summer vacations california

[opening music,cheerful light rock with flute and catchy beat] [male narrator]today, you're visiting from out of town and we're just gonna hop in the car and kind ofwander around and take in the local sights this will be about a 52-block drivedepending on how you count the blocks and we'll pass through 8 neighborhoodsof san francisco and along the way we'll be pausing atabout about 28 different points of interest some of them are the usual touristy spots butsome of them are not the typical touristy spots since you're the visitor, you get to choosewhich car we're going take on this tour. do you want to take the bentley?[bell dings]

do you want to take the maserati?[bell dings] or do you want to take the tesla?[bell dings] it's up to you, they're all down in the garagewaiting, so just take a moment and decide and while you're decidingi should apologize ahead of time just in case any of my off-the-cuff tourguidenarrations turn out to be factually incorrect. i'm sure if there's anything incorrectsomeone will let me know okay, now that you've decidedwhat car to take, let's get started. [opening music returns. various light music playsin background behind the narration for remainder of video] our drive starts at the end of mississippi streetat the intersection with 22nd

not too far from the 22nd street caltrain stationheading north up the hill before we reach the top of the hill herelet's pause for a moment... turn around, and look back behind us[whooshing sound] you can see the hill that we just came upand 22nd street is at the bottom and if i pan up and to the rightyou can see some low income housing sometimes generically known as "the projects"as low income housing everywhere seems to be known as it kind of illustrates the proximity of the desirable, single-familyhomes of potrero hill contrasted with the low-income housing projects i believe there's a plan underwayto replace those projects with some new projects so we'll see how that turns out

well, let's turn around and head back up the hill[whooshing sound] let's pause for a moment hereat the top of the hill we're starting to see some of the viewsthat potrero hill is known for straight ahead to the north is the san francisco skyline.we'll get a better view of that later. off to the right you can see the bay and east bay hills andwe'll zoom in a little bit even though it's a little bit hazy a piece of trivia... potrero hill was the home of the mike stonecharacter in the old tv show "the streets of san francisco" if you've ever seen lieutenant mike stonego to his house, that was in potrero hill we'll pause here at 19th street and admire the view this is not the typical view that you usually see inmovies and tv shows, because it's not as distinctive

you can't really see much of the pyramid or the bay. you can justsee a little bit of the pyramid peeking out from behind the skyline. so this is not the view they usually usefor tv shows, but it's still a nice view mississippi street ends at the bottom of the hilland we'll be entering 7th street we'll be at the intersection of7th street and 16th street typically in most places numbered streets would not intersect witheach other, especially two numbered streets that are 9 blocks apart. but in this area the streets radiate out from a point.so you do have cases where numbered streets intersect. such as here where 7th street and 16th streetconverge and intersect with each other for the first few blocks of 7th street we'll be goingparallel to interstate 280 which is elevated up above and the caltrain commuter rail tracks which are underneath the freeway[train horn and bell sounds from the right]

here's an example of a caltrain passing this intersection.a north-bound "baby bullet" with the engine pushing from behind. [train sounds fade to the left] the mission bay neighborhood, off to the rightof the tracks, is a recently renewed neighborhood. a modern bio-tech areawith a lot of new, tall glass and steel high-rises it used to be, not too long ago, a very grungy, rundown area,with a lot of semi-abandoned commercial and industrial buildings. you can still see some remnants of that off to the left side,some of the old buildings that haven't been reclaimed yet. it is probably only a matter of time. this portion of 7th streetused to be quite popular with homeless people people living out of their carsor living out of old campers

back when it was a somewhat desolatesemi-abandoned, grungy industrial area. now that mission bay is undergoing quite the transformationthose people are gradually getting pushed out. there's still a few people here hanging on,but i assume that eventually they're all going to be pushed out and they'll have to find some other remote area to hang out in one of the surviving buildings on the left side of the tracksis occupied by "economy restaurant fixtures" they provide supplies and equipment for restaurants it's kinda fun to go in there and browse around you can see gigantic mixers and huge cooking pots.theatre-sized popcorn machines. the carts that street vendors use.all kinds of interesting stuff in there.

and you can even find stuff you can use at home sometimes, too [jazzy music plays] the low, square building on the rightwith the blue decorations on the side... ...is "mission bay pump station number 4" and it'scontrol building, a part of the san francisco sewage system this is along the edge of what used to be mission bay.it used to be an actual large bay, but it's all been filled in. and this narrow channel is all that's left of the once big mission bay(hence the name "channel street", which is where we are) during periods of heavy rain as much as a milliongallons of water a day goes through these pumps being pumped down to a treatment plantfurther down south every once in a while it exceeds it's capacityand has to outflow into the bay

fortunately that doesn't happen too often becausethere are some houseboats in this channel some of the few houseboats in san francisco you usually think of houseboats as being up in marin countybut there are a few in san francisco and just beyond you can see at&t park,home of the san francisco giants it is bit off in the distance, but on the right we'll bepassing by the caltrain "fourth and king street" station the final, the northern-most station as the tracks curve around to the rightyou can see a cool mural on the side of the building there and here's a view of that mural from a passing caltrain i'm going to pause here and grab this video looking through thefence to the caltrain station off in the distance to the right

i see police shows on tv where they have some surveillance videolooking at a reflection on the side of a car, 3 miles away and they somehow enhance that video and get a clear image ofsome criminal. i always wondered how the heck they did that. i was searching around on ebay and i found the softwarethat can do this and i managed to get it so i'm going to try out that software on this video[keyboard clacking, whining and whirring machinery sounds] well, it loaded the video pretty fast, let's see if we can zoomin past the fence [keyboard clacking, computer beeping] oh yeah, look at that. we can actually zoom in and seeall the way to the trains there waiting at the station. let's see if we can zoom in any further with this magic software.[keyboard clacking, computer beeping] oh yeah, look at that.we can zoom right into the inside of the station. [keyboard clacking, computer beeping]and, we can actually zoom in on the people in there

so, if there were any criminals in there, we could zoom in on themfrom miles away and catch 'em. that's pretty good. so, i'm glad i got this "csi video enhancement software". [chuckles][keyboard clacking, computer beeping] well, anyway, let's get on with our drive.perhaps we'll use this software again later, who knows. we're now entering the south of market neighborhood,known as "soma" for short soma is known for being an industrial areawith big blocks and lots of wide, one-way streets during the internet boom of the 90's a lot of residential loftconversions occurred and a lot of residential use came to soma nightclubs liked to be in soma because it's an industrial areaand they could go there and not bother anyone as soma has seen more and more residential use, there has been someconflict and friction between the residential, industrial, and nightclub uses one of the attractions for living in soma is the weather

in the san francisco micro-climates that can varyfrom block to block soma tends to be sunny and warm often even when the rest of the cityis socked in by the famous fog soma is also very close to downtown for easy accessand it's also very close to freeways for easy exit so all that has made it popular for loft conversions andresidential use which is gradually pushing out the industrial uses 7th street is an everyday, down to earth, working street.there's nothing much touristy about it. it has a lot of industrial uses. also a lot ofgovernment uses, as we're about to come across. if you notice the round silver building on the right,that's the county jail and city prison and the big dark building on the left is the federal building.and we'll see more of those in a little bit. here we see a mixtureof the industrial and government use.

on one side we've got the golden gate meat company,next door to the glidden professional paint center. while on the other side of the streetwe have the office of the public defender let's pause here at 7th and bryant streets,an important location from the governmental perspective the low building on the right contains offices forpolice, and parking and traffic control. down the street are a lot of bail bonds offices. the big building in front of us to the right is the"hall of justice", often just known as "850 bryant" courts are in there,the southern police station is in there that's where you go for jury duty, for the most part.there are some other places, but this is the big one. i've been here many times for jury duty.i've actually made it onto a jury once.

the circular building behind is the county jail[chill hip-hop music plays] here inside of 850 bryant is an elevator you don'twant to be taking... the elevator to the county jail i've never been there, of course and here's the entrance to the jailif you're a visitor over on the left is the cleverly named "autoreturn", which iswhere you go to get your car if it has been towed or impounded [light, cheerful music with catchy beat plays] a minor point of interest on the leftis the offices of "webpass", my internet provider and the internet provider through whichthis very video was uploaded the large building up ahead on the leftis the 18-story san francisco federal building

a controversial building,both in terms of appearance and function it was designed to be extremely energy efficient. it doesn'teven contain a traditional air conditioning or hvac system. my understanding is thatit didn't work out quite as well as it was supposed to and there's a lot of controversy about that,which you can read about online if you're so inclined the appearance is also very controversial.a lot of people don't like it. another aspect of the building is thatit was purposely designed to encourage exercise most of the elevators only stop on every third floorso that you have to use the stairs every once in a while there are a few elevators for the disabled that stop on every floorbut most of the elevators only stop on every third floor the small building that you see on the corneris actually the cafeteria

which was purposely put away in a separate building so that you wouldhave to walk to it and get some exercise whenever you went for lunch the more traditional, court-house-style buildingon the right is the "james r browning courthouse" this houses the federal court of appealsfor the united states courts for the ninth circuit the ninth circuit federal court covers 9 western statesand 2 pacific island jurisdictions it has 4 courthouses. this one here in san francisco,one in pasadena, one in portland, and one in seattle. coming up ahead on the right, at the cornerof 7th and market, is the grant building the grant building was built in 1904, and has the distinctionof being one of the few buildings that survived the 1906 earthquake it is a well-built building, built with steel, concrete,has walls two and half feet thick, lots of marble but according to engineering reports from the time, that's notthe reason it survived. the reason it survived was pure luck.

it happens to be sitting on a piece of ground that didn't shakeas much as other areas, and therefore it survived structurally here are some photographs of the grant buildingfrom just after the 1906 earthquake you can see that although it survived structurallyit still had quite a bit of interior damage much of the interior was burned and a lot of the cosmeticthings inside, walls and ceilings and so forth, came down and it looks like most of the windows are missing, too this is a view from down the street you can see the extensive damage to most of theother buildings that surrounded the grant building you can also see how all the windows are goneand you can actually look straight through the building this is an interesting view. this is looking up 7th street,the very route we just drove up.

the dark building in the center is the grant building. and youcan see the courthouse building on the right which also survived. at the time it wasn't a courthouse,it was actually a post office what's going on on the left is they're actually blowing upthe building across the street from the grant building they did this in a number of places. they would blow up a rowof buildings in an attempt to make a fire break to stop the fire. from what i've readmost of those didn't really work very well fortunately, they didn't blow up the grant buildingand it survived a while back the grant building fell on hard times,along with the neighborhood that it's in there were squatters and drug dealersdoing business out of that building somebody bought it and fixed it up a little bitand drove most of those people out

the building has since been bought againand you can see it's now all boarded up i've read that they're planning to make a hotel out of itbut i think the economy has put a crimp in their plans there hasn't been any visible progressfor quite a while now years ago i used to have an office in the grant buildingso i have some photographs of the interior i'm not sure what they're going to dowhen they turn this into a hotel i hope they don't ruin the interiorbecause it's got a really great old interior [jazz music plays] as we cross market street, off to the right you can seeone of the historic street cars on the muni f-line the muni f-line has a series of restored street cars and trolleysfrom all over the world

they have cars as old as 1928 from italy,cars from 1920 in russia a lot of cars from the 30's, 40's, and 50'sfrom all over the united states all of the cars have been restored to look as they originallydid in their original service from wherever they came from and they've been restored to run on this f-line there are currently about 30 different types of cars in service,i'm just showing a few of them here as we cross market street this one last little block isno longer called 7th street, it's called charles j brenham charles j brenham was the second and the fourth mayorof san francisco in the mid 1800's i've read that he was a controversial mayor at a time ofvery high crime, but he got this one block named after him anyway for the next two blocks, we'll pass througha small corner of the civic center neighborhood

we'll take a jog to the left here on mcallister. if we were tocontinue down mcallister we'd come to civic center and city hall. but instead we're going to jog to the rightonto leavenworth so we'll just be in the civic center neighborhoodfor this little two-block corner [hip-hop music playing] we're now entering the "tenderloin" neighborhood, an approximately50 square block, predominantly low income area of san francisco this area is somewhat notorious for being a high crime areawith lots of drug addicts, drug dealers, drug problems in general homelessness, low-income sro hotels, and all thesorts of things you would associate with such an area and, yes, the tenderloin does indeedhave all that it has the reputation for you can easily find all kinds of squalorif you just look for it

but there's more to the tenderloin than just that there are people here raising families, there arenice people, there are very interesting people there are businesses, restaurants,even art galleries (because they can afford to be here) so, yes, all the crime, prostitution, drug use,homelessness, it's definitely here but there is more to the tenderloin than just that. of course, this mixture sometimes leads tointeresting juxtapositions such as a children's playground directly across the streetfrom a major "adult" theater. you will hear how it's unsafe in the tenderloin. i don't want to minimize that too much,because there are definitely dangers here, especially at night.

however, as someone who walks through the tenderloinall the time, i have to say i'm not that terribly worried myself there are actually other areas of the citythat i'd be more concerned about than the tenderloin if you're a woman by yourself, there's probably certain areasyou're not gonna walk through, especially at night and it wouldn't be wise to walk throughcarrying gold bars out in the open but if you use common sense, and are aware of your surroundings,most of the time you're going to be okay without any problems taking a drive up through leavenworth street,like we're gonna do here is not going to be an issue there are a lot of interesting old buildings in the tenderloinfrom the time just past the earthquake and the decades following they've managed to escape any sort of"urban renewal", and they've all survived it always feels a little weird to me whenthese tour buses come through the tenderloin

hopefully they're coming through to admireall the interesting old buildings or they're just coming through becausethey have to get from point a to point b hopefully they're not coming throughsolely to gawk at all the poor people there's actually a separate little videoabout this elsewhere on my channel... but since we're passing right by this spot, at the risk ofrepeating myself, i thought i'd include it in this video, too over on the right-hand side there, on the wallthere's a little letter that someone scrawled up there [reading the writing] "dear cynthia"i'm assuming that's cynthia although the "n" is missing "i know you don't care""care" spelled with a "k" "but here it is decidedto take a long-term drug program"

i'm assuming that's "drug"it looks like "dry" "so, i will see you" and then two words that i can't really make out. looks like"phoney fried", but that can't be right, must be something else i wonder if cynthia ever got that message? i've been by this spot since thenand the letter's been painted over so, if cynthia hasn't gotten it by now, she probablywon't be getting that message from "phony fried" coming up on the right-hand side here,i like this t-shirt that this guy's wearing we're coming up on the end of thetenderloin neighborhood and the start of nob hill this area is probably closer in characterto nob hill than it is to the tenderloin

so there's a term for this neighborhood, don't laugh now,it's often called the "tendernob" neighborhood especially by real estate agents who don't wantto advertise anything as being in the tenderloin because if they can say it's somewhere elsethey can command a much higher price we're coming up on california streetand the california street cable car line if this was a perfect video, i would have timed it such thata cable car was going by just as we reached this intersection because of course every video about san franciscohas to have a cable car in it somewhere since that wasn't in my power, what i'm going to dois pause here in the middle of the intersection if you look up to the right, you can see the cable car tracksgoing up the hill. that's the top of nob hill up there. we're going to teleport over to california street,off to the left of where we are now

so that we can take a side trip. we're gonna driveup the hill behind a cable car. a little detour. you can see that we're now facing up the hill on california streetand you can see a cable car off in the distance to give some perspective, on the map on the rightthe dotted line is the route we've taken so far and the solid line is the little detour we're takingthat crosses our original route here we've reached leavenworth street again.this is where we stopped. so if we could be in two places at one time we'd run intoourselves here and disrupt the space/time continuum well, we've succeededin getting a cable car into the video up ahead is the heart of nob hill, the top of nob hillwith the mark hopkins and fairmont hotels we're not heading there today, we're going to teleport back toleavenworth and california and continue up leavenworth street

as we finish crossing california streetwe officially enter the nob hill neighborhood nob hill is an expensive, up-scale neighborhoodmostly residential the hill you see ahead of us, with the two tall buildingson either side, is russian hill although the name is "russian hill", there isnot actually any significant russian community here it was named after a small russian cemetery that wasdiscovered at the top of the hill way back in 1806 russian hill is famous forthe curvy section of lombard street another point of interest is that a lot of the hillychase scenes in the movie "bullit" were filmed in russian hill at the top of the hill here we have a nice view ofalcatraz island about 2 miles away out in the bay over on the right are some good views ofcoit tower on top of telegraph hill

coit tower was built by the estate of lillian coit,who was a famous socialite in the early 1900's. famous for being a big fire department buff. due to lilian coit's interest in fire departments, a lot ofpeople say that this structure was built to resemble a fire hose officially, though, that was just a coincidence, and it was not inside the base of coit tower are some very large murals, paintedduring the great depression of the 1930's by government-paid artists they're in that classic "great depression style" there are quite a few muralsi'm just highlighting a select few of them here anyone with $7 can go to the top of coit tower there is an elevator, but it doesn't go all the way,you have to take some stairs up the last little bit

[sound of elevator machinery][sound of shoes tapping on steps on the way up] but once you're up there,there are some great 360-degree views so let's check out those 360-degree viewsstarting with the south from the south we have a good view of downtown, thefinancial district, and of course, the transamerica pyramid looking to the southwest, we're looking out over chinatown,and we can see nob hill off in the distance way off on the horizon in the center, we can even seesutro tower miles away and just barely see part of twin peaks looking directly west, we can see russian hill,which is the tall buildings just off-center to the left off to the right, in the distance we can seethe golden gate bridge coming into view in the foreground is north beach, and the squaregreen park that you see is washington square park

you can actually see the route that we've taken so faron our drive, and where we've stopped and, this is us looking backat coit tower from over there so, we're on top of coit tower, looking at ourselves,looking back at ourselves at coit tower looking to the northwestwe're looking out over north beach at the edge of the bay ahead of us is fisherman's wharf,which is where our drive will eventually end up you can see the golden gate bridgeoff to the left since there's no fog today the green hills on the horizon are the marin headlandsand off to the right you can see alcatraz island looking to the north, we're looking directly over thefisherman's wharf area there at the edge of the bay and you can see alcatraz straight ahead

the large island behind alcatrazand slightly to the right is angel island there's no real civilization on that island, the entire islandis a park, and it's a great place for hiking and biking you take a ferry to get there the large pier to the right is pier 35 it doesn't happen very often, but every once in agreat while, one of the large cruise ships will dock there i've seen them, but it's rare we're now looking to the northeast.i don't actually have a lot to say about this view. we're looking out over the embarcadero once againand at the various piers of the embarcadero looking to the eastwe're still looking out over the embarcadero

you can see the bay bridgestarting to come into view on the right the western span of the bay bridgewhich is what we're seeing here anchors at yerba buena islandwhich is the high island in the center the hills you see on the horizon in the distance arethe east bay hills with oakland and berkeley and so on the long, low, flat island on the leftis treasure island treasure island is an artificial islandthat was constructed from fill in the 1930's and it was the site of the1939 golden gate international exposition it's actually part of the city of san franciscoalthough it's not physically connected for a long time it was a military basefor the u.s. navy

however, it's now been released for civilian use, butthere's an ongoing controversy over exactly what to do with it looking southeast nowwe've almost come full circle you can see the transamerica pyramid again on the right.you can see the bay bridge on the left. and just below the right end of the bay bridgeyou can see the tower of the ferry building the ferry building was a very prominentsan francisco landmark since the 1800's it's now dwarfed by the tall buildings of the financial district,but it's still a prominent landmark you might think that telegraph hill got it's name froma telegraph antenna, or something like that but that's not the case in the mid 1800's there was a mechanicalwindmill-like structure on top of that hill

with mechanical arms that would raise or lower and signalto the rest of the town what ships are coming into port there was nothing electrical about it eventually the electrical telegraph did comeand that windmill was disassembled around 1862 but the name "telegraph hill" has stuck ever since here at the intersection with greenwich, you can seesomething that sometimes happens with the hills of san francisco greenwich comes up from the right, and ordinarilywould continue on up the hill to the left let's pull forward to the intersectionand pause there if we look to the left, you'll see that in this case,for some reason, they just gave up and didn't continue the streetup the hill for that one block

so that block just turns into stairsand there's no more street that happens every once in a while in san francisco as we continue down the street, you'll noticewe suddenly come across crowds of people standing around in what had been, up until this pointa quiet residential neighborhood and you're probably wondering whyall these crowds of people are here we'll pause in the intersection and check it out if you look off to the left, you can see thatwe're at the bottom of the famous lombard street the so-called "crookedest street in the world",this street has 8 hairpin turns within one block this was done in 1922 because the steepnessof the street made it difficult for cars back in 1922

it's now become a famous tourist destination,one that doesn't cost you anything except that you may have to wait in a long line of cars onthe other side of the hill, each waiting their turn to go down san francisco is well-known for it's hilly streetsand there are various approaches taken to handle them we just saw lombard street, which used switchbacks.some streets just go straight up the hill. some streets, they just give up,and end the street at the steep hill. some streets turn into steps and cars can't go any further, such asthe famous filbert street steps, or greenwich street that we just saw here at francisco is another approach.down below is the intersection with francisco. ordinarily it would be a hill that went up like this but for some reason in this case, they decided tosend a little ramp off to the left and go up the hill that way

so, if you're coming up the hill from the right on francisco yourun into a wall and can't go any further, you have to go left or right anyway, that's just one treatmentof the hills of san francisco coming up, once we cross bay streetwe'll be in the famous fisherman's wharf neighborhood probably like most san francisco residentsi don't actually go to fisherman's wharf very often mainly when there's someone visitingfrom out of town i may occasionally go to aquatic park next doorand sometimes to a restaurant however, there is one reason why i do go tofisherman's wharf every once in a while... [circus/arcade organ music playing] ...and that's a great place called "musee mecanique"[background sounds of crowd and arcade machines]

musee mecanique has one of the world's largestprivately-owned collections of antique arcade games... ...mechanical musical instruments,any kind of coin-operated machine we'll zip through here pretty fast, but you can kind of getan idea of all the variations of kinds of machines they have from the 1800's all the way to the present and the great thing is,it's not a stuffy museum all the machines are open and availableand you can actually play all of them but, the reason i get a hankering to come here everyonce in a while is to play good old fashioned pinball [sound of glass breaking, sounds from pinball machine] it's one of the few places i can still playgood old fashioned pinball

[pinball machine sounds] well, we're coming up on the end of leavenworth streetand thus the end of our drive on the right you can see one of the scavengers who makestheir living by picking recycling out of the trash and redeeming it always a little sad when you see that,and you wonder what their story is if we were on foot, i might stop and talk with them.but since we're in a car, we won't. i guess it's better than panhandling, and i guessthey're doing a service by separating out the recycling as long as we're herein the heart of fisherman's wharf might as well mingle with the touristsfor a few minutes before we go sometimes it can be funto be a tourist in your own city

[sounds of crowd, vendors hawking their goods,street sounds, music emanating from restaurants] [seagull sounds] as long as we're here in fisherman's wharf, there's one lasttourist attraction we should check out before we complete our trip and that's the so-called "world famousbushman of fisherman's wharf" this is a homeless guy who hangs out here and hidesbehind bushes and jumps out and scares unsuspecting tourists this is kind of an interesting way to make money, but i guessit works for him, since he's been doing it since 1980, over 30 years we won't spend a lot of time here you can look up him up online, just search for"bushman san francisco" and you'll find stuff maybe i'll do a video about him someday, but for now,as long as we're here, we'll just walk on by

[bushman snarling, growling][people laughing] [crowd and street sounds][tour boat crews hawking their cruises to passersby] well, that's the end of this drive.hope you enjoyed it. next time you're in town for a visitwe'll take another one so, be sure to call aheadwith any requests or ideas for the next one [closing music, same as original opening music,cheerful light rock with flute and catchy beat] i'd be interested in hearing any feedbackon how the closed captions worked for you