Tag: san francisco

  • Haunted Ghost Tour from Wild SF Walking Tours

    Over Halloween it occurred to me that I tend to gravitate toward “ghost tours” everywhere I go, but I’d never taken any traditional ghost tours at home here in San Francisco. The tricky part it turned out was figuring out which one to go on — there’s a surprising number of such tours from different…

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  • Haas-Lilienthal House

    A block away from Lafayette Park in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood is the Haas-Lilienthal House, a well-preserved 19th century Queen Anne Victorian home. Today the house is a museum of sorts. I took the tour earlier today. The only way to see the interior is on this tour, which takes around an hour. The…

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  • Salesforce Tower Tour

    I got to see the city from a new perspective yesterday thanks to the free Salesforce Tower Tour. Tickets for this are rarely available and are snapped up quickly — somehow I was able to snag one back in June. The line to enter the tour is on the small plaza at Mission and Fremont,…

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  • The Tony Bennett statue

    Today I came across the statue of Tony Bennett just outside the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. It’s been there since 2016 though I don’t think I’d ever gotten around to seeing it until now. The statue is in the front lawn of the hotel on Mason Street — a block also now known as…

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  • The Emperor Norton plaque is back

    Those who visited the old Transbay Terminal before it was demolished may remember the plaque dedicated to Emperor Norton next to the front door. The plaque reads: Pause travelerand be grateful toNorton 1st,  Emperor of the United StatesProtector of Mexico, 1859-80,whose prophetic wisdomconceived and decreed thebridging of San Francisco BayAugust 18 1869  Dedicated by E…

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  • The Central Subway is here… on the web

      Hot on the heels of my previous post about subway station plaques, it appears three new San Francisco subway stations are online: well, on the web, anyway. Today I was making my way to Muni Metro and happened to pull up SF Muni Central on my phone to see if I had any chance…

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  • Every single BART plaque I could find in San Francisco

    “Always read the plaque” is the unofficial motto of one of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible. Following that advice, over the past months I’ve been tracking down every BART station plaque located within San Francisco as a scavenger hunt of sorts. Conventional wisdom tells us there are eight BART stations in San Francisco, so there…

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  • A ride on San Francisco’s boat tram

    On Wednesday I mistakenly clicked on bookmark to streetcar.live, an online map displaying the current locations of each of San Francisco’s historic streetcars that are currently running. Before I had a chance to close the tab, I noticed something unusual: one of the Blackpool “boat trams” was running! I decided to take a long lunch…

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  • The murals inside Coit Tower’s first and second floors

    First floor murals  A couple years ago I visited the top of Coit Tower for the first time. In that blog post I noted: I should point out there is a second activity at Coit Tower that isn’t as well advertised, and I have yet to try it myself: in addition to the Depression era…

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  • Pony Express plaque on The Embarcadero

    Today I stumbled on a plaque on the west side of The Embarcadero. It honors a long forgotten pier that once stood on the other side of the street facing Oakland: the Broadway Wharf. The plaque reads: Pony Express Wharf  Nearby was the location of the Broadway Wharf, the wharf extended from Broadway and Davis…

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