The depth and quality of advice in this forum never ceases to amaze me! Obviously, if we want to be sure of getting reservations at any one or more of the restaurants mentioned, we will need to make these in advance of our arrival in San Francisco.

Sorry for influencing the order of your report, 111op. I'll just sit back and enjoy the rest of it now.

Rob.

No worries. I was going to do things in a random order anyway. It's more interesting that way. :)

<b>Getting Around San Francisco</b>

It was sunny every day I was there, if a bit chilly sometimes. But in any case, it was very pleasant walking around the city. I'll describe some of the neighborhoods I walked in and the two walking tours later.

It's also possible to drive, but I didn't rent a car. A car would be useful for day trips. The only one I did was the Wine Country tour with Grayline. I'll review this tour as well. I'd not especially recommend it, and now that I've seen what this tour is all about, I think I should have gone with an alternative, smaller tour.

As mentioned, easytraveller drove me around for a couple of hours, including the north of the Golden Gate bridge. I'd been north of the bridge before and had in fact walked across on foot. One of the vista points she chose (Battery Spencer) was new to me. I'd been to another one north that was further up in the hills. With Battery Spencer the bridge seemed so close that you could nearly reach out and touch it. It was quite thrilling. I'll describe more of her route later.

I should mention the <b>Muni passport.</b>

I bought the one-day pass for $11. This was good for one day (until midnight, not 24 hours) and covered all cable car rides (which would have been $5 each) and Muni rides. It's quite a good deal if you plan to ride cable cars. This doesn't cover BART rides.

At one point there was a discussion on the forum about the 7-day pass vs. the weekly pass (I think it was called the weekly pass). The latter was supposed to be $15. Well, I don't think that this is being sold anymore. If memory serves, your options are 3 days for $18 and 7 days for $24, so you can plan accordingly.

There's a San Francisco CityPass, and I think it's probably worthwhile if you plan to visit museums and such. Thanks to easytraveller, I got into the de Young museum and the Cal Academy of Sciences for free (I think admission to the latter is over $20). While we didn't have time to see the exhibits in de Young in detail, I felt that this was sufficient for this visit in that I got to visit the new Herzog and de Meuron building. Currently I think that there's a Warhol exhibition at de Young, which I skipped.

The only museum I paid to go in on this trip was SFMOMA. I was there a Thursday night and used the 1/2 price admission policy that was in place (50% of 12.50 = 6.25). There was also a guided tour at 7, which I joined (this was free after admission). I'll describe this later also.

easytraveller drove by Legion of Honor, but we didn't go in. I still haven't been inside Legion of Honor, but I didn't feel that this was such a tragedy that I had to remedy this during this trip.

So I didn't buy the CityPass during this trip.

I really like Delfina in part due to the service, which, like the service at Chez Panisse, is just the kind of service I appreciate--relaxed and friendly yet highly professional. It's not a destination restaurant, but its location is convenient for tourists visiting the Mission/Castro/Dolores Park. And then you can always have ice cream at BiRite.

I enjoyed the food at Range (have only been once) but there was something about the restaurant that put me off, a faint whiff of <i>let them eat cake,</i> a shade of glitz, of vulgarity. I don't know, I just didn't care for it, especially right in that location. But then again I am exceptionally refined. :)

Okay, where to next?

<i>I really like Delfina in part due to the service, which, like the service at Chez Panisse, is just the kind of service I appreciate--relaxed and friendly yet highly professional</i>

sorry, had to respond. i absolutely agree about the service at Delfina - it was stellar, and perfectly described by Leely. And Leely, BiRite ice cream is on my agenda, as soon as I decide I've had enough of Weight Watchers LOL!

Well some glitz is nice for someone coming from NYC. :)

I think Delfina and Range are both pretty easily accessible by public transportation. Gentrification is a bit of a double-edged sword. I don't know what the Mission district was like before (and actually I still don't know how the Mission district is technically defined), but it was interesting to have Range next to an arts cooperative next to Paxton Gate next to a Dave Eggers store (well I could have remembered the order of these places wrong, but this has to be close).

Maybe you want to try Coi if you haven't tried it? I wasn't willing to spend that much, plus some reviews online seemed questionable. I think that this restaurant has the Ferran Adria molecular pedigree. :)

For what it's worth, I'll list some restaurants covered by the Wallpaper City guide:

Americano
Eddie Rickenbacker's
The Blue Plate
Gary Danko (this one and the following one I've heard of -- I think StuDudley might have written that he liked them)
Farallon
Limon
Boulevard
Quince

That's part of the fun reading something like Wallpaper City guides. They are not very useful to use as a primary guide, but the photos are always nice to look at.

I think I'll move on to art next -- another pretentious topic worthy of attention of sophisticated Fodorites. :)

I've to remember the BiRite ice-cream tip. Do you guys know Mitchell's Ice Cream? According to Time Out SF, this serves some of the best in SF (688 San Jose Street), but it was too far south for me to go.

I think StuDudley mentioned Incanto in his very comprehensive thread about SF that's also in this area. Time Out likes this too, but surprisingly my friend doesn't know it.

Mitchell's is also an institution.

http://www.mitchellsicecream.com/html/index.htm

I won't even consider Coi because it sounds so pretentious/indulgent to me. Foam and aromatherapy at dinner are not in my vocabulary :-)

Incanto is in the Noe Valley.

Quince is one of my favorites.

I think of the Mission District as Market St to the north, Guerrero to the west, 101 to the east, and Army/Cesar Chavez to the south. It was a lot more "rough & tumble" 25-35 years ago. The dot-com boom brought a lot of gentrification to the area because housing was more affordable there, and the young set liked the Bohemian feel.

Stu Dudley

I'd go to Coi if I were feeling flush. I'll try anything twice.

This thread made me think about where I ate this weekend: Eliza's (18th on Potrero Hill) for takeout on Thursday, Regent Thai (29th and Church) on Friday and Pauline's Pizza (14th and Valencia on Saturday. For everyday food, I almost always go to the same old, regular old places.

Thanks for the Muni info, 111op. When friends visit I never know what to tell them about that kind of stuff. I just say, "Look on Fodor's."

Yes, I'm the same way in NYC. I've never been to Jean Georges or Per Se in NYC, but while on the road it's nice to splurge now and then.

Interestingly, if I use your definition, StuDudley, then Mission Dolores is not in the Mission because it's west of Guerrero. :)

We did the Cityspaces tour in Feb - did your tour guide have his dog with him? Our guide was great! We also did Victorian house tour with Mrs. Stu Dudley and loved it, in spite of the pouring rain. These tours are so varied and so well done, I highly recommend them.

We did the free City Hall tour too, and we were the only ones on tour, so it was a private tour. It too was well done and informative.

Chez Panisse is our favorite; we also love Zuni Cafe, Tadich Grill. We had lunch at Pizzeria Delfina and it was excellent. Bi Rite Salted Caramel Ice Cream Cones too!

Incanto was excellent as well but that came from the food as well as our dinner companions, Stu and Mrs. Dudley.

San Francisco is a wonderous place, we hope to be back soon.

Enjoyed reading your trip report, it is like being there again.

Deb

Hey Deb, my tour guide for Cityscapes was J who wrote a book. I probably shouldn't mention her name publicly (actually I don't remember her last name, but I think I can look her up if I really want to), but I think those in the know can figure it out.

For Haight-Ashbury I had DM, who lives in the area. Actually his house was on the tour, and he said that it was on the tour even before he started leading tours.

I agree that the tours are quite interesting, but I found the Haight tour to be a slight disappointment. I'll explain why later when I get to it. Since contributions are voluntary, I don't think that I can "complain" about the tour.

I also liked San Francisco a lot. As I've been telling friends, I think that it can be my second most favorite city in the US. For me NYC still beats it. I can't get over the reliance on cars. While technically you don't need one, I think it's nice to have one if you live there. Plus a lot of public transportation shuts down at night. In NYC that'd be inconceivable.

Names of the guides are posted on the City Guides web site - so it's perfectly OK to post them here too. If you want to know a name, let me know what day you took the walk & I can look the name up on the April schedule that my wife has.

Stu Dudley

I consider the Mission Dolores to be in the Mission Dolores neighborhood. It's on Dolores St

Stu Dudley

Yeah I know, but I feel that I should hold myself to a higher standard.

A lot more people probably read Fodor's than the website for the free walks. When the guides agree to have their names posted on that website, they might have not expected that someone like me might mention them by name on this website.

It's not like I've singled them out to award them a cash prize, in which case I'm sure that they'd thank me for it. :)

<b>Art in San Francisco</b> (Long)

If you care to look, there are always surprises.

<b>Public Art</b>

After dim sum at Yank Sing I walked to the waterfront and the Ferry Building (another culinary destination with fresh produce and buzzy restaurants (such as Slanted Door)). Here I got a magnificent view of the Bay Bridge, and there was a walkway that went out on the water with seats that rotated to give one the best views. It was really wonderful being out on a sunny day.

I noticed Louise Bourgeois's signature spider "Maman" perched nearby. In a distance, there was a piece I surmised was by Claes Oldenburg. It was clearly a big sculpture in the pop art tradition, and Oldenburg was known for this kind of art. As it turned out, the Wine Country coach drove past it, and our driver told us that this was a piece commissioned by one of the Gap founders (if I remember right). A web search reveals that the piece is titled "Cupid's Span" and the artists are Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

Link for Cupid's Span:
http://tinyurl.com/cv286e

Certainly it was a surprise to find two significant public art pieces by such important artists.

<b>Clyfford Still</b>

Clyfford Still is typically regarded as an Abstract Expressionist. I don't know much about him, but his pieces are instantly recognizable with bold and perhaps irregular (yet angular?) color patches. It turns out that SFMOMA has a gallery devoted to Still. Even more surprising, we encountered a Still painting during the Cityscapes walking tour. Interestingly, our guide didn't bother pointing it out, but if I remember right, it was in the Merchants Exchange building. (More about this building later.) This Still painting had a white background instead of his customary black.

A web search says that Still taught in the area, which could be why SF sees a significant Still presence. I'd read a while ago that a museum devoted to Clyfford Still will open in Denver in the future. It was a pleasant surprise to encounter Clyfford Still in SF.

<b>SFMOMA</b>

I joined a tour for this museum. We moved pretty slowly, but it was educational.

Kerry James Marshall was the featured artist in the atrium. I'm not familiar with this artist, but the guide said that he was quite well known. In any case, the murals high up in the atrium are apparently not conserved. They are painted over. (Can this really be right?) My Time Out guidebook of the atrium shows Sol LeWitt murals in place of the current Marshall murals.

Next we went to the second floor. We were led to the Matisses, but my eye wandered over to a colorful Frank Stella. Nearby was an Amy Sillman (again an artist I'm not too familiar with, but I know this name). Anyway, back to Matisse. Our guide asked us when we thought the modern art period started and what we thought of a specific painting by Matisse. I was surprised that the guide said that he believed that modern art started in the 1840s at the advent of photography, though he assured us that there must be dissertations written about this specific subject. The oldest painting in SFMOMA dates to 1900 or so.

Again, it was interesting to find that SFMOMA holds a study for "Le bonheur de vivre." This is a Matisse painting in the Barnes Collection that I'd seen before. It's a sister painting of Musee d'Orsay's "Luxe, calme et volupte," a study for which is in the MOMA in NYC.

Our next stop was a gallery devoted to new work by a young artist from Bangalore, India called Ranjani Shettar. Some of the works reminded of Alexander Calder mobiles. According to a museum brochure, "[h]er artistic vocabulary is akin to those of postmodern artists such as Martin Puryear and Eva Hesse...." While I can certainly see the Eva Hesse connection in her piece called "Waiting for June" with many similar objects that were placed in a seemingly haphazard fashion, I'm not sure if I understand the Puryear connection.

Next we went to galleries devoted to winners of the SECA Art Award, which I understand is an award for local rising stars. One artist was Tauba Auerbach. I discovered later that she has a page devoted to her favorites in the Wallpaper City guide (this series asks locals to identify their favorites in the cities they live in). In two paintings I believe were called "Crumple," Auerbach used Polke-like benday dots to depict what looked like crumpled paper. She's represented by Jack Henley in SF, and I think her NYC representation is Deitch Projects, so I think she must indeed be a rising star.

Finally our guide led us to galleries devoted to a show on the South African artist William Kentridge.

After a quick walk through the Kentridge show, I walked through the rest of the museum. The photography collection was noteworthy with several important American masters such as Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham. There was a photo by Paul Caponigro called "Redding, Conneticut," that I liked. The modern art collection is evidently not as strong as NYC's MOMA, but it's still interesting to look at. The only Pollock I saw was a 1943 painting from his Jungian period, prior to his breakthrough with drip painting. A Jasper Johns 1958 flag was on display, but the label said that this was on loan from Jean-Christophe Castelli, who I guess is Leo Castelli's son (Leo Castelli was Johns's long-time dealer).

Last, I should mention a fun work by Katharina Fritsch called "Baby With Poodles." Fritsch has taken the Madonna with Child and Adoration of the Magi themes to the contemporary era.

Link to "Baby With Poodles"
http://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/17435

<b>Three Art Galleries</b>

On the spur of the moment I decided to check out some art galleries. I was wandering about in the Mission earlier that day, and I was heading back downtown, but I decided to get off the street car and go to Jack Hanley (395 Valencia Street), which as you recall I wrote is Auerbach's gallerist. When I arrived, the gallery was closed for inventory (I had terrible luck with the Dave Eggers store earlier also). One neighbor was a bodega, while the other was a place selling 20th century modernist furniture called Farnsworth. Interesting!

My next stop was Crown Point Press in SOMA (20 Hawthorne Street). I've looked at their beautiful prints online, and since I was in San Francisco, why not visit them? On display were some prints by John Cage and a print by Julie Mehretu (very popular lately and the price tag was 10,000). But I was drawn to two prints by Richard Tuttle in a back office.

Last I went to Fraenkel Gallery on 49 Geary Street. Actually there are quite a number of galleries in this building, but I'd heard of this gallery that specializes in photography. I was glad that I stopped by to discover an exhibition called "Edward Hopper and Company," where works by Edward Hopper were interspersed with photographs deemed to have been influenced by him. It was a well curated show. Many significant American photographers were represented. There were a number of photos by Robert Adams and Lee Friedlander, but there were also photos by Diane Arbus, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, and I'm sure I left out a few names. One Eggleston photo reminded me of set-up photography by Gregory Crewdson. I'm not sure if the connection is tenuous, but certainly it'd not be unreasonable to argue that Eggleston, the father of modern color photography, influenced subsequent generations.

The show at Fraenkel was yet another very pleasant surprise in San Francisco.

The Sol LeWitt murals in the atrium were replaced the week after my visit to SFMOMA last Sept. Our docent-guide mentioned that specifically. Since LeWitt's works (at least, the ones you buy) are his ideas/instructions instead of the actual painting/mural/drawing, I'm not surprised they were simply painted over. However, I don't know if they'll do the same when the current ones get replaced.

Yes, LeWitt's works are conceptual and typically executed by assistants per his instructions, but I got the impression that the Marshall murals will be painted over also. I could be wrong, of course.