DISCOVER
SAN FRANCISCO CALIFORNIA

But locals mostly just call San Francisco The City. And it's always capitalized, even in our thoughts. If you were to say - "We're going up the The City to catch dinner and a play this weekend" - no one would think you were going to San Jose or Berkeley or Sacramento.

San Francisco, California is a what I like to call a City-Town, and it's a bit schizophrenic in that it can't quite decide "who" it wants to be - Big City or Small Town.

There's the City-half of San Francisco: sophisticated and worldly, offering up the good life for those who can afford it with elegant homes on Nob Hill, five-star hotels and dining opportunities, a world-famous symphony, plays and musicals, ballet performances, museums, and mega-shopping.

But it's also one of the smallest big cities in the world.

The whole city is contained in only 49 square miles. You can quite

literally walk from one end of San Francisco to the other.

(By comparison, New York City is 322 square miles and Los Angeles is 469.)

Yet there are more than 800,000 people living in The City.


That's over 16,000 people per square mile!

The flip-side of sophisticated San Francisco, California rises like a Phoenix from the not-quite-buried-ashes of its disreputable and colorful past:

• The California Gold Rush & Emperor Norton
• Fires and earthquakes
• Chinese immigration and the subsequent anti-Chinese laws
• Committees of Vigilance
• The Barbary Coast
• Kearnyism and the Sand-lotters
• The 1906 Earthquake and subsequent Fires
• Municipal corruption and the Graft Prosecutions
• Angel Island (the "Ellis Island of the West")
• Anti-Japanese sentiment and the evacuation of Japanese from San Francisco
• The Maritime Strike and Bloody Thursday
• The Bohemianism of the Beat Generation
• The Hippies with their Summer of Love, Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, and Psychedelic music
• The American Indian occupation of Alcatraz

The City's past adds seasoning to its present with a sense of funky fun and disdain for authority that is so much a part of San Francisco.

San Francisco, California's Claims to Fame

I'm sure you're familiar with San Francisco, California's famous tourist attractions, whether you've been to The City or not: the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, Chinatown, Alcatraz, Ghirardelli Square, Coit Tower, the Cliff House . . .

But here are some things you might NOT know about The City:

• San Francisco (which was originally called Yerba Buena) was just a small fishing village until James Marshall discovered gold in 1848
• There are 43 hills in the City of San Francisco - it's part of the California Coastal Range
• Contrary to popular opinion and local advertising, Lombard Street is not "The Crookedest Street in the World" - or even in San Francisco
• The City and County of San Francisco are one and the same - the county has the same borders as The City, making it a sort of "City/State"
• San Francisco can be very expensive, but there are also many free things to do!
• San Francisco Bay was originally larger (and the land available for building was smaller). During the California Gold Rush, over 600 ships and their cargoes were abandoned in the bay as their owners, crew, and passengers rushed off to the goldfields. Many of those ships became landfill - increasing the size of the new city-to-be, and becoming part of The City's Financial District

THE NEIGHBORHOODS

But for me, its the neighborhoods that really make San Francisco - this is the town-half I mentioned earlier:

Each neighborhood has its own, unique character which is constantly evolving - and collectively, they have created a City-Town that is unlike any other!

Picture yourself:

• Taking an early morning stroll through Chinatown, and watching the Mom & Pop groceries receive the day's fresh produce
• Greeting an old Italian couple who are sipping coffee at a sidewalk table outside a North Beach coffee house - the one they've frequented for 50 years
• Window shopping along trendy Union Street in The Marina District before heading out through the neighborhood to end up at the Yacht Club harbor
• Watching fishing boats unload tons of fresh Dungeness crab along Fisherman's Wharf






• Stopping in at the Buena Vista for an Irish Coffee
• Searching for the Wild Parrots around Telegraph Hill as you hike down through the gardens from Coit Tower




• Accidentally stumbling on a closed-off street that's sporting booths for a street faire

San Francisco's Neighborhoods, its walkability, its excellent public transport, its cafes and squares and parks, its support of art and culture - these are the things that give The City its unique character, which is part American frontier and part European flair.

Want some details about some of San Francisco's better hotels? This site should help you with that: Discovering-SanFrancisco.

Here's an easy way to find your way around San Francisco, California:

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