Oh man. Sounds really tempting.
I’ll be in SF w/ sup ~March 20 for four days. Both of us are first timers, so we’ll probably be doing mostly touristy things (no serious biking this time unless rental cruisers count). What’s a good neighborhood to AirBnb in? What are some must-see/do things? She likes art and I like food and we like nature.
I can recommend the eastern part of the Mission near 24th street (my neighborhood). Plenty of food and art (a few galleries and several painted up alleys and other murals), easy to get downtown; hike up Bernal Hill. Go across the bridge to the Headlands somehow, rental hybrid will get you there fine, there’s a bus that goes there on the weekend too.
Art?
de Young
SF MOMA is closed through May but might have an exhibit somewhere.
I like OMCA, but it’s very focused on California art.
Cantor Arts Center at Stanford
Nature
Muir Woods
Big Basin down towards Santa Cruz
Redwood Regional Park in the East bay
Tilden is cool
Get down the coast, check out some beaches.
Have high tea at Lovejoy’s (make a reservation way in advance)
Iunno, there’s a million things to do.
Stay way from Fisherman’s Wharf/Ghiardelli Square. That’s bullshit.
Farmers Market at the Ferry Building on Sunday is badass and kinda touristy.
Ferry building is kinda cool in any case. The Chinese tea shop there is awesome. Lots of other nice stuff, too.
If you have four days and are staying in SF, I’d probably recommend keeping the trip limited to SF, and parts of the East Bay that are accessible by BART (lots of it). I wouldn’t bother trying too hard to get down the peninsula or to Marin unless you already have plans to do something else there, since you’ll probably end up driving and will spend a lot of aggravating time navigating one of the worst cities in country for driving.
But hopefully you won’t be driving?
I’d try to stay somewhere near BART, or at least the Muni light rail stations. The Mission would be a fun place to stay. Lots of fantastic affordable restaurants and also lots of (mostly shitty and bland) expensive restaurants, depending on what you’re into. There are great bars out there and it will be easy to get Bay Area friends to come to hang out with you. The Castro would also be nice, is close to the Mission but has the added benefits of cleanliness, gayness and a lower chance of getting your car broken into, if you drive into town.
I work in SOMA and commute through downtown and would definitely advise you to not stay in either of those neighborhoods, or spend any significant amount of time in them.
Given that you’re only here for a few days, I’d prioritize being close to BART and Muni rail, since those are by far the fastest way to get around the parts of town where they run underground.
There are lots of other great areas of town to live in, but they probably wouldn’t be as fun to stay on vacation. I live out in the Richmond, where I grew up, and it’s relatively quiet, foggy and mellow. There’s good food and lots of laid-back neighborhood stuff to do, but transit access is limited to buses. They’re reliable, but can be slow and subject to traffic delays, and it’s a hard sell getting your East Bay friends out here. The De Young museum is in Golden Gate Park, which can be a fun place to walk around or maybe rent bikes. If you want some nature in San Francisco, you could walk around GGP, then take the 29 bus down to Baker Beach, get some cool bridge views, see some naked old dudes and then hike around the Presidio, which is a pretty large former military base that’s now a National Park. Lots of mellow hiking, cool old military housing and views of the ocean and the bridge.
I like the Richmond because I can go to bars and not hear dudes in matching company t-shirts and backpacks talk about IPOs and Series B funding. Which is nice. It’s also nice to be somewhat removed from some of the starkest realities of gentrification, which are sort of inescapable in the Mission. But that’s kind of a separate thing altogether.
The Richmond, the Sunset, Ingleside, Excelsior are all cool neighborhoods that I love, but probably wouldn’t be as fun to stay in unless you found some super cool spot or something. This is true of lots of areas of the city, really.
Heath’s recommendations to avoid Fisherman’s Wharf and check out the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market are legit. I’d also (cautiously) recommend checking out Chinatown, with the caveat that most of the tourist-targeted shit there is horrible. I just went to see some photos showing at a clothing store on Commercial St. featuring photographers active in Chinatown from the 40’s to the present, which was good and free. http://sf.funcheap.com/chinatown-7-photographers/
The exhibition is small, but the gallery is a block from where my grandmother was raised and Commercial St is a cool alleyway with lots of history, so it could be a jumping-off point for a walk around Chinatown and North Beach. Both of which are tourist traps in some ways but do have interesting and legitimate history and are worth walking around and exploring.
So yeah, probably try to find a place to stay in the Mission. Somewhere walkable to 16th and Mission or 24th and Mission BART stations. When you look at a map, it’s easy to underestimate relative proximity of things, since the city is so small, but getting around can be an asspain due to topography and a pubic transit system that can take more than 4 days to get the hang of. Being within walking distance of the things you want to do is super nice and I’d probably prioritize that.
So many cool places out in the Richmond/Sunset, but damn it’s hard to get out there.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area
Awesome, thanks for the recs dudes. We’ll take a look.
Seconding rental hybrids, you can (or once could) rent decent ones from one of the shops up on Stanyan near the head of Golden Gate Park. It might not be worth doing for the entire trip, but maybe for a day, depending on how bikey your partner is. It’s easy to ride around GGP, or go over to the Presidio, and from there down to the Golden Gate Bridge (check timings for bike access). Going over the bridge is honestly pretty rad.
The East Bay parks are pretty awesome, but they are hard to get to without a car or a bike + determination. If you wanted to do some kinda strenuous rental hybrid riding, you could BART from the Mission out to Orinda, and then ride Wildcat or Canyon back up into the parks, climbing up to Redwood or Tilden. Both have tons of good hiking trails. From those parks it’s a snappy descent to any BART station in central Berkeley / Oakland. It would take most of a day, but you’d see some of the East Bay’s prettiest nature spots.
Supgirl and I had a pretty good time in SF. What a fun city. We ended up staying in SF the whole time, mostly taking our time and walking everywhere. It ended up raining half the time we were there but we weren’t mad about it. 4 days wasn’t nearly enough time to see & do everything we wanted to.
I’ll be back in May for a wedding - hoping to squeeze in some bike time. Anyone in SF have a floor I can crash on for the weekend of May 7??
Does Oakland count?
oakland might be a bit tough logistically… thanks tho!
you can have my entire place that weekend afaik. I’ll be out of town for work delivering babies and stuff i think…
but again in oakland, but right next to a bart station (Macarthur)
Tarck, I just moved to Oakland from DC and am looking for riding buddies. I brought only my road bike with me, though a MTB purchase is imminent. Looking for weekend riding buddies with a penchant for shenanigans.
About me: late 30s dad-to-be; pretty damn slow (for now).
Nobody rides anymore.
I’ll ride with u. I’m in SF; am late 30s toddler-dad, not at all fast. Down to ride in the east bay or wherever. Usually ride alone, once got in trouble with my wife for going on a (organized) ride solo evn after my friend cancelled! so riding buddy would be conducive to my actually riding bike.
Pinehurst Road.
Don’t die.
Sweet! I’m available this weekend if that works. Pinehurst Road sounds good to me. That said, I can come out to SF, Marin or points north. Did a ride in Healdsburg last weekend that was just incredible.
I’ll loan you a mountain bike if it means you get to ride dirt
That is very generous of you, thanks! I’m dying to hit the trails out here.
I’m down for Saturday late morning-lunchtime this weekend, happy to hit Pinehurst. Maybe do Tunnel-Skyline-Redwood-Pinehurst and then back?