AFTERNOON TOUR

While there is a lot of overlap on topics, the Afternoon Tour features the Barbary Coast and North Beach; the Morning Tour features Chinatown.  The Afternoon Tour starts at the Robert Louis Stevenson monument on the Upper Level of Portsmouth Square at 1 a.m.  Look for us holding a three-ring binder with a sign that says:

San Francisco Walks and Talks

Walking Tour
Starts Here

Tour Route and Highlights

Please meet us by the Robert Louis Stevenson Monument at the northwest corner of the the upper level of Portsmouth Square, close to Washington Street and Walter Lum Place.

  • First Americans, Spanish and Mexican Periods
  • American conquest
  • San Francisco’s Birthplace
  • Gold Rush
  • Cable Car
  • Robert Louis Stevenson

Portsmouth Square to Clay and Montgomery

  • The Pony Express
  • The Original Shoreline and Harbor
  • Buried Gold Rush Ships
  • A.P. Giannini and the Bank of Italy

Montgomery Street to Pacific

  • Jackson Square Historic District
  • Our oldest buildings dating from the 1840s through the 1850s
  • Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Oscar Wilde, Melvin Belli
  • Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo, and mimosas

Pacific to Kearny/Columbus

  • The History of the Barbary Coast
  • The Life of a Sailor
  • “Terrific Street”
  • The International Settlement

Columbus to Washington Square

  • Francis Ford Coppola
  • The Hungry I
  • Tosca, Vesuvio and Spec’s
  • The Beat Generation/City Lights
  • The 1960s in the Haight Asbury
  • The City’s Great Transition
  • Beach Blanket Babylon

Washington Square

  • The Italians of San Francisco
  • The Story that 99% of San Franciscans’ Get Wrong (Hint – there’s a tower involved)

See the Morning Tour for tour route and highlights.

Please meet us by the Robert Louis Stevenson Monument at the northwest corner of the upper level of Portsmouth Square (Walter Lum Place and Washington Street).

The First Cable Car

The Barbary Coast

Bob Donlin, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVinge and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in front of City Lights Bookstore, the heart of North Beach, in the mid 1950s.