Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
8
Attention,
Shoppers!
Fill your bags without emptying your wallet
S
AN FRANCISCO IS NOT REALLY KNOWN AS A PLACE FOR MAJOR SHOPPING
deals. Food? It's top of its class. World-renowned postcard views? Check.
Computers? Definitely. But very few renowned clothing labels, for example, origi-
nate here. Many of the people who live and work in San Francisco are doing quite
well, thank you very much, and finding a deal is not the competitive sport it can
be in New York or Los Angeles.
Once you accept that it's not a discount wonderland, it's easier to have a good
time with the simple sport of finding stuff you like. This is a place where shop-
pers will be rewarded by ducking into countless boutiques spread around town.
The major names are located around Union Square, but fashion-forward types
will be rewarded by investigating the off-the-beaten path neighborhoods (see
“The Main Drags,” p. 182) for little stores worth a gander.
Most stores open at 9am (10am if they're small), and they close at around
6pm. Around Union Square, the hours are likely to be more extended, and stores
tend to close around 9pm. Most shops, if they do close one day a week, will do it
on a day or two, Monday through Wednesday, so that they can stay open on
Sunday. On all goods, with the exception of most edible grocery-store items,
7.5% sales tax is charged.
DEPARTMENT STORES
At the foot of Powell Street at Market Street, the brass-and-marble mega-mall
Westfield San Francisco Centre
555
(www.westfield.com/sanfrancisco)
is the
fallback shopping attraction for nearly every day-trip visitor to the area. The space
is gorgeous—check out the unusual curved escalators that wind in front of the
five-story Nordstrom, and on the other end of the mall, a 100-foot glass-and-steel
dome has been a city landmark since 1908, when it was first built. Along with the
usual well-groomed suspects (Victoria's Secret, Kenneth Cole, Club Monaco,
Banana Republic, Bloomingdale's, and so on), there's a mighty Borders bookstore
and a state-of-the-art multiplex to fill out those many rainy afternoons.
You're not likely to have a pressing need for most of the things on sale at the
luxury retailer
Gump's
5
(135 Post St., btw. Kearny and Grant;
%
800/766-7628;
www.gumps.com);
its stock in trade is housewares and wedding gifts, mostly. But
it's also a San Francisco institution—has been since 1861—and there's only this
one store. Any list of the great shopping destinations in town would be lacking
without it. Prices are stratospheric across the board; the most affordable things will
probably be stuff you don't need, like $50 corkscrews. But that fact doesn't dimin-
ish the window-shopping fun of a stroll through its floors. Don't miss the giant
carved gilt-wood Buddha on the first floor; the store swears it's the largest of its
kind outside a museum. Even if it's not, it certainly sets the rarified and exotic tone.
