Here on Grant Avenue, you’re in the tourist heart of Chinatown. Feel free to poke around in the shops before we move on. Kids love it here. They can buy back scratchers, coolee hats, whoopee cushions, kazoos, masks, glass animals, kites, and all sorts of other inexpensive kid things. 
San Francisco’s Chinatown is the oldest in North America and the largest Chinese community outside of Asia. It was settled during the gold rush, when thousands of Chinese men came here to hunt for gold and work on the transcontinental railroad. Though a lot of racist laws tried to limit, cheat and control them, they eventually were able to bring their families, and their community thrived. The original buildings were all destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. But today’s Chinatown still retains Chinese customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs and a strong cultural identity.

Chinatown

The beautiful Dragon Gate is one of the most photographed icons in the whole city. It was commissioned in the late 1960s and dedicated in 1970, and is the only authentic Chinatown Gate in North America. It’s very closely based on traditional Chinese village gates, called paifang. It’s built of stone from base to top and covered with a green-tiled wooden roof. It has a large, ceremonial main entrance, and two smaller side entrances for so-called common people. The two lion statues keep out evil spirits. Up above, the inscription is a quote from Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat Sen. It says “All under heaven is for the good of the people.”

Dragon Gate

You’re either approaching or already standing in Union Square Plaza. It’s not very big, but, then, neither is the city – not even a million people live here. Union Square was built on a sand dune in 1850, the first year we were a state. It was named for the pro-Union rallies that were held here leading up to the Civil War.&nbsp; 
Today in Union Square, you can dance to a salsa band on a summer evening, or ice skate on cold winter days. You can chill at two cafes and lots of outdoor benches. You can rent a bike to cruise the city, and you can buy tickets to plays, tours, and music events. Just take a short walk around the plaza and you’ll find it all. Also, right nearby you can shop at Macy’s or Nieman Marcus or the Apple store, with dozens of other shops in the surrounding blocks.&nbsp;

Union Square

This little fountain was given to the city by the adorable Lotta Crabtree, nineteenth-century America’s most beloved actress. Lotta got her acting start in San Francisco, then moved to the East Coast, where she became known as “the nation’s darling.” In 1875, she commissioned the fountain to acknowledge her San Francisco roots.&nbsp;The cast-iron fountain survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, and it became a meeting point for friends and family trying to find each other after the disaster. Every single year since then, right at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, people gather here to commemorate the moment the magnitude 8.0 quake struck. The last survivor of the quake, William A. Del Monte, died in 2016 at 109 years old. As a three-month-old baby, he’d escaped the fire with his family in a horse-drawn buckboard. He lived to play the stock market on the internet.

Lotte's Fountain

Like Lotta’s fountain, the original hotel dates to 1875. In those days, horse-drawn carriages drove in through the main entrance and parked in the sky lighted court.&nbsp;The Palace was the biggest luxury hotel in the west when it was built. Everyone stayed here. Enrico Caruso, the world’s greatest tenor, was here in 1906 when the earthquake struck. He later wrote that he woke up to find his bed rocking like a ship at sea. He ran to his window, where he saw buildings toppling and huge chunks of masonry falling, and heard the screams of desperate people.&nbsp;Caruso got out okay, but the original Palace was destroyed by fire that day. It was rebuilt in 1909 and has been renovated more than once.

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Palace Hotel

I love riding one of the vintage street cars down to Ferry Plaza. It makes me feel like it’s still the thirties and I’m in Milan or Buenos Aires. San Francisco’s Municipal Railway, or Muni, brought them here from cities all over, and they still have exit signs in their original language. Every day, up to twenty of them will take you down Market Street, where you are now, to the Ferry Building and the Embarcadero. The Embarcadero is San Francisco’s long waterfront, once buried under an ugly freeway but now a wide open, world-class, palm-lined destination with great views.

Vintage Streetcar Ride

The cable cars are one of San Francisco’s best loved traditions – and they’re the last manually operated cable cars in the world. They’ve been around since 1873, when British immigrant Andrew Hallidie figured out how to use wire rope to run a cable railway. 
Here’s the basic cable principle: Inside a huge cable car barn and powerhouse, big electric motors drive giant wheels that pull cables through a slot below the street. So the cables are always moving. The cable car guys operate grips that reach down underneath the cable cars to grab the moving cables and hitch a ride. It’s like an old T-bar on a ski slope. You can see how it all works at the cable car barn if you want. It’s at Washington and Mason streets, just a few blocks from Chinatown.

Cable Car

The long stretch of waterfront you’re standing on now is called the Embarcadero. That’s Spanish for “the place to embark.” You’ll notice we have tons of Spanish names for things here, since we used to be part of Spain and then Mexico. This is the eastern waterfront, and it borders the San Francisco Bay. It was a major shipping port until container ships came along. They don’t fit along these quays. 
The Embarcadero used to be shrouded by an old 1960s-era double-decker raised freeway that blighted the view and bounced when you drove on it. We all hated it. When it was torn down after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the Embarcadero just blossomed. The city widened the boulevard and lined it with palm trees, extended the streetcar tracks, and created generous sidewalks. People opened cafés and restaurants, and artists were commissioned to create sculptures. Now, I love coming here and looking at the bay, or hiking along the waterfront, or joining one of the outdoor, drop-in exercise or stretch classes. 
Down a way to the south – that’s to your right if you’re facing the water – is AT&amp;T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants.&nbsp;Far in the other direction is Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf. You can jump on the streetcar in either direction to get to those places.

Embarcadero

The bridge you’re looking at is officially named the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, but to us, it’s just the Bay Bridge. People were already talking about a trans-bay bridge back in the 1850s, during the gold rush. But it didn’t get built until the 1930s, opening in November 1936, six months before the Golden Gate.&nbsp;The bridge has two sections. The one you can see is the western span, between the city and Yerba Buena island. The eastern span, the one you can’t see, goes from Yerba Buena island to Oakland. In 1989, a section of its top deck shook loose during the Loma Prieta earthquake and crashed onto its lower deck, killing one person. It was jerry-rigged back together, and we started planning a replacement. Design took a few decades, construction began in 2003, and the eastern span didn’t open until 2013. So, from 1989 to 2013 —&nbsp;twenty-four years — about 270,000 of us drove across an earthquake-damaged, unreliable bridge every day. What were we thinking? &nbsp;

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San Francisco Bay Bridge

This is the historic Ferry Building. For decades, ferries arrived and departed all day long. As you enter the main doors, panels on either side tell its history, if you want to know more. Just inside, you can buy a ferry ticket to Oakland, Sausalito, Larkspur or Vallejo, and they leave from here.&nbsp;But the real draw is the Ferry Building’s current incarnation, and you can probably smell why. I will fight traffic and pay steep parking prices to spend time here. This is the heart of San Francisco’s foodie culture, Mecca for fresh, local, super high-quality produce, meats, fish, cheeses, breads, coffees, chocolates and anything else you could possibly want. Foraged porcini mushrooms? No problem. Oysters cracked as you sit at the oyster bar? Yep. Artisanal spearmint ice cream? Uh huh. Locally raised duck, rabbit, bison, and beef? &nbsp;Oh yes. Just dive in and wander. You’ll find plenty of little restaurants and other food-related shops, plus there’s a bookstore I really like. On weekends, I come here for the outdoor farmers’ market in back. I gotta have my heirloom tomatoes and fresh arugula.

Ferry Building

This area is called Justin Herman Plaza. Every day, all year long, rain or shine, street vendors offer hand-made arts and crafts for sale. Each artist is screened by the San Francisco Arts Commission to ensure that everything is made directly by the vendors themselves. If it’s Saturday, look for Raoul and Monika and their beautiful crocheted wire and bead necklaces and silver bracelets. Raoul has been selling on the street for thirty years and is the best, and funniest, story teller I know. He’ll be the guy laughing and talking. 
Besides the vendors, the Critical Mass group has gathered here for their Friday night, cross-city bicycle ride for the last twenty years. There are daytime concerts in summer and an ice skating rink in winter. &nbsp;

Image:<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Justin_Herman_Plaza_from_Steuart_Tower.JPG">"Justin Herman Plaza from Steuart Tower"</a> by&nbsp;<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:BrokenSphere" title="User:BrokenSphere">BrokenSphere</a>&nbsp;is licensed under&nbsp;<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>

Justin Herman Plaza

Those gigantic, square concrete tubes make up the Vaillancourt fountain. Some people know it as a place where U2 performed once. It’s too bad you can’t see it with water gushing out of the open ends into the pool at its feet. 
But it was turned off in the early 2000s during California’s energy crisis, and hasn’t ever been turned back on.&nbsp;Quebec artist Armand Vaillancourt was chosen to design the fountain in 1971. Like so much contemporary art, it was violently derided when it was finished. People called it a “howling obscenity,” a “pestiferous eyesore,” and “an obscene practical joke.” One critic famously compared it to the poop of a giant concrete dog with square intestines. I’ve always liked it, because it invites you to crawl around on it. And I even like that it’s empty, because it’s a memorial to California’s chronic water shortage.

Vaillancourt Fountain

This tour goes to three places that are at the heart of downtown San Francisco: Union Square, the Embarcadero, and Chinatown.&nbsp;

Chinatown&nbsp;is of course one of the city’s biggest tourist draws where you can get to taste the traditional Chinese cuisine and discover a variety of bakeries, souvenir shops, cocktail lounges, and herbalists. Union Square is surrounded by shopping areas, hotels and theatres. The plaza pulses with the city’s energy, and is the best place to get tickets for everything that’s going on here, from plays to music to bike rides. From there, we’ll wander down Market Street, check out a few historic earthquake landmarks, then continue down to the Embarcadero, on the edge of the Bay. The old Ferry Building on the Embarcadero is now the heart of the city’s foodie culture, and you just can’t spend time in San Francisco without treating yourself to the incredible diversity of foods there.&nbsp;

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San Francisco: The Heart of Downtown

San Francisco

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San Francisco

San Francisco: The Heart of Downtown

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