De forskjellige større nabolag og områder i byen:
Alcatraz: Lonely rock in the middle of the bay, except for massive swarms of tourists
Bernal Heights: Liberal neighborhood home to artists and ‘quaint’ businesses- fruit stands, barber shops, & small markets. Appeals to lesbian couples, new families, and dog-lovers. Was once a bad neighborhood; may retain that nature in WoD.
Castro District: ‘Gay capital of the world’; lively, colorful (rainbows aplenty), and stylish. Proliferate adult stores, many tourists, and very politically active.
Chinatown: The most famous neighborhood in America. Good Chinese food, new faux-Chinese architecture, and shops selling kitschy ‘Chinese’ objects to American tourists. Hidden away is the real Chinatown, where Chinese families have lived for decades.
Cole Valley: Mom and pop shops, home to families and young professionals, full of cafés and restaurants; quiet, languid neighborhood.
Deco Ghetto: Young and growing neighborhood; a number of Art Deco furniture stores lending it its name.
Fisherman’s Warf: Sea food, sea lions, and much abuse from SF natives; huge tourist area.
Golden Gate Park: Humongous park, home to several museums and gardens.
The Haight: Hippie homeland turned major commercial district; swanky shops and Internet cafés; active counterculture nightlife, home to a number of punk types.
Hayes Valley: Until recently was a run-down neighborhood home to the homeless and drug-dealers; has recently been renovated, tenements replaced with chic clothing stores, restaurants, and nightclubs.
Inner Richmond: Good food, very multicultural with Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern, Jewish, Irish, and Russian influences, not many tourists, good, cheap stores and restaurants.
Inner Sunset: Heavy fog almost all the time; friendly ‘small town’ feel where everyone knows each other; mix of Asian (several cultures) and Irish cultures; is now a chic upper-class neighborhood, home to a number of families and attendants of UCSF medical school.
The Marina: Marshland until 1906 quake, was build up as hugely desirable neighborhood, was razed by ’89 quake, neighborhood was rebuilt with more sturdy foundations; home to a number of young white single yuppies- definitely not lower-class-friendly.
The Mission: Latin quarter, and home to college graduates, artists, and so on; was recently hit with gentrification, knocking many poorer residents to other neighborhoods.
Nob Hill: Rich, upper-class area; some spillover from nearby neighborhoods; fringed with more typically ‘San Francisco’ stuff, funky shops and dive bars.
Noe Valley: Both liberals and conservatives and all economic classes live here. A nice, prosperous neighborhood, though there have been recent problems with vandalism and the end of the dot-com bubble. Very bourgeois place.
North Beach: ‘Little Italy,’ home of SF’s Beat movement; extremely active nightlife, Broadway home to strip clubs and other sleaziness, very diverse collection of cuisine and culture.
Outer Richmond: Former graveyard site turned friendly multiethnic neighborhood plagued by fog.
Outer Sunset and West Portal: Weird blend of modern businesses and ‘50s stuff, due to isolation from rest of SF and solidly middle-class inhabitants; very few ‘chain’ businesses; peaceful area with Irish and Italian roots in W. Portal and everything else elsewhere.
Pacific Heights: Upper class neighborhood attached to Golden Gate Bridge; almost sickeningly snooty and pretentious, covering the worst of Californian gentry.
Russian Hill: Not very Russian at all; restaurants and small shops; tiny French quarter; more friendly and inviting version of Nob Hill.
South of Market (SoMa): Large neighborhood mixed between factories and warehouses and nightclubs and restaurants. Has quieted greatly with the absence of dot-comers, home to the Giants ballpark; nightclubs attract gay leather and S&M fetishists.
The Tenderloins: ‘The worst neighborhood in San Francisco’; drug dealers and their customers, prostitutes, and homeless; gradually getting better IRL, probably getting worse in WoD; works against city’s gentrification.
Union Square: Financial/cultural center; was very recently turned from a grassy slope to a granite platform, home to stores, theaters, and roiling masses of people.
Western Addition: Most ethnically and economically diverse neighborhood in SF; strong African-American community which has tried and failed to revive old jazz scene; contains Japantown, which doesn’t actually contain many Japanese living there. Whole neighborhood has been in state of decay since the ‘50s.
