San Fran Voice

Pier 39.  It’s where the sea lions go to rest, the tourists go to shop and the locals …  well, the locals say that they don’t go there much but you’ll find that they flock there when they have houseguests to entertain.  Sure, it’s cheesy and pricey and totally not “San Francisco” in the way that the rest of the city is.  But it’s also part of our home here and there are good reasons to go there whether it’s those absolutely-bad-for-you-but-oh-so-good fried donuts or the need to escape your life with your own pretend-to-be-from-somewhere-else day.

And Pier 39 is making reasons for locals to head to the area in May.  It’s their sunset concert series, when The Entrance to Pier 39 will fill with fun music every Friday from 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.  Each of the bands performing on Fridays plays music that was popular in eras from the ‘70’s through today, offering a little bit of something for the tourist in everyone.  And it all starts tomorrow, Friday, May 4^th with a daytime luau from noon to four.  Unrelated to the series but also happening at Pier 39 tomorrow is a performance by Manny Trevin at Hard Rock Cafe.  It starts at 9 so if you’re in the area anyway, check it out.

The bands playing at the Pier 39 Sunset Concert Series are as follows:

May 4^th: Double Funk Crunch -  Starting off as a band that played disco and funk from the 1970’s, this large group of creatively fun performers now plays hits from every decade from then until now.  Check out a partial list of their songs here.  Superb cover band at zero cost?  Sounds like a reason to play tourist to me.

May 11^th: Busta-Groove – With corporate clients that include 25 Hour Fitness, Honda and The Giants, this band has learned how to play to a crowd of any size.  Check out their song list so you can see if you can sing along.

May 18^th: The Cheeseballs – Yeah, they know that their cheesy.  And they embrace it.  Let’s face it, we all love that cheesy music sometimes and there’s really no better place to go show it than a place as cheesy as Pier 39 with a band as cheesy as this one.  But don’t worry, they serve up a side of talent with that cheese.  Here’s the song list.

May 25^th: David Martin’s House Party – Don’t mistake it for a location; that’s the name of the band.  But when you’re dancing to their tunes, you’ll feel like you’re at a multi-generational house party.  Check out the band member bios to see who you’ll be partying with.

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.

David Copperfield escapes from Alcatraz.  You get tidbits of interesting Alcatraz history along with the magic trick.  The footage is scratchy because it’s from 1987 but it’s good enough to watch.  Is David Copperfield creepy or what?

Part I:

Part II:

Did you know that the fortune cookie was a food that was invented here in San Francisco?  The Bay Area happens to be the birthplace of a number of different foods including the Popsicle, Crab Louis salad, Cioppino stew and the Martini.  This clip that tells you the history of the fortune cookie is set at the Japanese Tea Garden, a beautiful retreat within Golden Gate Park.

There is going to be some debate among people browsing through the San Fran Voice information about San Francisco neighborhoods as to whether or not Fisherman’s Wharf can really be called a “neighborhood”.  It’s a place with geographic boundaries for sure, but it’s more of a tourist attraction than a neighborhood, right?  In a sense, yes, but in terms of being a part of the city which is unique in and of itself to the area within which it is confined, I think that Fisherman’s Wharf is very much its own neighborhood.

Fisherman’s Wharf itself is the section of the city located at Pier 45.  It’s impossible to miss because it has a big sign indicating that you’re there, and if you somehow don’t see that, you can look at the strip of tourist stores, the famous Wharf restaurants like Boudin’s, the clam-chowder-in-a-bread-bowl carts and the throngs of other travelers and know that you’re there.  It offers a little bit of sensory overload and really lets you know that you’re traveling – it’s the kind of place that you think of when you think of tourist trap locations like Hollywood, Orlando, Atlantic City, the Vegas Strip and Virginia Beach.  It’s the cheesy souvenirs and the over-priced chain restaurants that you won’t find anywhere else in the city.  It’s a tourist spot.

But, I do have to say that, as a local who lives not all that far from the area, I make it down there more often than I might think that I would.  That’s due in part to the fact that there’s a strange appeal to the tourist activities sometimes.  That you can wander within your own city and see seals docked at the pier, buy fish ‘n’ chips from a street vendor and pick up ridiculous “city theme” gifts for Mom has its place.  And when the right houseguests come to town and want to splurge on expensive restaurants, the first choice might be North Beach but some of the local restaurants on the water run a close second.

My favorite thing in this neighborhood is Musee Mechanique, also known as the “old arcade game place”.  This free-to-enter, quarters-to-play museum of arcade games has a ridiculously odd selection of games which include old reenactments of foreign executions, electric ferris wheels made out of toothpicks by the former prisoners of San Quentin and eighties favorites like Ms. Pacman and Moon Patrol.  This place is fun in a not-quite-touristy-but-sorta-kinda way.

Fisherman’s Wharf has nightlife, although it’s not the place that I think of when I’m headed out on the town.  There’s a section to the west of the main intersection of the neighborhood which is home to a series of Irish bars where you can get Irish coffees and beer.  Many of these have terrific happy hours and live music, so it’s worth wandering through the neighborhood to see what catches your fancy.  However, it’s a tourist spot so you pay inflated tourist prices for most of the drinks and food in this neighborhood.  Similarly, you could choose to live in one of the homes which make up the small residential portion of this neighborhood, but you’d be paying a lot of money to live in a spot where you’ll regularly be woken early by the sounds of the tour buses passing by.  Instead, Fisherman’s Wharf is that neighborhood that you should be happy to visit and then pleased to leave.

You can’t miss San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill neighborhood because it’s topped by the famous Coit Tower which you can see from most points around the city.  But when you start walking in the direction of Coit Tower, you might find that you get a bit lost because the streets of this San Francisco neighborhood are a bit curvy, with a number of dead ends and a lot of confusion.  This is a mostly residential area, which is interesting because the famous landmarks also makes it a tourist destination, so the traffic here is crowded and there’s not much thing as parking – but if you get the chance to wander around, this is a beautiful part of the city to be lost in.

Telegraph Hill is generally located between San Francisco’s North Beach and the Embarcadero area which lines the bay.  The thing that you see sitting on top of it is Coit Tower, a famous landmark which offers a terrific 360 degree view of San Francisco.  This tower was constructed in honor of San Francisco’s fireman by their longtime historical fan, Lillie Coit.  (As a quirky note, she’s called the mascot to these fireman, having ridden along with them on their life-saving treks years ago).  Inexplicably, there is also a statue of Christopher Columbus up here; if anyone ever figures out why, they should let me know because I’ve always been curious.

To walk to Coit Tower, you can either take the Coit Tower steps (also known as The Filbert Steps) on the east side of Telegraph Hill or you can head east from the North Beach neighborhood, at approximately Union Street.  In either case, you’ll have to do quite a bit of uphill trekking, but the view that you’ll get from the top is worth the climb.  You can pay a few dollars and head all the way up Coit Tower itself or you can simply enjoy the scenery from the hill.  Even if you don’t head up to the tower’s top for the view, you should go inside and check out the murals that you’ll find along the circular walls there.  There are grassy areas up at Coit Tower and lots of peace so you can pack a snack, take a book and a camera and enjoy a few hours of absolutely relaxing in-city peace.

The thing that Telegraph Hill is famous for besides Coit Tower is the wild parrots that live there.  “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” were noticed years ago by a then-homeless man who had plenty of time to spend on Telegraph Hill.  They have since been commemorated with a book and a movie and sightings of them are sought after by San Francisco tourists who are curious to hear the calls of the wild birds.  I’ve only seen the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill once, but it was a beautiful experience; it just seems so rare to find a flock of parrots inside a bustling city.

Although Telegraph Hill really doesn’t seem like a bustling part of the city despite the fact that it is an active area.  There are a great number of trees here and many pockets of quiet.  It’s an urban retreat which is much less noticed than obvious choices such as Golden Gate Park.  The Filbert Steps which lead down from Coit Tower take you through the lush backyard gardens of the homes on this hill.  The streets, despite having tourist traffic, lack the pedestrians normally seen throughout the city.  It’s a place right in the heart of San Francisco that has a lot of small town peacefulness to it.  There’s not much to do in Telegraph Hill other than wander and enjoy the views but sometimes that is the best way to spend an afternoon in San Francisco.

Learn the history of Telegraph Hill here.