San Francisco - Alison Bing [1]
COSTS & MONEY
INTERNET RESOURCES
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Sherpas probably won’t be necessary, but you should still come prepared for high adventure in the hills of San Francisco. With 43 hills stretching the imagination and the calf muscles, this town will leave you breathless – keep a few bucks handy for the cable car. Otherwise, you don’t need all that much cash to have a good time here: there are free events, street fairs, concerts and parades throughout the year, and plenty of cheap eats and boutique bargains to go around. But if you’re here to splurge, San Francisco’s top-notch dining establishments, art galleries and hotel-top bars will lighten your load as surely as Miss Piggot and her thieving barmaids did to their customers nightly during the Gold Rush – only these days, you’re less likely to wake up on a ship bound for Argentina with a skipper barking at you to swab the decks.
Red velvet ropes and black-tie dress aren’t San Francisco’s style: entry to SF’s hottest restaurants, clubs and events is almost always open to all on a first-come, first-served basis, though a feather boa may come in handy. You’ll want to reserve ahead online, especially in summer, for film festivals and theater, or dinner in the city’s trendiest restaurants. With so much to do, the challenge is not overbooking; this is one city where spontaneity is well rewarded.
WHEN TO GO
Little-known fact: the Summer of Love actually kicked off here in January of 1967, and once you’ve spent a chilly summer’s day in San Francisco you’ll understand how the hippies might’ve gotten confused even without the help of hallucinogens. Entire June days are spent shivering in a fog bank, with temperatures hovering around 55°F. Determined picnickers huddle over their barbecue grills in Golden Gate Park, while just across the bay, tanned Berkeley locals are rocking their Birkenstocks without socks. It would hardly seem fair, except for the many street fairs and nonstop parades that make San Francisco in summer the place to be, and worth the high-season hotel rates.
Early fall is the best of all possible worlds in San Francisco, when summer really arrives (never mind the calendar), neighborhood street fairs are still in full swing, California’s seasonal cuisine is at its flavor-bursting best and hotel rates unaccountably drop. By October, Wine Country cools off enough at night to appreciate a peppery zinfandel and a Calistoga mud bath. Most of the year the consistent San Francisco forecast makes easy money for local meteorologists: a high of about 55°F to 70°F during the day, with fog burning off in the morning and rolling back into town in the late afternoon. Tote a sweater or coat at all times, or you’ll be forced to commit the ultimate San Francisco fashion crime and sheepishly sport one of those $12 fleece pullovers with the Golden Gate Bridge embroidered on it.
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FESTIVALS & EVENTS
Professional paraders, raging exhibitionists and homecoming queens of all kinds won’t want to miss the glut of annual street fairs that kicks off with Pride month (known elsewhere as June) and ends with the gleeful partying skeletons of Día de los Muertos in November. However, if you must come in the rainier, chillier months from December through to March, don’t despair, because there’s still plenty to celebrate, both indoors and out: dance-along Nutcracker Suites, tiny-tot kung-fu classes marching in adorably inept formation in the Lunar New Year parades, throngs rocking Astroturf jackets at public art gallery openings, and the improbable incessant blooming of Golden Gate Park. Not-to-be-missed events are listed below.
January
DINE ABOUT TOWN
www.sfdineabouttown.com
Over 100 of San Francisco’s best restaurants offer set-price lunch and dinner specials with local seasonal treats, including Dungeness crab cakes galore.
February
INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL
415-820-3907; www.sfindie.com
Cinephiles binge on over 100 indie films, documentaries, animated films and short films over two weeks in early February.
NOISE POP
www.noisepop.com
Winter