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Top 5 Reasons to Go | Quick Bites | Getting There | Making the Most of Your Time | Top Attractions
The eight blocks of Valencia Street between 16th and 24th streets—what’s come to be known as the Valencia Corridor—typify the neighborhood’s diversity. Businesses on the block between 16th and 17th streets, for instance, include an upscale Peruvian restaurant, an Indian grocery and sundries store, a tattoo parlor, the yuppie-chic bar Blondie’s, a handful of funky home-decor stores, a pizzeria, a taqueria, a Turkish restaurant, a sushi bar, bargain and pricey thrift shops, and the Puerto Alegre restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall with pack-a-punch margaritas locals revere. On the other hand, Mission Street itself, three blocks east, is mostly a down-at-the-heels row of check-cashing places, dollar stores, and residential hotels—but there are more than a few great taquerias. And the farther east you go, the sketchier the neighborhood gets.
Italian and Irish in the early 20th century, the Mission became heavily Latino in the late 1960s, when immigrants from Mexico and Central America began arriving. An influx of Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, and other immigrants, along with a young bohemian crowd enticed by cheap rents and the burgeoning arts-and-nightlife scene, followed in the 1980s and early 1990s. The skyrocketing rents of the late 1990s have leveled off and the district is yet again in transition. The Mission is still scruffy in patches, so as you plan your explorations, take into account your comfort zone. TIP Be prepared for homelessness and drug use around the BART stations, prostitution along Mission Street, and raucous bar-hoppers along the Valencia Corridor.
Top 5 Reasons to Go
Bar-hop: Embrace your inner (or not-so-inner) hipster. Start off at Medjool’s rare rooftop deck, then move up to the stylish Nihon Whisky Lounge or pull up a chair in pretension-free Truck. Round the night off in the company of the 150+ beers available at the Monk’s Kettle.
Chow down on phenomenal, cheap ethnic food: Keen appetites and thin wallets will meet their match here. Just try to decide between deliciously fresh burritos, garlicky falafel, thin-crust pizza, savory crepes, and more.
One-of-a-kind shopping: Barter for buried treasure at 826 Valencia and its Pirate Supply Store, then hop next door and say hello to the giraffe’s head at the mad taxidermy–cum–garden store hodgepodge that is Paxton Gate.
Vivid murals: Check out dozens of energetic, colorful public artworks in alleyways and on building exteriors.
Hang out in Dolores Park: Join Mission locals and their dogs on this hilly expanse of green with a glorious view of downtown and, if you’re lucky, the Bay Bridge.
Touring the Mission's Murals
Since the 1970s, groups of artists have worked to transform the city’s walls into canvases, art accessible to everyone. Muralists here fall into two loose categories: those in the Latin American tradition of addressing political and social justice issues through art, and everyone else (those who simply paint on a large scale and like lots of people to see it).
Rediscovering the work of Mexican liberal artist and muralist Diego Rivera in the 1960s, Latino muralists began to address public issues on the community’s walls. Heavily Latino since the 1970s, the Mission District became the collective canvas for these artists. The Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center emerged to support those artists and galvanize collaborative projects in the neighborhood. Early on, the San Francisco Arts Commission hired the center to create murals all over town. Of the 800-plus murals that adorn city surfaces, a good quarter of them were painted by muralists associated with Precita Eyes.
Bright Sunbelt colors reflect the medium’s historical geography; in contemporary work, look for anime and woodblock cuts along with traditional Latino symbols. Here are the best and brightest of the Mission District:
826 Valencia. Fans of graphic novelist Chris Ware will want to take a good look at the facade here. Ware designed the intricate mural for the storefront, a meditation on the evolution of human communication.
Balmy Alley. The most famous of the Mission’s murals—a vivid sweep from end to end. This group series began in 1971 and still gets new additions.
Caltrain Depot. Facing the train yard near 7th and Townsend streets is Brian Barneclo’s behemoth Systems Mural Project (2011), exploring everything from the nervous system to the ecosystem. At 24,000 square feet, the city’s largest mural is also among its most high-profile artworks, visible from passenger trains and the freeway.
Clarion Alley. A new generation of muralists is creating a fresh alley-cum-gallery here, between Valencia and Mission streets and 17th and 18th streets. The loosely connected artists of the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) represent a broad range of styles and imagery. Carpet-draped Indonesian elephants plod calmly down the block; kung fu movie-style headlines shout slogans. The works here offer a dense glimpse at the Mission’s contemporary art scene.
Shotwell Street grocery. Brian Barneclo’s gigantic Food Chain adorns a grocery store on Shotwell Street between 14th and 15th streets. It’s a retro, 1950s-style celebration of the city’s many neighborhoods (and the food chain), complete with an ant birthday party and worms finishing off a human skull. But in a cute way. Barneclo fans can see more of his work at Rye bar or Nopa restaurant.
24th Street. Several murals in the Mexican political tradition adorn the buildings along 24th Street, including St. Peter’s (at Alabama Street) and even McDonald’s (at Mission Street).
Women’s Building. Maestrapeace—the impressive, towering mural that seems to enclose this building—celebrates women around the world who work for peace.
Quick Bites
La Victoria.
Latin-American pastries are the specialty at La Victoria. You can also pick up a coffee. | 2937 24th St.,
at Alabama St.,
Mission | 94110 | 415/642–7120.
Stable Café.
In what was the carriage house of a long-ago mayor, the Stable serves up a mean latte as well as soups and sandwiches. | 2128 Folsom St.,
at 17th St.,
Mission | 94110 | 415/552–1199.
Tartine Bakery.
It may not be quick—the line often snakes out the door—but if you’re hankering after the perfect croque monsieur or frangapine, Tartine is certainly worth the wait. Skip the line and head to the register in the back right corner if you’re just ordering drinks. | 600 Guerrero St.,
at 18th St.,
Mission | 94110 | 415/487–2600.
Getting There
After climbing the hills downtown, you’ll find the Mission to be welcomingly flat. BART’s two Mission District stations drop you right in the heart of the action. Get off at 16th Street for Mission Dolores, shopping, nightlife, and restaurants, or 24th Street to see the neighborhood murals. The busy 14–Mission bus runs all the way from downtown into the neighborhood, but BART is a much faster and more direct route. Parking can be a drag, especially on weekend evenings. If you’re heading out in the evening, your safest bet would be taking a cab, since some blocks are sketchy.
Making the Most of Your Time
A walk that includes Mission Dolores and the neighborhood’s murals takes about two hours. If you plan to go on a mural walk with the Precita Eyes organization or if you’re a window-shopper, add at least another hour. The Mission is a neighborhood that sleeps in. In the afternoon and evening the main drags really come to life.
Sunday through Tuesday is relatively quiet here, especially in the evening—a great time to get a café table with no wait. If you’re getting bummed out by fog elsewhere in the city, come here—the Mission wins out in San Francisco’s system of microclimates.
The Mission has a number of distinct personalities: it’s the Latino neighborhood, where working-class folks raise their families and where gangs occasionally clash; it’s the hipster hood, where tattooed and pierced twenty- and thirtysomethings hold court in the coolest cafés and bars in town; it’s a culinary epicenter, with the strongest concentration of destination restaurants and affordable ethnic cuisine; and it’s the artists’ quarter, where murals adorn literally blocks of walls. It’s also the city’s equivalent of the Sunshine State—this neighborhood’s always the last to succumb to fog.
Top Attractions
Balmy Alley.
Mission District artists have transformed the walls of their neighborhood with paintings, and Balmy Alley is one of the best-executed examples. Murals fill the one-block alley, with newer ones continually filling in the blank spaces. Local children working with adults started the project in 1971. Since then dozens of artists have steadily added to it, with the aim of promoting peace in Central America, as well as community spirit and AIDS awareness. TIP
Be alert here: the 25th Street end of the alley adjoins a somewhat dangerous area. | 24th St. between and parallel to Harrison and Treat Sts., alley runs south to 25th St.,
Mission | 94110.
Mission Dolores.
Two churches stand side by side at this mission, including the small adobe Mission San Francisco de Asís, the oldest standing structure in San Francisco. Completed in 1791, it’s the sixth of the 21 California missions founded by Father Junípero Serra in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Its ceiling depicts original Ohlone Indian basket designs, executed in vegetable dyes. The tiny chapel includes frescoes and a hand-painted wooden altar.
There’s a hidden treasure here, too. In 2004 an archaeologist and an artist crawling along the ceiling’s rafters opened a trap door behind the altar and rediscovered the mission’s original mural, painted with natural dyes by Native Americans in 1791. The centuries have taken their toll, so the team photographed the 20-by-22-foot mural and began digitally restoring the photographic version. Among the images is a dagger-pierced Sacred Heart of Jesus. There’s a small museum
covering the mission’s founding and history, and the pretty little mission cemetery (made famous by a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo) maintains the graves of mid-19th-century European immigrants. (The remains of an estimated 5,000 Native Americans lie in unmarked graves.) Services are held in both the Mission San Francisco de Asís and next door in the handsome multi-dome basilica. | Dolores and 16th Sts.,
Mission | 94114 | 415/621–8203 | www.missiondolores.org | $5 donation, audio tour $7 | Nov.–Apr., daily 9–4; May–Oct., daily 9–4:30.
San Francisco on Film
With its spectacular cityscape, atmospheric fog, and a camera-ready iconic bridge, it’s little wonder that San Francisco has been the setting for hundreds of films. While you’re running around town, you might have the occasional sense of déjà vu, sparked by a scene from a Hitchcock or Clint Eastwood thriller.
Zodiac, a 2007 drama about a legendary Bay Area serial killer, filmed scenes at the real-life locations where victims were gunned down. It also re-created the San Francisco Chronicle offices, but down south in L.A.
City Hall shows up in the Clint Eastwood cop thrillers Dirty Harry and Magnum Force, and is set aflame in the James Bond flick A View to a Kill. Its domed interior became a nightclub for Robin Williams’ Bicentennial Man and a courthouse in Tucker: The Man and His Dream.
Streets in Russian Hill, Potrero Hill, and North Beach were used for the supreme car-chase sequence in Bullitt. The namesake detective, played by Steve McQueen, lived in Nob Hill at 1153–57 Taylor Street. And the “King of Cool” did much of his own stunt driving, thank you very much.
Brocklebank Apartments, at Mason and Sacramento streets in Nob Hill, appears in several films, most notably as the posh residence of Kim Novak in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Other key Vertigo locations include the cemetery of Mission Dolores and the waterfront at Fort Point.
The great Bogie-and-Bacall noir film Dark Passage revolves around the art-deco apartment building at 1360 Montgomery Street and the nearby Filbert Steps.
Dashiell Hammett’s Thin Man characters, Nick and Nora Charles, do much of their sleuthing in the city, especially in films like After the Thin Man, in which the base of Coit Tower stands in as the entrance to the Charles’ home.
North Beach’s Tosca Café, at 242 Columbus Avenue, is the bar where Michael Douglas unwinds in Basic Instinct.
The Hilton Hotel at 333 O’Farrell Street became the “Hotel Bristol,” the scene of much of the mayhem caused by Barbra Streisand in What’s Up, Doc?
At 2640 Steiner Street in Pacific Heights is the elegant home that Robin Williams infiltrates while disguised as a nanny in Mrs. Doubtfire.
The Castro of the 1970s comes alive in Milk, Gus Van Sant’s film starring Sean Penn as slain San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk.
And, of course, there are plenty of movies about the notorious federal prison on Alcatraz Island, including Burt Lancaster’s redemption drama Birdman of Alcatraz, Clint Eastwood’s suspenseful Escape from Alcatraz, the goofy So I Married an Axe Murderer, and the Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage action flick, The Rock.
—Jim Van Buskirk
Worth Noting
Creativity Explored.
Joyous, if chaotic, creativity pervades the workshops of this art-education center and gallery for developmentally disabled adults. Several dozen adults work at the center each day—guided by a staff of working artists—painting, working in the darkroom, producing videos, and crafting prints, textiles, and ceramics. On weekdays you can drop by and see the artists at work. The art produced here is striking, and some of it is for sale; this is a great place to find a unique
San Francisco masterpiece to take home. | 3245 16th St.,
Mission | 94103 | 415/863–2108 | www.creativityexplored.org | Free | Mon.–Wed. and Fri. 10–3, Thurs. 10–7, weekends noon–5.
Galería de la Raza.
San Francisco’s premier showcase for contemporary Latino art, the gallery exhibits the works of mostly local artists. Events include readings and spoken word by local poets and writers, screenings of Latin American and Spanish films, and theater works by local minority theater troupes. Just across the street, amazing art festoons the 24th Street/York Street Minipark, a tiny urban playground. A mosaic-covered Quetzalcoatl serpent plunges into the ground and rises,
creating hills for little ones to clamber over, and mural-covered walls surround the space. | 2857 24th St.,
at Bryant St.,
Mission | 94110 | 415/826–8009 | www.galeriadelaraza.org | Gallery Tues. 1–7, Wed.–Sat. noon–6.
Precita Eyes Mural Arts and Visitors Center.
Founded by muralists, this nonprofit arts organization designs and creates murals. The artists themselves lead informative guided walks of murals in the area. Most tours start with a 45-minute slide presentation. The bike and walking trips, which take between one and three hours, pass several dozen murals. May is Mural Awareness Month, with visits to murals-in-progress and presentations by artists. You can pick up a map of 24th Street’s murals at the center and buy art
supplies, T-shirts, postcards, and other mural-related items. Bike tours are available by appointment; Saturday’s 11 am walking tour meets at Cafe Venice, at 24th and Mission streets. (All other tours meet at the center.) | 2981 24th St.,
Mission | 94110 | 415/285–2287 | www.precitaeyes.org | Center free, tours $12–$15 | Center weekdays 10–5, Sat. 10–4, Sun. noon–4; walks weekends at 11 and 1:30 or by appointment.
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