Culture + Travel Archives

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park Has Hella Secrets

24Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Nature + Climate Crisis

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park Has Hella Secrets

Spoiler alert: There may be a Nessie in SF's Stow Lake. And bison numbered in the hundreds at Golden Gate Park. San Francisco is a bastion of weird-ass shit, a cornucopia of Muni missteps and quirky, out-of-sight gems. But one of the city’s most well-known and Instagrammed locations, Golden Gate Park, has its own share of historical weirdness to add to the misfit melting pot. Let’s take a walk down memory lane and shine a spotlight on some of the park’s most interesting historical footnotes and facts. A 60-foot cross is (somewhere) behind the foliage at Rainbow Falls In 1894, the Prayerbook Cross — an enormous sandstone cross inscribed with English excerpts from the first sermon of the Book of Common Prayer in California — was given to the city as a gift from the Church of En...

This Old Chevy on Lombard Street Is Pure San Francisco Nostalgia

21Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

This Old Chevy on Lombard Street Is Pure San Francisco Nostalgia

Look at SF's Coit Tower looking all kinds of cute in the background! I find it increasingly hard to envision a San Francisco that wasn’t defined by tech companies, sky-high rents, and the presence of wildfire smoke (the latter of which, thankfully, hasn’t been as severe this year). Times when the city’s innate bohemian, free-wheeling spirit coincided with affordability. The days when you could make an earnest wage and comfortably rent a two-bedroom-one-bathroom domicile in Nob Hill — for $250 a month. Alas: Windows into a San Francisco that didn’t include the City failing thousands of unhoused people and pee-soaked sidewalks are fleeting, brief flashbacks that never mirror the present moment. But when I yearn to see San Francisco framed in gentler years, I turn to Reddit. And a rec...

This Tenderloin Mural Is a Celebration of SF’s Working Class

20Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

This Tenderloin Mural Is a Celebration of SF’s Working Class

You’re technically considered a ‘low-income earner’ in San Francisco if you make less than $82,200 a year San Francisco has become insurmountably difficult for anyone not making about twice the average U.S. salary to carve out a living — let alone flourish. Even the smallest of studio apartments in the city will require the lessee to make upwards of $80,000 to responsibly afford. (Don’t get us started on how much you’d need to make to afford a statistically modest two-bedroom, one-bathroom unit.) It’s an abundantly sad, and, quite frankly, demoralizing reality that’s now synonymous with SF life. But a new mural at 455 Eddy Street titled “Pesca Pesca Redouble la Force” by former SF-based artist Erlin Geffrard is shedding a light on the working class. You know: The socioeconomic cohort...

FYI: This Surreal Victorian in SF’s Dolores Heights Is Stunnin’

17Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Nature + Climate Crisis

FYI: This Surreal Victorian in SF’s Dolores Heights Is Stunnin’

Constructed in 1900, the house was among the few residential homes in San Francisco to survive the 1906 earthquake Don’t get us wrong, we love Alamo Square Parks’s Painted Ladies. (This drone footage that goes inside the sister at 712 Steiner street has only deepened our fascination with the city’s architectural landmarks.) However, more often than not, they hog the spotlight away from other residential gems in San Francisco — like the gorgeous John Welsh-designed flats at Capp and 22nd streets. Case in point: Y’all ever hear about or seen the fantastically blue, 121-year-old Victorian at 3919 20th Street? We hadn’t. But that all changed though, thanks to Instagram’s algorithm. Looks like one of the neighbors also found the home’s blue paint scheme attrac...

What If We Got Rid of All the Parking Lots in the SF Bay Area?

15Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks, Hyperlocal News + Stories

What If We Got Rid of All the Parking Lots in the SF Bay Area?

For one: There would be enough space left to create 60 public greenspaces the size of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It’s been over a month since my Prius was stripped of its catalytic converter. The part is *at least* a few months out because people are assholes and stealing these at a dizzying, maddening, unrelenting rate. By proxy, I’m effectively now car-free… sans the few times a week when I force the engine into a lion’s roar and move the car a few blocks. My relationship with car ownership has never been more forced — honed in, zoomed out, dissected. I grew up around cars; I was born in the suburbs of North Texas, after all. And over my three decades on this mortal coil, I’ve owned seven vehicles… half of which were totaled by either an act from a Higher Power or a no-fault a...

Some LEDs on the Bay Bridge Literally Won’t Turn Off

15Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

Some LEDs on the Bay Bridge Literally Won’t Turn Off

"The Bay Lights" installation along the Bay Bridge is so broken, even the switch to turn it off was "on the fritz" until Monday night. But some LEDs refuse to go dark. It’s been over a week since “The Bay Lights” — the 25,000 LED art installation on the Bay Bridge that beamed for just over a decade — went dark. Backdropped by a gloomy, chilly, rain-soaked evening, the vast network of glowing diodes was turned off amid financial woes. A recent fundraising campaign started by Illuminate, the nonprofit behind the public artwork (as well as many others in the Bay Area), has raised over $107,000 toward “The Bay Lights 360” project, which would see the Bay Bridge light up with LEDs again come fall with a host of improvements; the fate and likelihood of the artwork again lighting up the Bay ...

Here’s What San Francisco’s Cliff House Looked Like 80 Years Ago

13Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

Here’s What San Francisco’s Cliff House Looked Like 80 Years Ago

Back in 1943, there were just 139 new cars built in the United States back due to World War II — and San Francisco's vehicle scene was pretty sparse. San Francisco will forever exist as a dichotomy of itself. On one hand, it’s a metropolitan synonymous with spearheading humanity into the future. And on the other palm sits a seven-by-seven-mile slice of Northern California rich with history, which remains on display around almost every corner. (On my morning walks to commune with the sun — a circadian necessity when one’s window faces into a dark concrete corridor — I’m often gobsmacked by the sheer amount of patina and storied concrete around me.) On January 1st, 2021, San Francisco’s beloved Cliff House restaurant closed after 137 years in operation. Like hundreds of Bay Area ga...

5 SF Bay Area Trails to Hike That Are Painted With Wildflowers

10Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Nature + Climate Crisis

5 SF Bay Area Trails to Hike That Are Painted With Wildflowers

"Hey Siri, play 'Flowers' by Miley Cyrus." Because we can think of no better way to start an SF Bay Area hike that's brimming with wildflowers. Yes, reader: It’s nearing that time of the year to don your floral getups to color coordinate with the thriving flora around you. Given the amount of rain we've received thus far — with more of it on the way, very soon — it's going to be a golden year for wildflower walks in the region. You know... once the ground has dried and is conducive to walking. Here in the Bay Area, our temperate climate and nutrient-dense soils give way to some of the most awe-inspiring blooms anywhere in the country. In fact: Our slice of Northern California is no stranger to super bloom events — much like the one that happened in Half Moon Bay back in 2021, brimm...

This New SF Exhibit Is an Ode to Working-Class San Francisco

10Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

This New SF Exhibit Is an Ode to Working-Class San Francisco

For hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans, SFMTA plays a major role in their day-to-day lives. San Francisco is a city founded by blue-collar workers — a sentiment that solidified during the Gold Rush when tens of thousands of transients descended on SF en route to mining grounds. Fast forward some 150-plus years later, the seven-by-seven has now found itself divided by wealth and income inequalities. That’s not to say SF can’t (and won't) return to its more grounded roots; we’re already seeing a semblance of that with rents stabilizing across the city; the number of sub-$1,500 studios on the market right now is a refreshing sight. San Francisco is also a city synonymous with public transit. In 2021, over 4 million people rode Muni to crisscross SF. Now until April 9th, SOMArts ...

Revisiting the Story Behind 2022’s Most Viral Shot of San Francisco

9Mar

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories

Revisiting the Story Behind 2022’s Most Viral Shot of San Francisco

When a local shutterbug managed to capture this aerial photo of San Francisco last year, little did they know the image — which has oil-paint-like qualities to it — would become among the most viral pictures of San Francisco taken in 2022. Well-composed aerial photographs of San Francisco, notably those with the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park featured as central subjects, are known to garner literally tens of thousands of likes and comments, and shares across social media. But on occasion, one of them tends to stick out above the proverbial fray. It sits differently on our eyes; it lands in our souls with perfect form. In the flicker of a scrolling LED screen, these specific stills remind us just how fortunate we are to call the Bay Area home. A snap taken in 202...