So I put out a few feelers on where people like to get stoned in San Francisco, and the first thing I learned is that San Franciscans cannot answer this question without first doing a little bit.

Bowen Dwelle's entire contribution was "at your mom's house," and Jason Roth simply answered "Yes." That's not a place, but also sounds about right. My favorite reply from another reader was: "in the middle of Costco, so I can move like the other people in there."

Cannabis filtered into San Francisco through the same channels as everything else in the early twentieth century: the ports, the jazz clubs, the bohemian fringe. By the 1950s it was part of the furniture of the Beat scene in North Beach, where the poets treated it as one more tool for rearranging consciousness. It was illegal the whole time, but the city had a long head start on not caring much.

The most well-known place to light one up is Hippie Hill, the grassy slope in Golden Gate Park that has been the city's open-air clubhouse since the Summer of Love and still draws a congregation every April 20th.

You can also get high pretty much anywhere in San Francisco; the city is permissive by temperament and distracted by enforcement, so the real question was never whether you can. It's where's worth the trip. Here's what readers said:

Twin Peaks

501 Twin Peaks Blvd
sfrecpark.org

The view from the top is the whole city laid flat beneath you, bridge to bridge, ocean to bay. It's high enough that the wind handles your discretion for you, and there's almost always a stranger up there doing the exact same thing. Go at dusk and watch the grid light up.

Ocean Beach

The Great Highway
From Lincoln Way to Sloat Blvd
nps.gov

Three miles of sand at the western edge of everything, with the Pacific running white noise and the fog swallowing you whole. Nobody is close enough to notice and nothing out there is sharp enough to hurt you. Bring a hoodie you don't mind smelling like a bonfire.

Sunset Dunes

Upper Great Highway
Lincoln Way to Sloat Blvd
sfrecpark.org

The two-mile oceanfront park that replaced the Upper Great Highway in 2025 is a car-free ribbon of murals, dunes, and open Pacific. It's flat, it's quiet, and there's a giant climbable octopus, which only gets funnier the more committed you are to the bit. Walk the length of it and let the ocean do the rest.

Buena Vista Park

Haight Street & Buena Vista Avenue
sfrecpark.org

The city's oldest park is a steep tangle of eucalyptus above the Haight, and the climb alone thins out the crowd before you've even arrived. Find a bench halfway up and you get the skyline through the trees with near-total privacy. It feels secret even though it's been here since the 1860s.

Lands End

680 Point Lobos Ave (Lands End Lookout)
nps.gov

The cliffside trail strings you along the headlands with the Golden Gate on one side and the ruins of the old Sutro Baths on the other. It's dramatic enough to make a single hit feel cinematic. Mind your footing near the edge, because gravity does not care how good the playlist is.

Dolores Park

Dolores Street & 19th Street
sfrecpark.org

The Mission's sloped lawn is less a place you go to smoke than a place where smoking is simply the weather. You'll catch a contact high reading a book there, downtown glittering across the rooftops in front of you. Pack out whatever you pack in; the park has a lot of self-appointed guardians.

The Audium

1616 Bush Street
audium.org

This tiny theater seats 49 people in total darkness and moves sound through 176 speakers around, over, and under you for about an hour. You don't light up inside, so arrive already where you want to be and let the dark take it from there. It is, with no exaggeration, the most interesting hour of audio in the city.

Moe Greens

1276 Market Street
moegreens.com

The deco-glam consumption lounge near Civic Center, with separate rooms for smoking, vaping, and dabbing. Buying and lighting up on site is fully legal here, no view required and no ticket risk. There's usually something on the calendar too, from drag shows to comedy nights.

Barbary Coast

952 Mission Street
barbarycoastsf.com

The city's oldest cannabis lounge sits in SoMa, all red leather booths and a glass-walled dab bar. It's been legal to buy and consume here since 2018, which makes it about the closest thing to an Amsterdam coffeeshop on this side of the Atlantic. Come for a seat indoors when the fog wins.

Other recommendations I heard:

• Billy Goat Hill. The rope-swing hill in Noe Valley; the view comes included, the crowd usually doesn't.
• Jack Early Park. A hidden North Beach platform with both bridges in frame. A reader begged me not to print it, so consider it printed quietly.
• The Kearny Street Steps. A stairway climb that earns you a skyline.
• Aquatic Park. The curved cove at the end of the wharf, calmer than it has any right to be.
• The Panhandle. Golden Gate Park's skinny eastern tail, for when Hippie Hill feels too on the nose.
• Outside the Exploratorium. One reader's Embarcadero pick; science optional.
• The Green Door. A SoMa dispensary, if you'd rather stock up than sit down.
• The Toronado. The Lower Haight beer shrine; duck out onto Haight Street between rounds.
• Mason and O'Farrell. A reader's exact coordinates in the Tenderloin, delivered with the instruction "come thru."

Where to NOT get stoned

I also talked to my friend and frequent contributor to The Bold Italic, T. Von D., who was unironically a little high when we spoke. Here of some places T told me to steer clear.

The Financial District

It's all cars whizzing through intersections, suits speedwalking into you like you're a turnstile, and a cop posted on roughly every other corner. "I need to have a sense of safety in the place that I am," T told me. The FiDi is where that sense goes to file for unemployment.

The ballpark

Picture it: forty thousand people, a beer in every fist, and a staircase situation that demands more coordination than you currently possess. "It's a really good way to just eat shit and die," T said, which is a sentence that should be printed on the back of every ticket. The garlic fries are not worth the broken ankle, and the seventh-inning stretch is hard enough sober.

The wrong bus

The right bus is a gently swaying meditation pod gliding you home through the fog. The wrong bus is a fluorescent-lit anxiety chamber where time stops, every stop is your stop and also not your stop, and a man three rows back is having a louder day than you are. You will know which one you boarded approximately four seconds after the doors hiss shut, and by then it is far too late.

What the whole survey said to me is that San Franciscans don't actually agree on a single spot; they agree on the right to have one. Yours might be a clifftop or your own couch. The city just hands you a few hundred good options and leaves the rest up to you.

Saul Sugarman is editor in chief and owner of The Bold Italic.

The Bold Italic is a not-for-profit media organization, and we publish first-person perspectives about San Francisco and the Bay Area. We operate under a fiscal sponsorship of a 501(c)(3).

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Cover photo by Daniel Ramos.