Packed with destination restaurants, hole-in-the-wall eateries representing dozens of cuisines, and hip watering holes—plus taquerias, pupuserías (places selling thick, filled tortillas), and produce markets—one of the city's hottest hoods strikes an increasingly precarious balance between cutting-edge hot spot and working-class enclave. With longtime businesses being forced out by astronomical rents and city agencies coming together with community groups to create an action plan to reverse gentrification in the neighborhood, the Mission is in flux once again.
The eight blocks of Valencia Street between 16th and 24th Streets—what's become known as the Valencia Corridor—typify the Mission District's diversity. Businesses on the block between 16th and 17th Streets, for instance, include a bustling Peruvian restaurant, funky home-decor stores, a hip cocktail destination, a sushi bar, an upscale matcha-focused café, and bargain and pricey thrift shops. As prices rise, this strip has lost some of its edge as even international publications proclaim its hipness. At the same time, nearby Mission Street is slowly morphing from a row of check-cashing parlors, dollar stores, and residential hotels into overflow for the Valencia Corridor's restaurant explosion. Meanwhile, 24th Street has become the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District in an attempt to protect the mostly Latino-owned businesses that have served this thriving neighborhood for decades.
Italian and Irish in the early 20th century, the Mission became heavily Latino in the late 1960s, when immigrants from Mexico and Central America began arriving. Since the 1970s, groups of muralists have transformed walls and storefronts into canvases, creating art accessible to everyone. Following the example set by the Mexican artist and muralist Diego Rivera, many artists address political and social justice issues in their murals.
The conversations you'll hear on the street these days might unfold in Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, and other tongues of the immigrants who began settling in the Mission in the 1980s and 1990s along with a young bohemian crowd enticed by cheap rents and the burgeoning arts-and-nightlife scene. These newer arrivals made a diverse and lively neighborhood even more so, setting the stage for the Mission's current hipster cachet. With the neighborhood flourishing, rents have gone through the roof, but the Mission remains scruffy in patches, so as you plan your explorations, take into account your comfort zone.
Be prepared for homelessness and drug use around the BART stations, prostitution along Capp Street, and raucous barhoppers along the Valencia Corridor.
