Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History on the Move
New visitors might lay eyes multiple times on the rumbling streetcars on
the F line, which goes on a round-trip journey from Fisherman's Wharf to
the Ferry Building via the Embarcadero and then heads straight down
Market Street to the Castro. But most of them don't register what they're
seeing: streetcars from the early and mid-20th century. A hard-working
nonprofit group helps Muni restore and maintain antique streetcars from
around the world, and if you take the F, you'll board one of the fleet. A
few hail originally from here in town, but most come from a wide variety
of cities, from Blackpool, England, to Melbourne, Australia, to Brooklyn.
There's usually a sign in the middle of the car that explains the particular
pedigree of the one you've boarded. I'm not particularly a train spotter,
but I find it thrilling to be able to experience an everyday commute that
is pretty much exactly the way my forefathers did.
At the foot of Market Street, across from the Ferry Building and next to
a streetcar stop (most tourists overlook it, too), the
San Francisco
Railway Museum
5
(77 Steuart St.;
%
415/975-1948; www.streetcar.org;
free admission; Wed-Sun 10am-6pm)
is a well-funded one-room history
exhibition of the city's streetcars and cable cars. Don't neglect the video
screens, where you can watch generously timed movies of streetcar rides
down Market Street that were filmed just days before the '06 quake—it's
a rare glimpse at what the city looked like in its true heyday.
docents are volunteers and sometimes don't show up. If the fact that the building
is atop one of the city's highest points daunts you, remember that the California
Street cable car goes right past it, so you can bypass an exhausting hike up its hill.
Visitors have a hard time keeping the city's various hills straight. Here's a
helper: Telegraph Hill, east of North Beach, is signified by the 210-foot-tall
Coit
Tower
55
($4.50 13-64, $3.50 seniors 65 and over, $2 kids 6-12; cash only),
opened in 1933. There are lots of apocryphal tales about the tower's design, but
the only one that's certifiable is that it was created from a bequeath by a wealthy
woman, Lillie Hitchcock Coit. Based on the suggestive design of the tower and
on the fact that she hung out with firemen in her free time, her virtue has been
questioned, but it's no surprise that locals have dirty minds. She was, in reality,
probably just a liberated gal. Inside, you'll find one of the city's most charactered
souvenir shops, a cramped clutter of ticky-tacky knickknacks. At a desk inside it,
you can buy tickets for an elevator that takes you most of the way up to the top,
where you'll climb another 37 steps to the open-air crown ringed with 24 person-
wide observation windows (you may get rained on, but you won't feel like you can
fall out). Part of the pleasure is watching other tourists laboring up the hill to get
where you now are. You can technically enjoy much of what the tower has to offer
without paying anything. There's still an excellent view from the base in what's
called Pioneer Park, and a majority of the tower's most discussed aspects, its Social
