Frances Bula header image 2
← →

And now for something completely different: A restaurant tour in the Mission district, San Francisco

November 3rd, 2015 · 6 Comments

A nice break of an assignment for me. An editor at Western Living asked me to do five restaurants in San Francisco. But I said our vow was to eat only at restaurants we could walk to in the Mission. So he let me narrow the scope.

The trick was picking only five. There were so many within walking distance of our VRBO apartment on 17th between Dolores and Guerrero. Delfina, Bar Tartine, several dozen taco shops, Mission Chinese, Flour + Water, various pupusa places recommended by my knowledgeable tweeps, and so on. Here are the five I picked in the end.

Of course, behind this decadence, it was impossible not to hear the waves of anxiety about the changes in the neighbourhood. Our place was owned by a former business writer from New York who’d bought it to live in the back apartment and rent out the front space through VRBO, as well as the duplex next door. (Occupied by our stay by a very heavy-footed French family with bicycles.) And she said it was disconcerting to realize that she could easily be bought a sold by the 20-something bazillionaires in the ‘hood, getting rich from their start-ups.

But it was interesting to see that gentrification can only go so far. I ended up at one point taking a city bus around the backside of Potrero Hill and through the area of the Mission east of Mission Street. It was still filled with obvious social housing in parts (which looked like a minimum-security prison) and pretty modest bungalows. A reminder that it takes more than a few years to transform a neighbourhood.

Categories: Uncategorized

6 responses so far ↓

  • 1 peakie // Nov 4, 2015 at 4:36 pm

    No map in the article?
    And what do you do when you wait so long to get a seat in a restaurant?

    I see that VRBO was bought yesterday by Expedia.

    First it was Travelocity, then Orbitz, now Bellevue-based Expedia is buying the vacation rental site HomeAway.
    The $3.9 billion deal, expected to close in the first quarter of 2016, was announced Wednesday.
    The HomeAway portfolio includes vacation rental websites HomeAway.com,
    VRBO.com and VacationRentals.com in the United States; as well as
    similar sites in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Brazil,
    Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific.

  • 2 peakie // Nov 5, 2015 at 5:56 pm

    Any comment about San Francisco’s Propositions F and I?

    Prop F was the anti-AirBnb measure limiting rental locations to only 75 days a year. AirBnB is rumoured to have spend 8.5 million to defeat it.
    Prop I was to put a “moratorium on luxury housing in San Francisco’s Mission District, ground zero for well-off tech workers leading expensive bohemian
    lifestyles.” (Suspension of Market-Rate Housing in the Mission District) Yes — 42.46% No — 57.54%

    During an election debrief turned victory speech, Airbnb’s head of
    global policy, Chris Lehane, issued a thinly veiled threat to other cities.
    In sum, Airbnb says it has figured out how to mobilize its home-sharing network, and its membership numbers are almost totaling the NRA. Now that it successfully rallied its San Francisco user group, it’s going to do the same in 100 cities across the US in the form of “clubs.”
    Here’s the playbook of how Airbnb beat the San Francisco ballot initiative, and how it plans to make sure that never happens again:….

    businessinsider.com/inside-airbnbs-playbook-for-taking-over-every-city-2015-11

  • 3 francesbula // Nov 6, 2015 at 12:43 pm

    Ha ha, I went to a Japanese massage parlour next door for stressed professionals and got a hand and shoulder massage. Funny you should ask.

  • 4 francesbula // Nov 6, 2015 at 12:44 pm

    Yes, Proposition F hadn’t really heated up at that point, although I knew the whole issue of Airbnb was generating a lot of debate.

  • 5 peakie // Nov 8, 2015 at 11:21 am

    So now you write much more gooder in longhand?
    Is the massage technique tranferable, i.e. could you show others how to do it?

  • 6 davididid // Dec 6, 2015 at 12:08 am

    wow, that’s actually a pretty on point list. delfina, flour and water, etc. – that’s old hat. the only one you’d probably regret (and have quite a bit to say about) is mission chinese, which just revamped its menu.