San Francisco - Alison Bing [85]
Streetcar The N heads from Downtown all the way to Ocean Beach, with stops at Duboce Park in the Lower Haight and at Carl and Cole Sts in Cole Valley.
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GRATEFUL DEAD HOUSE Map
710 Ashbury St; 6, 7, 33, 37, 71
Like most of the members of the Grateful Dead, this Victorian sports more than just a touch of gray – but back in the 1960s this was the candy-colored flophouse where Jerry Garcia and bandmates blew minds, amps and brain cells. The mom-and-pop flower shop up the block has done brisk business selling bouquets left on the steps here ever since Jerry’s membership in the Dead took a turn for the literal, but the new owners would be most Grateful if you paid your respects to the great man with a donation to a neighborhood nonprofit (see below).
HAIGHT ASHBURY FOOD PROGRAM Map
415-566-0366; www.thefoodprogram.org; 1525 Waller St; 6, 7, 33, 37, 43, 71, N
Flower children who arrived in the ‘60s to a free hot meal in the Haight are now returning the favor at Haight Ashbury Food Program. Hippie idealism meets 21st-century street smarts here, where everyone gets a healthy meal and a second chance through retraining. If you volunteer to serve a meal or contribute to job training programs, you’ll help them prove the Summer of Love isn’t over yet.
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MAKING QUEEN VICTORIA BLUSH
The city’s signature architectural style is usually called ‘Victorian,’ but demure Queen Victoria would surely blush to see the eccentric architecture perpetrated in her name in San Francisco. True Victorians tend to be drab, stately, earth-toned structures – nothing like San Franciscan ‘Painted Ladies’ with candy-jar color palates, lavish gingerbread woodworking dripping off steeply peaked roofs, and gilded stucco garlands swagging huge, look-at-me bay windows. Only a fraction of the older buildings you’ll see in SF were built during Victoria’s 1837–1901 reign, and the rest are cheerfully inauthentic San Franciscan takes on a vaguely Anglo-Continental style.
Of the 19th-century buildings that survived the 1906 fire and earthquake, many belong to other architectural categories.
Italianate (1860s–1880s): around Jackson Sq, you can still see original Italianate brick buildings with elevated false facades capped with jutting cornices, a straight roofline and graceful arches over tall windows.
Stick (1880s): in the Lower Haight and Pacific Heights, you’ll notice some squared-off Victorians built to fit side-by-side in narrow lots, usually with flat fronts and long, narrow windows.
Queen Anne (1880s–1910): Alamo Sq has several exuberant examples built in wood with fish-scale shingle decoration, rounded corner towers and decorative bands to lift the eye skyward.
Edwardian (1901–1914): most of the ‘Victorians’ you’ll see in San Francisco are actually from the post-fire Edwardian era, and Art Nouveau, Asian-inspired, and Arts and Crafts details are the giveaway. You’ll notice the stained-glass windows and false gables in homes in the inner Richmond and Castro.
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LOWER HAIGHT
Skateboards are the preferred method of transportation on the downhill slide from the Upper to Lower Haight, though it’s not for the faint of heart – but then the same could be said for the Lower Haight in general. The high density of bars and medicinal marijuana clubs tends to define the neighborhood scene, though there are some quality cheap eats in the area and some amazing Victorians on Laussat Alley, including a Rasta house painted red, gold and green. When value, a central location and down-to-earth attitude counts, head to the Lower Haight for food, drink and homeboy hoodies at Upper Playground.
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COLE VALLEY
A motley collection of young professionals and their families reside in this area, united by a common tax bracket, a shared passion for espresso drinks and not much else. Hard to believe this staid, upwardly mobile neighborhood was the mid-’60s haunt of Hunter S Thompson and the Hells Angels who crashed his parties. These days most of the excitement in Cole Valley