DISTRICTS
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Bernal Hill, Photo: Sandy Kim
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San Francisco is an incredibly small city—49 square miles, to be exact. On a 15-minute walk in the right direction you can cross about five neighborhoods. Here are the main ones of interest.
The Mission
A cool-kid haven with serious gentrification bleeding from the center outward, the Mission is probably the neighborhood that most of you readers will find comfort in. Highlights include sunnier weather, a plethora of dive bars, thrift stores, semi-affordable housing, venues, art galleries, and the epicenter of it all—Dolores Park.
The Tenderloin
Dave Chappelle was right when he said, “There is nothing tender about the Tenderloin.” There are many tales of where the name derives from, but the one we like best is that the beat cops who worked the Tenderloin back in the day would get so many bribes on a shift that they could afford to eat tenderloin. The bums, crackheads, junkies, tranny hookers, and other sordid characters of the night have nested themselves all over this part of town. Between the dope deals, tranjobs, and crack smoke, there are some gems of both food and drink to be had round the shady streets of the Tenderloin.
Western Addition
The Western Addition is a comfy, mostly residential area, centrally located with its main drag running down Divisadero, which features some cool little bars and good food. The history of this neighborhood is fucked up because the city planner’s office displaced a large number of Japanese and African Americans from this area during and after WWII.
Chinatown and North Beach
Chinatown and North Beach are stacked right on top of each other. North Beach is a bit of a tourist trap because it’s a thruway to the whole Fisherman’s Wharf/Pier 31/Alcatraz clusterfuck. Greasy guidos will bait you into their restaurants by speaking Italian, but don’t be fooled, it’s a well-known fact that the worst Italian food in SF comes from North Beach. Chinatown, on the other hand, is just like every other Chinatown with the exception that restaurants here score a lot lower on health-code inspections than do those in other cities. There is great Chinese here, but don’t think you can walk into any old place and not get typhoid from your wonton soup.
Richmond, Golden Gate Park, and Sunset
The Richmond and Sunset districts should really be called “Chinatown(s) West.” There are large Asian populations on both sides of the park because of the slightly reduced cost of living and impulses to overcrowd buses that stink to high heaven of cabbage. Hidden between these two mammoth districts is the biggest and best park in the US: Golden Gate Park. It’s larger than Central Park and you could fill a whole week trying to see it all.
 Anonymous, on Nov 21, 2009 wrote:
west of WHAT?! ’chinatown west’ my azz its the avenues DUMMY... damn true retards | | Anonymous, on Nov 21, 2009 wrote:
all that said dope photo of BH niiiicce. later retards, bamboo ’from tha vis’ p.s. fuck you dumbass muthafuckasss haha | | Anonymous, on Nov 21, 2009 wrote:
Yo vice, whoever reads your garbage and takes it seriously is retarded. why is all your shit so off in an effort to come across as if you know what you talking about???? | | Anonymous, on Nov 21, 2009 wrote:
looks like you only ’researched’ areas you ain’t scared of. damn you missed hella ’districts’ too! maybe the rest are too ’banal’ to yall huh? | | Anonymous, on Nov 21, 2009 wrote:
how the f*** you gonna put soma dogpatch hp together? haha what bitch wrote this? this reads like gaivn’s trust fund wet dream tryin to publish this in a pamplet for all the tourists or some sh*T haha | | Anonymous, on Nov 21, 2009 wrote:
this shit is wack and wont let you post | | Anonymous, on Nov 21, 2009 wrote:
??????????? | |
| ALL CITY, on Nov 21, 2009 wrote:
ok I’m high and somehow I clicked onto here googling "dave chappelle" and "SF" and I was curious about what nin ching bak gwai thinks of my city ? this shit is funny as a muthafucka to someone raised here you know? I mean you serious??????????? | | |
| ALL CITY, on Nov 21, 2009 wrote:
////////////????? | | Anonymous, on Nov 12, 2009 wrote:
If you want to know why SF sucks ass, then read a few of these miserable, self-entitled sods’comments below. | | Anonymous, on Nov 11, 2009 wrote:
article fail. Fact check numb nuts. and way to boil down whole neighborhoods into 2 or 3 sentence blurbs. Did you just move to SF from some shitty little town in the midwest where no one really "got you?" Seems like it! | | Anonymous, on Nov 11, 2009 wrote:
I wish all the people who moved here from the East Coast would go home, so the rents can go back to normal... Oh yeah, SF doesn’t want to be like NY. In fact, I wish all these people who call themselves foodies would go fuck themselves. | | Anonymous, on Sep 20, 2009 wrote:
Jaw-droppingly ignorant. What are the criteria? If you care even a mite about architecture, for instance, this clown has just steered you away from the neighborhoods with some of the richest examples( e.g. the financial district, Nob Hill). North Beach is no good because there are too many tourists there? The Mission is too hip? Utterly dim-witted: you have to avoid neighborhoods at the first sign that others like them? Both of those neighborhoods are old, have a rich history, have plenty of little hidden roosts and places waiting to be discovered if you display a little curiosity. I entertain serious doubts that whoever wrote this has lived here for more than a year. N.Y. can afford to play the pointless game, "What’s the hot new neighborhood?" because it’s huge and has hundreds of distinct precincts. People who have lived in S.F. for any length of time have no interest in paying heed to buzz, we can’t afford to pretend to be uninterested in a neighborhood because it was ’hip’ last year, thankfully. | | Anonymous, on Sep 20, 2009 wrote:
Most of this is strictly dispensible, silly. I get the joke, however, about the Western Addition- the writer’s trying to lure the unsuspecting into being murdered, a sort of punishment for taking this nonsense at face value. | | Anonymous, on Sep 10, 2009 wrote:
ha ha you nailed it. sf is so freakin’ easy, there ain’t much there there. | |
| Grant, on Sep 9, 2009 wrote:
Who gives a fuck who’s a hipster and who’s a yuppie? Maybe in LA there are still scenes or whatever but I’m so tired of labeling. Not trying to sound too cool for school, but labeling is for asshats, plain and simple. There should be two labels. Good or bad. That’s all that matters. | | Anonymous, on Sep 8, 2009 wrote:
c’mon people... don’t put the words yuppie and hipster together. you know it makes no sense. there was a wave of authentic artists and musicians in the city for a while that you could call hipsters if you were viewing from a distance. i knew a lot of them, the scene wasn’t that big. they weren’t all privileged. old-school yuppies (suit and tie) have given way to a whole different breed of yuppie. these yuppies are younger. they work for tech bullshit. they listen to that shitbag kanye west and overhyped MGMT. they borrow heavily from that mainstream style that basically stole the soul of what you would call the hipster scene. that’s who lives in the mission now. Tech-employed Bro’s that really really want to be hip. so they sit in ’DP’ as they call it now (fucking pricks, no one ever called it that) and wear bandanas and shit. those are the fucking assholes that ruined the city. not the economically poor artists before them, however farty their art may have been. | | Anonymous, on Aug 28, 2009 wrote:
WRONG DUMBASS!! the mission and every other cool place in frisco has been taken over by yuppie HIPSTERS!! GENTRIFUCKATION!
if you want some fun go to the eastbay | | Anonymous, on Aug 27, 2009 wrote:
The Mission is ’aight but it’s slowly being stolen by bro’s & ho’s just like it was stolen from low income Mexicans by privileged hipsters. The Tenderloin is where it’sat. | | Anonymous, on Aug 24, 2009 wrote:
The Mission is so played out. When this guide’s author says that most of Vice’s readers will find that neighborhood most comfortable, it’s somewhat of an insult. | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2009 wrote:
How did the Marina only get shitted on with one sentence? | | Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2009 wrote:
this is the worst writing ever... oh wait why do I bother? | | Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote:
This is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever read. | | Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote:
Anyone who says North Beach has the worst italian food in SF obviously hasn’t been to golden boy pizza, which is amazing. | | Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote:
golden gate park is beaauttifull...it makes central park look like a dump | | Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote:
when I went to fishermans warf the man in the bushes jumped out and scared me! it was awesome. if you have been to SF then you will definitely know what I am talking about. hes a legend. | | Anonymous, on Aug 10, 2009 wrote:
Haight used to be the best place in San Fran but now its so fake and touristy | | |
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