The Mission has a number of distinct personalities: it's the Latino neighborhood, where working-class folks raise their families and where gangs occasionally clash; it's the hipster hood, where tattooed and pierced twenty- and thirtysomethings hold court in the coolest cafés and bars in town; it's a culinary epicenter, with the strongest concentration of destination restaurants and affordable global cuisines; it’s the face of gentrification, where high-tech money prices out longtime commercial and residential renters; and it's the artists' quarter, where murals adorn literally blocks of walls long after their creators have moved to cheaper digs.
It's also the city's equivalent of the Sunshine State—this neighborhood's always the last to succumb to fog. The Mission has ceded the title of neighborhood with the most buzz to Dogpatch, another flat swath on the far side of Potrero Hill, right along the San Francisco Bay coastline. Here artists and industry share space, restaurants draw diners from far-flung neighborhoods, and the city's largest stock of houses that survived the 1906 quake surround a thriving commercial strip with creative flair.
