Dating in San Francisco and Oakland
The Bay Area rewards knowing two things: which neighborhoods are walkable to each other, and where the fog is on any given afternoon.
The second one is where most advice fails. The Marina and Crissy Field are in the fog corridor, not out of it — a July afternoon there runs 55 to 60 degrees with hard wind while Dolores Park, five miles away, sits at 75. September and October are the Bay Area’s actual summer. When San Francisco is socked in, Oakland is ten to fifteen degrees warmer and the fog has usually burned off hours earlier.
On walkability: the Mission to the Castro along 18th Street is nine-tenths of a mile, flat, and the best cross-neighborhood walk in the city. North Beach to Polk looks similar on a map and is a twenty-five-minute climb over Russian Hill. One of those is a date; the other is a mistake.
Guides for San Francisco Bay Area
- 6 min readSan Francisco
First dates in San Francisco: Hayes Valley, the Castro, North Beach and the Marina
Four neighborhoods that each do one thing well, the fog map that decides which one to pick, and the two walks that look identical on a map and are not.
Read - 5 min readOakland
Meeting people in Oakland
Warmer and sunnier than San Francisco, easier to park in than anywhere else in the Bay Area, and home to a Sunday afternoon where showing up alone and not talking is the entire format.
Read - 4 min readThe Mission
Meeting people in the Mission
The sunniest neighborhood in San Francisco, the best cross-town walk in the city, and the three specific blocks worth routing around.
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