San Francisco

The currency is the US dollar, and practically everything is paid by card or phone. There is, however, a 2019 city law that requires physical stores to accept cash, so no one can turn down your bills. Reference prices in 2026: drip coffee $4–6, burrito $12–18, casual lunch $18–28, dinner at a mid-range restaurant $45–75 per person without drinks, draft beer $9–13, cocktail $16–22, mid-range hotel $220–350 a night, hostel bed $55–90. The price you read is never the price you pay, and that goes for everything: the roughly 8.6% sales tax never appears on the tag and gets added at the end. Lodging pays a 14% city tax plus tourism promotion fees, which pushes the surcharge to around 16%. Tipping at a table-service restaurant is 18% to 20% and is a real part of the server's wage. Many places still add 5% to 8% for an “SF Mandate” or “health surcharge,” which funds employees' health plans and doesn't replace the tip: it's a common mistake to think it does. At cafés and counters, rounding up or leaving 10% is enough.

Airport: 21 km south, BART leaves from the international terminal

The international airport (SFO) is 21 km to the south, and the simplest way out is inside the terminal itself: BART departs from there and reaches downtown in about 30 minutes for roughly $11 (2026), with trains running from early morning until midnight. A taxi or app ride costs $60–90 and takes 25 to 60 minutes, and the gap between those two numbers is just Highway 101 traffic. Oakland (OAK) is about 1 hour away by BART with a driverless automated connector, and San José (SJC) is 1 hour by car or Caltrain. Caltrain departs from the 4th & King station toward the peninsula and Silicon Valley, and has run electrified since September 2024, with faster and more frequent trips.

The Muni network and the Clipper card

Within the city, buses, trolleybuses, light rail, the historic F-line streetcars, and the three cable car lines are all run by Muni. A single bus or metro fare has been $3 since January 2026, with free transfers for 120 minutes; the cable car costs $9 separately and rises to $12 on January 4, 2027. Pay with a Clipper card (physical or on your phone) or by tap; a day pass including the cable car currently runs around $15 and, starting January 2027, is replaced by the Cable Car Plus, at $18. BART covers the Market–Mission corridor and the crossing to Oakland and Berkeley, and the Central Subway, opened in 2022, linked SoMa to Chinatown. The city is walkable over short distances, but the hills are real: 100 m on the map can mean 30 m of elevation change. There are Bay Wheels bike shares and a flat route known as “the Wiggle” between downtown and Golden Gate Park; taxis exist, apps are everywhere, and Waymo's self-driving cars, which have run with no one behind the wheel since 2022, have been open to anyone since June 2024.

What threatens visitors in San Francisco is theft of what they carry, and rarely violence. Car break-ins are the city's most common crime: they take less than ten seconds and happen in broad daylight at tourist spots like Lands End, Twin Peaks, the Palace of Fine Arts and Alamo Square. Leave absolutely nothing visible, not even an empty bag or a charger cable, and empty the trunk before you park, not after, because anyone watching acts the moment you stash your things. The numbers have dropped sharply since the 2023 peak, but the pattern holds. Snatching phones from people's hands near the curb is also common on Market Street and outside stations. The Tenderloin, the stretch of Sixth at Market and parts of SoMa concentrate open-air drug use and encampments; walking through them by day is common, and most interactions go no further than a request for money, but avoid walking there alone at night and stay off shortcuts down empty side streets. Violent crime in the city is below the average for big American cities. Learn the earthquake basics (move away from windows, protect your head, stay where you are), even though the chance of feeling a strong tremor in a few days is minimal. Visitors from outside the US need an ESTA ($40.27 in 2026) or a visa, obtained before boarding, because this can't be sorted out at the airport counter.

Say “San Francisco” or “the City”

“San Fran” marks a visitor by the first syllable, and “Frisco” annoys a good share of longtime residents. Anywhere in the Bay Area, “the City” already means San Francisco and no other.

On the cable car, hold on tight and follow the conductor

The car only stops for someone who signals, and there are curves where standing on the running board is forbidden. The conductor calls it out loud, and the order is meant to be followed right away. Let people off before you board, and pay the conductor on board if you don't have a Clipper card.

On the check: health surcharge of 5% to 8%, tip of 18% to 20% on top

When you see an “SF Mandate,” “health surcharge,” or “service fee” of 5% to 8%, that goes to the staff's health plan. The 18% to 20% tip is still expected on top.

Don't photograph unhoused people

The housing and fentanyl crisis is visible in parts of downtown and is daily life for the people who live there. Photographing people lying on the sidewalk or encampments is a direct insult and often leads to confrontation.

Turn your wheels when parking on a hill

It's a city law with a fine attached: wheels turned toward the curb when the car points downhill, away from it when pointing uphill, parking brake always set.

Order at the counter and wait for your first name

At cafés, food trucks, and most casual places, you order and pay at the register, choose the tip on the screen, and your name is called when it's ready. No one comes to your table at this kind of place.

Arriving in July with summer clothes

If you arrive in July in summer clothes, you'll find highs of 16 °C to 19 °C along the coast, with wind and fog: a cold summer, not much warmer than the 8 °C to 15 °C winter. The sweatshirt shops at Fisherman's Wharf make their living off visitors who make this mistake.

Confusing the city with Silicon Valley

Confusing San Francisco with Silicon Valley. Google, Apple, and Meta sit 50 to 70 km south, in Mountain View, Cupertino, and Menlo Park, and a round-trip drive eats half a day in Highway 101 traffic. What you see at the end of the trip is parking lots and closed buildings.

Waiting to buy Alcatraz tickets on the day

Leaving Alcatraz tickets until the last minute. No boat other than the official operator lands on the island, and without a ticket bought in advance, the visit simply doesn't happen.

Renting a car to get around only within the city

Renting a car to get around only within the city. Garages at $40–60 a day, parking meters on nearly every street, tow trucks during street-sweeping hours, and a high risk of break-ins: in a 121 km² city with public transit, the car gets in the way more than it helps.

From Fisherman's Wharf to Coit Tower, 1.5 km with an 80 m climb

Underestimating the hills on foot. From Fisherman's Wharf to Coit Tower is about 1.5 km with 80 m of elevation gain and stairs. Measuring only the distance on the map, without looking at the elevation, is the classic itinerary mistake, and the map never warns you.

“The City”

San Francisco, in the mouth of anyone from the Bay Area. Avoid “San Fran” and “Frisco.”

“Hella”

A Northern California intensifier: “hella good” means “very good.” Barely used in the rest of the country.

“Karl the Fog”

Nickname for the afternoon fog, treated as a proper-named character since a social media account created in 2010.

“Muni” (pronounced “MYOO-nee”)

The municipal system of buses, streetcars, and cable cars, distinct from BART, which is the regional train.

“I got bipped”

Local slang for “they broke my car window and took what was inside.”

“The Avenues”

Richmond and Sunset, the grid neighborhoods west of Golden Gate Park, where the streets are numbered by avenue.

The peninsula and the forty hills

There are more than forty named hills within the peninsula's 121 km²: Twin Peaks and Mount Davidson reach about 280 m, and streets like Filbert, between Hyde and Leavenworth, have a 31.5% grade.

O'Farrell's street plan and the eastern landfill

The street grid was drawn by Jasper O'Farrell in 1847 and laid over the terrain without compromise, which produces intersections on top of ridges, public stairways where the street can't climb and the diagonal slash of Market Street, which leaves two grids misaligned at a 36-degree angle. Much of the city's east side is landfill: the Financial District sits on the old Yerba Buena Cove, and the Marina District on rubble from 1906 and from the 1915 exposition, precisely where the ground liquefied in the 1989 earthquake.

The fog and the winter rain

The climate is cool-summer Mediterranean: the Pacific offshore stays between 11 °C and 14 °C year-round, and when the Central Valley heats up, the warm air rises and draws marine air over the cold water, which condenses and enters through the Golden Gate as the summer afternoon fog. Rain concentrates from November to March, with about 600 mm a year, and June, July, and August are practically dry.

Music and literary scene: from Beat poetry to punk

Beat poetry, psychedelic rock and punk all came out of this city. Peter D. Martin and Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened City Lights in 1953 (the first all-paperback bookstore in the US), which also became the publisher of Allen Ginsberg's “Howl.” A decade later, psychedelic rock spilled out of the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin; in the 1980s punk passed through the Mabuhay Gardens with the Dead Kennedys. In literature, the city has three canonical portraits: Dashiell Hammett's “The Maltese Falcon” (1930), Armistead Maupin's “Tales of the City” (from 1976) and Amy Tan's “The Joy Luck Club” (1989), about two generations of Chinatown.

Opera, ballet, symphony and museums

Institutional life is older and more solid than the city's improvised reputation suggests. The San Francisco Opera, founded in 1923, performs at the War Memorial Opera House; the San Francisco Ballet, from 1933, is the country's oldest and has performed a full-length “Nutcracker” since 1944. The Symphony has occupied Davies Hall since 1980 and was led by Michael Tilson Thomas from 1995 to 2020 and by Esa-Pekka Salonen until 2025. In the visual arts, besides SFMOMA, the Asian Art Museum has occupied the former central library since 2003, the Legion of Honor holds the European collection in a 1924 building above the sea, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum operates in a 1907 electrical substation expanded by Daniel Libeskind in 2008.

Baseball, basketball, and the bay

In sports, the Giants have played baseball at Oracle Park since 2000 (titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014), and the Warriors moved from Oakland to the Chase Center, in SoMa, in 2019. The 49ers have played football in Santa Clara, 65 km away, since 2014. Beyond sports, the city has a long history of protest: this is where the disability rights movement of the 1970s was born, with the 25-day occupation of a federal building in 1977, as were the first community networks responding to AIDS in the 1980s. It's also an open-air technology lab: Waymo's self-driving cars have been circulating without a driver since 2022, and since June 2024 they've served anyone across the whole city.

“The Maltese Falcon,” Dashiell Hammett (1930)

Dashiell Hammett lived on Post Street and worked in the city as a Pinkerton agency detective, and it shows in the novel: the book's geography is literal, with Burritt Alley, the tunnels and the downtown hotels. Take the book along and follow Sam Spade's steps through downtown.

“Vertigo,” Alfred Hitchcock (1958)

Hitchcock shot “Vertigo” on location at Mission Dolores, at Fort Point under the bridge, on Lombard Street and at Lands End. It's the best-known portrait of the city in the days when the waterfront didn't yet have the elevated Embarcadero Freeway, built later and torn down after the 1989 earthquake.

“Milk,” Gus Van Sant (2008)

Reconstructs the 1977 election and the 1978 assassination of Harvey Milk, filmed on the actual Castro Street and at the shop at number 575. It explains where the neighborhood's political weight comes from.