Gold Club
I certainly can recommend the Gold Club. It has a great buffet at lunch time. And their drinks are pretty generous in the evenings.
Erm. I mean or so I'm told. Cough.
San Francisco is bracing itself for an influx of around 50,000 technologists as the Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne conferences kick off next week, and the city’s smut merchants – or gentlemen’s clubs as they prefer to be known – are making a play for attendees' attention. The week of the two conferences is apparent to most of …
Dotties True Blue Cafe for breakfast, MoMos or Fog City Diner for lunch, and pretty much anywhere on the waterfront (seafood) or North Beach (Italian) or China Town (duh!) for lunch, supper or dinner. I've spent as much time in London, Paris, Rome and New York as I have in San Francisco, and I'm here to tell you the food in SF is better. Ask any Cop where to eat for cheap; at the Front Desk of your hotel to get pointed at Tourist traps; or anyone in the Business District wearing a button-up shirt with no tie for good, honest food without gimmicks. If you want Mexican food (the real thing, not Taco Bell), head for The Mission District ... but they also do good old American "head-sized" Burrito-Grandes at most of the Mexican places in the Mission.
If you have the time & inclination, take the Ferry from Pier 41 across the Golden Gate to Sausalito for Lunch, eat at Spinnaker Restaurant before returning to San Francisco. Take a camera! The views of The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco (and Alcatraz, also worth a visit if you have time) are worth the relatively low cost.
Yes, the walk across The Bridge and back is worth it, if you like walking.
And for goodness sake, if you're only in town for a couple days every decade or so, get yourself a drink at Top Of The Mark around sunset before you leave ... The view is astonishing!
All the above is walkable (SF is only 7x7 miles square). Even if you think it's warm, carry a sweater. And if you think it's cold and foggy, carry water anyway ... Chances are good you'll be in full sunshine around the next corner.
[1] I decided to nuke my first option "purulent", because I doubt most of you kids would get the joke ;-)
What the hell do you expect? California's only been a State since July 9th, 1846 (26 days longer if you erroneously choose to call The Bear Flag Republic a State). CAofS has only been around since 1853 ... and even then lost a lot of stuff in the 1906 earthquake and fire. On top of THAT, it was moved to a temporary location after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Have you visited it since the re-opening in late 2008?
The Smithsonian is National ("the nation's attic"), CAofS is a State run thing. Can you see why one might be larger than the other?
The British Museum (est. 1753) had a lot more time to pinch stuff from "foreigners", before it became politically incorrect to do so. Can you see why this might have an impact on what is displayed?
And if you think US$30 is expensive for a day's entertainment, California is not the place for you to be vacationing.
http://www.calacademy.org/tickets/
"What the hell do you expect?"
You seem to agree it isn't excellent (as you give a long list of excuses) so maybe the AC expects the article to not describe it as excellent?
$30 per adult, $25 per child, puts it slightly north of a decent theme park, so a bit of the steep side if you view it purely as a day's entertainment. But from your description of how bad it is and why, I doubt that it provides a day's entertainment.
Never been there, but you don't make it sound very attractive.
Nowhere did I say it was a bad experience. I was pointing out that the AC's expectations might have been set entirely too high, for all the wrong reasons, within the current timeframe. Note that the AC hasn't mentioned if he visited the temporary digs, or the new buildings.
Did you bother to follow the link I provided? Here it is again: http://www.calacademy.org/ ... poke around. See what they have to offer. It might surprise you.
Or perhaps you could change your handle to "HardOfThinking".
In San Francisco, or as we nearby locals call "The City". Yes, it is all there and more. If you want "technical" treats, venture down south ("Do You Know The Way To San Jose?") if you have the obligatory rental vehicle (the airport is a ways from the city proper!). Down a couple of counties we have nice surplus shops, and pretty good electronics stores (1Tbyte drives for less than $100, and only sales tax of 8.25% no VAT here!).
The advise about having a good coat is a good one, as if one ventures down to Fisherman's Wharf, one can observe that only the tourists are the ones without coats and shivering.
Just remember, the "Topless Bar" scene started in the North Beach part of town in the 60's, and has been going strong ever since.
"Obligatory rental vehicle" --- WTF? For a meeting in central SF it would be entirely a liability as parking is impossible. The BART whisks you to central SF from the airport cheaply and rapidly, the buses and subway/tram lines are plentiful and there are always the lovely cable cars to play on as well. Get the whole-week MUNI travel pass for about $20 for the best value --- 4 single rides on the cable cars costs that.
Oh, and going back to the original story, when I go to SF for the American Geophysical Union meeting, no-one gives us free passes to, uh, "gentlemans' clubs" either.
Frisco is NOT a city in California... You can go to Frisco, Colorado, or Frisco, Texas. And denizens of SAN FRANCISCO will be only to happy to give you a boot in the right direction if you call Bagdhad-By-The-Bay by the wrong name.
Just leavin', it's beer o'clock somewhere...
Herby, you are correct. I should have said "became part of the United States" instead of "a State". Mea culpa. As for surplus shops, that scene died with the loss of Haltec and TheSource. Thankfully Wierdstuff and Halted are still with us ... It's a really, really strange feeling to find a 19" relay rack full of odds & ends of .misc equipment that you, yourself built several years ago available as surplus ...
Hugh: Indeed. If you are not a local, take public transport in the central Bay Area. It works, and just makes sense. You geophysical guys don't get free passes to so-called "gentlemen's clubs" because you are ... uh ...gentlemen, at least for the most part. (At least according to my Wife, who worked at the USGS in Menlo Park for a couple years after High School, before she entered College). OTOH, computer geeks have a reputation for enjoying porn, valid or not.
Michael: Or worse "SanFran" ::shudders::