Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
16
you'll be the only outsider—unlike North Beach's elusive Italians, Chinese people
really do come here on a daily basis. The cable car goes down Powell, a block west
of Chinatown, although the neighborhood changes so abruptly that there's little
sign of the area from the rails just one block away. Just as abruptly, Chinatown
turns into North Beach around Pacific Street.
THE FINANCIAL DISTRICT
Best for: Impressive architecture, business-hours hubbub
What you won't find: Evening street life
The area at the eastern end of Market Street (sometimes known as Lower Market),
where the substantial stone buildings dominate, is the Financial District, also
called Downtown. Historically, this was the power center of town, and it's still
where fine banking halls and classic stone skyscrapers rule. Interestingly, this part
of the city has changed the most over the past generation; a horrible elevated high-
way used to run along the waterfront, separating it from town with a ribbon of
asphalt and grime. The quake of 1989 took care of that, and now, the Ferry
Building, a high-quality food mall at the foot of Market, is considered a model of
urban renewal. Take a stroll through the streets of the Financial District, and, dur-
ing business hours, duck into the banking halls—some of them are really spectac-
ular specimens of 20th-century interior design and architecture.
SOUTH OF MARKET (SOMA)
Best for: Galleries, museums, sleaze bars
What you won't find: Parks, shopping
When people call SoMa “up and coming,” which they frequently do these days,
what they really mean is it's no longer a place you're likely to get shot. It'll be a
long time before SoMa is considered a true part of the city equal to the north-of-
Market blocks. For now, it's a place where old warehouses are slowly being con-
verted to other uses. So it's mostly where you'll find big-ticket art museums that
came about from massive redevelopment projects (the Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), as well as a variety of pubs, gal-
leries, and the city's sleaziest gay leather bars. Walking more than a block or two
off Market Street is not currently recommended, and that's doubly true for
around 6th Street, which is the closest the city has to a pit of despair. However,
the area of SoMa east of 3rd Street is the site of some of the city's biggest recent
construction projects; it's only a matter of time before the rest of the neighbor-
hood regains cachet as a place where you'll want to kick back.
THE TENDERLOIN
Best for: Inexpensive places to eat, nightclubs
What you won't find: High-quality hotels
SoMa's 6th Street is a dreadful mire of vagrants, and it connects to the north with
Taylor Street, one of the worst drags in the Tenderloin. This is the high-crime part
of town where the flophouses are located. As you walk through its streets, you'll
find crowds of people standing idly in the streets, yelling obscenities at each other
or at imaginary friends. Things don't get much better until you go north of Post
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