Sure San Francisco has that nice bridge and you can always ride those trains on a string, but there's way more to see in the city's more than 40 neighborhoods.
The San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau just launched a site filled with an interactive map and information about each of the neighborhoods to make your trip planning a bit easier. For the more Jerry Garcia-oriented crowd it illustrates the fun to be had in areas like Haight-Asbury. If that's not quite your scene, head to SoMa (South of Market) for "more than two square miles of sleek nightclubs, fashionable restaurants [and] art hubs." Finally, if you still haven't gotten your passport, just hit up Chinatown--it's one of the largest and oldest in the country.
Click on any 'hood to see more about it, including activity, sightseeing and restaurant picks. You'll also find neighborhood-specific events calendars that'll help you plan out your summer travel.
We found ourselves in St. Louis recently with a crowd of Italians. So we just had to take them to the city's own Italian neighborhood, The Hill. Entertainment? It was handled by an enormous meal at one of The Hill's best restaurants, LoRusso's.
The restaurant has a separate bar area where women of a certain age down dark liquor in snifters while chatting with friends. We loved it. After a cocktail, we moved into the main dining room, where the live piano player set the mood. (We did not ask to hear "That's Amore," thankyouverymuch.)
The thing to order is the Tenderloin Mudega, breaded and broiled steak with a mushroom sauce. It was knock-out Italian-American grub. We skipped the pasta bowl, but it's also a stand-by: a new recipe is developed each year, but Chef Rich LoRusso remembers 'em all. So if, say, the '03 pasta bowl sounds good, order it up.
Plenty of cities have their rapidly redeveloping urban areas: New York has Bushwick, San Francisco has the Tenderloin and until recently, Philadelphia had South 13th Street. But the strip's about to go from blighted red-light district to urban chic if Valerie Safran and Marcie Turney have their way.
Writing in Food & Wine, Jen Murphy spills the story on "Philadelphia's Design and Food Mini-Empire," built from the ground up by Safran and Turney. On a single block of 13th street--just south of Market--they've opened a funky home accessories shop: Open House. Months later came Lolita, a BYOB (this is Philly) serving high-end Mexican food at not-so-high-end prices. The latest outpost is Grocery, a cafe and takeaway with fancy lunchtime grub. Next up on the power couple's list? An Indian restaurant.
As part of a much larger article on the gentrification of Los Angeles--which we're too lazy to read--LA Weekly published a cheat sheet: Five ways to tell your L.A. neighborhood is gentrifying. In New York, this is a simple equation (when the number of pais divided by the number of guys wearing size 30 or smaller jeans is less than one, you're gentrified) but apparently it's a little more complicated in Los Angeles.
Some of them are more obvious than others--and ornamental grasses get mentioned twice, so they must be a pretty clear barometer--but we do like one of their choices in particular: Gelato. We agree that gelato is the new espresso; coffee shops were the sign of Gen X gentrification, and gelato is it for Gen Y. Guess that means we're in for a fat set of hipsters in a few years.
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by kjb
