Page 38 - Adelante Magazine February 2025

Travel
Article and Photos By: Scott S. Smith and Sandra Wells

COOL THINGS FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIANS TO DO 51
SAN FRANCISCO

We had not visited San Francisco was a really great experience for
in 20 years to write a travel story, reasons we explain in our full re-
so we were quite overdue when we view:
decided to go in January 2025. We https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/re-
had postponed a prior plan a cou- view-becks-motor-lodge-san-fran-
ple of years ago when the down- ciso-scott-s-smith-qlonc/
town got some bad publicity
because of homelessness and THURSDAY
drug dealing, but knew city leaders We decided to take the fastest
since then have improved the situ- route that starts out on the I-5
ation greatly (something our home- North, but requires getting onto a
town of Los Angeles can't claim). side road for a while and later veer- 1
The Moscone convention center is ing to Oakland, so we came
again attracting big events, tourists (slowly) into SF from the east. The
are packing the museums, and res- alternative is to take the more lei-
taurants are thriving. surely, lovely, and simpler 101
along the coast, by which we re-
But that means that traffic isn't just turned.
congested, the one-way streets
and few parking spaces on the We had planned our agenda with
street, as well as the fact that park- the invaluable help of the city's
ing lots are expensive and often SFTravel.com https://www.sftra-
full, mean the first rule to get vel.com/ , which has extensive lists
around is to use the mass transit of things to do. But we were
system. This includes cable cars, shocked to get an email on our way
street cars, the Muni Metro buses that the city tour we had signed up
and light rail system, and BART's with for Fri. was cancelled, includ-
subway to get to more distant ing our reservations for Alcatraz is-
places (buy a Clipper Card to make land. This is the prison where Al
this easy and save money). But if Capone and other major criminals
you insist on a car, Google's had served their sentences and
Waymo vehicles are smarter and made famous by the 1962 largely
less dangerous than any driven by fictional movie "The Bird Man of Al-
humans. catraz" (Robert Shroud was a bird
doctor at Leavenworth, but did not
Hotels are expensive, but so are have birds on the island). The
SF B&Bs, which are usually not tickets often sell out days in ad-
conveniently located and inade- vance, so the first thing we did
quate for all a visitor's needs. We when we arrived was to call the
chose a unique place to stay which only official provider of transport to
is located on Market St., the city's the island, Alcatraz City Cruises
main thoroughfare: Beck's Motor https://www.cityexperiences.com/s
Lodge, located in the Castro Dis- an-francisco/city-cruises/alcatraz/,
trict, the nation's pioneering and someone actually answered
LGBTQ+ friendly quarter, with lots the phone and set up our replace-
of restaurants, bars, specialty ment tickets for Saturday without
shops, and the Castro Theatre with our having to try to rebook online
its mighty Wurlitzer organ that is with our dysfunctional cell phone. 2
played before every show. Beck's

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