San Francisco Voice

San Francisco is a city which leaves its impressions upon people.  In honor of that, writers and artists, comedians and actors, and visitors from across the globe have made mention of San Francisco in print and in voice.  Quotes about San Francisco vary as much as the people who make up this city.  Each morning, San Fran Voice gives you one to think about as you wander through the city streets, letting it leave its mark on you. Check the archives for others.Today’s San Francisco quote is … from an Epinions.com piece on the city and is about the neighborhoods …read more

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There is a funny thing about neighborhoods in San Francisco.  On the one hand, they are very distinct from one another.  North Beach and Chinatown lie side by side but you can tell almost exactly when you’ve crossed from one to the other.  And even the new-to-SF can tell the subtle differences between a place like commercial North Beach and its more residential neighbor, Telegraph Hill.  But then there are all of these little pockets and smaller divisions within neighborhoods that kind of blend together and make it hard to tell what’s what and where is where.
It’s kind of like …read more

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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 …read more

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If asked to name the main street in San Francisco, a number of people would offer the automatic reply that it’s Market Street.  This isn’t entirely true but that’s only because San Francisco is a city filled with such distinct neighborhoods that there are multiple “main streets” in different sections of town.  Insofar as there can be a street that everyone kind of ends up at on a regular basis, Market Street is that street.
That Market is a main street is due in large part to the fact that it is the hub of much of the city’s transportation.  The …read more

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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 …read more

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Before I moved to San Francisco, my brother lived here in a neighborhood that was loosely defined as Lower Nob Hill which turned out to just be a pretty name for the edges of the Tenderloin neighborhood.  He told me stories about wandering a little bit too far from those edges, into the heart of the Tenderloin, and encountering shady activity that he just didn’t see throughout the rest of San Francisco.  But at the same time, he loved his neighborhood.  And now that I live here and have hung out regularly with friends who take advantage of the relatively cheap …read more

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I’m not sure where I heard it, but I’ve been told that San Francisco’s Chinatown is the largest Chinatown in the world (outside of Asia).  I’m not sure if that means geographically or in terms of numbers of residents or businesses in the area, but whichever one of these things it means, I definitely believe that it’s probably true.  Extending for many more blocks than the average-sized neighborhood in San Francisco, Chinatown is jam packed with businesses and restaurants that cater to the tastes of both tourists and the people who live in the neighborhood.  From the dim sum spots …read more

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San Francisco is a city which is very neighborhood-oriented.  People identify with the neighborhoods in which they live and work, selecting from a range of quite different choices to find a locale which suits their personal styles.  From the Mission to the Marina, from North Beach to the Tenderloin, from the Castro to the Haight, from the Financial District to the SoMa …  people in San Francisco hear the names of certain neighborhoods and either smile or cringe with recognition.
San Fran Voice is working to bring you inside information on the different neighborhoods of San Francisco and what you will find there.  …read more

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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 …read more

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I don’t actually know how it is possible that I managed to get this far along in my profile posts of San Francisco’s neighborhoods without getting around to mentioning The Castro.  It is the first neighborhood in San Francisco where I got out to enjoy the nightlife and it is one of my favorite neighborhoods in the city, for both day and night activity.  Although, now that I think of it, maybe it makes sense that I missed mentioning The Castro.  Although it’s an area I love, it’s not one that I get up to all that often, and so …read more

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