Welcome to San Francisco, certainly the most open and probably the most tolerant city in the United States. This is a city where you can not only openly be who you are, you can also try being whatever it is you want to be. Just about anything goes, whether you have come to make a fortune or to squander one, whether you have decided to join the established culture or any one of the myriad counter-cultures that call San Francisco home. Just think of the city’s changing nicknames. In the 1850s the city was called “The Barbary Coast,” when rowdy gold miners recalled the old-time Barbary pirates. For a time it was even called “Baghdad by the Bay,” when that city was still exotic and untouched. Current appellations, however, demonstrate the city’s pride in what it has accomplished: “The City That Knows How,” or even the proud “City by the Bay.” But most San Franciscans just call it “The City,” as though it were the only one—as for many residents it is. One nickname it does not ever have—at least for locals—is Frisco. Do not call the city Frisco.
A San Francisco Year
16.4 million visitors
US$ 8.5 billion spent by visitors (US$ 22 million per day)
US$ 527 million in tax and fee revenues for the city
77,856 jobs supporting the visitor industry
32,866 hotel rooms
14 percent hotel tax
1,432 licensed taxicabs
7.9 million cable car rides
39 million vehicles cross the Golden Gate Bridge
About 16 million visitors a year come to “everyone’s favorite city.” You might think the reasons obvious: San Francisco is the most beautiful—ravishing—cosmopolitan city in the United States, with clean air, sparkling water on three sides, steep hills rising in the middle of the city, and breathtaking views. Quaint cable cars clang up and down the hills, and exotic aromas waft through the streets. People are outgoing and friendly. And when the sun shines and the sky is bright blue, it feels as though there is no other city in the world where you would want to be. But although beauty and charm stretch far, they do not tell the entire story. The deeper story unfolds as you come to understand the city and its residents, as time goes on.
Some of San Francisco’s substance, of course, is in plain view. Perched on the Pacific Rim, the city is home to some of the most important banks and trade institutions in the country. It is the northern focus of Silicon Valley—an area that may not appear on any map, but which nonetheless commands much of the world’s high technology development and trade. It is a port for passenger cruises. It has an outstanding opera company, symphony orchestra, and ballet, plus impressive art museums and galleries. It has excellent universities, hospitals, and research institutions. It has a glorious climate and beautiful parks and promenades from which to enjoy it all. And it has some of the best restaurants in the country.
You can find all this in a standard tourist guide, of course. Such guides describe the city and its unique attractions in detail, review restaurants, and suggest hotels of all categories. Each has its own approach to capturing the spirit of this enchanting city by the sea—and in the most eye-catching manner possible. All, however, have one thing in common: they are designed only for people visiting for a short while—visitors who think that what they see in a week is what the city is all about.
It is true that you can get a general idea of the magnetism of this city in a short time, and that is a good start. Certainly, many of the things you have heard about The City by the Bay do ring somewhat true. Definitely it is charming at its core, always vibrant, ever pushing toward the future. And its beauty does stretch far. That Tony Bennett has sung to the world “I left my heart in San Francisco” is no mistake. But it is also odd, offbeat, perhaps even outrageous in some ways, and its outright iconoclasm contributes a great deal to its delicious mystique. When you begin to understand the city’s acceptance of the unusual and its constant search for any next frontier, you will realize that it wholeheartedly embraces the new, which should be important to you if you are coming for a longer stay, perhaps even to settle in.
And, if you are here for a while, you will need that extra look, those extra clues as to how The City works. This book, thus, although offering information for the first-time visitor, also focuses on where tourism ends and where daily life begins. Whether your stay is for a month or two or a year or two, the type of information you need for a successful stay is different—deeper and more detailed than that found in the standard tourist guides. How to choose a neighborhood that suits you, where to find the most interesting markets and shops, how best to get up and down the hills or commute in from other towns, how to cope with the difficulties of finding (almost) affordable housing or the right school for your children, and, of course, how to find out what is going on at any day of the year—these are just a few examples of basic information that should help you maneuver comfortably within the San Francisco scene.
So, what will you find here? A city to take seriously, no matter what you have heard about the eclectic lifestyles and iconoclasm of its residents. As in any city in the world, daily life rules: if San Franciscans are known for playing hard, they work hard, too. In the soaring office buildings of the Financial District and in the funky warehouses of the Inner Mission (sometimes called Multimedia Gulch), workers earn salaries that, on average, are among the highest in the country; more than half of the city’s residents hold college or professional degrees. Locals spend their dollars in almost 13,000 retail businesses and eat out in more than 4,000 restaurants, all of which must appeal to a population that demands creativity and excellence—and something ever new to tickle its fancy for novelty. Even the municipality itself has done its best to make its urban life attractive and rewarding. Where other cities have seen their downtowns collapse as people fled to the suburbs, San Francisco has conscientiously upgraded its own with the Moscone Convention Center, Yerba Buena Gardens, Museum of Modern Art, the light rail system, the refurbished waterfront, and the vibrant downtown AT&T Baseball Park.
Businesses that manage to capture the changing, eclectic tastes of San Franciscans tend to succeed. Yet those that do not often see failure as an opportunity to start again, to reinvent themselves with a different—even more novel—approach. The city has always been known for its creative energy, and, since Gold Rush times, for taking risks. If the area is on the cutting edge of technology and finance now, think back to 1853 when Levi Strauss came to San Francisco to work with his brother-in-law. By 1871, they had received a patent for securing the seams of their duck twill work pants with copper saddlebag rivets. Now the headquarters of the multi-million dollar Levi Strauss & Company sits in its own lovely green park along the Embarcadero, and the company provides more than 1,000 people with work.
On the other hand, there is a lot not to take seriously in The City by the Bay. What contributes to the very energy and essence of San Francisco is the attitude that makes living here downright fun. This book also describes the area’s myriad sporting opportunities, the friskiness of the population, the varying Chinese cuisines and their eateries—both upscale and definitely not—and some cultural—and decidedly non-cultural—events. What it cannot impart in detail—but you will soon find out for yourself—is how the light-hearted and quirky nature of the city’s population contributes to what makes San Francisco the way it is, a place like nowhere else.
The city, of course, has its problems. Although it is often rated near the top of “quality of life” surveys, and its workers earn above the national average, the cost of living in the Bay Area also ranks among the highest in the country and is the highest in the state. This is owing to a lack of affordable housing, brought about by a shortage of housing in general and the willingness of well-paid professionals to pay high rents and purchase prices. Housing in the Bay Area—for both purchases and rentals—costs significantly more than in most areas of the country, and San Francisco has been rated as one of the country’s most overpriced cities. Although prices may have fallen somewhat during the recent financial crises, they are still much higher then the national average, and some people are concerned that San Francisco may in the future become a city dominated by the interests of the rich. And it is true that families with children are finding life in other regions of the Bay Area more affordable and just about as pleasant. And, San Francisco is not very far away.
Other top problems facing the city’s residents are a public transportation system that has not always transported well, and, as in other major urban areas, there are too many homeless people on the streets. A succession of mayoral candidates has used homelessness as a campaign issue, and those elected come into office with big plans, only to find that, without being able to address the causes of homelessness, few “Band-Aid” solutions actually work. Mayors also set out to address the problems of transportation and parking, affordable housing, and more serious crime, and occasionally it seems—at least temporarily—that some progress is being made.
San Francisco also has its undesirable elements, its occasional robberies and muggings. Yet women need take only the usual precautions of staying on well-traveled streets and jogging in the parks with friends on designated paths and in daylight hours. And there should be no reason at all for anyone to enter the Tenderloin alone at night—that area between Union Square and the Civic Center that might in other cities be termed “skid row”—or Hunters Point to the south. Some other neighborhoods that are trendy in some spots—the Mission, Western Addition, Lower Haight—also occasionally have their pockets of problematical areas. But these areas are few, and they too have their agreeable streets and attitudes.
All in all, as you will shortly discover, San Francisco is—and it also is not—just like any other city. This book should help you find that out as you begin to make your way. Scout out the neighborhoods it describes, stroll the outdoor markets, experiment with unfamiliar dishes in offbeat Asian eateries. Get to know your neighbors and your colleagues at work, for San Franciscans are welcoming folk. Volunteer in your community. Spend Sundays in one of the city’s beautiful parks, go whale watching not far offshore, and find the view that best makes your own heart soar. San Francisco’s Convention & Visitors Bureau says that the three commandments when visiting San Francisco are to “explore, experience, and enjoy.” When you join long-time San Franciscans in following these “commandments,” soon you too will understand what led the city’s beloved writer Alice Adams to term San Francisco “the last lovely city.” Welcome home.
