By Lynn Rapoport

To the naked eye, the charms and wonders of the Telegraph Avenue - UC Berkeley nexus might seem best suited to the 18-year-old incoming student fresh off the bus from, say, Steinbeck country or the eastern seaboard. One is immediately put in a Dead Poets Society frame of mind: open, not to say vulnerable, to engaging in free-spirited activities like buying drugs in People's Park and getting a nostril pierced in the sight of God, crusty punks, strolling shoppers, and possibly one's rhetoric professor - all against a backdrop of tie-dyed T-shirts and posters memorializing the noble faces of Bob Marley and Jerry Garcia.

But even if you've happily checked those to-dos off your list - or if, for any reason, they fail to tempt you to within a mile of Telegraph - there are other pleasurable pursuits here, many of them well worth a voyage across that vast aquatic body known as the San Francisco Bay. Yes, it is a sad fact that many SFers equate the task of journeying to the East Bay with ascending the northwest face of Half Dome using a pair of toothpicks. But the happier truth of the matter is that the trip comprises a mere 29-minute BART ride, followed by a stroll across the lovely Berkeley campus. Having mastered that feat, you can easily pass a day on and around Telegraph getting cranked on espresso; gorging on cheap, tasty food; scoring excellent records, books, and threads; and absorbing world-class architecture, visual art, film, and performance.

BEST SPOT TO POUND LATTES, ELEGANTLY

The phrase early and often works as well for coffee as it does for voting, and Berkeley knows this. Campus-area cafés of various stripes and characters ensure that no student need take more than 10 paces at any given time to encounter a source of swiftly flowing caffeine. Several of these have gained institutional status, and each has its idiosyncratic charms. But only 18-year-old Caffè Strada , run by a former Berkeley student and holding down the corner lot at Bancroft and College, offers the opportunity to nurse one's white chocolate mocha or other tasty espresso concoction on a sun-dappled patio while eyeing the academic hordes heading to and from campus. A small plantation of leafy trees shades patrons from heavy sunlight, while heat lamps offer protection on cool evenings. The crowd on a recent warm weekend afternoon included a gang of older Euro gentlemen carping about the state of American health care, some rather stunned-looking youths in caps and gowns, and a skate punk absorbed in a collection of Susan Sontag essays.

2300 College, Berk. (510) 843-5282

BEST SWIMMING WITH NYMPHS

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and this writer was a Berkeley student, the pool in the Phoebe A. Hearst Memorial Gymnasium was designated wimmins only. Now it's a gender free-for-all, which, I'm guessing, has led to a sad reversal regarding topless sunbathing along the perimeter. But such sights were only a small portion of the Hearst pool's charms. Located on the second floor of a magnificent 1927 beaux arts building designed by Julia Morgan and Bernard Maybeck, the ornate 33-yard, four-lane pool is flanked by a marble deck, ornamental urns, and colonnades featuring life-size nymphs in flowing garments, offering swimmers a more romantic setting for their laps than the average gym. A $10 day pass gains you admittance to this neoclassical paradise as well as the rest of the university's Cal Rec Club facilities. But if you live or work in the East Bay and can take advantage of it, the community membership package isn't a bad deal: $680 a year (or $58 a month) plus a $65 initiation fee gets you access to Hearst and three other fitness facilities; four pools (Strawberry Canyon is another good one); basketball, tennis, racquetball, handball, and squash courts; group exercise classes; and reduced rates for instruction in windsurfing and sailing.

Bancroft Way near Bowditch, Berk. (510) 642-7796, calbears.berkeley.edu/signup

BEST BONANZA OF THEATRICAL ENLIGHTENMENT

San Francisco has its Civic Center cluster of grand performance halls. But UC Berkeley's Cal Performances has a richly deserved reputation for bringing world-class dance, music, and theater to the campus's Zellerbach Hall and a handful of other venues, some of which doesn't ever make it across the bay. And as befits the university setting, many performances are preceded or followed by talks with artists and scholars in the relevant field. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Mark Morris Dance Group have long-standing relationships with Cal Performances, and they share the 2007 - 08 season with revered companies such as the American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet, Miami City Ballet, and Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal. The coming year also brings opera singer Bryn Terfel and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, a series of recitals and chamber music, the West Coast premiere of Academy Award winner Rachel Portman's opera The Little Prince, performed by the San Francisco Opera, and an appearance by This American Life 's Ira Glass and David Rakoff.

(510) 642-9988 (box office), www.calperformances.net

BEST SPOT TO PAUSE WHILE WEAVING ALONG DURANT STREET ON FRIDAY NIGHT

The Telegraph crawl has its fair share of exploration-worthy bookstores (RIP Cody's; Moe's, stay gold!), music stores (OG Amoeba!), head shops (Annapurna forever!), and clothing stores (Wet Seal?!), but what a visitor may notice first is the cornucopia of restaurants serving cheap, gluttonously portioned plates of complex carbohydrates and other efficient vehicles for grease and salt. It makes sense - students are notoriously hungry people, especially when tanked, so it's nice of the Durant food court to stay open late and make sure nobody has to go to bed with all that lonely alcohol sloshing around in their belly. If it's fine dining you seek, you may want to stroll on, but if you're down to your last few crumpled dollars and after some late-night drunk food, chances are excellent you'll find something to your liking at Meesha's Berkeley Gyros, Gypsy's Italian Trattoria, Steve's Korean BBQ, Satay House, House of Kabab, Bear's Ramen House, Mandarin House, Yokohama Station, Viet Nam Village, or the venerable King Pin Donuts.

Durant near Telegraph, Berk.

BEST HEAD-SIZE BOWL OF GREENS AND BEANS

Of course, one is not always in the position of being drunk, hungry, nearly broke, and wandering the streets near campus at midnight. Sometimes one is simply hungry, nearly broke, and in dire need of an enormous quantity of green, leafy vegetables and a delicious hunk of fresh-baked whole grain bread. On such occasions, Cafe Intermezzo has long been the choice of intelligent students. Among the menu board's tasty rundown of soups, salads, sandwiches, and various sensible combinations thereof, the Veggie Delight is oddly but affordably priced at $5.38 and comes in a bowl big enough to wear as a sun hat, which is filled with mixed greens, chickpeas, kidney beans, cucumbers, carrots, cabbage, avocado, egg, tomatoes, a mess of sprouts, a healthy allotment of croutons, your choice of three dressings (go with poppy seed), and the aforementioned sizable hunk of bread. Well nigh impossible to finish in one sitting, it has been known to keep a cash- and nutrient-poor student going through an entire day of higher learning.

2442 Telegraph, Berk. (510) 849-4592

BEST CONFLUENCE OF RENAISSANCE MADRIGALS AND PERUVIAN CORN BREAD

At a Starbucks somewhere (well, everywhere), they're playing the new Paul McCartney album; at the Musical Offering , you're more likely to hear a selection of opera, choral and chamber music, and the early music (medieval, renaissance, and baroque) the store specializes in. Comparing a behemoth coffeehouse chain (and wannabe music label) to a singular classical music shop (and home of the 20-plus-year-old Wildboar Records) might not seem appropriate, but the Musical Offering's café-restaurant is without question a superior place to drop in for lunch or a snack (such as the incredibly moist and delicious Peruvian corn bread) before or after browsing the impressive selection of CDs.

2430 Bancroft Way, Berk. (510) 849-0211, www.musicaloffering.com

BEST BEACON OF BOOKSTORE EXCELLENCE

Since the early '80s, the Musical Offering has shared a building (and a street address, a bathroom, and some part owners) with its equally first-rate and similarly well-seasoned next-door neighbor, University Press Books , a beacon of bookstore excellence in these grim times of indie closures. As the name suggests, UPB specializes in works from academic presses, and while it's not affiliated with UC Berkeley, it also makes a point of prominently displaying new books by faculty members (whatever the publisher). Among the thousands of titles in stock, other eye-catching categorizations include Californiana, Green Design, Hot Scholarship!, Vintage Psychology Books, Books about Books, and my personal favorite, Fire.

2430 Bancroft Way, Berk. (510) 548-0585, www.universitypressbooks.com

By Johnny Ray Huston

If you call one of this city's many grimy hoods your home, then Glen Park — and Glen Canyon — is an oasis. It's a place where you can replenish yourself and rev up for the short-term future; a place where you can have a one-day vacation without even leaving the city. The air is fresher, and car-crammed roads are mere squiggles in the distance. The fact that Glen Park's petite commercial district is crammed with salons is proof positive that the residents keep it together.

But what about the long-term future of Glen Park, a place so often described in terms — the word quaint meekly nudges its way to the front of my mind — redolent of nostalgia? Pondering that 21st-century question, I ventured into Modernpast, a shop dedicated to forward-thinking design from the mid-20th century.

As smart as he is smartly attired, owner and designer Ric López knows better than anyone that retro and future are entwined. President of the neighborhood's merchants association, he also has so many local projects in motion that he can joke that he's the "Glen" of Glen Park. Besides running Modernpast and its connected gallery, López is remaking his Red Rock bar into a French bistro, and he's planning to open a minimalist sushi eatery — where the waitstaff will sport Weston Wear — across the street.

Holding court at Modernpast's front counter, a pair of attractive Jean Conner paintings behind him, Lopez predicted that Glen Park will soon cast off its rep as a "quaint village" to fully assume an identity as a "new urban village." Rejecting big-box business and conducting "outreach for people with ideas" are two ways the area is honing its singular identity at a time when many other SF neighborhoods and shoppers seem to think the city's history begins in 1998. Within the year, in addition to Lopez's ventures, an organic gourmet pizza parlor will arrive, and the area's library, which has bounced from Diamond to Chenery many times since 1927, will be opening in a new 8,000-square-foot manifestation. How can you not love a place where the only big box is a library? This neighborhood can feed you, read you, and lead you to a better tomorrow.

BEST CLUB SANDWICH LOVERS' CLUB

The line out the door every weekend morning tells you all you need to know about the delicious, unpretentious delights of Tyger's Coffee Shop. Is there a better club sandwich in the city? (The underrated Red Café on Mission Street is Tyger's only competition.) Tyger's breakfasts — including jumbo raisin-walnut French toast, vegan sausage, and omelets — are as tasty as they are easy on the wallet. The deserved popularity of Tyger's means that folks waiting in line during rush periods leave newspapers aplenty for those hungry loners who choose their visiting hours wisely, and even if it's packed, you can count on quick service with speed-of-light coffee refills. Attention, cat kitsch lovers: Keep an eye out for the framed photo of the tabby wearing a feathered headdress.

2798 Diamond, SF. (415) 239-4060, www.tygerscoffeshop.com

BEST PROOF THAT THE BEAT GOES ON

Pass the array of newspapers and magazines outside the shop, go into Bird and Beckett Books and Records, and look for the shelf devoted strictly to books by and about Samuel Beckett and the pictorial tome Birds of Paradise, by Michael Everett. Even if you fail to find it, you'll uncover a reader's paradise in the process — a characterful, warm, and affable place with wholly unique used and new poetry and film sections (to name two) that prove quality bests the smothering quantity in your average boring Borders. There's an amazing bunch of books about SF history, including the comprehensive Images of America series devoted to specific neighborhoods. There's great used vinyl ranging from Mabel Mercer to Antonio Carlos Jobim. There's a piano, lying in wait for Friday night and first-Sunday jazz performances. And there's proof, in broadsides and in reading events, that Diane di Prima, Jack Hirschman, and others have more to say about the world today than the Grey Lady and her many relatives.

2788 Diamond, SF. (415) 586-3733, www.bird-beckett.com

BEST PUBLIC COURTS FOR PRIVATE TYPES

Any tennis maniac who can't or won't throw down monthly money for an overpriced club membership knows the value of free public courts in secluded or slightly out-of-the-way locations. Nestled in the southeast corner of Glen Canyon Park, the Peter Folger Tennis Courts fit the bill and then some as a pair of individually fenced-in courts — no Dolores Park mayhem here — that also allow for discretion. It isn't easy for casual onlookers to see you and your partner do your best (or worst) imitation of this year's women's Wimbledon winner giving her opponent the vengeful beatdown she deserved, or to see you kiss after a rally like you know this year's men's French Open and Wimbledon finalists secretly wanted to do. Yeah, the skeezy Buena Vista Tennis Courts are better hidden, but the winds caress the trees tenderly here.

Chenery and Elk, Glen Canyon Park, SF.

BEST NEEDLING FOR YOUR QI

At your average trad doctor, a needle can mean only one thing — a shot that won't feel good. But you know the drill about average trad doctors: They'll target the symptom alone when maybe they should be taking a more expansive view of treatment. Expansive and in-depth care is what you'll find at East-West Integrative Medicine Clinic, where Marnie McCurdy — a licensed practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine who also has experience as a certified hepatitis C practitioner and a CMT — brings years of training to acupuncture. In other words, here, when you face the needle(s), your qi will say thank you.

650 Chenery, SF. (415) 987-7578, www.eastwestsf.com

BEST HEART IN YOUR FOAM

This ain't no Starbucks, this ain't no fooling around. Calling all coffee geeks: Café Bello is the type of place where the baristas can make a heart shape in the foam of your latte. They could probably even do it blindfolded, though I didn't force them to — there's always a next time. Clean, quiet, minimalist, and sunny on even the grayest day, thanks to the sherbet-hued walls, this spot roasts coffee beans daily and features blended drinks, oolong specialties, and many other kinds of tea from Red Blossom Tea Company. You can also buy an AeroPress vacuum brewer here, but why bother trying for the same effect at home when you're likely to heart anything — foamy or not — these folks serve up?

2885 Diamond, SF. (415) 585-3457

BEST RETRO-FUTURIST'S DELIGHT

Welcome to the Terradome — or, rather, the store where you'll find and immediately want to buy a beautiful Terradome. You don't have to be what creator Ric López (mentioned above) calls a "techy hippie" to appreciate his beautiful see-through acrylic terrariums. Exemplifying López's ideas about design within reach, they range in size and in price, going for as low as $85. And as an added bonus, none of them contain Biodome "star" Pauly Shore — the plant life within them is succulent rather than lecherous. The Terradome family greets you when you walk into López's store, Modernpast, but beyond it lies an austere wonderland of midcentury glass, pottery, and home furnishings. Eames LaFonda chairs, check. Higgins glass galore, check. Gorgeous "Imperial Lipstick"–colored Phyllis Morris thrones that are as tall and skinny as a supermodel, check. Select 20th-century original artworks, huge check — that hopefully won't bounce.

677 Chenery, SF. (415) 333-9007, www.modernpast.com

 

By Matt Sussman

Before it became synonymous with cozy trattorias and jazz in Washington Square Park; before its cafés and community halls hosted readings by poetic native sons like Jack Spicer and Kenneth Rexroth and, a little later, the East Coast transplants whom Herb Caen would dub beatniks; even before Italian immigrants formed a community from within their post-1906 tenements, North Beach was home to that handy catchall: vice. Although the neighborhood overlapped topographically, along Pacific Avenue, with the rough-and-tumble Barbary Coast district, North Beach didn't completely come into its own as a fecund hothouse for topless clubs, dyke-run brothels, gay bathhouses, and bars and cafés where bohemian and queer clienteles mixed until the repeal of prohibition in 1933.

In addition to ritzy nightspots such as Bimbo's, whose famed mermaid tank is still a must-see, North Beach has also been home to Mona's, the city's first exclusively lesbian bar; José Julio Sarria, the city's onetime reigning drag queen, who ran for city supervisor 17 years prior to Harvey Milk's election; the Condor, which boasted the country's first topless female dancers; Finocchio's, the famed drag cabaret where female Hollywood royalty mingled with the men who impersonated them; and, just post - Summer of Love, the now-boarded-up Palace Theater, in which genderfuck hippies the Cockettes and a pre-disco Sylvester performed their acid-fried midnight revues.

As one walks around North Beach today, remnants of this groundbreaking past are difficult to locate - many of the above businesses have long since been closed, razed, or sold as real estate prices have risen over the years and North Beach, post - Real World , has become San Francisco's answer to Greenwich Village. The Condor put its shirt back on and became a respectable Cajun restaurant, and the space that once housed historic lesbian bar the Black Cat has been remade into an upscale eatery, twice. The following, however, is a list of locales that do their part to evoke the spirits of the bedazzled gown queens, serenading bull daggers, buxom "loose" dames, and literary dissidents who once called our Little Italy's fog-shrouded streets, dim basement bars, and cramped studios their own.

BEST LITERARY TIME CAPSULE

"There could be no 1967 without 1957," Jerry Cimino declares, enthusiastically referring to the year when Allen Ginsberg's Howl was tried for obscenity, a trial in which free speech would eventually win out over cultural puritanism. Cimino, along with his wife, Estelle, is the proprietor, chief curator, and beat-culture acolyte behind the Beat Museum. The modest space, housed in a storefront between two strip clubs, is a curious mix of brazen commercialism (they've already snagged 1-800-KEROUAC), impressive research (see the display on female beats), and P.T. Barnum-esque chutzpah (ask about the Sputnik fragment). Looking at the vitrine-enclosed first three editions of Howl might seem a bit square, but the deep admiration Cimino feels for the beats' art is palpable, as is the care he's taken in making his personal calling to beatitude open to the public.

540 Broadway, SF. 1-800-KEROUAC, www.kerouac.com

BEST PLACE TO CHANNEL YOUR INNER COCKETTE

Some homo coven ought to hold a séance for Divine in the preserved-in-amber specimen of a '60s glamour emporium that is Rosalie's New Looks , so her spirit can don one of the hundreds of wigs that hang like so many hunting trophies, throw on a fistful of the many vintage pelts for sale, top off her ensemble with some baubles from the crazy costume jewelry selection, and go avenge Edna Turnblad's honor by haunting John Travolta's lame ass into the grave. Such a full-service Wunderkammer of fabulousness is Rosalie's that it's been a secret one-stop for trannies in need of a new do for decades, dating back to a time when entering a drag ball was like walking in a cotillion. Still run by Rosalie, herself a former beauty-pageant star, the fabulously cluttered shop styles real hair in addition to (as its business card claims) stocking the largest wig selection in the Bay Area. Next time you see me flossin' at Ruby Skye, you'll know where I got my killer bouffant.

782 Columbus, SF. (415) 397-6246

BEST SPLASH OF SPIFFINESS

I don't really care that Tosca Café is a rumored hot spot for sighting the occasional celeb in town for a film shoot or famous local politicos. I'm not looking at the people. My eye is too busy taking in the sumptuously large red banquettes; the gorgeous mahogany bar tended by dashing men in white dinner jackets; the jukebox stocked with opera 45s; the way in which the wood-paneled interior makes it always feel like dusk inside. While it's not one of North Beach's lost stripper bars, Tosca is classy and classic - the kind of joint where my fevered imagination conjures Sam Spade meeting with Joel Cairo just to catch a whiff of his gardenias over sidecars, which Tosca does a damn fine job of. The brandy-laced hot chocolate is no slouch either.

242 Columbus, SF. (451) 986-9651

BEST LOCAL MONUMENT TO priapic OMNIPOTENCE

Coit Tower is perhaps our city's queerest landmark. In the 1976 Dirty Harry movie The Enforcer , Inspector Kate Moor plays coy when describing the monument to volunteer firefighters as "vaguely phallic," then gives it the cheeky nickname Coitus Interruptus. That its benefactor and namesake, the wealthy, eccentric Lillie Hitchcock Coit, was a woman fond of wearing men's clothing in order to sneak into North Beach's many all-male gambling establishments adds a nice gender bend to the obvious reading the tower invites: masculine brio immortalized via priapic omnipotence (see: the Washington Monument). But the journey is very much the destination as well. Telegraph Hill is a veritable lush jungle rising dramatically above the densely packed surrounding streets like some resurrected lost world from an Edgar Rice Burroughs serial, complete with its own parrot population. Just as North Beach must have been for the butches, fairy folk, artists, writers, and other bar and jazz hall denizens who made it their turf, Telegraph Hill is itself a small oasis, supportive of an ecosystem that sustains birds of many hues and outlandish plumage as well as another species that travels in flocks: tourists.

1 Telegraph Hill Blvd., SF. (415) 362-0808

BEST WINDOW SHOPPING FOR A SWEET TOOTH

If Grant Street is North Beach's Valencia Corridor, lined with enough sparkly boutiques and restaurants that scream "I'm a romantic gem" to make a bloody tiara, then pastry atelier I Dream of Cake is clearly the Hope Diamond set in the crown's center. When I point out to pastry creator Shinmin Li how pedestrians tend to stop midtrek and stand agape before the appointment-only shop's stunning window displays, she simply smiles and admits, "We get that a lot." Li and her small staff are culinary couturiers who work with sugar instead of silk. They hand-fashion each decorative detail (immaculate zippers on the handbag-shape cakes, tiny pistils on the flowering vines that snake along the surfaces of their tiered designs) and batch of organic filling with a rococo delicacy befitting a Fabergé egg - another frequently commissioned design, as it happens. With premade cakes starting at $150 and custom orders at $350, many of us will have to be content savoring Li's creations through glass. But a girl can dream. I already have a design in mind for my fantasy tea party with legendary Finocchio's diva Charles Pierce, J.J. Sarria, and nutcase Emperor Norton, but if I tell you, my wish won't come true.

1351 Grant, SF. (415) 989-2253, www.idreamofcake.com

BEST COMPENDIUM OF TOPOGRAPHICAL WONDERS

As I wander around North Beach, my search for signposts of a radical nightlife that has long since vanished becomes fatiguing. The strata of history have become compacted into densely stacked, phyllo-thin layers under the sheer weight of chronological accumulation - North Beach's outré years now seem recoverable only in the paper-thin contents of historical archives: old menus, photographs, tourist brochures, and maps. Luckily for me, antique print and map shop Schein and Schein is right down the street from I Dream of Cake. Here one can trace practically the entire topographic history of California and the outcrop of "pueblo lands" (so termed in an 1884 survey in which the city is a few crosshatches between Market Street and the Presidio) that would become San Francisco. Schein and Schein also stocks world maps from as far back as 1645. Kid gloves and snobby attitudes are thankfully absent as one examines plastic-wrapped views of the Cliff House in its heyday, woodblocks of Hawaiian fauna, or a beautiful souvenir guide to the Golden Gate International Exposition. I hit pay dirt with a gold rush - <\d>themed 1947 guidebook to San Francisco of the same name (Pay Dirt! The Romance of a Great City), in which North Beach is described as perfect for "the tourist seeking more adventurous fare."

1435 Grant, SF. (415) 399-8882, www.scheinandschein.com

 

By Deborah Giattina

The Mission has its murals paying tribute to César Chávez. Two on Potrero Hill have borne portraits of neighborhood native son OJ Simpson. But the colorful one at the intersection of Excelsior and Mission has the 52 Muni as its central image. Perhaps that's because a higher per capita number of Outer Mission residents get around by bus than folks in any other part of the city. Clearly this is a neighborhood of very brave and patient souls.

The revered 52 might also be the best common denominator among the exceptionally diverse group of people who make their home in this breezy, bowl-shape valley, which stretches from where 280 meets Mission Street all the way to Daly City. Many are recent immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands, juggling kid care and two jobs. They buy family-size and cook at home. The neighborhood isn't party central, though it does have its own annual street fair, September's Excelsior Festival, a relatively mellow affair featuring good food and live Latin jazz. Conspicuously absent are buttless-chaps wearers and moshing hippies.

On any given day along the bustling Mission Street corridor, you'll find new inhabitants blending harmoniously with the old, as exemplified by an Italian deli facing the Hawaiian BBQ across the way. From the 1860s through the 1920s much of this area was farmland tilled by immigrants from Italy, Sweden, and Germany. When the streetcars rolled in, the area quickly urbanized. Mission Street was once lined with pasta factories and single-screen theaters. Soon came pizzerias, then taquerías. As shop owners have retired and vacancies have opened up, the neighborhood has continued to develop its new identity, with help from merchant and resident organizations such as the Excelsior Action Group, which has prospected new renters such as Martha and Bros. Coffee. Still, some of that old flavor remains, as experienced in the Godfather -esque back room of Little Joe's Pizza or the Sunday brunches at the Italian American Social Club.

To experience the collision of these worlds, all you have to do is hop the 52. The 14 and 49 will also do.

Best Way to Honor the Dead

Actually, we're just talking about the dearly departed guitar noodler from the Grateful Dead, not the entire band. For the past five years the unshaved and tie-dyed have gathered in the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, a Greek-style outdoor venue quietly tucked into sprawling McLaren Park, to play and enjoy Garcia's music. The first time Excelsior residents got together to organize Jerry Day , it was held in the Italian American Social Club as a fundraiser for Crocker Amazon Park, Garcia's old stomping ground as a kid. Since 2003 it has been held in the amphitheater on the first Sunday of August (this year's Jerry Day is Aug. 5), close to the dates of the shaggy Leo's birthday and passing. The upcoming festival boasts tributes by the likes of Melvin Seals, a Bayview resident and keyboardist who played in the Jerry Garcia Band for 15 years. Any neighborhood that could rear the good-times-luvin' Garcia can't be all work and no play. Excelsior , you know, is Latin for "higher."

McLaren Park, John F. Shelly Drive near Cambridge, SF. www.jerryday.org

Best Chowder Tradition

As the Italian population has aged and made way for new waves of Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants, many of the old establishments have gone the way of the zucchini farm. But according to Angel Tang, when a Chinese family bought the building that held Tony and Joe's Seafood Grotto, the old-timers pleaded with them to carry on the tradition. The family complied and hired Tang to run the wood-paneled bar and restaurant, where she continues to stir up red and white chowders using Tony and Joe's original recipes. Regulars assure Tang that the chowders remain delicious, possibly even rivaling Boston varieties. The formerly seafood-only menu now includes prime rib and steaks, and the name on the awning has changed, to Joe's Prime Rib and Seafood . Names mean a lot to people, but rarely as much as a good chowder.

4435 Mission, SF. (415) 239-9459

Best Pan-Asian Treats

For those who sadly said good-bye to Mom Is Cooking, the matriarch-run Mexican restaurant on Geneva, you still have a MOM who cares that you don't go hungry. Also known as the Manila Oriental Market , the pan-Asian grocery stocks everything from quail's eggs to midnight-snackable Asian treats such as fermented bean curd with chili. Most impressive, however, is the grocer's fresh fish market. Over in aisle one, Tagalog- and Cantonese-speaking clerks clobber live trout, cod, and carp with rubber mallets before bagging and handing them over to eager pescetarians. They'll even clean and deep-fry your fresh kill before you head to the checkout. Vegetarians should stay close to the produce aisle at the opposite end of MOM's, where they can fill their carts with an impressive selection of bok choy and other inanimate foodstuffs.

4175 Mission, SF. (415) 337-7272

Best Cozy Café-Gallery

Selling coffees, teas, and snacks and decorated in soothing pastels, Mamá Art Cafe is a sweet little spot to take a breather from the Mission Street chaos. Evenings within its breezy confines come alive with dinner tango performances and live jazz and bluegrass shows. And for the past three years the café has meticulously handpicked neighborhood and international artists to show their work there. A recent exhibition, "One Thousand and One Books," by Rafael Landea, featured a series of paintings inspired by Chris Cobb's much-talked-about color-coding of all the titles in 16th Street's Adobe Bookstore. Come to Mamá and keep an eye out for what might be the burgeoning Outer Mission School.

4754 Mission, SF. (415) 586-8453, www.mamasf.com

Best Secret Sculpture Garden

The first words you'll probably utter when you finally find the Cayuga Playground , located at the intersection of a dead-end street and a footpath, are "Who put that there?" Not because the playground - which has basketball and tennis courts, a cricket field, and a swing set - is situated under the BART overpass running between the Daly City and Balboa Park stations. Nor because of the lavish citrus bloom obviously cultivated with fastidious care in such an unexpected place. Your wonderment will be due to the dozens of wooden totems that surround the field and accentuate paths running under vine-covered bowers. The "who" is Demetrio Braceros, Cayuga's personal gardener since 1986. Even after retiring from the Recreation and Park Department two years ago, the Philippine émigré continues to tend to the park's flora and carve its fauna from nearby fallen wood with a chain saw. His creations - of Barry Bonds, Princess Di, Native American chieftains, and boa constrictors - verge on the miraculous.

End of Cayuga and Naglee, SF

By Marke B.

And so we reach the ocean. Remember the ocean? It's that big, wet, gray thing on the other side of town, heaving like a hungry drag queen as she snatches at your onion rings. Many of us preoccupied downtown urbanites forget altogether that we live on a peninsula - in California, no less - and though the bay gets all the press, the ocean's just a half-hour glide on the N train away. For some, the only reminder that we're almost entirely surrounded by water may come at 4 a.m. on a sleepless night: the eerie bray of a cargo ship's foghorn announcing the latest arrival of knockoff Crocs from China.

That's nonsense, of course, to wetsuited brave hearts and those fond of oceanic contemplation. On a spiritual level, the ocean rocks. It's a ginormous metaphor that swallows you whole, a churning eraser that wipes the mental slate clean. It's nonsense too to those who live in the Outer Sunset, the urban-suburban, sprawling neighborhood bordered by Golden Gate Park and Sloat Boulevard, 19th Avenue and Ocean Beach. The one with the funny alphabetical street names and ordinated avenues whose total I can never quite recall. (Oh - 48. Thanks, Internet!)

Strolling down the Outer Sunset's capacious, treeless sidewalks, its little houses lined up on the streets like pastel teeth, I often find my ragged thoughts sliding into the neighborhood's past. Not so very long ago, this was all sand dunes and friendless scrub. Hollywood used to film its desert scenes here (Lawrence of Presuburbia?) until the great earthquake and fire chased people out of the charred and gnarled downtown and the dunes began to be paved over. It's said that developer Aurelius E. Buckingham came up with the "Sunset" name in the early 1900s to make the often cold and foggy neighborhood more attractive to home buyers - some folks needed a harder sell than mere escape from the ravages of the cantankerous San Andreas. (It worked a little too well, maybe: a tiny earthquake cottage currently sells for around $500,000 and a midsize house for a cool $2 million.)

The San Francisco Public Library possesses a photo from the late 1800's of defunct streetcars abandoned in the arid wilds that used to reign supreme here. If anything can fire the poetic imagination, that picture can; my press-on nails ache to scratch through the asphalt and exhume those lonely trolleys' rusted bones. But there's also poetry to be found in the Outer Sunset's now - the Irish-Asian-Russian-surfer tumult, echoed in the parallel, park-buffered Richmond District to the north but here somehow less brazen, haphazard in its foggy shroud. Perhaps it's the order the streets impose (who knows?). Yet for the observant adventurous, Outer Sunset gems abound. Below are some very personal favorites:

BEST JOE ON THE DUNES

Back when I was less environmental, I drove a beat-up '87 Blazer minus several windows. Early every morning I'd cruise to the ocean, grab a cup of steamy joe from Java Beach Cafe , right across the Great Highway from the shoreline, stumble over the twilit dunes, and watch the dawn break over the waves. People said I was crazy: "It's too cold! It's too foggy!" But I like the fog and the cold, I'd protest, and the quiet and the peace. I also loved the exuberant mishmash of fellow early risers I encountered at Java Beach: surfers, philosophers, ragtag all-nighters, bullshitting Internet visionaries (this was the '90s), nannies with children, business-suited sharks punching their laptops in the open air ... The café's been around for 15 years now - owners Patrick and Buffy Maguire describe it as "forever a work in progress" - and I still love to visit when I'm in the neighborhood, although now it's for a giant sub and a glass of merlot at sunset. No way I'm getting up that early anymore.

1396 La Playa, SF. (415) 665-5282, www.javabeachcafe.com

BEST LAID-BACK SURF SHACK

Who doesn't wish they could surf? I'll tell you who: surfers, because they already can. Lucky bastards. But for unbalanceable people whose inner ears have been knocked out of whack from too much happy hour and who are just getting home from the clubs when the big ones swell, well, sorry, Charlie. I'm one of those people, but I've made up for it a little by chatting online with a lot of cute guys who say they're surfers, and most of them tell me they love to get their gear from Mollusk Surf Shop . So I paid the place a visit and compared it to the other surf shops I've popped into with dreams of someday catching waves. Every surf shop in town has its unique charms, but Mollusk is the only one where it seemed I could really hang out and not feel lurky - the staff are welcoming, there's a cozy living room setup right in the middle of the sales floor, and the place even has an art gallery thing going on, featuring work by such folks as the Society of Driftwood Shack Enthusiasts. Oh yeah, and they sell stuff there too: wetsuits, board bags, hoodies, surf DVDs, fins, and even surfboards.

4500 Irving, SF. (415) 564-6300, www.mollusksurfshop.com

BEST HOT STEWED SNOW PLOUGH

Suddenly my boyfriend stopped. "Hot stewed snow frog cream with red date and lotus seed," he read aloud from a menu posted on Noriega Street. 'Lily nur with snow plough.' Let's eat here." We entered the tiny, candy-colored Hong Kong - style dessert wonderland of Golden Island Cafe and took our seats. A shy but lovely young waitress placed an illustrated menu before us, but the pictures didn't help much. What the heck was snow frog cream? Or dundan or dunlai or grass jelly or horlick hot and cold? So we naive kids just ordered by color, figuring we couldn't lose. Golden Island serves a vast assortment of sago (think rice pudding but pithier), tapioca pearl drinks, and even deep-fried meats. The hot stewed desserts, however, entranced us. Although we refrained from ordering the café's specialty, hot sea coconut snow frog cream stewed with coconut milk (too white for me), we dove into the rest of the menu's confounding rainbow, discovering a wealth of new textures, subtle-sweet flavors, and odd spellings. We still don't know what snow plough is, but we'll happily eat it again.

1300 Noriega, SF. (415) 759-9118

BEST SLINGS FOR HURT WINGS

The following events may share no connection, but in my head they form a sort of winged kismet. A little while ago I went to see Our Breath Is as Thin as a Hummingbird's Spine , a pretty nifty play about a man who falls in love with a bird. The following morning I got a frantic call from a friend on the verge of hysterics - his budgie had gotten one of her flappers caught in her cage somehow, and now she was unable to flutter around. To the bird hospital! More specifically, to the Bay Area Bird Hospital ! There a team of chipper chirper fixer-uppers attends to birds of all types, headed by hospital founder and owner Dr. Lynn R. Dustin, who possesses an extensive background in psittacine aviculture (I don't what that is, but I sure like trying to say it). Also treated: reptiles, rabbits, rodents, and small exotic mammals. Soon my friend's dear budgie was flitting and squawking about like new. Then I had chicken for dinner. Kidding!

2145 Taraval, SF. (415) 566-4359, www.bayareabirdhospital.com

BEST KING OF CHINESE DUMPLING

Time-pressed, stove-phobic lovers of homemade jiaozi, rejoice. Pork with string bean, chicken with spinach, celery and carrot vegetarian - these are just some of the cook-at-home varieties of Chinese dumplings for sale at the Asian American Food Co. , along with pot stickers, wontons, radish cakes, green onion pancakes, marinated bao, and much more. This one-stop for all things delectably doughy (also modestly known as the King of Chinese Dumpling) is reason enough for a trip to the Outer Sunset. You can get your dumpling fix fresh or frozen, lickety-split. Frozen, you say? Yes, but don't fret - the staff, surely the most passionate people about dumplings ever , are on hand to tell you exactly how to prepare the iced goodies so you don't lose any of their steamy texture or springy flavor. There's also a complete guide to preparation on the AAFC Web site, in case you're forgetful as well as kitchen clumsy.

1426 Noriega, SF. (415) 665-6617, www.kingofchinesedumpling.com

BEST SHOTS BY THE SEASHORE

I can never remember if the giant stuffed mammal's head on the wall was once the property of a moose, a caribou, or a singularly hefty elk - but there's the antlered head of something towering over the snug environs of the Riptide . Whether my recurring forgetfulness pays testament to my years of glorious self-abuse or to the generous pours at this bar is a toss-up. Let's go with the bar's pours; it's their award, after all. And if no one has trademarked the phrase "Get ripped at the Riptide" yet, well ... Caught somewhere in the slipstream of time and space between old West saloon and Southern gothic honky-tonk - no surprise, since the joint harks back to 1941 - the Rip offers a roaring fireplace, a loopy jukebox, and a "Whoa, nelly!"<\!s>'s worth of live-music programming (where else in the Outer Sunset can you hear bluegrass on the weekends, I ask you?). And for those of us who can't quite kick the habit, the bar's smoking patio offers a spectacular ocean view, which makes it even harder to stop lighting up.

3639 Taraval, SF. (415) 681-8433, www.riptidesf.com

By Cheryl Eddy

Remember Pacific Heights, that crappy 1990 thriller starring Michael Keaton as a tenant who unleashes hell on yuppie landlord Melanie Griffith? The tagline was "Where terror lives." I don't know about that, but I do know that the dogs on upper Fillmore Street are better coiffed than I am and wear more-expensive sweaters too - which is pretty scary. I went into a swanky dress shop, kinda sorta looking for something to wear to an impending big event, and tried on something that was so cute I could almost overlook the fact that it cost a mere $100 less than my monthly rent. Such are the beguiling charms of this shopper's paradise, whose main drag boasts an eye-popping array of joints where disposable income can be disposed of, including boutiques devoted to single brands of makeup (MAC, Benefit, Shu Uemura) and skin care.

Several storefronts feature helpful, oh-so-sassy slogans to augment the names of their businesses; step this way for "flowers with attitude" and cross the street to discover "where lonely sofas meet perky pillows." There's also an overload of coffee chains, in particular a half-block stretch where the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Peet's, and Starbucks wage a daily battle for the affections of caffeine-and-whipped-cream devotees. You may just need that extra pick-me-up to make it through the seemingly endless retail browsing opportunities, singular taste sensations, and bursts of shabby chic that await you on the hill.

Best Cocoa Overload

I can totally fuck up a Snickers bar when the mood is right. But I can also appreciate fancy chocolate, even if I don't really understand the point of buying something for dessert that's described as "earthy dark with hints of mushroom." Fortunately, the cocoa-rati at Bittersweet: The Chocolate Café give you the heads-up on what to expect from each of their exotic bars. While there's a milk chocolate selection (including lavender and green tea flavors), the dark varieties are more likely to inspire double takes, thanks to their unusual ingredients. Wondering about that $5.95 Café Tasse Dark with Pepper bar? Sayeth the Bittersweet annotation, "Belgian chocolate with a pepper kick!" For the less adventurous - or shall we say, more traditional - Bittersweet also offers seven kinds of hot chocolate as well as chocolate Thai iced tea, chocolate dulce de leche pudding, and baked goodies. The store also hosts regular chocolate tastings and occasional lectures, so you too can become an expert on nature's most addictive treat.

2123 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-8715. (Also 5427 College, Oakl. 510-654-7159.) www.bittersweetchocolatecafe.com

Best Gold mine of Sterling Silver

After Bittersweet I started hitting shops where the musical selections eerily mirrored the mood of the merchandise. In Aumakua it was Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." And indeed, the store is full of gift ideas for someone who might very well be into Mr. Joel: colorful picture frames, carved wooden cats, a whole shelf of guardian angel figurines, and home decor objects sharing a Zen, world-traveler vibe. Basically, stuff you'd find in a crib that's calm, tastefully decorated, and not often host to the sorts of rowdy parties at which things get broken. A painted sign outside advises, "Love is the only thing of value that we leave behind" - which may be true, but Aumakua also features an impressive selection of pretty sterling-silver earrings in a variety of classic styles, all priced around $25. Perfect for the Storm Front fan or anyone who appreciates unique jewelry that'll never look too last-season to wear over and over. Seasonal note: Aumakua also carries a wide range of Christmas ornaments around the holidays.

2238 Fillmore, SF. (415) 673-4200

Best Spot to Feather Your You-Know-What

Per its sign, Nest is where you can find "rustic adornments for the home." The store is vaguely arranged into "rooms," with colorful bed linens, bathrobes, French ceramics, kitchen accessories, cookbooks, and kids' clothes grouped as appropriate. Swanky yet quirky chandeliers (I saw one on sale for $1,100) are scattered throughout, as is interesting jewelry. Echoing the store's avian motif, several birdhouses that look like dollhouses are displayed atop a case holding some wonderfully Victorian-creepy items, including a glass tray decorated with drawings of bats. The whole store is set up to encourage browsing, so every time you look at a shelf, you spot something you didn't see before, like a sheaf of paper masks tucked behind a stack of blank journals.

2300 Fillmore, SF. (415) 292-6199. (Also 2340 Polk, SF. 415-292-6198)

Best Four-Legged Window Shopping

Not owning a furry critter myself, I've never been inside Pets Unlimited . But according to its Web site, it offers "everything from emergency medical services, adoption, rehabilitation, and foster care to education and 24-hour veterinary care in partnership with other local animal welfare agencies." And the organization has been around for 60 years, apparently. For the Fillmore Street stroller, though, the Pets Unlimited windows offer the opportunity to peruse the adoptable cat and dog populations, whose photos and alluringly cute names (Romeo! Snailsford!) are featured on flyers alongside tempting copy such as "Jamie is a young poodle mix who has time to play with just about everyone he meets." Aw! Someone get over there and give Jamie a good home before I have to break some clauses in my rental agreement.

2343 Fillmore, SF. (415) 563-6700, www.petsunlimited.org

Best Fun in Functional

I kind of want to move into Zinc Details. There's not really any place for me to sleep, but I could pile up some of the store's huge selection of Marimekko linens and animal-shaped pillows and camp out among the spiffy, shiny, cleverly fashioned housewares: a sleek, modern teakettle with a bird perched on its spout; dishes festooned with bold, graphic patterns; glasses covered with delicate, folksy scenes (love the highball glass subtly decorated with flowers and a prancing pony); giant Yoshimato Nara ashtrays; and gadgets galore. Looking for a budget gift? Check the table by the register for address books, cocktail goldfish, and a 3-D cat playing cards - plus double-sided, naughty 'n' nice wrapping paper.

1905 Fillmore, SF. (415) 776-2100. (Also 2410 California, SF. 415-776-9002.) www.zincdetails.com

Best Zabaglione Seduction

Cover all your sweet-tooth bases at Tango Gelato , where even if the temptation of fabulously sinful zabaglione - a traditional custardlike Italian dessert made with egg yolks, sugar, and sweet wine - can't seduce you into a dessert coma, any of the zillion gelato flavors on offer will, such as chocolate chip, mango, and vanilla ginger. Styled after an authentic Argentine gelato shop ("Tango" isn't just a fancy name), the spot also serves smoothies and sorbet, so if olive oil - flavored gelato sounds too freaky for you, you can still scoop something up to tap-dance on your taste buds.

2015 Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-3692. (Also 4184 Piedmont, Oakl. 510-655-5041; 831 Marina Village Pkwy., Alameda. 510-522-2758.) www.tangogelato.com

By Justin Juul

I visited San Francisco for the first time on a spur-of-the-moment trip when I was 19 years old, almost a decade ago. As a SoCal resident, I was completely blown away by the old-school, centralized urban charm, but the differences between here and my hometown didn't really hit me until my friends and I got sick of all the tourist shit and ventured into the Upper Haight, where people actually live.

I had never seen anything like it: people drumming in the park, girls cackling on mushrooms, liquor stores with Bob Marley murals. My virgin eyes were exposed to things I didn't understand. Is that lady really naked? What's that dude doing in that tree? In contrast to my boring Los Angeles hood, the Upper Haight seemed like a real community, one where people of like minds had been coming since the '60s to live in free-spirited bliss. There were an anarchist bookstore, tattoo parlors, and legendary music outlets all on the same street. The beer ran like water, and there were pot brownies for sale on every corner. I soon became obsessed with the Haight and vowed to move there as soon as I could.

Of course, first impressions can be deceiving. These days on the Haight, where I now live, it can be mighty tempting to agree with legendary San Francisco Chronicle columnist and curmudgeon Charles McCabe, who wrote in the '70s that "tourism has dehumanized and alienated our city." Upper Haight Street sometimes seems like Pier 39, except instead of ogling seals, the waves of tourists ogle the homeless, and black-light posters sell out as fast as bowls of overpriced crab bisque. Indeed, commercialized gawking is one of the things that supposedly caused the original Summer of Love's demise. Nothing is more attractive than naked utopian ideals, but it's an attraction that dooms, perhaps.

And yet, despite often getting clogged with fume-spewing tour buses and overrun by hopeless ex-frat boys into reggae, the Upper Haight remains a vibrant community, rife with unique small businesses and community services that didn't necessarily chomp on the magical mystery mushroom. The obvious thing to do for this year's Best of the Bay would be to highlight classic hippie holdouts. But I took inspiration from vintage clothing shop La Rosa's notorious entrance sign ("No pictures, no food, and please... NO DIRTY HIPPIES") and went looking for Upper Haight gems that transcend the typical wacky-'60s-ethos thing. What can I say? I'm a rebel like that.

Best Pint on the Sly

While your visiting relations are checking out gaudy knickknacks up and down the Haight Street stretch, quietly slip away and hightail it to the Gold Cane Cocktail Lounge for some good, cheap beer and an always interesting crowd. The Summer of Love is but a tiny blip on this saloon's 81-year time line. No Jimi posters or tie-dye here, just strong cocktails at the bar and smoke-drenched sunlight on the patio. The owner, in his infinite wisdom, has even hung a giant moose head in the main room - to ward off galloping hordes of militant vegans, perhaps?

1569 Haight, SF. (415) 626-1112

Best Noodle Pick-Me-Up

There's always a long line to get into this tiny pan-Asian destination, but it's usually made up of locals or, at the very least, extremely in-the-know tourists. The Citrus Club has nothing to do with hippies or marijuana or freedom. It's just some great-ass food at good prices. Huge bowls of noodles; greasy, finger-staining garlic edamame; and sake martinis are the draws here. If you need a place to mentally prepare yourself for a monster-flick marathon at the Red Vic Movie House across the street, look no farther. A few cold beers and a steaming bowl of tom kha gai from the Citrus Club will ensure resiliency like nothing else.

1790 Haight, SF. (415) 387-6366

Best Robot (Hip Intellectual Division)

Are you smart enough and cool enough to hang with the hot robot overload? Sure you are. The groundbreaking minds behind Giant Robot magazine - which started out as a photocopied fanzine devoted to pumping cutting-edge Asian and Asian American culture from an LA point of view, then exploded into a global hipster juggernaut - opened a retail store on Shrader Street in the early days of the new millennium. We have a hard time ever leaving it. Chock-full of underground publications, neato toys, whiz-bang art books, and nifty apparel, the Giant Robot outlet promotes the work of local artists through fascinating gallery shows and installations, which makes it especially way-beyond-anime awesome in our one-of-a-kind flipbook. Giant robot, away!

618 Shrader, SF. (415) 876-4773, www.gr-sf.com

Best Four-Wheeled Know-It-Alls

Dang, your obnoxious little skater siblings are staying with you for the summer. Mercifully, a quick visit to FTC will take them down a peg. After getting ridiculed for asking the staff stupid questions about where to find the famous Hubba ledge or how hard it is to carve the China banks, they'll be humbly begging you for protection. Skate shop employees are notoriously smug - it's how they keep kids worshipping the myth of skater coolness and buying $200 all-over-print hoodies and limited-edition Nike P-Rods. The dudes at FTC have perfected the art. Shit, they even make us nervous.

1632 Haight, SF. 1-800-679-8066, www.ftcskate.com

Best Jock Converter

Is your football-obsessed, homophobic cousin in town and itching to see the Haight? Why not have a little fun with him? After watching him hork down a gallon of Ben and Jerry's and groaning as he tries to "get the digits" of one of the hot staffers at Dollhouse Betty's, take him for a brewski at Trax , a low-key little gay joint at Haight and Masonic that has the feel of your average sports bar. Order a few pints of hefeweizen and laugh maniacally as the needle on his gaydar slowly rises: Rainbow clock? Ten dudes for every chick? Cosmo happy hour? WTF?! When you see him at the next family function, make a show of appreciating your cousin's sudden change of heart. Ensure the whole clan's within earshot when you say, "The bartender was staring at you the whole time, Greg. Did you know that guy?"

1437 Haight, SF. (415) 864-4213, www.traxsf.com

Best Pro Bono Lifesaver

OK, I had to slip at least one hippie-type appreciation in here. Babysitting a freaked-out friend on his or her first psychedelic misadventure is a rite of passage for every SF local. Skip the bars and liquor stores and go directly to the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics , an institution that's gone through some hard times since its inception in 1967 but is still, happily, there for all. The doctors will have your friend feeling better in no time - and maybe you can finally get a handle on your drinking problem or get those weird bumps on your naughty region checked out while you're waiting. The HAFC is one of the few free clinics in all of progressive San Francisco - a reminder of just how entrenched our lame health care system has become.

529 Clayton, SF. (415) 431-9909, www.hafci.org