San Francisco: Don't let the Golden Gate hit you on the way out.
You've heard it before: It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. We asked some of our City Guides writers to pick (and write about) places that fit that familiar saying.
We entertained a variety of nominees, including some cities — New York especially — that showed up on both lists. In the end, we got a mix of locations, from the usual big-city suspects to places off the well-beaten track.
Here are the ones our writers nominated as better places to live than to visit (see the other list here). Disagree, or want to nominate your own place? Visit our message board.
San Francisco: Do not try this for home
San Francisco seduces, to be sure. Walk certain streets — up crowded, curving Lombard, along Union to Coit Tower, from Cole Valley to Twin Peaks — and every intersection reveals a picture-postcard view: of two iconic bridges, pinpoints of light flickering across the bay, of golden sunshine filtering through stands of eucalyptus trees.
Other neighborhoods, though, reveal images more police-blotter than tourism-brochure: a staggering homeless population, rampant open-air drug use, public parks and buses made intimidating and unsafe by unruly combinations of both. To live in San Francisco is to daily confront these issues — and probably from under a dense bank of fog. (The climate's as much London as it is L.A.)
By all means: Come. Dress warmly. Climb Twin Peaks. Visit SF MOMA, the new DeYoung, and the Legion of Honor, three world-class art museums. Shop Hayes Valley and Valencia Street; get brunch at Tartine, lunch at the Dolores Park Café, snacks at Bi-Rite, and dinner at Delfina. (This can be accomplished without leaving one short stretch of 18th Street, quite possibly the world's most densely packed row of organic and locally produced deliciousness.)
Rent a car on a nice day and drive across the Golden Gate to Point Reyes National Seashore for scenery that suggests an impossibly sunny Scotland. And then, go home, safe in the knowledge that San Francisco puts on its best face for its guests. Leave the hard work of citizenship to the locals.
- Diane Vadino
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