San Francisco Neighborhoods: Union Square
When I first moved here, a new friend was trying to give me directions to somewhere or other in San Francisco and I was completely baffled by his instructions, so finally he laughed and said, “Just meet me at Union Square and I’ll take you over there”. When I said, “um, okay, where’s Union Square?” he just about dropped the phone because he thought that he had given me one of the most obvious landmarks in the city to make the plan easier for me. We laugh about that now because the idea that I didn’t know Union Square is strange and yet makes sense.
You see, the main reason that you would go to Union Square, especially as a tourist which is more or less what I still was at the time of the conversation, is for the shopping. You go there because they have the multiple story Macy’s and the Loehmann’s discounted brand name store and the Victoria’s Secret with the terrific window displays and the trendy clothing at H&M. They have all of the brand name stores that you see in magazines and don’t get to experience if you don’t live in a city, stores like FCUK, Armani Exchange, and Jessica McClintock, stores that are familiar if you’re a shopper. But I’m not much of a shopper and I’m much more likely to end up hitting thrift stores in The Haight or The Mission than purchasing anything from Louis Vuitton so it makes sense that I had only a vague idea of where San Francisco’s major shopping area was located.
At the same time, it’s strange that I couldn’t identify where Union Square was located since it’s close enough to so many of the things I was living close to at the time. Union Square itself is an urban park which is home to the Theatre Bay Area half-price tickets booth and the See’s Candies that I’ve never even stopped at. It is bordered on one side by Stockton, just south of the Stockton Tunnel, so I pass by it every time I take the 30 MUNI bus from North Beach down to Market Street. It is bordered on another side by Powell Street which is the street that my Mason-Powell cable car heads down to get to the cable car turnaround at Market. So basically, if I was taking any form of transportation that I knew at the time, I’d pass Union Square and probably should’ve known where it was.
Now that I’ve lived in the city for long enough to have explored the ins and outs of it, I obviously don’t have to think twice about where Union Square is. In fact, I’ve amassed quite a list of positive memories within the geographically small neighborhood. I’ve ridden up the elevator of the Westin St. Francis to enjoy a stunning view of the bay with a new friend. I’ve had the best midnight Thai food ever at a small place I stumbled upon on the way home from the underground MUNI station one night. I’ve had very pricey but amazingly good frozen amaretto sours at Gold Dust Lounge, an older-crowd bar I never would’ve thought I’d have reason to stop in to. I’ve been to art gallery openings and bookstore readings and small theatre plays.
In short, I’ve discovered that there is actually a lot more to Union Square than just the shopping, even though that’s the big draw that it has for many people. You have to do some searching to find the non-tourist things in this neighborhood. It would be really easy to get over-priced food and watered-down beverages in the area, to pay high covers for VIP sections of clubs that aren’t worth their cost and to get lost in the urge to spend too much on shopping. But it’s just as easy to get cheap slices of pizza at Blondie’s and buy inexpensive trinkets from street vendors and enjoy the entertainment of neighborhood characters like the San Francisco Twins. Union Square is the kind of neighborhood that is great for those who are just passing through and better for those who are in-the-know.
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