Leave your heart in San Fran
New parks, art, eats, hotels await your visit to the Golden Gate City
Lately, it seems as if the news headlines from San Francisco have been negative, from the city’s homelessness crisis to the area’s astronomical cost-of-living and worsening fire seasons.
But San Francisco is still San Francisco. Always a city for lovers of the outdoors, pandemic restrictions led to the near-universal embrace of an indoor-outdoor city life. And at its core, the city’s spirit, a heady brew of creativity, progressivism and experimentation, remains unbreakable.
San Francisco’s pandemic recovery has been slower than other major metropolitan areas in the United States; according to data from the San Francisco Travel Association, forecasts for 2022 estimate 80% of 2019’s visitor volume. While the downtown and Union Square neighborhoods remain quieter than pre-pandemic times, the city’s singular neighborhoods, from the Mission to Russian
Hill and the Outer Sunset, are vibrant with packed restaurants and bars, and many boast of new parks and events. San Francisco no longer imposes a mask mandate, but some businesses will require masks; masks are recommended on MUNI and BART, the city’s public transportation systems. Many indoor events, including concerts and theater productions, require proof of vaccination to enter.
New parks and slow streets
San Francisco’s wealth of green spaces has increased thanks to a trio of new parks, including the Presidio Tunnel Tops, 14 acres of new national park land hugging the city’s north coast. Boasting panoramic views of the Bay, the park was designed by the same group behind New York’s High Line and is home to a changing roster of food trucks, art installations and performances. For more views, check out Francisco Park in the Russian Hill neighborhood, which opened in April on the site of San Francisco’s first reservoir. In the Mission Bay neighborhood, Crane Cove Park has become a warm, sunny destination for stand-up paddleboarding, kayaking and lounging since it opened in 2020.
In addition to new parks, San Francisco has become more walkable and bikeable with the pandemicdriven development of the Slow Streets program, which limits or prohibits car traffic on streets throughout the city. Destination-worthy ones include the Great Highway, which runs alongside Ocean Beach on the city’s western shore and JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park, which could be made permanently car-free in November. The 1½-mile stretch of JFK takes you past the Conservatory of Flowers and the Rose Garden, plus the Skatin’ Place, where you will often find a rocking roller disco.
In-person music events
Golden Gate Park is also playing host to a number of major in-person events this year, including Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a free, three-day music festival being held Sept. 30 to Oct. 2. This year’s lineup will feature Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle and Buddy Miller. The Portola Music Festival, a new music festival from the team behind
Coachella, takes place Sept. 24-25 at Pier 80, and will showcase electronic acts including Flume, James Blake, the Avalanches and M.I.A.
A new destination for contemporary art
With its opening in October, the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco aims to provide a fresh approach to the ways in which contemporary art should be showcased and shared. Tied to its core tenets of equity and accessibility, ICASF will have free admission and plans to showcase local artists and artists of color. Opening programming includes a solo exhibition from Jeffrey Gibson, a Choctaw-Cherokee painter and sculptor; a group exhibit curated by California artists and curators Tahirah Rasheed and Autumn Breon; and work from local artists Liz Hernandez and Ryan Whelan.
Eat and drink
While undoubtedly challenging, the past two years have had a silver lining: Outdoor dining and drinking cropped up everywhere, from longestablished restaurants such as Nopa to brand-new spots such as Casements, a modern Irish bar in the Mission that opened in 2020. The bar had originally planned to be a cozy, indoor-only affair, but it now serves stellar cocktails on one of the best patios in the city, complete with an outdoor semiprivate space, live music, DJs and murals
of Irish rock musicians.
While marquee openings are still a major part of the city’s food fabric — recent ones include the opulent Palm Court Restaurant in the new RH Gallery and a new Ghirardelli Chocolate Experience store — some of the most exciting developments center on low-key projects from high-end chefs. In the Mission, Corey Lee of three Michelin-starred Benu opened San Ho Won, a Korean barbecue spot with classic dishes and riffs on tradition, such as a blood-sausage pancake and kimchi pozole. Matthew Kirk, a sous chef from Lazy Bear, opened Automat, a destination in the Western Addition for baked goods, breakfast sandwiches and burgers.
Where to stay
1 Hotel opened in San Francisco in June on the Embarcadero. The striking space features reclaimed wood and native greenery, plus a rooftop spa, chef ’s garden and beehives. Terrene, the hotel’s restaurant, features a farm-to-table menu and a wide selection of mezcal and tequila.
LUMA, which also opened in June, is the first hotel development in the Mission Bay neighborhood. Also in June, the long-standing Sir Francis Drake Hotel in Union Square reopened as Beacon Grand with 418 guest rooms, a lobby bar and in 2023, will reopen a redesign of the famed top-floor bar, the Starlite Room.