Landmarks in San Francisco
31 landmarks to discover with Bad Historian in San Francisco.
Baker Beach
Baker Beach.
Buena Vista Park
You're standing at the entrance to San Francisco's oldest park.
Cable Car Museum
This building is not a museum.
Chinatown
You're looking at the Dragon Gate — the entrance to the oldest Chinatown in North America.
Chinatown Alleys
Waverly Place.
City Lights Bookstore
See that triangular building on the corner? That's City Lights Bookstore — the first all-paperback bookstore in the United States, which in the early
Coit Tower
Look up.
Crissy Field
Crissy Field.
Dolores Park
You're standing on top of a Jewish cemetery.
Emperor Norton
You're on Commercial Street.
Ferry Building
Look at that clock tower.
Fisherman's Wharf / Pier 39
You can probably smell them before you see them.
Fort Point
Fort Point.
Ghirardelli Square
You can smell it before you see it — chocolate.
Golden Gate Bridge
There it is.
Golden Gate Bridge — South Vista
The Golden Gate Bridge.
Golden Gate Bridge — Walking the Span
You're on the bridge.
Haight-Ashbury
You're standing at the corner of Haight and Ashbury — possibly the most famous intersection in counterculture history.
Harvey Milk's Castro
See that bar on the corner — the one with the big plate-glass windows? That's Twin Peaks Tavern.
Hotaling's Warehouse
See that brick building? Four fifty-one Jackson Street.
Lombard Street
You're looking at the crookedest street in the world.
Mission Dolores
You're standing at the oldest building in San Francisco.
Old Ship Saloon
The Old Ship Saloon.
Pacific Avenue
Pacific Avenue.
Palace of Fine Arts
The Palace of Fine Arts.
Portsmouth Square
Portsmouth Square.
Presidio Main Post
The Presidio.
The Castro Theatre
Look at that facade.
The Painted Ladies
You're looking at the most photographed houses in San Francisco — seven Queen Anne Victorians lined up on a hill like they're posing for a class pictu
Transamerica Pyramid
Look up.
Union Square
See that column in the center of the square? Ninety-seven feet tall, bronze figure of Nike on top — the Greek goddess of victory, not the shoe company
San Francisco Audio Experiences
Visit these landmarks and more on a self-guided audio experience.
100,000 Hippies and One Camera Store
How San Francisco became the capital of doing your own thing. Walk from the Painted Ladies to Dolores Park through hippie ground zero and the neighborhood that launched a civil rights revolution — where a hundred thousand teenagers showed up for free love and the locals held a funeral to make them leave, a camera shop owner stepped in dog poop on purpose to get elected, and two women opened bar curtains and changed what courage looked like.
Fog, Fraud & Fortune Cookies
Ten landmarks. Ten lies. Good luck. Walk through a city that spent a hundred and seventy-five years doing absolutely unhinged things and then pretending they were normal. You'll see the Ferry Building that was hidden behind a freeway for thirty-two years, the sugar heir who survived a shooting because of picture books, the fake Chinatown built by architects who'd never been to China, and the crookedest street that isn't actually the crookedest street.
The Barbary Coast
Seven stops. Seven lies. One Emperor. Walk through the neighborhood that invented the word shanghaied — where a gang leader in chain mail was assassinated because somebody sent his bodyguard for a newspaper, tourists paid for balcony seats to watch staged depravity, and a bankrupt rice trader declared himself Emperor of the United States.
The Bridge That Couldn't Be Built
The man who built the Golden Gate Bridge had never designed a suspension bridge. The man who actually did the math was erased from history for seventy-five years. Walk from a building designed to fall apart to a bridge that screams in the wind — through a military base conquered three times without a shot and an airfield restored from poison.
Hear the stories behind these places
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