How many stops are on the Nightlife walking tour in San Francisco?

The Nightlife route in San Francisco includes 12 curated stops.

How long does the Nightlife tour in San Francisco take?

The Nightlife walking tour in San Francisco takes approximately 6 hours at a leisurely pace.

Is the Nightlife walking tour in San Francisco free?

Yes, Promenario's Nightlife tour in San Francisco is free to download and use, with full offline support.

🇺🇸 San Francisco, United States

Nightlife in San Francisco

Evening districts, bars, and lively after-dark streets. Explore 12 curated stops in San Francisco, including Pier 39, Chinatown, and Lombard Street. Highlights include City Hall, rated 4.7/5 by 4,200 visitors.

12 stops ~6h Available in app

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12 places in this collection

Nightlife places

12 places in this collection

Image by Kingofthedead, CC BY-SA 4.0

Pier 39

Pier 39 is a shopping center and popular tourist attraction built on a pier in San Francisco. At Pier 39, there are shops, restaurants, a video arcade, street performances, the Aquarium of the Bay, virtual 3D rides, and views of California sea lions hauled out on docks on Pier 39's marina. A two-story carousel is one of the pier's more dominant features, although it is not directly visible from the street and sits towards the end of the pier. The family-oriented entertainment and presence of marine mammals make this a popular tourist location for families with kids. The pier is located at the edge of the Fisherman's Wharf district and is close to North Beach, Chinatown, and the Embarcadero. The area is easily accessible with the historic F Market streetcars. From the pier one can see Angel Island, Alcatraz Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Bay Bridge. Blue & Gold Fleet's bay cruises leave from Pier 39. California sea lions have always been present in San Francisco Bay. They started to haul out on docks of Pier 39 in September 1989. Before that they mostly used Seal Rock for that purpose. Ever since September 1989 the number of sea lions on Seal Rock has been steadily decreasing, while their number on Pier 39 has generally increased. Some people speculate that sea lions moved to docks because of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, but the earthquake occurred months after the first sea lions had arrived at Pier 39. It is likely that the sea lions feel safer inside the Bay.

Image by chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0

Chinatown

The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese enclave outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinatowns within the City. Since its establishment in 1848, it has been highly important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that continues to retain its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. There are two hospitals, several parks and squares, numerous churches, a post office, and other infrastructure. Recent immigrants, many of whom are elderly, opt to live in Chinatown because of the availability of affordable housing and their familiarity with the culture. San Francisco's Chinatown is also renowned as a major tourist attraction, drawing more visitors annually than the Golden Gate Bridge. San Francisco Chinatown restaurants are cxonsidered to be the birthplace of Americanized Chinese cuisine such as food items like Chop Suey while introducing and popularizing Dim Sum to American tastes, as its Dim Sum tea houses are a major tourist attraction.

Image by Pedro Lastra peterlaster, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Lombard Street

Lombard Street is an east–west street in San Francisco, California that is famous for a steep, one-block section with eight hairpin turns. Stretching from The Presidio east to The Embarcadero (with a gap on Telegraph Hill), most of the street's western segment is a major thoroughfare designated as part of U.S. Route 101. The famous one-block section, claimed to be 'the crookedest street in the world', is located along the eastern segment in the Russian Hill neighborhood. It is a major tourist attraction, receiving around two million visitors per year and up to 17,000 per day on busy summer weekends, as of 2015. San Francisco surveyor Jasper O'Farrell named the road after Lombard Street in Philadelphia. Lombard Street is known for the one-way block on Russian Hill between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets, where eight sharp turns are said to make it the most crooked street in the world. The design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and built in 1922, was intended to reduce the hill's natural 27 percent grade, which was too steep for most vehicles.

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Image by Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / "San Francisco (CA, USA), Powell-Mason Cable Car Turnaround -- 2022 -- 2965" / CC BY-SA 4.0

Powell Street Station

Powell Street station (often Powell station) is a combined BART and Muni Metro rapid transit station in the Market Street Subway. Located under Market Street between 4th Street and 5th Street, it serves the Financial District neighborhood and surrounding areas. The three-level station has a large fare mezzanine level, with separate platform levels for Muni Metro and BART below. The fare mezzanine will also connect to the Union Square/Market Street station when it opens. The Powell-Mason and Powell-Hyde cable car lines turn around at Powell and Market adjacent to the station and Hallidie Plaza. BART service at the station began on November 5, 1973, followed by Muni Metro service on February 18, 1980.

Image by DestinationFearFan, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ghirardelli Square

Ghirardelli Square is a landmark public square with shops and restaurants and a 5-star hotel in the Marina area of San Francisco, California. A portion of the area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as Pioneer Woolen Mills and D. Ghirardelli Company. The square once featured over 40 specialty shops and restaurants. Some of the original shops and restaurants still occupy the square. In 1893, Domenico Ghirardelli purchased the entire city block in order to make it into the headquarters of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company. In the early 1960s, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company was bought by the Golden Grain Macaroni Company which moved the headquarters off-site to San Leandro and put the square up for sale. In order to preserve Ghirardelli Square for future generations, the Pioneer Woolen Mills and D. Ghirardelli Company was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Image by Sanfranman59, CC BY-SA 3.0

City Hall

San Francisco City Hall is the seat of government for the City and County of San Francisco. Re-opened in 1915 in its open space area in the city's Civic Center, it is a Beaux-Arts monument to the City Beautiful movement that epitomized the high-minded American Renaissance of the 1880s to 1917. The structure's dome is taller than that of the United States Capitol by 42 feet. The present building replaced an earlier City Hall that was destroyed during the 1906 earthquake, which was two blocks from the present one. It was bounded by Larkin Street, McAllister Street, and City Hall Avenue (a street, now built over, which ran from the corner of Grove and Larkin to the corner of McAllister and Leavenworth), largely where the current public library and U.N. Plaza stand today. The principal architect was Arthur Brown, Jr., of Bakewell & Brown, whose attention to the finishing details extended to the doorknobs and the typeface to be used in signage. Brown's blueprints of the building are preserved at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Brown also designed the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House, Veterans Building, Temple Emanuel, Coit Tower and the Federal office building at 50 United Nations Plaza.

Image by Supercarwaar, CC BY-SA 4.0

Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art museum located in San Francisco. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. The museum's current collection includes over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts. They are displayed in 170,000 square feet (16,000 m2) of exhibition space, making the museum one of the largest in the United States overall, and one of the largest in the world for modern and contemporary art. SFMOMA reopened on May 14, 2016, following a major three-year-long expansion project. The expansion more than doubles the museum's gallery spaces and provides almost six times as much public space as the previous building, allowing SFMOMA to showcase an expanded collection along with the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection of contemporary art.

Image by Benson Kua, CC BY-SA 2.0

Union Square

Union Square is a 2.6-acre (1.1 ha) public plaza bordered by Geary, Powell, Post and Stockton Streets in downtown San Francisco. 'Union Square' also refers to the central shopping, hotel, and theater district that surrounds the plaza for several blocks.[citation needed] The area got its name because it was once used for Thomas Starr King rallies and support for the Union Army during the American Civil War, earning its designation as a California Historical Landmark. Today, this one-block plaza and surrounding area is one of the largest collections of department stores, upscale boutiques, gift shops, art galleries, and beauty salons in the United States, making Union Square a major tourist destination and a vital, cosmopolitan gathering place in downtown San Francisco. Grand hotels and small inns, as well as repertory, off-Broadway, and single-act theaters also contribute to the area's dynamic, 24-hour character. The Dewey Monument is located at the center of Union Square. It is a statue of Nike, the ancient Greek Goddess of Victory. At the center of Union Square stands the Dewey Monument, an 85-foot (26 m) column on which stand a 9-foot (2.7 m) statue of Nike, the ancient Greek Goddess of Victory.[16] The monument is dedicated to Admiral George Dewey, a hero of the Spanish–American War for his victory at the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898.[17] The monument was dedicated in 1903. Beginning in 2009, painted heart sculptures from the Hearts in San Francisco public art installation have been installed in each of the four corners of the square.[18]

Image by Team at Carnaval.com Studios, CC BY 2.0

North Beach

North Beach is a neighborhood in the northeast of San Francisco adjacent to Chinatown, the Financial District, and Russian Hill. The neighborhood is San Francisco's 'Little Italy' and has historically been home to a large Italian American population. It still has many Italian restaurants, though many other ethnic groups currently live in the neighborhood. It was also the historic center of the beatnik subculture and has become one of San Francisco's main nightlife districts as well as a residential neighborhood populated by a mix of young urban professionals, families, and Chinese immigrants. The American Planning Association (APA) has named North Beach as one of ten 'Great Neighborhoods in America'.

Image by Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Cable Car Museum

The Cable Car Museum is a free museum in the Nob Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. Located at 1201 Mason Street, it contains historical and explanatory exhibits on the San Francisco cable car system, which can itself be regarded as a working museum. The museum contains several examples of old cable cars, together with smaller exhibits and a gift shop. The cable cars displayed include: Sutter Street Railway - grip car 46 and trailer 54 dating from the 1870s; Clay Street Hill Railroad - grip car 8, the only surviving car from the first cable car company. The museum is part of the complex that also houses the cable car power house, which drives the cables, and the car depot ('barn'). The car depot is not open to the public, but two overlook galleries allow the visitor to view the power house, and to descend below the junction of Washington and Mason streets in order to view the large cavern where the haulage cables are routed via large sheaves out to the street. The museum was established in 1974, and is run by the Friends of the Cable Car Museum. It is entered from an entrance at Washington and Mason and is open from 10 AM to 6 PM between April 1 and September 30 and from 10 AM to 5 PM between October 1 and March 31, apart from some public holidays. The museum main level is wheelchair accessible via a separate entrance. The admission to the museum is free.

Image by Steven Lek, CC BY-SA 4.0

Aquarium of the Bay

Aquarium of the Bay is a public aquarium located at The Embarcadero and Beach Street, at the edge of Pier 39 in San Francisco, California. The Aquarium is focused on local aquatic animals from the San Francisco Bay and neighboring rivers and watersheds as far as the Sierras. The Aquarium of the Bay is a Smithsonian Affiliate, accredited by Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and certified as a Green Business by the city of San Francisco. It is a member of the Aquarium Conservation Partnership (ACP), a collaboration to promote ocean and freshwater conservation, specifically by reducing plastic pollution. The Aquarium has over 50 sharks. The Aquarium also has skates, bat rays and thousands of other animals including eels, flatfish, rockfish, Wrasse, Gobies, Kelpfish, Pricklebacks, Sculpin and Sturgeons. A river otter exhibit opened on June 28, 2013. Snow is placed in the otter enclosure periodically during the winter during what are called 'Otter Snow Days.'

Image by Zoran Kurelić Rabko, CC BY-SA 3.0

San Francisco Fountain

Ruth Asawa's San Francisco Fountain, or sometimes simply San Francisco Fountain, is a 1970 bronze sculpture and fountain by Ruth Asawa, located outside the Grand Hyatt San Francisco in downtown San Francisco, California, in the United States. The cylinder-shaped sculpture, which serves as the outer wall of the fountain basin, features bas-relief scenes of San Francisco, 'whimsically interrelated'. It measures approximately 90 inches (2.3 m) tall, with a diameter of 193 inches (4.9 m), and is set into a base of brick stairs. Albert Lanier served as the architect; credited assistants include Aiko Asawa, Haru Awara, Mae Lee, Mei Mei, Hector Villanueva, and Sally Woodbridge. In May 2016, Apple Inc. completed construction of a new flagship store on the northwest corner of Post and Stockton Streets. The project included renovating the public space located between the new store and a hotel on the southwest corner of Sutter and Stockton Streets. The renovated public open space now includes wooden tables, chairs, planters with trees, a 'living wall,' a new mutil-color 'LOVE' sculpture and Ruth Asawa's San Francisco Fountain. Some restoration and preservation work on the fountain was done as part of the project.

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