San Francisco - Alison Bing [83]
CASTRO THEATRE Map
415-621-6120; www.thecastrotheatre.com; 429 Castro St; 24, 33, Castro St
The city’s grandest cinema opened in 1922. The Spanish-Moorish-ish exterior yields to a mishmash of styles inside, from Italianate to Oriental. Ask nicely and staff will let you peak inside without buying a ticket. For the best images of the blinking blue-and-pink lights, shoot from across the street. For programming information, Click here.
HARVEY MILK PLAZA Map
Market & Castro Sts; 24, 33, F, Castro St
The first thing you’ll notice as you emerge from the Castro St Muni station is a huge, irrepressibly cheerful rainbow flag. Gay kids too young for the bars sit on the wall beneath; look closer and you’ll notice a plaque honoring the man whose lasting legacy to the Castro is civic pride and political clout. The ugly plaza may soon be redesigned to give Harvey more of a starring role.
CORONA HEIGHTS PARK Map
bounded by 16th St & Roosevelt Way; 24, 37, F, Castro St
Urban hikers scramble up the rocky, 520ft summit of Corona Heights (aka Museum Hill or Red Rocks) for jaw-dropping eastward 180-degree views. We love it on warm, fogless nights, when the city unfurls below in a carpet of light. Take tiny Beaver St uphill to the steps through the bushes, then cut right of the tennis courts and up the trail. For an easier hike, enter via the Roosevelt Way side.
Near the summit is the family-ready Randall Junior Museum ( 415-554-9600; www.randallmuseum.org; admission free; 10am-5pm Tue-Sat; ), with live-animal exhibits and hands-on workshops (check the web); downstairs is the Golden Gate Model Railroad Club ( 415-346-3303; www.ggmrc.org; 10am-4pm Sat; ), an elaborate collection of vintage Lionel trains.
NOBBY CLARKE MANSION
250 Douglass St, at Caselli Ave; 24, 33, F, Castro St
Built in 1892 by a wealthy attorney who recognized the weather was sunnier in this part of town than atop fashionable Nob Hill, this gorgeous turreted mansion went uninhabited after its construction: Snob Hill socialites dubbed the house ‘Nobby Clarke’s Folly,’ and his wife refused to move in. It served briefly as a hospital; now it’s an apartment building. Spot the disco ball in the top-turret window and you’ll definitely know that you’re not on Nob Hill.
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SF’S COOLEST EPHEMERAL SIGHT
If you’re in the Castro or Noe Valley on a summer afternoon when the fog starts rolling over Twin Peaks, look up at Sutro Tower, that enormous Erector Set–like radio tower atop the peaks. As the clouds ascend its base and reach the cross-pieces near the top, the tower magically transforms into a two-masted schooner sailing across a sea of fog. And then it vanishes as fast as it appeared, like a Wagnerian ghost ship. Gorgeous.
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THE HAIGHT
Drinking; Eating; Shopping; Sleeping
Was it the fall of 1966 or the winter of ’67? As the San Francisco saying goes, if you can remember the Summer of Love, man, you probably weren’t here. The fog was laced with Nag Champa incense and burning draft cards, entire days were spent contemplating Day-Glo posters advertising psychedelic rock at the Fillmore, and on the Haight end of Golden Gate Park, Hippie Hill reverberated with the vibrations of naked Beat poets blowing conch shells and some Grateful Dead song that remained the same for decades.
Flashbacks are a given in the Haight, which still has its swinging ’60s tendencies. Only a very mysterious, very local illness could explain the number of neighborhood medical marijuana clubs, and tie-dyes and ideals have never entirely gone out of fashion here, hence the Bound Together Anarchist Book Collective, the cooperative indie Red Vic Movie House, and the Haight Ashbury Food Program serving anyone in need with hot meals and job training. Some ’60s memories are better left behind: habits were kicked in the neighborhood’s many rehabs, and many an intimate itch has been mercifully treated gratis at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. To relive the highlights of the era, a short walk Click here will take you past the former flophouses