Groom's Guide to San Francisco

You’re a relative or friend of mine, and you’ve decided to come some umpteen thousands of miles to my wedding. I’m honored! If your personal budget is at all like mine, the cost of your ticket plus those lovely “just married” mudflaps you’ve got in your suitcase probably don’t have you enthusiastic about blowing $14.95 on the fish and chips basket at Fisherman’s Wharf (drink not included).

This guide is intended to help you have fun, see interesting and special stuff, save money, and pretend that you know the town when friends of yours from work fly here for their vacations to the West’s biggest tourist trap.

First, some cost-saving tips:

1. We have three airports in the Bay Area, all of which are sort of close to a rail station. Go to orbitz.com and run a search on flights from your home to SFO, and click the box “airports within 80 miles” and you might find some deals. (Don’t go to Monterey.) One caveat, though – the Bay Bridge is going to be closed over Labor Day weekend for earthquake upgrade stuff. If you want to get from Oakland to San Francisco, you’ll have to take the BART (underwater subway train).

2. Think about buying a Muni Passport. This is a special pass that gets you unlimited use of the buses and cable cars. A one-day pass is $11, a three-day pass is $18, and a seven-day pass is $24. You don’t have to specify which days until you actually start using the pass.

http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mfares/passports.htm

Or, if you want a little more fun, think about a City Pass, which gets you seven days on the buses and cable cars, and admission to your choice of one of several museums, and you can also go on a boat tour of the bay. It’s $54.

http://www.citypass.com/city/sanfrancisco.html

Now, stuff to do, most of which does not require a rental car:

Socialize with some of the other wedding guests. There are two nearby restaurants that are great for this (motel has no lobby). I would like to suggest Asqew, 3348 Steiner, a shish-kebab grilling place, and Mel’s Drive-In, 2165 Lombard, a classic-style American diner with heavy food that should be eaten slowly. (Public restrooms are often a challenge to find in San Francisco.) One delicious exception from the “heavy food” category – the Tuna Ahi steak sandwich. These two are within a block of the hotel.

See the Wild Parrots of San Francisco. Somebody made a movie about them. I’ve never seen it, but the parrots are real. There are two colonies of them that I know about – one on Telegraph Hill in the trees surrounding Coit Tower, and the other at the Lombard Gate of the Presidio (military base turned into housing and office space). The latter is a mere eight-block walk from the hotel. To get there, walk out of the hotel and cross Lombard at Steiner Street. Go one block to Greenwich and turn right. Walk until Greenwich ends at a T intersection at Lyon and turn right. Go one block to Lombard, turn left and go through the gate with the big cannons by it. The parrots live in the eucalyptus trees up above the park. They have red heads and green bodies, and a wonderful, musical cawing. You’re most likely to see them around sunrise, which will be 6:40 a.m. on Labor Day weekend, but I’ve seen them out at 8 a.m., too.

If you want to go to Coit Tower, which provides a lovely view of both bridges, it’s a 2.5 mile walk. Or, you can take the No. 30 inbound bus, which stops one block to the north of the hotel at Chestnut and Pierce. Take that bus to Washington Square, and get off. From there you can walk up the hill to Coit, or you can wait for the No. 39 bus to come get you and take you to the top. Even if you have a car, this is a good strategy because the parking lot at the top of hill is usually very full.

Another spot worth stopping at in this neighborhood: The Italian-French Bakery at Grant and Green (1501 Grant). It’s one of the few San Francisco bakeries where they still bake bread on site. A small roll costs $.60

Let’s go fly a kite! Crissy Field is a nice, wide, grassy field along the bay with excellent views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Some serious kite flyers like to bring large stunt kites that are fun to watch here. Also, if you’re the type of guest who would bring a wet suit and a sail board to a wedding (and I know one) this is your place to launch. Just be careful at low tide – the current going out of the Golden Gate is strong and getting sucked out to sea sucks.

Getting there. Leave the hotel and walk north on Pierce St. Turn left on Beach, right on Scott. When you get to Marina Blvd., you’ll see Marina Green, which is a very pretty field, too, but you’re not quite there yet. Turn left on Marina. Go to the right at the funny fork in the road, and go through the Marina Gate of the Presidio. (Now you’re on Mason St.) If you look left, you can see the Exploratorium and the Palace of Fine Arts. (Also neat places to go, but we’re flying kites. Focus, please…) Keep walking on Mason, go past a lagoon, and on the right will be a big field, and a beach after it.

Other beaches: There are two other large sandy beaches in San Francisco, Ocean Beach, which unsurprisingly is on the west edge of San Francisco facing the Pacific Ocean. There’s an area where bonfires are allowed. You can walk for about two miles on the beach, and then when you run out of beach, you’re near the San Francisco Zoo. To get to Ocean Beach, walk to Fillmore St. and catch the No. 22 bus going uphill. At Geary Blvd., transfer to the No. 38 Ocean Beach bus going outbound (left-to-right). Make sure it says “Ocean Beach” on the front, as there are several varieties of the 38. Take it to the end of the line (next to a Safeway) and walk into the wind.

And there’s Baker Beach, with its excellent view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s got bigger waves, and a few rocks you can climb on. To get there, use the above directions to walk to Crissy Field. At Mason St. and Halleck, wait at a No. 29 bus stop. Get on there. (Make sure you’re headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge.) Watch out the right window for signs for Baker Beach, and walk through the parking lot. One caution: as you walk towards the north end of the beach, you might see a fellow off in the distance who’s wearing a brown suit. Um, he’s in his birthday suit. That end of the beach is a favorite place for the fabric-free.

If you feel obligated to act like a tourist, you can go to Fisherman’s Wharf via the No. 30 bus mentioned above. At the end of Pier 39 (the singularity point at the center of the tourist black hole) there is a salt-water taffy shop worth visiting. Also, in that same neighborhood is In-N-Out Burger at 333 Jefferson. The burgers here are the best around in my opinion, and they’re cheap! If you’re a chocloholic and you feel drawn to Ghiradelli Square, it’s a fine place to look around, but if you want to actually buy chocolate, go to a drug store or grocery store anywhere in San Francisco, and you’ll find the same products for 20 percent less.

The other cool thing you can do in the Wharf is hop on the F Street Car, which is an historic streetcar line that runs on the surface. It’ll take you through the Embarcadero, and past the Ferry Building, where there is often a farmers’ market. From there, it goes down Market Street all the way to the Castro.

The other super-touristy spot in San Francisco is North Beach, although there are a few places worth seeing there, too. My favorite of them: Café Tosca, 242 Columbus. Order the House Coffee, which is really hot cocoa, steamed milk and brandy. It’s $5. Café Tosca was around back in the Beatnik poet days, so Jack Kerouac would’ve been drinking there. Spec’s 12 Adler Museum Café is nearby at 12 Saroyan Pl. It’s neat just for the signs on the wall. Two others worth visiting: Vesuvio, 255 Columbus, and Caffé Trieste, 601 Vallejo, is where Francis Ford Coppola took his typewriter for 8 hours a day and sat writing the screenplay to The Godfather. If you’re from Pittsburgh and feeling nostalgic, check out Giordano Brothers’, 303 Columbus, which is an almost exact copy of Primanti Bros. This bar/restaurant is famous for putting coleslaw and fries onto Italian sandwiches. (Odd but tasty.)

Nob Hill is also worth strolling around, and there are two spots up there worth seeing: The Top of the Mark, at California and Mason, which is a jazz club on top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, has excellent music and great views of the city. It became famous with a photograph during World War II of servicemen saying goodbye to America there before they shipped out.

http://www.businessimagegroup.com/sfimages/history/NobHill.html

Grace Cathedral is a gorgeous gothic church at 1100 California St., and in it is a carpet labyrinth that will keep you occupied for some time. Maybe not as good as the one Tom designed in the snow one year at Christmas, but definitely worth trying. Take off your shoes.

Down towards my neighborhood, you can find a few places worth visiting. Tommy’s Joynt, 1101 Geary Blvd., is a restaurant/bar that has very well prepared and tasty meat dishes for less than $10. If you’re set on fish and chips in San Francisco, try Piccadilly’s Fish and Chips at 1348 Polk St. They’re cheaper and better there than the Wharf, but eat them slowly. And, last in this group is Saigon Sandwich at 560 Larkin, the best value in San Francisco, where none of these tasty Vietnamese sandwiches cost more than $2.50. (It’s open 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.)

Getting to all of the above involves a 1.5 – 2 mile walk or getting on a Southbound bus on Van Ness.

Finally, two more gorgeous spots: Holy Virgin Cathedral, at 6210 Geary Blvd., is a beautiful, beautiful church with five gold domes. To get there, follow the directions to Ocean Beach but get off at 25th Street, and walk to the tall Russian Orthodox church there. (Side note – this church shares the same name as the one where the wedding will be. The congregation moved from the Old Cathedral, 864 Fulton St., where we’re getting married, to the New Cathedral, which is, in my opinion, the most beautiful Orthodox church in North America.)

And, I want to put in a plug for the Mt. Lick Observatory, which is a two-hour drive from San Francisco, but it is a really, really neat place where you can get a tour of the telescopes, look at a whole bunch of neat astronomical photographs and see a magnificent view of the Silicon Valley. Here’s a link:

http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/

I hope this guide has been somewhat useful to you. The paper announcements will be going out in a few weeks!

Love,
Thomas Eric Ruthford