San Francisco Inside Info

A list of details about living in San Francisco that you learn from living in San Francisco. Having lived in San Francisco, I can vouch for these.

A sunny morning means nothing. Carry a layer anyway; one neighborhood can be warm while another is buried in fog. Reddit
September and October often feel more like “summer” than June or July.
You eventually judge apartments partly by which side of Twin Peaks they’re on.
“The Richmond” usually means the Richmond District, not Richmond, California.
“The City” means San Francisco. “San Fran” tends to sound more outsider-ish.
In the Sunset, Irving, Judah, Kirkham, Lawton, Moraga, Noriega, Ortega, Pacheco, Quintara, Rivera, Santiago, Taraval, Ulloa, Vicente and Wawona run in alphabetical order. Balangero Books
There is no 13th Avenue in much of the western grid; it’s Funston.
Street cleaning can dictate where you park, when you wake up and whether you move your car the night before. Reddit
Parking signs are read like legal contracts: arrows, colored curbs, permit zones, cleaning hours and temporary construction notices all matter.
You learn instinctively which direction to turn your wheels when parking on a hill.
“Inbound” and “outbound” become normal vocabulary even though they initially make little geographic sense. SFMTA
On Muni, people routinely enter through the rear doors; with valid fare, all-door boarding is normal. SFMTA
A 15-minute walk can be either trivial or a genuine workout depending entirely on the elevation profile.
Locals mentally know which stairways, alleys and pedestrian cut-throughs eliminate an ugly hill.
You can hear foghorns at night from surprisingly far inland.
The smell of eucalyptus instantly registers as “park/Presidio.”
Dutch crunch bread is excellent until it removes a layer from the roof of your mouth.
A Mission burrito is expected to arrive wrapped tightly enough in foil to survive structural testing.
Dolores Park has distinct informal territories; where you sit subtly says something about what kind of afternoon you want.
Nobody is particularly surprised to see someone carrying a surfboard onto public transit.
A jacket tied around your waist at 2 p.m. may be absolutely necessary by 4:30.
Ocean Beach is treated more like a dramatic wilderness edge of the city than a conventional beach.
Residents frequently choose where to meet based on microclimate, not just distance.
Owning a car can feel less like having transportation and more like maintaining an additional household responsibility. Reddit
After living there long enough, “seven miles across” stops sounding small because you know how long seven San Francisco miles can take.
Bay to Breakers is technically a footrace; culturally, it is a moving citywide costume party. San Francisco Travel
The serious runners go first. The increasingly absurd part comes behind them.
Hayes Street Hill is the section everyone talks about afterward. KQED
People who live along the route throw morning house parties and watch from stoops, windows and rooftops. Reddit
Bay to Breakers starts early enough that “come over at 8 a.m. for drinks” can sound completely reasonable.
Costumes range from elaborate group concepts to something assembled at 6 a.m. from whatever was in the closet.
Some participants traditionally run it naked. This is treated with considerably less surprise than outsiders expect. KQED
Tortillas flying through the air near the start are an old Bay to Breakers tradition. Wikipedia
“Centipedes” are coordinated groups of runners physically linked together. San Francisco Chronicle
A group dressed as salmon traditionally runs the course backward, “upstream,” toward the Bay. Wikipedia
The Panhandle becomes part race route, part spectator zone, part party.
If you live directly on the route, protecting your bathroom from random strangers becomes an actual logistical concern. Reddit
Bay to Breakers is one of those mornings when seeing six people dressed as a single object requires no explanation.
You can often tell who is actually racing by how intensely annoyed they look while passing people in costumes.
The finish at Ocean Beach can be dramatically colder than the start downtown.
Outside Lands is less “concert logistics” to locals and more “which streets and buses am I avoiding this weekend?”
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass being free still feels faintly improbable even after years of it.
Fleet Week is announced by jet noise before you remember Fleet Week is happening.
During Blue Angels practice, people routinely stop mid-conversation and look upward.
The first warm weekend produces an almost synchronized migration to Dolores Park.
“Dolores” can mean the street, the park or the neighborhood vicinity; context does the work.
Dolores Park’s slope is useful because you can scan the entire lawn for friends without moving.
People describe where they are in Golden Gate Park using landmarks rather than addresses.
JFK Drive being car-free changed how many locals mentally use Golden Gate Park: it functions like a giant promenade.
The bison in Golden Gate Park are real, and after a while their existence stops seeming unusual.
The Conservatory of Flowers suddenly appearing through fog feels normal after enough trips through the park.
Karl is the fog’s unofficial name, although locals vary considerably in how seriously they use it.
The fog can visibly pour over Twin Peaks while your block remains sunny.
Going three neighborhoods west can mean dropping ten degrees.
Going three neighborhoods east can mean taking your jacket off again.
The Mission can still be sunny when people in the Richmond are wearing puffers.
“Bring layers” is not tourist advice. It is basic daily logistics.
Apartment hunters learn that direct afternoon sunlight is practically an amenity category.
A west-facing apartment can sound romantic until you learn what “western exposure” means in July.
A Victorian can be gorgeous from the sidewalk and contain absolutely baffling interior geometry.
Many flats have a mysterious tiny room that is simultaneously an office, closet and earthquake-era architectural accident.
You eventually stop noticing how many houses are painted colors that would look ridiculous almost anywhere else.
Earthquake retrofitting signs, soft-story work and foundation conversations become ordinary homeowner vocabulary.
People casually keep shoes, flashlights and water near the bed because earthquakes are less abstract when you live there.
You eventually recognize a small earthquake before your brain has formally decided it was an earthquake.
After one, the first question is often “did you feel that?” followed immediately by checking the magnitude.
A truck passing can briefly make you wonder whether it was an earthquake.
You learn exactly which grocery stores have steep parking lots.
Parallel parking competence rises sharply after about six months.
A parking spot that requires only one U-turn can feel like a victory.
You can spend more time looking for parking than driving across half the city.
Locals develop personal rules about which neighborhoods are simply not worth driving to.
Never assuming your parked car will still be on the same side of the street tomorrow becomes normal because of street cleaning.
Tiny curb colors matter enormously.
A driveway that looks unused is still a driveway.
Parking on even a modest hill eventually makes wheel-curbing automatic.
Seeing a Waymo with nobody in the driver’s seat stopped beside you becomes mundane remarkably quickly.
Cable cars are real transit, but most residents rarely use them for normal commuting.
The F streetcar is simultaneously transportation and a rolling museum.
“Muni” means the whole municipal transit system, not one particular kind of vehicle.
You learn which bus lines bunch together so badly that three arrive at once.
“Just missed the 38” can materially alter your mood.
People refer to transit lines simply as “the 22,” “the 24,” “the 38,” etc.
Some Muni stops are so close together that walking to the next one is faster than waiting.
You eventually memorize which underground station exit puts you on the correct side of Market.
Market Street distances are psychologically measured in BART stations.
Crossing Market can feel like crossing into a different part of the city even when you moved one block.
“South of Market” covers enough distinct territory that saying SoMa can still be frustratingly imprecise.
People debate neighborhood boundaries with unnecessary confidence.
Nobody completely agrees where the Mission ends and Bernal begins.
The Divisadero microclimate boundary can feel absurdly real.
“Divis” is normal shorthand.
“The Wiggle” makes perfect sense as a transportation route once you bike it once.
Cyclists know the Wiggle partly because it avoids climbing directly over a hill.
San Francisco route planning is often secretly hill-avoidance planning.
Google Maps saying “0.7 miles” tells you almost nothing useful until you inspect elevation.
Two places that look adjacent on a map can be separated by a staircase, cliff or punishing grade.
Public staircases are not curiosities; some are genuinely useful shortcuts.
There are staircases you discover only after living near them for years.
Grocery shopping strategy sometimes includes “can I carry this back uphill?”
Walking downhill can be more tiring than walking uphill if the grade is steep enough.
You learn not to wear completely smooth-soled shoes on wet hills.
Telegraph Hill parrots are heard before they are seen.
Coyotes appearing in surprisingly urban places eventually stops being shocking.
Raccoons behave like they own certain blocks.
Ocean Beach bonfire smoke has a very specific smell.
Ocean Beach is frequently better for walking dramatically in a jacket than for conventional beachgoing.
Nobody trusts the apparent temperature at Ocean Beach from what downtown feels like.
Sutro Baths is one of those places locals repeatedly take visiting friends because it genuinely remains good.
Lands End can feel startlingly wild considering downtown is only a few miles away.
You sometimes forget the Golden Gate Bridge is famous because it becomes part of the normal background.
Conversely, on certain clear days you suddenly notice it again.
Locals rarely call Fisherman’s Wharf “the Wharf” as if it were the center of city life.
Pier 39 is somewhere you mostly go when someone is visiting.
The sea lions remain entertaining anyway.
Chinatown grocery stores can save you significant money if you know where to shop.
North Beach and Chinatown interlock so tightly that a normal walk can switch cultural worlds within a block.
Grant Avenue and Stockton Street give tourists and locals very different versions of Chinatown.
A good corner store is called a corner store, market or liquor store, and becomes disproportionately important to your life.
“Bi-Rite” can mean ice cream, groceries or a meeting landmark depending on context.
Dutch crunch is ordered without explanation.
It is possible to have strong opinions about which deli has the correct Dutch crunch.
It’s-It is understood as a food, not a grammatical error.
Garlic fries smell identifiable from remarkable distances at Giants games.
Oracle Park is still occasionally called “the ballpark” because its corporate name has changed enough times.
People still accidentally call it Pac Bell.
Wearing a Giants jacket in July can be completely rational.
Baseball games can begin warm and end with spectators wrapped in blankets.
The Giants’ stadium weather and the A’s former Oakland weather could feel like different seasons on the same day.
“Going to Tahoe” can casually mean spending most of Friday sitting in traffic.
“Going to Marin” can mean ten minutes across the bridge or an entirely different day trip.
“East Bay” is spoken of like one place even though locals immediately subdivide it into many very different places.
Someone can live six miles away and realistically be described as living “across the Bay.”
BART shutting down before your late night ends has shaped countless questionable transportation decisions.
Missing the last BART feels much more consequential than missing an ordinary train.
The Bay Bridge lights disappearing or changing is something residents actually notice.
A clear sunset after several foggy days can cause half the city to photograph the same sky.