San Francisco - Alison Bing [32]
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THE LAND
Think of San Francisco as the thumbnail of a 30-mile-long peninsula that sticks up like a thumb into the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay, trying to hitch a ride off continental US. But more than its sparkling stretches of waterfront, the city’s pride and worth-the-climb joy are its hills. The most spectacular panoramas are atop Nob and Russian Hills, rising above Downtown just a few blocks from Union Square and the Financial District to offer sweeping views of the Pacific, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the Downtown skyline and across the bay to Berkeley and Oakland. Telegraph Hill sprouts up between North Beach and the bay, adding a touch of urban wilderness to panoramic views, with stairway gardens and wild parrots. Potrero Hill rises up from the flatlands of SoMa to overlook the industrial waterfront of China Basin and the Downtown skyline. Pacific Heights offers glimpses of the Presidio and Golden Gate Bridge between tony mansions and well-kept parks. Twin Peaks shelters the Castro and Mission from the foggy avenues to the west, while Buena Vista Park gives a bird’s-eye view of Victorians in the Castro and the Haight.
For less arduous walks, try wandering close to the water, west of the Haight or SoMa. The waterfront is flat in the Marina, along the Embarcadero, and all the way down through Hunter’s Point; much of the bay front is formed by landfill. SoMa and the Mission District are also mostly flat, as are the Sunset and Richmond Districts, and these flatlands are mostly reclaimed areas with filled-in streams, swamps and flattened sand dunes. There is a downside to these easygoing, low-slung areas: they’re particularly vulnerable during earthquakes, when the soft ground underneath makes streets buckle and houses shift off their foundations. Sure makes a little huffing and puffing up bedrock seem worthwhile.
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GREEN SAN FRANCISCO
In a place surrounded by so much natural beauty, environmentalism comes easily. This is one town where you can eat, sleep and cavort using sustainable means; the GreenDex in the index lists the best options in all of these categories and more. The US may be a two-party system, but in San Francisco the Green Party is a power player, introducing innovative emissions-reductions and municipal power measures. San Franciscans actually use the public transportation system, and some use green-minded car-sharing programs in lieu of owning a vehicle (Click here). San Franciscans have effectively defended parks and green spaces against development schemes for more than a century (see the boxed text), and even reclaimed acres of military bases and industrial sites as green space. The city already has one of California’s most successful curbside recycling programs, and as of 2010, mandates compost waste for reuse. Creative reuse has been big here ever since Beat artists starting turning junk into collages and assemblages in the ’50s, and you too can get in on the artistic recycling action at SCRAP Click here.
One area of continued environmental concern is the San Francisco Bay, which is part of the West Coast’s largest estuary and has become increasingly fragile in recent years. Much of the city’s storm-water runoff goes directly into the bay, so you’ll notice stenciled warnings on city sidewalks prohibiting the pouring of pollutants down the gutter. But shipping, recreational boating, fishing and bayside farming and industry have also taken their toll on the shallow bay and the wetlands that line it. Salmon are among the first fish to be affected by changes in water quality, and in 2008 the prized Pacific chinook salmon, once abundant in the Sacramento River and previously found running through the bay, were suddenly unable