San Francisco and what to do in it

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!

the one great thing about the area is the quantity of different types of restaurants. brazilian pizza? tibetan? afghan? and more... it's all there.

Sushi A'float Restaurant is the one i was trying to remember... they send you your sushi on a little boat....

another thing... with BART, it's easy to stay in berkeley... hit some breakfast ... goof around... get some lunch... then get on bart and go into san fran goof around and then BART back to where you're staying and vice versa... you can really mix and match the locales if you want that way.
m.

i'm not sure if you're going to be in the east bay during the weekend, but you have to go to Berkely on Sunday morning. across the street from the Ashby BART station (where they have a killer flea market with a real drum circle, not that hippy shit you find in Golden Gate park, and you can buy some crazy swords) is a Thai Temple. every Sunday until about 1.30 or 2, they have Thai brunch. it's the best thing in the entire world. everything is super duper cheap, and the servings are huge. 4$ gets you a heaping serving of your favorite Thai food. The mangos and sticky rice are to die for!!!

le cheval (french vietnamese) - downtown oakland (10th/clay)
-one of my favorite restaurants in the bay area and suprisingly affordable
lotus thai (on piedmont ave. near rockridge and college)
-service/decor used to be better, but the food is still good.

there is a really good comic store on piedmont too but there is an even better one on divisadero between page and oak in SF called comix experience, it's got all the small run indie and fantagraphics-like stuff. they have a complete set of meatcake!

bay tours: forget the fisherman's wharf, go downtown to the ferry building (where market ends downtown) on a clear day and take the tiburon/angel island ferry. pack a lunch and hike on angel island, a 740 acre island in the middle of the bay. $8 including park admission and is a nice way to spend a half day when the weather's nice away from the city. the views from the ferry of downtown SF, north SF, alcatraz, golden gate bridge are really worth it for the perspective from the water.

fisherman's wharf: crap, crap and more crap. tourist traps, revisionist/false history (ghiradelli chocolate is something of a manufactured myth), but there is an In N Out hamburger on jefferson (btw leavenworth and jones) if you're hungry from hiking up telegraph hill to coit tower. uh... trying to think of more to write about...

golden gate park: i recommend the japanese tea garden, it's a nice little walking park in the middle of the park. if you want to walk from the haight to inner sunset or inner richmond, this is a good destination on the way. strawberry hill is kind of fun to hike up, you get some nice views up there.

museums:
the asian art and deyoung museums are located in golden gate park but the deyoung is closed for renovation.
SFMOMA is pretty nice, they have a decent chagall retrospective through the summer.
next door, is the yerba buena center for the arts [keep checking back]

The only good thing about Fisherman's Wharf is that the Musee Mecanique moved there temporarily while they rebuild the Cliff House. Haven't been to the new home but this collection is my favorite thing to show out of towners; absolutely amazingly huge collection of coin-operated diaoramas from the early 20th century.

Sutro Baths is my favorite place in the entire world.

Beauty Bar: bring some coke and make a hundred new friends. Yuck.

there was one really good club here but it moved to the sublounge (dogpatch - 3rd/20th).

Make OUt Room is the best bar in the Mission but go to get fucked up, not for excellently mixed drinks (ditto Latin American Club up the street).

they occasionally have good live music here (i saw the m0unt@in g0@ts here 3-4 years ago? jonathan richman played a 4 hour set here as well).

The only good thing about Fisherman's Wharf is that the Musee Mecanique moved there temporarily while they rebuild the Cliff House. Haven't been to the new home but this collection is my favorite thing to show out of towners; absolutely amazingly huge collection of coin-operated diaoramas from the early 20th century.

YES! excellent recomendation, i forgot that it moved... what ever happend to the camera obscura?

oh yes the best ice cream in the world is now located in berkeley: mondo gelato on shattuck right by bart.

ciao bella is my favorite, they have a shop at 3rd/harrison and a new cafe in the new ferry building.

okay, i'll try to think of more when i get back on sunday.

(That said, there are more and more places that "feature" Mitchell's ice cream nowadays, so maybe just keep an eye peeled for it since there's little else to do near San Jose @ 29th!)

Also, I stand by my recommendations. The critiques upthread are TYPICAL Bay Area snob bullshit.

SF/East Bay has a large amount of charismatic, conveniently located "ok" food joints, with the occasional fucking excellent place, in a sparse mire of shitty places.

LA has a slightly smaller amount of not-as-conveniently located restaurants, but they are all "fucking excellent", though surrounded by a lot of shitty restaurants.

wow the stacks of these with like ten cents on them that I used to have to take to Powell St. to get combined together into one brand new BART ticket worth $3....

There are quite a few stuck in my old books, I used to use them for bookmarks all the time

We arrived in SF yesterday on the last leg of our trip up the coast. Lunch was in Pescadero at Duarte’s Tavern and dinner was at Tadich Grill. Classic restaurants, both. Slept like a baby after 1.75 martinis from Tadich. Cioppino was delicious.

Damn I remember occasional work parties Tadich being the high point of the shitty job I had downtown in the 90s!

i've gone to Tadich each time i've visited the city this year (3). which is more than i went when i lived there. Had sazeracs the last couple times, which were as good as the martinis are.

glad to hear it hasn't closed like everything else downtown

What did you get at Duarte's? Half & half soup and olallieberry pie?

I should have mentioned there's a bakery across the street from Duarte's that bakes my favorite loaf on the planet (roasted garlic/artichoke heart/herb rustic loaf)...

I had fried smelts and a garden salad; my wife had artichoke soup and a grilled cheese, but we shared everything. That artichoke soup was so good.

We’ve had just the best trip and there feels like there are a million more beaches to stop and see, especially north of Monterey.

Oh, and we shared the olallieberry pie with vanilla ice cream. Excellent. I started reading about olallieberries while there. I didn’t realize they are a type of blackberry.

Please come back to Santa Barbara when I am not across the Pacific on my own vacation!

We will be coming back for sure!

Glad you've had a good time for sure!

Thanks!

We went to Toronado (beer bar) on the lower Haight last night. My wife said, “I never thought I would be in a bar again that smelled like [our dive bar in law school]”.

oh cool! I thought for sure Toronado had closed sometime in the past

Beer selection was insane and the vibes were great once I got the hang of it (don’t ask questions).

Rosamunde recently closed but yeah Toronado is still kicking along.

guy at door: you know this is cash only

rosamunde can go to hell (at least the original owner known as "Smiley")

I think rosamunde is reopening?

(it reopened yesterday)

Yeah I heard some rumor about that. Like the workers took it over?

Feel like I'm the only SF resident on here sometimes... Rosamunde (Haight) never closed it was sold to Rosamunde employee #1 who rebranded it as Berliner Berliner. She also makes her own sausages unlike Rosamunde that buys their product from a major big box retailer.

Toronado also never closed but the two bars that paid a hefty sum to license the name (SD and Seattle) both closed in the past 5 years. Toronado just celebrated their 36th anniversary, still employee owned and operated. They own the whole building so they are approaching legacy status. I wish PBKR would have let me know as I have a sizeable tab there that I could have hosted a round or two.

Hurrah for clarity! Anyway drinks on Steve er wait

Have not met any ilxors in real life. Maybe next trip!

Steve, thanks for putting Duarte's on the map for us and to all the other CA folks who offered advice.

We're back home feeling very lucky and recharged.

Oh I wouldn't have met you guys, just sent a round lol.

I ate at John’s Grill last night

Oh I wouldn't have met you guys, just sent a round lol.

:(

I would have loved to have met up but didn't want to impose on plans -- also it's been a bit of a holiday whirl for me on various fronts!

Thanks, Ned. Would love to meet up on another trip some time.

Just a quick note that I'll be at the Laetitia Sadier show at the Chapel tonight! My birthday treat to myself, and why not?

Ok as a former Seattle resident (like 20+ yrs ago at this point) I am super excited about KEXP Bay Area (in 2 wks!)

KEXP SF is live on your terrestrial receiver @92.7FM

thats so fuckin awesome

Thanks! Tuned in today

Whoo boy we're going to be drowning in fliers and mailouts by Election Day

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/04/san-francisco-mayor-race-aaron-peskin-00150538

On a wholly separate note -- lukas and I are both seeing Steve Roach at Grace Cathedral on Saturday and I've got a couple of guest list spots open. If anyone wants in, let me know!

https://gracecathedral.org/calendar-events/reflections-steve-roach-structures-from-silence/

(To the ilxor who asked -- you need to get me your own email in your message, I don't know it otherwise!)