San Francisco offers visitors a wide-range of new cultural, culinary, nightlife and outdoor experiences ย to explore.
Since 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge has served as San Franciscoโs international icon, as closely identified with the city as Parisโ Eiffel Tower or Sydneyโs Opera House. ย While the bridge has long been the cityโs most popular sightseeing attraction, 2022 saw the opening of a spectacular new location for observing the Golden Gate thatโs quickly becoming a major attraction in its own right. Presidio Tunnel Tops (tunneltops.com) is the remarkable transformation of 14 bay view acres by the same designers who developed Manhattanโs celebrated High Line.
Itโs the site of a former elevated freeway, now replaced by multi-lane tunnels which run beneath this ingenious urban greenspace, providing its moniker. The parkโs terraced meadows, landscaped with native plants are traversed by looping pathways with unparalleled bridge views to the west and the downtown skyline to the east.
Katya & Suki at Dacha (Photo courtesy of Dacha)
Two cypress-wood waveform sculptures are a hybrid of public art and public accommodation: theyโre the most spectacular park benches youโve ever seen, with seating room for dozens along their gentle curves. At dusk, cleverly hidden lighting sets them aglow from within. An amphitheater, a childrenโs playground, plus plenty of room to sprawl and daydream are fold- ed into the park. Food trucks featuring an array of ethnic cuisines can be found on the upper perimeter and The Mess Hall (messhallpresidio.com), a massive public food hall, is set to open in mid-2025.
After fortifying yourself with a bite, take a quick stroll down to the bottom of Tunnel Topsโ three tiers, cross a single road, and youโll find yourself at Crissy Field, where you can follow paved footpaths along scenic bayfront beaches and marshlands. In less than a mile, youโll find yourself at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.
TRANSPORTING EXPERIENCES
One of the many Bay Area residents who made career changes in the wake of the pandemic, Jerome Ribeiro, a French transplant to the Bay Area, spent years working as a chef in San Francisco fine dining establishments. Now heโs extending hospitality of a very different sort, inviting locals and visitors into the sidecars of his Ural motorcycle fleet for revved up city tours that are a far cry from hop on hop off bus excursions.
The Clift Hotel features a jaunt with Jerome as part of its overnight Sidecar package (which also includes a sidecar cocktail in the hotelโs swanky Redwood Room). Tours can also be booked directly through Ribeiro at ridesbyme.com.
The only business of its kind in the city, Rides by Me offers exhilarating itineraries of three hours or more, including options that whiz down San Franciscoโs steepest hills, slalom the famously crooked Lombard Street, and make pit stops at wine bars and breweries (connections from his former career mean special treatment for Ribeiroโs guests).
Dawn’s Club (Photo by Dawn’s Club)
In addition to a sidecar rider, Ribeiro and his team can each take a pillion passenger on the bike itself. Up to 8 motorcycles with sidecars are available for large group excursions.
Helmets are required, of course, but theyโre also kitted out with excellent two-way audio systems that allow Ribeiro and his fellow wisecracking drivers to provide entertaining commentary and answer guest questions while zooming along. Within minutes of climbing aboard, Ribeiro gives his passengers a quick lesson on how to wave oneโs hand like the queen of England whenever he honks the bikeโs cartoonish sounding horn: youโre about to get gawked at, all over town.
For another vehicular adventure that also serves a more practical purpose, download the Waymo One (waymo.com) app on your smartphone. San Francisco and Phoenix are currently the only two cities in the country where self-driving taxis are available (Los Angeles and Austin are in the works). Your phone will serve as a key to unlock the car when it arrives to fetch you. Enjoy the ride; its San Fran at its uncanniest.
QUEER BAR RENAISSANCE
San Franciscoโs LGBTQ+ nightlife is vigorously twinkling with Gen Z- boosted genderfluidity as the current sceneโs hallmark. Check your pro- nouns at the door, folks, and go with the genderfluid flow.
In The Mission District, Mother (mothersf.com) is a sometimes raucous woman-centric watering hole with an โall queers welcomeโ policy.
Ginger’s Bar (Photo by Courtesy of Futurebars)
Just five minutesโ walk from Union Square, home to some of the cityโs largest hotels, itโs rebirth redux at Gingerโs (gingers.bar). The only gay bar in the Financial District, once home to many gathering spots for gray flannel closet-dwellers, the current version of Gingerโs opened in 2018, its name a tribute to three queer watering holes that had operated nearby between 1978 and 2008 (Gingerโs, Gingerโs Too, and Gingerโs Trois).
Open for less than two years before the pandemic shutdown, Gingerโs began its comeback during Pride month of 2024 and now welcomes the public several days a month with the hopes of eventually reopening full time. The dark, subterranean saloon, down one flight from its entrance on a narrow alley, has brick walls, red-cushioned chairs, and slatted wood floors, evoking a secret social club from the Mad Men era.
The funkiest phoenix to arise post-Covid is the long awaited reincarnation of The Stud (studsf.com). The world-renowned, 57-year-old drag bar and dance club has relocated to a larger space within the cityโs official Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District and now operates as a worker-owned co-operative with a full calendar of drag show, karaoke, and dance parties.
CASTRO NOTABLES
In San Franciscoโs most famous gayborhood, the chic new Lobby Bar (lobbybarsf.com) has velveteen upholstered banquettes, flattering lighting, and creative house cocktails that incorporate spice cabinet staples including turmeric, sesame, Szechuan peppercorn, and saffron. And, yes, you can get a beer here.
As to the โLobbyโ in its name, the bar occupies the ground floor of the boutique Hotel Castro (thehotelcastro.com). With its enviable heart-of-the-hood location, perfect for homo-immersion, its 12 minimal but stylish rooms here are always in demand. A roof deck is also available for guests, weather permitting. Note that it is one of those newfangled hotels where check in, room access, and guidance are provided byย appโfortunately, thereโs plenty of human interaction available withinโbleepโfifty feet.
Nearby, popular dance bar Badlands has changed ownership and reopened its doors (sfbadlands.com), and the site of another shuttered favorite, Harveyโs, is slated for imminent rebirth as, ahem, Pink Swallow (instagram.com/pinkswallowsf).
The space once occupied by Harvey Milkโs camera shop has been transformed into QAF – Queer Arts Featured (queerartsfeatured.com), a quirky gallery featuring work by LGBTQ+ identifying artists and hosting a wide range of events in a parlor-like setting.
A few doors down, Welcome Castro (welcomecastro.com) combines a neighborhood visitorsโ center, where you can pick up maps, leaflets, and perhaps a new friend, with one of the cityโs best selections high quality queer souvenirs, including sassy apparel thatโs witty, not clichรฉd.
New Castro food and drink options include a pocket-size microbrewery, Copper (coppersf.com) that features serious beers exclusively available on site; a highly competitive trivia night every Tuesday at Hot Johnnieโs (hotjohnnies.com), which makes its own top notch pastrami; and Poesia Cafรฉ (poesiacafesf.com), where Italian-born baker Giovanni Liguoro is pulling in connoisseurs from across this pastry-snob city.
The worldโs longest-operating queer theatre, Theatre Rhinoceros (therhino.org), has come home to the Castro from venues elsewhere in town and now presents inventive and experimental plays in an intimate new space.
The neighborhoodโs strongest sign of revival is a $15 million renovation of the historic Castro Theater (castrotheatre.com) that is currently underway. This neon-lit beacon, a struggling repertory movie theater pre-pandemic, is scheduled to reopened in late 2025 as a venue for live entertainment as well as movie screenings.
TRY A LITTLE TENDERLOIN
While national media has long portrayed San Franciscoโs Tenderloin neighborhood as an unsalvageable skid row, this admittedly gritty neighborhood, wedged between Union Square, the theater district, and City Hall, has a long history of diverse queer culture along with several emerging businesses and institutions of note.
The Tenderloin Museum (tenderloinmuseum.org) offers weekly neighborhood walking tours led by local residents to complement its on-site exhibits. The tours provide visitors with a sensitively framed introduction to the area, which includes the worldโs only legally recognized Transgender Cultural District. Here, in 1966, the Comptonโs Cafeteria Riots helped initiate the trans civil and human rights initiative that continues today.
Three new Tenderloin points of interest for queer visitors can be found on a single block-long stretch of Larkin Street. Rosebud Gallery (rose-budgallery.com) is a vibrant exhibition space for LGBTQ+ artists working in a wide range of media. Owner and curator Cabure Bonugli is an exuberant booster of local talent, eager to talk about the work on display and to share his own passionate take on the Tenderloinโs renewal.
His own whimsical hand-woven rugs, in the form of underpants, butt plugs, poppers bottles and other sources of queer joy are also displayed at Rosebud.
Photo of John Tristram at the Bob Mizer Foundation (Photo courtesy of Bob Mizer Foundation)
Across the street and a few doors down is the Bob Mizer Foundation (bobmizer.org), a non-profit archive and research center dedicated to the work of gay male physique photographer Mizer and his 20th Century peers. Mizer, who founded the groundbreaking Athletic Modeling Guild studio and Physique Pictorial magazine, was a pioneering creator of homoerotic beefcake imagery in an era when circulating photos of naked men was illegal.
Headed by Dennis Bell, himself a former bodybuilder and photographer, the foundation has acquired millions of negatives, prints, film reels, magazines, and related ephemera, which it is in the process of cataloging, digitally scanning, and preserving.
Staffed by volunteers, the foundation headquarters was opened to the public last year. In addition to exhibitions in its ground floor gallery, the foundation regularly hosts film screenings and guest speakers that draw on its collections and related topics.
Following an afternoon perusing queer art and photography, stroll another half block to Dacha (dachaprojects.com ), an unexpectedly chic bar and restaurant opened in 2023 by queer couple Suki and Katya Skye, natives of Ukraine and Russia respectively.
The women, who met in San Francisco, oversee one of the cityโs most creative mixology programs, with meticulously balanced cock- tails incorporating ingredients like a house-made apple cordial, their own infused vodkas, allspice, and tarragon.
Their dinner menu features cheffy, finessed versions of homeland childhood favorites, including mushroom piroshki, stuffed peppers, and a dill-accented chicken cutlet. Alas, thereโs no tenderloin.
JAZZ AND ACROBATS
Two historically significant venues have been radically refreshed with unusual entertainment options for visitors to the city. The Dawn Club (dawnclub.com), an elegant venue which operated in the Beaux Arts- style Monadnock Building downtown during the 1930s and 1940s, is back and bopping. Live jazz is presented from six nights a week in this stylish room where music is the main event, featuring Bay Area musicians from Hella Fitzgerald to a 7-piece band with vocalists, and pianist Adam Kipple, who has accompanied both Lauryn Hill and Smokey Robinson. Seating at cocktail tables is available by reservation and walk-in guests are welcome at the bar.
Club Fugazi, Dear San Francisco (Photo by Kevin Bern)
In the North Beach neighborhood, Club Fugazi (clubfugazisf.com), which between 1974 and 2019 was the venue for Beach Blanket Babylon, the worldโs longest running music and comedy revue, now hosts a worthy successor. Called Dear San Francisco, it has been a major draw for both locals and tourists since opening in 2021, and it features an intimate indoor circus of sorts. The cityโs history is cleverly evoked by an international cast of acrobats who perform remarkably close up to audiences of fewer than 350 people.
FRESH LOOKS AT LANDMARKS
The Painted Ladies (instagram.com/bluepaintedlady), a block- long row of colorful Victorian houses by Alamo Square Park, have long been pictured on postcards, jigsaw puzzles, souvenir T-shirts, and the sitcom Full House, becoming a widely recognized symbol of the city.
Since 2021, George Horsfall, a retired schoolteacher who owns and lives in the bright blue lady at 712 Steiner Street, has welcomed small groups of visitors to go beyond the faรงade on a daily, chat-filled 90- minute tour of his home.
Elaborately carved wooden moldings, lace curtains, and period furniture provide a sense of the houseโs past and Horsfall cheerfully regales his guests with stories of its history and former tenants. This is by no means a museum, and the tours are highly personalized, with Horsfall, a native San Franciscan attending to guestsโ curiosities and special interests. The tour fees he collects are donated to local architectural preservation organizations.
Crowning the cityโs famous Nob Hill, once home to railroad barons and currently the site of storied hotels including The Fairmont and The Mark Hopkins, is Grace Cathedral (gracecathedral.org), a marvel of modern gothic architecture with a surprising history (Following a groundbreaking ceremony in 1910, construction was not completed until 1964). While it remains an active Episcopal place of worship, the cathedral has, over the past few years, began hosting more frequent guided tours and public events.
Yoga and meditation sessions illuminated by sunbeams through stained glass; performances in which trapeze and aerial artists have soared through the towering nave; climbs into the bell tower; and con- certs ranging from classical music to electronic soundscapes by U2 producer Daniel Lanois have all been featured.
Queer visitors on guided tours should take special note of the Inter- faith AIDS Chapel and artworks by Keith Haring and David LaChappelle. And donโt miss the stained glass portrait of secular saint Albert Einstein, complete with his E=mc2 formula.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (Photo by Walter Cicchetti)
A more contemporary city landmark, the world-class San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (sfmoma.org), is currently offering (through Spring 2026) an enormous site-specific installation by queer African American artist Kara Walker called Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) which incorporates the MacArthur fellowโs first foray into robotics within her artwork.
UNBURIED TREASURE
San Franciscoโs Treasure Island (tisf.com), long reachable only by navigating congested Oakland-bound Bay Bridge traffic, is now easily accessible via a quick 8-minute ferry ride from downtown. The man-made, 400-acre island was originally constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, a Worldโs Fair. Long used as a military base, the island is now the site of new residential development, with a target of 8,000 new homes and apartments.
View of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco from Treasure Island (Photo by Michael Warwic)
San Francisco offers visitors a wide-range of cultural, culinary, and nightlife options, helping to make The City By The Bay one of the most exciting places to explore and experience.
Offering unbeatable views of the urban skyline across the bay, Treasure Island also boasts its own attractions, including 22 miles of trails, restaurants, and wineries and distilleries, all in walking distance of the public transit dock.
Immediately upon disembarking the ferry, youโll see the curved white Art Modern faรงade of the two-story Treasure Island Museum (treasureislandmuseum.org), once a terminal for military sea- plane traffic.
Outside sit four sculptures commissioned for the 1939 fair that celebrate Indian, Asian, and Pacific Island cultures. Inside, rotating exhibits complement the main attraction, a 26-foot-high, 251-foot- long mural depicting Americaโs military history in the Pacific.
The buildingโs arcing main corridor also houses the posh showcase lounge of Gold Bar Distillery (goldbarwhiskey.com), a local whiskey manufacturer known for gleaming golden bottles that would look at home in Fort Knox, and proprietary blends aged in Napa Valley wine barrels. Whiskey and cocktail tastings along with full bar service are available.
While Gold Barโs off-the-beaten-path HQ remains almost entirely under-the-radar of San Francisco bargoers, itโs served as an unlikely filming location for Bravo televisionโs Vanderpump Rules.
A far less-glitzy, but genuinely artisanal experience can be found close by at gay-owned Treecraft Distillery (treecraftdistillery.com). Business and life partners Nate Byerly and Gordon Rempel operate their 9-year-old small batch business out of a former naval base fire- house that now looks like a mad scientistโs laboratory.
In fact, science-minded Byerly is an inveterate experimenter, having gradually transformed what was once a home-based beer-brewing hobby into a full-fledged commercial spirits manufactory, the only business of its kind with membership in the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Treecraft also regularly donates to local LGBTQ+ charities.
On Saturdays and Sundays, the couple rolls up their industrial gates and rolls out a bar cart to offer public peeks at is processes along with generously poured tasting flights. Signature Treecraft products include Earl Grey Gin, a distinctive rum fermented with whiskey yeast, and a not-at-all sweet Chocolate Bourbon, cold-macerated with specially selected Ecuadoran cocoa nibs.
One weekend a month, visitors can pair their Treecraft tippling with a visit to Treasurefest (treasurefest.com), the islandโs massive flea market, with over 300 vendors of vintage goods, crafts, and esoterica, plus lots of live music.
