The neighborhoods carry the rest of the story. Chinatown, the oldest in North America, runs lantern-lit behind the Dragon Gate — its story reaching back through Angel Island, the immigration station in the bay, and the old dream of Gold Mountain; North Beach keeps the espresso and the memory of the Beat Generation, whose poets gathered at the City Lights bookstore from 1953; the Mission holds the old adobe church, the murals, and the burrito that bears its name; the Castro became a symbol of gay life in America — Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California, served the city from here before his assassination in 1978; and Haight-Ashbury hosted the Summer of Love in 1967. The fog pours through the Gate on schedule every evening in summer, the 415 answers the phone, and the tech era writes the newest chapter on the same seven-by-seven grid the Yelamu knew first.
What’s with the Orange Bridge? The Golden Gate Bridge was very nearly a striped one. When chief engineer Joseph B. Strauss’s great span went up across the strait in the 1930s, the Navy lobbied to paint it black with yellow stripes so ships could see it in the fog; the Army Air Corps preferred red and white. But the consulting architect, Irving Morrow, had watched the steel arrive from the East coated in a red-lead primer that glowed against the headlands, and he fought to keep something close to it — a color called International Orange. He won. When two hundred thousand people walked across the new bridge on opening day, May 27, 1937, it was already the color the world knows: the warm orange that burns through the gray when the fog pours in, chosen precisely because the fog was coming. And the name is older than the gold: John C. Frémont named the strait Chrysopylae — Greek for Golden Gate — in 1846, two years before anyone found a nugget. The gold, like everything else here, arrived after the name was ready for it.
Why People Visit San Francisco California
- Walk or bike the Golden Gate Bridge, then see it from Fort Point below, Baker Beach, or the Marin headlands — International Orange against the fog.
- Ride a cable car over Nob Hill and Russian Hill — the 1873 system is the only moving National Historic Landmark in the country.
- Take the ferry to Alcatraz Island for the penitentiary years and the view back at the city.
- See the Painted Ladies from Alamo Square at golden hour, the Queen Anne row of the 1890s against the downtown skyline.
- Enter Chinatown through the Dragon Gate for dim sum and lantern-strung alleys — the oldest Chinatown in North America.
- Wander North Beach for espresso, the City Lights bookstore of the Beats, and the climb to Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill — listening for the wild parrots overhead.
- Visit the Mission District for Mission Dolores — the 1791 adobe that is the city’s oldest building — the murals, and a Mission-style burrito.
- Graze the Ferry Building marketplace, then watch the sea lions haul out along the Fisherman’s Wharf piers.
- Walk Lands End past the Sutro Baths ruins to Ocean Beach, or catch the whole grid from Twin Peaks.
- Drive — or better, walk — the crooked block of Lombard Street down Russian Hill.