111 Places in San Francisco that you must not miss
By Floriana Petersen and Steve Werneyhs
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111 Places in San Francisco that you must not miss - Floriana Petersen
111 Places in San Francisco That You Must Not Miss
Floriana Petersen und Steve Werney
emons: Verlag
Imprint
Many San Franciscans shared their city secrets with us for this book. Special thanks are due to Barbara Roether and Mark MacNamara, who contributed not only suggestions but history, background, and literary inspiration. –F.P.
© Emons Verlag GmbH // 2016
All rights reserved
Text: Floriana Petersen
All photographs © Steve Werney, except page 32 (photo by Melissa Kaseman), courtesy of The Battery
cover icon: Istockphoto.com © soberve
Edited by Katrina Fried
Design: Emons Verlag
Maps based on data by Openstreetmap, © Openstreet Map-participants, ODbL
ISBN 978-3-96041-013-3
eBook of the original print edition published by Emons Verlag
Did you enjoy it? Do you want more? Join us in uncovering new places around the world on: www.111places.com
Table of contents
Foreword
1_140 New Montgomery | San Francisco
It’s all about communication
2_826 Valencia | San Francisco
Reading, writing, and Ahoy, matey!
3_1450 Noriega Street | San Francisco
Where the heiress robbed a bank
4_Alhambra Theater | San Francisco
A cinematic workout
5_Anchor Brewing Company | San Francisco
Born and brewed in San Francisco
6_The Antique Vibrator Museum | San Francisco
A history of good vibrations
7_Arion Press | San Francisco
Lost and foundry
8_The Armory | San Francisco
Where kink is king
9_The Audium | San Francisco
Seeing with your ears
10_Balmy Alley Murals | San Francisco
Struggle and change
11_Bar Agricole | San Francisco
Keeping it local
12_The Battery Club | San Francisco
Old world, new school
13_The Bay Lights | San Francisco
The Bay Bridge gets its bling
14_The Beach & Park Chalet | San Francisco
Upstairs, downstairs, in Golden Gate Park
15_The Beat Museum | San Francisco
Still on the road
16_Billionaires’ Row | San Francisco
Life on the Gold Coast
17_Bliss Dance | San Francisco
Forty feet of female energy
18_The Bohemian Club | San Francisco
A private place for powerful men
19_Bourbon & Branch | San Francisco
The password-protected speakeasy
20_Buena Vista Park | San Francisco
A magical hush
21_Building One | San Francisco
A sinking treasure
22_Building 95 | San Francisco
If a tree falls in the forest …
23_Candlestick Park | San Francisco
Long live the ’stick
24_Casa Cielo | San Francisco
Sunny Jim
Rolph’s love nest
25_Chinese Telephone Exchange | San Francisco
1500 names on the tip of the tongue
26_Clarion Alley | San Francisco
These walls can talk
27_The Cloud Forest | San Francisco
Communing with nature on Mount Sutro
28_The Condor Club | San Francisco
Death by piano
29_Conservatory of Flowers | San Francisco
Home to the beautiful and the bizarre
30_Cow Palace | Daly City
From moo to Who
31_Creativity Explored | San Francisco
Art for all
32_Crissy Field | San Francisco
From airfield to House of Air
33_Dashiell Hammett’s Apartment | San Francisco
Where the Maltese Falcon took flight
34_The F-Line | San Francisco
A journey back in time
35_Flora Grubb Gardens | San Francisco
Coffee and air plants, anyone?
36_The Fly-Casting Pools | San Francisco
Angling for a good time
37_Fog Bridge | San Francisco
A walk in the clouds at the Exploratorium
38_Forbes Island & The Taj Mahal | San Francisco
Boats by any other name
39_Foreign Cinema | San Francisco
Dinner and a show
40_Fort Funston | San Francisco
Where humans take to the sky
41_The Frank Lloyd Wright Building | San Francisco
A mid-century jewel in the Barbary Coast
42_Gallery 6 | San Francisco
The ghosts of Vertigo at the Legion of Honor
43_The Gardens of Alcatraz | San Francisco
Planting life on the Rock
44_Glen Canyon Park | San Francisco
A time machine to the San Francisco of yore
45_Glide Memorial Church | San Francisco
Can I get an amen?
46_Grace Cathedral Labyrinths | San Francisco
A maze for meditation
47_The Green Roof | San Francisco
The Academy of Sciences goes underground
48_The Hallidie Building | San Francisco
Ahead of its time
49_Headlands Center for the Arts | Sausalito
Using creativity as a weapon
50_Heath Ceramics | San Francisco
Very Made in America
51_Hunter S. Thompson’s House | San Francisco
Fear & Loathing in San Francisco
52_Hunter’s Point | San Francisco
A flourishing artist colony in a shipyard
53_Ingleside Terrace Sundial | San Francisco
Time is on its side
54_Institute of Illegal Images | San Francisco
A trip
to the museum
55_The Interval at Long Now | San Francisco
For thinkers and drinkers
56_Kabuki Springs & Spa | San Francisco
Wet, naked, and hot
57_Lands End | San Francisco
A mystical walk through history
58_The Lefty O’Doul Bridge | San Francisco
In memory of a hometown hitter
59_LeRoy King Carousel | San Francisco
Round and round we go
60_Levi Strauss & Co. | San Francisco
Birthplace of the 501
61_Lyon Street Steps | San Francisco
Where health meets wealth
62_Macondray Lane | San Francisco
Tales of the city
63_The Malloch Building | San Francisco
For those who appreciate curves
64_Maritime Museum | San Francisco
A shipshape
exhibition space
65_Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial | San Francisco
A fountain for reflection in Yerba Buena Gardens
66_Mavericks | Half Moon Bay
A surfer’s nirvana
67_Mechanics’ Institute | San Francisco
Home to books and rooks
68_Mission Creek Houseboats | San Francisco
Islands in the storm
69_Mission Dolores Cemetery | San Francisco
Where the bodies are buried
70_The Monastery Stones | San Francisco
Relics in the Botanical Garden
71_Moraga Street Steps | San Francisco
Stairway to Heaven
72_Musée Mécanique | San Francisco
A penny arcade on the Embarcadero
73_National Cemetery Overlook | San Francisco
A graveyard with a view
74_Nimitz Mansion | San Francisco
Secret views from Yerba Buena
75_The Observation Tower | San Francisco
A castle in the trees at the de Young
76_Ocean Beach | San Francisco
Hanging ten on city waves
77_ODC | San Francisco
Put on your dancin’ shoes
78_Old Skool Café | San Francisco
Serving up second chances
79_The Parrots of Telegraph Hill | San Francisco
As free as a bird
80_Patricia’s Green | San Francisco
From parkway to park
81_The Phoenix Hotel | San Francisco
Rock ’n’ roll crash pad
82_Pier 24 Photography | San Francisco
A private collection goes public
83_Pier 70 | San Francisco
Industrial ruins with a waterfront view
84_Pink Triangle Park | San Francisco
The only memorial of its kind
85_Point Bonita Lighthouse | Sausalito
Overlooking an underwater graveyard
86_Portals of the Past | San Francisco
A bit of history and the occult on Lloyd Lake
87_The Presidio Pet Cemetery | San Francisco
Final resting place for the furry and feathered
88_Project Artaud | San Francisco
The artist factory
89_The Ramp | San Francisco
Fog City’s hangover cure
90_The Rock Colony | San Francisco
Where music legends lived and free loved
91_The Rousseaus | San Francisco
One man, many facades
92_Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church | San Francisco
Worship in the house of jazz
93_Saints Peter and Paul Church | San Francisco
Home base of a neighborhood
94_Sam’s Grill | San Francisco
A historic chophouse with a fishy past
95_San Francisco Art Institute | San Francisco
All hail Diego Rivera
96_Slovenian Hall | San Francisco
The past is present here
97_Stow Lake | San Francisco
The ghost of the White Lady
98_Sutro Heights Park | San Francisco
A garden of earthly delight
99_Swedenborgian Church | San Francisco
Sacred space hidden in plain sight
100_Tenderloin National Forest | San Francisco
A quiet sliver of green amid the chaos
101_Tessie Wall Townhouse | San Francisco
Home of a trigger-happy madam
102_Tin How Temple | San Francisco
The How of Tao
103_Tosca Café | San Francisco
Still cool (thanks to Sean Penn)
104_Toy Boating on Spreckels Lake | San Francisco
It’s anything but child’s play
105_Transamerica Redwood Park | San Francisco
Secrets of the pyramid
106_UCSF Medical Center Park | San Francisco
Public art en plein air
107_Van Ness Auto Row | San Francisco
When cars were kings
108_Vermont Street | San Francisco
The thrill of S curves
109_Warrior Surfer Mural | San Francisco
Reflection of a neighborhood
110_Wave Organ | San Francisco
Shhh … listen
111_Wood Line | San Francisco
The art of sticks and stones
Gallery
Maps
Foreword
In all my years living in San Francisco, I have never stopped discovering new places, hidden stairways, unexpected vistas, and stories embedded in every crevice. Strolling the city’s rolling terrain brings you face-to-face with these charming details, like the scrollwork on an old Victorian, an overgrown garden of jasmine in a concealed alley, or the lively salsa rhythms drifting out of an open window.
For a city that is only seven miles wide and seven miles long, the diversity here is stunning; from musicians, artists, and hippies, to hipsters and entrepreneurs, its population reflects every human shape, color, and spirit. It’s not only the people who have defined the neighborhoods, but the land itself: there are 14 hills across which the city rises and falls.
In San Francisco, each hill, from Telegraph to Potrero, and every valley, from Noe to Hayes, has its own architecture, its own history, and even its own weather. Visitors often find it hard to comprehend that the sunny blue skies of the Mission District turn to cold and fog just over Twin Peaks. Locals know to dress for the many microclimates, and expect the sudden shifts in temperature. In many ways, extremes are in the DNA of San Francisco, a notion that becomes ever clearer as you delve into the city’s storied past. During the Gold Rush, the population went from around 1,000 in 1848 to 30,000 in 1850; and by 1855, almost 300,000 people lived here. For decades San Francisco was the only outpost of real civilization west of the Rockies. 1848 may seem new by European standards, but for the American West, this is the old mother city.
All cities change; the recent boom in Silicon Valley has made the Bay Area a new playground for young millionaires. People, and wealth, come and go quickly here, but the landscape—the purple headlands jutting into the Pacific, the island-scattered bay, the fog pouring over the Golden Gate Bridge—is as stoic and enduring as Nature itself.
San Francisco
View full image
1_140 New Montgomery
It’s all about communication
The Pacific Telephone Building rose up at 140 Montgomery Street to be San Francisco’s first skyscraper. It was built in 1925 for $4 million and provided offices for 2,000 workers, mostly women. With its fresh look of verticality and its Art Deco lobby, including the reddish ceiling full of unicorns, phoenixes, and clouds, the building suggested a new style of workplace. Dressed in highly reflective, granite-colored terra-cotta exterior panels, it presided over the city for 40 years.
The architect was Timothy Pflueger (1892–1946), a San Francisco native, who—in the wake of the 1906 earthquake—never went to college yet found his way to the field of architecture and interior design. Following Prohibition, Pflueger’s interiors graced the city’s most renowned cocktail lounges, most notably the Patent Leather Bar at the St. Francis Hotel. Other well-known Pflueger buildings include the Castro and Alhambra theaters (see p. 16), and 450 Sutter street. He also designed buildings for the Olympic Club, the quintessential West Coast men’s club, of which he, himself, was a member. One night, after his customary swim, he dropped dead from a heart attack on the street outside.
Info
Address 140 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105 | Public Transport Bus: 8X (3rd St & Howard St stop); 10, 12 (2nd St & Howard St stop) | Tip The restaurant and bar Trou Normand next door offers delicious charcuterie.
Pflueger’s inspiration for 140 Montgomery was a never-built skyscraper imagined by the great Finnish architect, Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen. Now, almost 90 years after it was built, the 26-story building is lost in the glass-and-steel forest that has grown around it. Yet it remains not only an architectural landmark, but also a symbol of the city’s focus on communications: Pacific Telephone was a cutting-edge company in its day. The building’s main client now is Yelp, the online review site. Today, the interior includes various perks
typical of the modern, progressive, start-up workplace culture, such as showers for commuters and a bike repair shop built inside a former wood-paneled boardroom.
Nearby
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial (0.193 mi)
Mechanics’ Institute (0.217 mi)
LeRoy King Carousel (0.261 mi)
The Hallidie Building (0.292 mi)
To the online map
To the beginning of the chapter
San Francisco
View full image
2_826 Valencia
Reading, writing, and Ahoy, matey!
Back
This city is full of creative characters and always has been, and writer Dave Eggers is among the most honorable examples. Eggers is a genuine renaissance fellow, a Bono of words, whose 2000 blockbuster memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, became a way to parlay his literary wits and profits into various collaborations, some of which involve methods for teaching kids how to read and write and teachers how to inspire their students.
In 2002 Eggers teamed up with educator and advocate Nínive Calegari to organize a one-on-one tutoring program for kids. He found a location at 826 Valencia Street, which in those days was in a shopping-hood
with retro furniture stores and a Santeria shop. The idea was to run his quarterly literary magazine and publishing company, McSweeneys, out of the same building, and have his staff and community of writers and editors work with the neighborhood kids after school. From the start, the charter was to draw students into a space where imagination was king, and where writing was respected and explored.
Info
Address 826 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110, www.826valencia.org, +1 415.642.905 | Public Transport Bus: 33 (18th St & Valencia St stop) | Hours Daily 12–6pm| Tip Stop at Dandelion Chocolate at 740 Valencia Street. You can sit in the front cafe and watch the chocolate-making process in the factory in the back.
To make it a going concern, Eggers and Calegari opened up a pirate-supply store in the front of the building, where you can pick up practically anything an aspiring or practicing swashbuckler might need—from peg legs and mermaid bait (or repellant), to eye patches and planks sold by the foot. Although the shop was created as a means to an end, it is an enchantment in its own right, not to mention a terrific magnet for potential pupils. After all, who wouldn’t rather do their homework surrounded by pirate paraphernalia instead of at their kitchen table?
Incidentally, 826 Valencia has nonprofit extensions in seven other cities across the country. Programs for kids ages 6 to 18 include tutoring, publishing, and college and career training, along with parallel opportunities for teachers.
Nearby
Institute of Illegal Images (0.155 mi)
Foreign Cinema (0.255 mi)
Clarion Alley (0.267 mi)
ODC (0.379 mi)
To the online map
To the beginning of the chapter
San Francisco
View full image
3_1450 Noriega Street
Where the heiress robbed a bank
Back
In the 1970s, the Outer Sunset District was an increasingly Asian suburb far removed from downtown. On the corner of Noriega and 22nd Avenue stands what was then a branch of the Hibernia Savings & Loan. At 10am on April 15, 1974, several members of a Marxist-inspired