I Love SF
Why I love the Richmond District
The Richmond has both infinite depth and surprising intimacy. M. T. Eley walks us through this San Francisco neighborhood you probably skip unless you live there.
This article is part of I Love San Francisco, a feature series of essays that highlight what makes San Francisco iconic and irreplaceable.
By M. T. Eley
Part of San Francisco’s magic is that it’s actually many small towns that run into each other. You walk in a straight line and find these wonderful discrete continents, some tucked into hills and others spanning the valleys below; a phenomenon that the fog makes even more stark. Few neighborhoods illustrate this more than the Richmond.
Despite it stretching for nearly half the city, you don’t really go to the Richmond unless you have business there. It’s easy to ignore, and I did for the first year I lived here before taking my mother to a hotpot place on Geary, which I only later learned doubled as an exotic dance lounge (since closed, alas).
You can get a good mental map of the place from the top of the USF campus on Lone Mountain. East and west are miles of human-sized buildings, packed together like nougats. To the south, the big branches of eucalypti and cypresses in the Golden Gate Park; to the north, the Golden Gate Bridge is incidental in its magnificence, towers peeking at you from a break in the buildings and groves of the Presidio, Sea Cliff neighborhood and the VA hospital campus.
All of this facilitates the very real illusion — like a magic trick gone right — that the Richmond has both infinite depth and intimacy. No buildings save church spires rise above the rest to cut off these sight lines which form a vast urban valley, opening onto the ocean.
An honorary mention goes to the San Francisco Columbarium, not quite in the Richmond but catching your eye as you walk down Lone Mountain. The last nondenominational place in San Francisco one’s ashes can be interred is worth a respectful visit, if only to see the unmarked cable car grave marker. All in all, a good thing we put an end to in-city burials: one reason San Francisco is so lively is that there are very few dead left.
Head down Balboa, which is one of three main east-west thoroughfares in Richmond; the others being Geary and Clement. You quickly arrive at the first of several little villages which are nothing more than a clearing of businesses in the forest of homes and apartments. This one is centered around Balboa and 5th.
It is here, not Russian Hill, that you find SF’s only Russian bookstore, Globus Books. Indicative of the area’s Russian roots as well is Cinderella, a charming café and bakery. Try the homemade kvass — beer, of sorts, but with a starting base of bread or flour instead of grain. Light, with a kombucha-like tartness; the absence of malted grain lets the earthy sweetness of rye come through.
Crossing Geary for a bit — mostly chains, some mom-and-pops and combination hot pot and exotic dance bars — one finds a much longer stretch of businesses on Clement. Highlights include The Plough and the Stars, one of my favorite spots to have a pint in the rain or catch some midday fiddling. Preface the pints at Burma Superstar with their mouth-tingling tea leaf salad or Moh Hinga, a rich, pungently spicy catfish chowder. Then finish off the block by buying books under the influence at Green Apple Books’ original location.
Back across Geary again: The de Young museum peers like a Mayan temple over the forest of the Golden Gate park. Each block seems to have its own unappreciated Painted Ladies: three or four in the same style, perhaps by the same builder, but different colors, lovely as a set.
After crossing Park Presidio and entering Central Richmond, you’ll find another small burg centered on 19th and Balboa, the Golden Gate towers peeking at you at each crossroad. The smell of coffee roasting mixing with Korean BBQ and the smell of old leather from Love Street Vintage, whose owner Graciela Ronconi recently celebrated 30 years of treasure hunting.
Run across Geary again to find a lively downtown centered around 23rd and Clement and anchored by the 4-Star theater, one of two remaining cinemas in the Richmond. Plenty of options for a snack beforehand: I suggest C. Q. Noodles’ house beef rib noodle soup, with meat so tender it slides off the bone and into the simmering broth.
Or, if in the mood for something a little more Americana, nearby Bill’s Place makes a passable burger, the basis of about a dozen “celebrity”-themed plates. The best order might be the “Herb Caen,” a mouth-filling patty with Monterey Jack, alongside a vanilla malt shake which is served half in-glass, half still in the chrome mixing vessel, like the martinis at the House of Prime Rib.
If you have time, cut one block north to the last stretch of once-mighty California Street to find another enclave of cute groceries, hidden bistros and a friendly pet store.
Except for Geary Boulevard, it gets quieter the further you go into the “Outer Richmond,” which starts somewhere around 31st. Yet it still feels alive; fewer cars, more people. On my walk I found local saxophonist Timothy Stiles serenaded a Grocery Outlet across from the Russian Orthodox Holy Virgin Cathedral. I’d seen him before on the Geary rapid transit out here from downtown. Small world.
Outer Richmond is vast, and the wind cold and gusty once you begin to climb the last hill on the continent. The distant hills and mountains grow dark purple with the gloaming — if you see them at all. If you can, take one last look over your shoulder at the Golden Gate before walking south and west to hit the last real pocket of civilization around 36th and Balboa.
The sliver of ocean you first spied three miles ago from Lone Mountain starts to loom larger on the horizon that Balboa disappears over. On the right, the cheery red neon of Richmond’s other gem of a theater, the Balboa Theater, blinks away. Their lineup this spring is no less impressive than 4 Star’s — The Room lovers, rejoice! Tommy Wiseau is making an appearance there late May.
Across the street, La Promenade Cafe offers up pastries, sandwiches and drinks in a bookish setting. And down the way is San Francisco’s only Egyptian restaurant, Al-Masri, with authentic belly dancing on Saturday nights. Maybe that’s where the hotpot place got the idea.
And then? The land simply runs out. At the top of Sutro Heights, you are left with the Great Highway, the beach, and lonely remnants of the old Sutro family mansion, to whom time has not been kind. The rumbling ocean seems almost to almost threaten to surround you, the plangent sighs of the wind in the trees drowned by the crashing of cold waves. The earth suddenly feels very young, and big.
Which makes it all the easier to turn back to the newly-formed continent of San Francisco.
M. T. Eley is a San Francisco-based writer.
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