again. I would love to be there but cannot.

That’s a bummer because she says this might be her last US tour for a while, understandably.

Anyway I’m the Asian guy with a shaved head and a Boris tee.

The Lab is indeed great but I am wiped and already tucked in bed, frankly. Hope it’s a great show!

Octobeard — if you can, lmk if there is anything sketchy or janky about exits there … the crew that were previously managing that spot were a bit lazy about safety stuff. I heard that the new crew is better.

FWIW, The Lab seemed pretty safe tonight to me. Does the south corridor have an exit? That was definitely open.

Wow, Ghost Ship will be 10 years ago this Dec.

xp over in Oakland at The Loom? yeah it seemed a bit light on security tbh, now that you mention it. They didn't seem to be refilling water stations in a timely manner when I left a short bit ago either. When I was there for a Parameter/Endzeit event last fall there, it seemed well supported and secure, with more space and decor to boot.

If you're referring to The Lab, never had issues there

As far as the Chronicle's 100 best restaurants go, I can totally recommend Capital, a small inexpensive Chinese diner on Clay between Grant and Stockton. You are not treated as royalty when you go there and it's a dive, but the ambiance is interesting and the salt and pepper chicken wings are worth taking home

Lol I am familiar with the life safety issues or lack thereof… because it’s a historic building with a history of assembly use going back before we were born, that place has much less stringent requirements than The Loom … </work.lecture>

Since Pretty Gritty closed, my new favorite band played their first show on Saturday night at The Laundry Gallery @ 3359 24th St... which was rather spectacular.

Dare I say it but is (Daniel Lurie voice) The Mission back? Let's go Mission! La Bubu matcha latte punch a homeless person!

Pretty Gritty was totally just a temp space … like saying it closed is like saying a pop-up ended.

where is that killfile thread...

Or do you not know the deal with that building?

i do feel like the mission is "back" in a way. i just played the knockout not too long ago and multiple pals were there telling me they moved back to the mission because its "affordable" again.

how much is an affordable 1br in the mission now?

Welcome back kurt! … sorry, Steve, if I sounded mean … it just isn’t as demoralizing or even noteworthy when a space like Pretty Gritty closes, that was basically just doing shows in a temporarily vacant building, as opposed to venues that have been around for years, decades even, or spots where people live and get gentrified out of their housing on top of it.

I feel like the nouveau tech coming in want sterile, secure modern developments and they're locating themselves in downtown high rises, new developments in the Dogpatch (also that's where Open AI's headquarters are iirc), and the Mission is "gross, dirty and has homeless people". Also these people don't go out much.

I'm doing a LOT of assuming based on personal observations of the industry culture, so take this post with a bit of salinity. That said, I'd be shocked if it meant the Mission was becoming "more affordable". It's still a massively desirable neighborhood within the city. However, other more outlying neighborhoods, like where I live, have become far more "hot"

Yeah I'm terrified of the day my 80-year-old landlord dies and his daughter decides to sell the place. I'll never find another similar place in SF.

Knockout is indeed goated, love that you can catch a random gen z psych-noise evening matinee and then they kick everyone out at 9pm when the club transforms into some monthly reggaeton mexa/perreo oscuro night.

one thing i learned through putting kids through the SF public school system is how many of the more interesting club owners (ie, Knockout/Rickshaw, not the BOTH/Parkside) are vitally invested in the arts community of the city and not just grayed-out boomers from the burbs.

Yeah I'm terrified of the day my 80-year-old landlord dies and his daughter decides to sell the place. I'll never find another similar place in SF.

― disco stabbing horror (lukas), Tuesday, May 12, 2026 2:12 PM (yesterday)

depending on the number of units you have in your building, you have tenant's rights and protections that only an owner-eviction would lead to your removal.

I also assume the daughter of an 80 year old (age 55-60?) does not and probably would not want to live in SF anymore.

https://sftu.org/omi/

Yes this is true - they can only evict you if the daughter wants to move into your space - or they want to tear the building down and rebuild it. I am also rent controlled in a long time space. They can try and make it hard for you, but there's a ton of city resources to fight back.

my (very attentive) landlord in Oakland is hella old and I have the same fears... but I think I'd be able to stay, albeit with probably more frequent rent raises, I think they forget to raise my rent as often as they can (pre-1985 building)

Taken me forever to get to a Frameline Castro showing and this absolutely does the trick for me. (Tickets going fast, glad I have mine!)

https://www.frameline.org/films/frameline50/teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma

more on boycotting burningman/techbro/cryptofascist arts:

https://www.coyotemedia.org/how-could-you-be-against-joy-bay-area-artists-are-turning-on-the-civic-joy-fund/

oh yeah I think that got discussed above a few weeks back.

Lol I posted it, and Steve participated in the discussion.

Walked past Dan Lurie on 18th St. Two bruisers flanking him in front, glaring at me. Two aides flanking him behind. Awful vibes tbh

I'm sure wearing your "FUCK DAN LURIE AND HIS SECURITY SQUAD" T-shirt didn't help.

(Slightly more seriously, why am I not surprised.)

I mean after what happened in the Tenderloin a few months ago why wouldn't he? Also - at least he's still actually walking the streets.

For some perspective though, I do recall walking down Third years ago in the Bayview past a non-profit or some gallery hosting an event and Newsom was out in front with no security chatting someone else up. This was while he was Lt. Governor I believe.

The story I heard - third-hand, so grain of salt - about what went down in the Tenderloin made it sound like Lurie's security was the problem.

lukas, 100%. What I read was that they escalated and punched first, iirc. Lurie tried to "push" his "point" when he should have listened, and backed off. Maybe he's doing more of that. If he is, it's no doubt not very newsworthy. At least he's avoided escalations since then.

Janelle Monae dropped out of the First Thursday celebration tomorrow: https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/downtown-first-thursdays-cancellation-22289612.php

Wonder if this is due to criticism of the Civic Joy Fund?

dunno if this has anything to do with Civic Joy but I like the giant crows in the Panhandle

I like them too, but sort of strange location for it. There are usually a few real crows walking around the art every time I go by there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsffgLgmHLs