IT’S true. At first sight, San Francisco justifies all its hype. It’s a gorgeous place, set on a hilly, 47-square-mile promontory with world-class views and swathes of green space.
Yet it isn’t this clichéd shorthand of the city that makes it such a compelling place to visit — rather, you should come to experience its schizophrenic soul.
Yes, this is the ultra-liberal, gay marriage-endorsing, hippie-nurturing, literary heart of the West Coast, always recycling glass bottles and shunning plastic bags (they charge for them in the supermarkets here). But it’s also one of the most conservative, tradition-boosting cities in the country: the Blue Bloods in the mansions on the hilltops are as hushed and moneyed as Upper East Side lifers (albeit with mountain bikes) and the architectural-preservation movement here is fanatical. And San Francisco’s a place even more opportunistic than New York: There’s a reason both the Gold Rush and the dot-com boom flourished here.
For a West Coast city, it’s refreshingly compact in layout. Downtown centers on the refurbed Union Square — like Times Square without the gaudy neon — and neighborhoods radiate from there: to the north, Italian North Beach and Chinatown; to the south, warehouse club hub SoMa which is liveliest after dark; and on the west, swanky Nob Hill and Pacific Heights. Of course, the northern waterfront is blighted by the as-bad-you’ve-heard-and-then-some Fisherman’s Wharf, which you’ll still have to brave to reach Alcatraz. Don’t miss the two landlocked valley ‘hoods: the Mission, long a Latino stronghold but now more like Williamsburg with burritos, and the Castro, arguably the most famous gay nabe in the world.
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