The best things to do in San Francisco for locals and tourists

A food mecca that rivals Seattle’s Pike’s Place Market, the Ferry Building hosts both the city’s largest tri-weekly farmer’s market and provides a permanent home for some of the region’s most beloved artisan producers. Indoors, you’ll find merchants including Cowgirl Creamery, Dandelion Chocolate and Fort Point Beer Company. Behind the Ferry Building on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am-2pm and Saturdays from 8am-2pm, regional farmers and ranchers sell vegetables, flowers, meats and other edible and small-batch products. When your shopping is done, grab a bite at one of the itinerant food stalls on market days or brick-and-mortar restaurants like Charles Phan’s beloved Vietnamese juggernaut the Slanted Door or the popular Hog Island Oyster Company. San Francisco City Guides offer regular free tours of the plaza.

There’s still some debate as to who created the first Mission-style burrito. Taqueria La Cumbre is generally credited with the creation—they introduced the tortilla wrapped combination of beans, rice, meat and cheese in 1969. Their neighborhood competitor, El Faro (2399 Folsom St), also claims have to have originated the delicacy, serving it up to local firefighters as early as 1961. If you want the best, though, head to La Taqueria (2989 Mission St), which consistently appears on top restaurant lists year after year thanks to its behemoth, rice-free foil-wrapped bombs.

For a food tour of La Mission, click here. 

For over 60 years, City Lights Bookstore has been a mainstay of free-speech and radical ideas. Co-founded in 1953 by poet-artist Lawrence Ferlinghetti (who, at 98, still keeps the candle dripping over the chianti bottle), it was here that Allen Ginsberg’s Howl & Other Poems was first published, putting the Beat Generation on the map. The creaky wooden bookstore and publishing house is still a center of progressive politics and indie literary voices, which it stocks alongside a huge inventory of new and used fiction and nonfiction. 

Every Sunday afternoon from March through October, the seven acre Main Parade Grounds at the Presidio’s Main Post comes alive with dozens of food vendors, free lawn games, yoga, live music and more. Thursday evenings, you’ll find the (still kid-friendly) grown-up version, with lantern-lit cabanas, fire pits and cocktail service in addition to the games and impressive food selection offered on the weekend.

San Francisco’s Chinatown is both the oldest and largest enclave of Chinese immigrants outside of Asia. Explore its historic buildings, pocket parks and shops by passing through the Dragon Gate at the corner of Bush Street and Grant Avenue. Considered the birthplace of American Chinese food like chop suey and fortune cookies and credited with introducing dim sum to the Western palate, you’d be remiss not to stop for a bite at an eatery like Hunan Home’s Restaurant or Good Mong Kok Bakery. Don’t miss the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory (56 Ross Alley), where some 20,000 fortune cookies are made every day—folded by hand as they come off an ancient-looking cookie conveyor belt.

You don’t have to be a fan of baseball to enjoy a game at AT&T Park. From the stadium seats, attendees get a view not only of the San Francisco Bay but kayakers and paddleboarders laying in wait for “splash hits”to come hurdling over the right-field fence. The food at the ballpark alone is worth a visit. Along with quintessentially-SF treats like garlic fries and Ghiradelli chocolate sundaes, you’ll find everything from Caribbean barbecue to Tony’s Neapolitan-style pizza and plenty of craft beer to wash it down. SF Giants games frequently sell out but last-minute options are almost always available through StubHub or at the ball park’s ticket office.

Nearly 400 different stairways, some of them built over a century ago, connect San Francisco’s 42 hills. These steep passageways not only get you off the grid but offer some of the city’s best views, from the 290-step Lyon Street stairway (between Green St and Broadway) to the delightful, garden-accented Pemberton Steps (starting at Corbett and Clay Sts). On Moraga Street in the Inner Sunset, 163 mosaic tiled steps connect 15th and 16th avenues. Macondray Lane (off Leavenworth St between Union and Green Sts) inspired Armistead Maupin’s secretive, leafy green Barbary Lane in his Tales of the City series. And then there’s the Filbert Street Steps, arguably the most spectacular of them all, which climbs through tropical gardens from the bottom of Sansome Street to Coit Tower in North Beach.

The Mission District’s alleys and buildings are decorated with over 200 distinct murals, many reflecting the neighborhood’s Latino heritage and themes of social justice. Thanks in large part to the efforts of artist Susan Cervantes and the Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center, you’ll find the most concentrated outdoor galleries at Caledonia Alley (at 15th St), Clarion Alley (at Valencia St), Balmy Alley (at 24th St), Horace Alley (at 25th St), Cypress and Lilac alleys (at 26th St) and Osage Alley (at 25th St). Keep an eye out for Mary Nash’s “Las Milagrosas: Tribute to Women Artists” on Balmy and the warriors of Lilac.

Although the Buena Vista has been slinging drinks for seafaring folk since 1916, it wasn’t until 1952 that the cafe got its big break. That year Joe Sheridan, an Irish chef, invented the Irish Coffee. These days, the restaurant’s white-jacketed bartenders serve up to 2,000 of the frothy, whiskey concoctions daily from behind the long, mahogany bar. Alongside their specialty, the Buena Vista has a menu full featuring a variety of seafood options like clam chowder and Dungeness crab cakes befitting of its Fisherman’s Wharf location.

It’s not like you need to seek out the fog in San Francisco— it’s so ever-present it even has its own name (Karl) and instagram account (@karlthefog). But there are certain vantage points in the city that will remind you of the unique beauty of San Francisco’s rolling grey mist. Get a front row seat for the city’s changing moods at Land’s End, Twin Peaks, Sutro Tower or Glen Canyon Park. For a wider view of Karl’s descent over the city, head up to the Marin Headlands on the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Public Works opened in 2010 and has quickly become a staple of SF nightlife with a mission to “give the people what they want.” Bouncy, foot-friendly dance floors, a top-of-the-line sound system by Funktion-One, an occasional pop-up art gallery of rotating art, great drinks with or without alcohol, and an upstairs loft for a party within a party all come together for the city’s liveliest local and international underground scene.