Inner Sunset

I lived here for six years and would still take Golden Gate Park as a tradeoff for the fog any day. Yes, the fog gets pretty old in the summer. But on sunny days, you're a 20-minute bike ride from the beach, and once you've lived here for a while, you'll learn areas of the park that tourists will never visit.

Situated just west of the Haight-Ashbury and Cole Valley neighborhoods and about three miles east of the Pacific Ocean, the Inner Sunset is far enough away from downtown that you might forget you’re still in San Francisco.

Still, commuting via public transportation is as easy as it is in most other parts of the city, largely due to the N-Judah light rail train, which makes nearly 10 stops in the neighborhood. Several bus lines – including the 71-Haight and 6-Parnassus – also offer access to downtown areas.

Locals consider the corner of 9th Avenue and Irving Street the Inner Sunset’s epicenter, and both streets are lined with a multitude of local dining and shopping options. Within just a few blocks’ walk, foodies can choose from sushi at Ebisu, comfort food at Park Chow, freshly baked pizza at Arizmendi Bakery, or Siamese cuisine at Marnee Thai. Local stores sell everything from hardware to vintage clothing to magic supplies. Andronico’s Community Market is the neighborhood’s dedicated grocery store, and a farmers’ market sets up shop every Sunday year-round.

Those who partake in sports and outdoor activities will find a lot to like about the Inner Sunset, in spite of the frequent fog. The neighborhood’s location on the south side of Golden Gate Park means that runners, bikers, and hikers can indulge their passions without straying far from home. Tennis courts, a fly-casting pond, soccer and baseball fields, and a golf course can all be found within the park’s boundaries.

The 1,000-acre urban oasis – which stretches all the way to Ocean Beach – also offers plenty of cultural and natural attractions and events. Golden Gate Park fixtures include the de Young Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, the San Francisco Botanical Garden, and the Conservatory of Flowers. And if that weren’t enough, the park hosts numerous music festivals throughout the year, including Outside Lands in August and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in October.

Edwardian- and Victorian-style homes abound in the Inner Sunset, lending the neighborhood a classic San Francisco feel. Median single-family home prices in the Inner Sunset hit $1.28 million in May 2013, according to MLS data, a year-over-year spike of 24 percent and the second-highest peak in the past two years. Median home prices in the Inner Sunset are currently 35 percent higher than they are in District 2 overall.

Median sales prices for condos in the neighborhood have risen 38 percent from a year ago, climbing to $1.43 million in June 2013.

Inner Sunset is a really cool neighborhood . . .when you can actually see it. I don't think I've ever seen the sun once in this neighborhood. And, although the entire city is no stranger to fog, Inner Sunset seems to be the most fog stricken part of the city. But, if you can get over the perpetual gloom and doom, Inner Sunset lovely. Inner Sunset used to be sand dunes that were developed in the late 19th century. And, because the housing prices were so low for so long, a huge influx of immigrants came to this part of town. The neighborhood is still quite diverse to this day. And, the melting pot demographic makes for a lot of great restaurants in a short distance. Ok, the melting pot makes for a lot of great things, but I'm a fatty, so I pretty much only care about the food. L'Avenida pretty much has the best mexi food around town and it's top rival, Gordo's is right down the street. So, pretty much if you like massive burritos, your favorite spot is going to be Inner Sunset. Everybody talks about Ebisu being the best sushi in SF (also in Inner Sunset). I don't believe people actually like Sushi but if you're one of those people that pretends to, then this is your spot. I could go on and on about the food but pretty much everything around here is delicious and authentic.

There is a kind of small town feel to Inner Sunset. I feel like everyone knows each other and I'm assuming it's because most people have been in this neighborhood forever. The houses are really cute and still semi-affordable so it's a great place to look if you're a young family. The downsides to this nabe are that there isn't much in the way of nightlife and I can't deal with that kind of fog. But, I guess if you're coming from Ireland or the pits of hell or something, the gloom weather won't bother you.

This is one of those underappreciated areas of SF. It has a fairly unique look and feel to it—feels almost like you are in a different part of the world. Golden Gate Park is on the north side and it is nestled between the hills of Forest Knolls and Golden Gate Heights, this little vale has kind of a hip mix of singles and young families. It is just close enough to the action to keep the young and restless interested but just far enough away to attract those that are starting to settle down.

The most attractive area is by the UCSF Medical Center. It is also close to the sports fields that make up the southeast corner of Golden Gate Park. The historic Kezar Stadium is here. You can find plenty of ethnic restaurants here, including a number of sushi bars like Koo and the New Eritrea, an Ethiopian place.

Rents are all over the place in this neighborhood, with some steals at under a $1000 while other studios go for $3000. Why so much variation? I have no idea but it does reflect the mix of residents here—from doctors to young families. It is actually a really great little spot (it is really barely a neighborhood at all).

In a nutshell, I would love to live here.

Known for being a quiet residential neighborhood, the Inner Sunset is home to a high socioeconomic class with many of its residents settling down and owning homes. The area also has a small town feeling with tightly packed homes and a relatively homogenous neighborhood. Many families love this district because of the brightly colored store fronts and buildings while others love it because of its proximity to the Pacific Ocean (about three miles away).

The neighborhood also offers a terrific public school system, boasting a couple of well-funded high schools as well as the University of California, San Francisco. The university also offers both undergraduate and graduate courses. Because of its proximity, student housing tends to be very prevalent in the area.

You’d think with the university close by, there would be more bars to choose from, but unfortunately that’s not the case. The neighborhood only offers a few dive bars and a swanky old fashioned saloon. However, commercial stores (like Starbucks and Naoh’s Bagels), grocery stores, book store outlets and chic boutiques seem to be popping up everywhere. For dining out, the neighborhood offers a few sushi restaurants to pick from and two neighborhood taquerias. Unfortunately, parking can be a bit of a nuisance after business hours but many of the residents have their own garages.

The Inner Sunset might as well be one of the bustling bits of San Francisco life (even though—trust me—it’s not). Mt. Sutro Open Space Reserve is one of the best parks in the city. Golden Gate Park is just a short walk above you. West Portal, just south and east, offers a great strip to shop on. And our own little series of parks – Hawk Hill, Golden Gate Heights, and Grand View – should be destinations in their own right (even though – once again – they’re not).

But that’s not all on the menu. Up on Irving Street, the restaurants are hoppin. Underdog offers vegetarian hot dogs—they’re like nothing you’ve ever experienced. San Tung Chinese is a staple of mine. Sometimes take-out Chinese food is the best meal you can ask for. And the Chug Pub just a block up on Lincoln is every recovering frat boy’s dream.

All the way down on Taraval, the fun keeps going. Guerra quality meats is a great stop to refill your meat locker. (Or your freezer—whatever.) San Francisco Wine Trader has some killer deals on some great bottles. And Sushi Zen really hits the sushi spot any day of the week.

Inner Sunset offers one of the best San Francisco locations. You are bordering Golden Gate Park. In fact, this neighborhood is directly south of the Botanical Gardens. For access to a world-class park, you can’t do too much to beat this part of San Francisco.

Apparently, many locals call Inner Sunset their favorite neighborhood in the whole city! As a result, living costs are very high. If you are looking for a home to buy, you may not even be able to find one in Inner Sunset. This part of town has great restaurants, and a diverse population. You see all types of people living in Inner Sunset, so you won’t just feel as though you are surrounded by yuppies. All different types of people bought houses in this neighborhood when it was less expensive. It’s so cool that you see small businesses and mom and pop stores, and you aren’t completely surrounded by large corporate chains.

One of the most popular restaurants in Inner Sunset is San Tung Chinese Restaurant. My friends have told me that I have to eat there, though I haven’t tried it yet. For some reasons, people rave and rave about their chicken wings. I don’t eat meat, but there seem to be good offerings for vegetarians as well.

The Inner Sunset is where I’d say more action happens, or rather where most of the action happens in the whole Sunset District, and by action I don’t mean car accidents/crashes and pedestrian accidents. Although those do occur more commonly in the Inner Sunset than Central and Outer Sunset, those things shouldn’t be what draws you in or pushes you away from the Inner Sunset, there’s a lot more to this neighborhood than those horrible things. Anyways, bad way to start off, but in the Inner Sunset, there’s a lot to do more than to see. Traffic gets very heavy in the Inner Sunset at times, especially around 19th Avenue, so for those who are not from this neighborhood may be in stuck in traffic for a little while. Aside from that, there are many places to eat at. There is a large variety of Asian restaurants to dine at. The central locations of these restaurants are on Taraval, Noriega, and Irving Street. There are MUNI buses that run through these streets so you can easily access these restaurants. There are also some great cafes to get breakfast at, as I have quite often, mostly on Irving Street. There are also really great tapioca stores such as Quickly’s and other small stores, personally tapioca is just really good in general so I can’t really recommend or put in a preferred tapioca store. There are many grocery stores on Irving, Noriega, and Taraval street, there are also little Asian or Chinese stores where you can get little do-dads/gizmo/gadgets for a small price. They’re fun to play with but usually break pretty fast (as I’ve experienced). The Inner Sunset is a great place in general, especially in the night when you can go eat at late-night open restaurants with friends or family.

As with many San Francisco neighborhoods, the Inner Sunset is defined by its core, the convergence of two or more thoroughfares where businesses and residents cluster. In this case, that would be Ninth Avenue and Irving Street, a nexus that includes banks, an old-time drugstore, a post office, a number of coffeehouses, bars, and restaurants to satisfy most cravings, with well-maintained apartment buildings and older single-family homes spreading in all directions. The variety of storefronts reflects the people who call this corner of town home: longtime residents who were born and raised here and brought up their families here, too; immigrants from far-flung places across the globe who stayed to make their mark; young people who came to study at the renowned medical center here or work downtown and have simply settled in. The little shops and cafes and restaurants that cater to them give the Inner Sunset the feel of a village or small town. And that seems fitting for this tightly packed neighborhood: at no point are you far from a shop or eatery or small business that feels like home, however you define it.

That small-town feel is all the more remarkable when you consider that the area also hosts one of the most important academic medical centers in the country, if not the world: the University of California at San Francisco, whose hospitals and clinics rank among the top ten anywhere, according to U.S. News and World Report. More than 4,000 students attend classes and labs and perform their internships and resident training here, supported by more than 2,000 faculty doctors and researchers, and many hundreds more rank-and-file staffers.

All the activity in this densely populated area (with more than 35,000 residents, according to U.S. Census Bureau, in the square mile bounded by Lincoln Way, 19th Avenue, Ortega Street, and First Avenue) translates to an on-street parking situation that is challenging at best. To make things a little easier for residents, the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic issues an annual permit ($96) for those who live on the busiest streets in the neighborhood where parking rules apply—meaning that if you reside here and purchase a J sticker for your car’s bumper, you don’t have to obey the two-hour parking limit on streets that are marked and don’t have meters. (Some streets, especially those in the western half of the neighborhood near 19th Avenue, impose no time constraints other than the citywide 72-hour limit.)

For those without a car or who prefer to leave it parked, the Inner Sunset offers a number of good public transportation options, including frequent N trolleys that rumble to the Financial District downtown and back to Ocean Beach. Numerous buses also crisscross the neighborhood, including the 6 and 71 bound for Civic Center and the 44, which cuts through Golden Gate Park en route to the Inner Richmond.

Like the Mission District, its bigger cousin on the other side of Twin Peaks, the Inner Sunset combines a number of influences in melting-pot fashion. That explains the eruption of Asian eateries along Irving Street (Yummy Yummy, Little Bangkok, and Golden Rice Bowl), bakeries (such as Arizmendi on 9th Avenue), stalwart bars (Blackthorn Tavern and the sports bar Mucky Duck) and coffeehouses (the Beanery) all elbow-to-elbow with laundries, shoe repair shops, and longtime establishments like Art’s Café and Le Video, the go-to rental place for rare, indie, cult, and foreign movies on tape and DVD. A big grocery (Andronico’s, part of the small, quality-minded Bay Area chain) offers staples and gourmet items at its location on Irving Street, and numerous other small groceries and produce stores dot the neighborhood and make last-minute convenience shopping a snap.

Architecture-wise, the area falls into what is often called San Francisco eclectic. This is one of the first neighborhoods in the so-called “Outer Lands” to be settled around the same time the city was planning and developing Golden Gate Park, and much of the housing is late Victorian or early Edwardian, with a sizable smattering of Craftsman style thrown in along with more modern (and less eye-appealing) boxy apartment units. Because the neighborhood lies at the edge of the so-called fog belt, it’s not the most conducive environment for a proliferation of trees and shrubs. Still, these are somewhat more common on the streets and sidewalks than farther west in the Sunset, though the view down many blocks is rarely shaded and often stark for lack of greenery. The relative lack of leafy trees may not strike many as such a drawback, however; the neighborhood abuts the grassy meadows and leafy stretches of Golden Gate Park, as well as the mostly undeveloped western flank of Mount Sutro and the Forest Knolls neighborhood. Two other nearby parks—Grand View and Sunset Heights—offer open space and panoramas (though they require a considerable uphill hike to access).

Rising on the slope of Parnassus Street is the UC-San Francisco complex, a combination medical center/children’s hospital, with university classrooms, offices, and student housing radiating from the two main buildings: a blocky, buff-colored highrise on Parnassus and its square, black-windowed sibling across the street. Both are anomalies not only in the neighborhood, but in the whole of San Francisco as well. Sutro Tower looms over it in the distance, as if the ugliest of the city’s ugly landmarks were connected. A considerable number of students from the university spills over into the neighborhood, making cheap apartments a rarity. The presence of the university is considered a mixed blessing for other reasons as well: on the downside, it increases traffic, even on side streets, and limits available parking, especially on side streets. The upside is that all the foot traffic amounts to a generally safe street life, with little violent crime; according to SFPD stats, vandalism, larcency and car thefts are the most common crimes. Even these are relatively infrequent compared with other such densely populated districts, and concentrated along Irving Street and Lincoln Way. Assaults are also generally low; the neighborhood had no murders in 2009.

Schools in this compact neighborhood include Jefferson Elementary, a public elementary that received a 9 out of 10 rating by GreatSchools, and St. Anne’s, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school attached to the Catholic church of the same name. Both are within blocks of each other, and the outpouring of children on the streets in the morning and afternoon (along with cars double-parked to drop them off and pick them up) is a common sight (and, commonly, an aggravation if you’re trying to get by).

Although the area has a large number of whites and Asians, it is typical of San Francisco overall in that no one race predominates. Other groups, including Latinos and African Americans, make up about 15 percent of the area’s population. Almost half of all residents own their home (worth on average from $800,000 to $950,000); the others rent (paying upwards of $1,600 for a one-bedroom flat). And, owing to UCSF, a large number (more than 60 percent) have bachelor’s degrees or better. These young, well-educated newcomers help contribute to a fairly high median annual income: upwards of $70,000, according to census stats. The better to spend in those little shops around the corner that define the Inner Sunset.

Inner Sunset is a unique place - an odd mishmash of hip little boutiques, bars, and restaurants smack up against Golden Gate Park and UCSF Medical Center. Parking can be troublesome, but on the whole the neighborhood is fairly family friendly with something to do every day. Good ethnic eats (a little classier and a little pricier than some of the more "authentic" nabes), and an overall youngish vibe. Good place to go down, if you're medically fragile; there are medical and dental students, young and old doctors and nurses crawling everywhere in this neighborhood. N-Judah will whisk you all the way into downtown - pretty convenient living.

Walking accross the Golden Gate Park past the De Young Museum & Japanese Gardens the road unfolds into one of my favorite neighborhoods in all of the great metropolis of San Francisco, Inner Sunset. I lived there for 5 years and enjoyed every minute of it. Golden Gate park is across the street and perfect for long walks, bike rides, tennis, boce, and picnics with friends. Once you've worked up an appetite you have your choice of cafes and restaurants, anything from good ole' american breakfast, crepes, pizza, mexican, middle eastern, thai, seafood to fusion. Irving St. has flourished with boutiques and diverse businesses which hold their own against any other San Francisco community. There are some great watering holes that have endured the economic seasons such as, The Saloon, Mucky Duck, Shamrock & Blackthorn Tavern. The spirit of this neighborhood is alive and thriving, most of all people are friendly!

I lived in the inner sunset for years. It's a great place to be, even where I was on Lincoln by 4th. The park is right there so you have lots of greenery.

Head up to 9th and Irving and you'll enjoy some great places to eat. Pluto's has meals at a price that simply can't be beat. And Crepevine nearby is a great place to get some wonderful crepes -- both sweet and savory.

If you need to get your nails done, there's a corner shop at 8th (maybe 7th?) and Irving on the north west side of the street. It's small and the ladies in there do a great job, even if they don't all speak English that well. Plus, the price can't be beat.

My amazing massage therapist is at the Momentum Chiropractic office and simply kicks butt, so check him out if you're in need of a rub down.

The N line is great -- just check next bus to know when you're train will arrive.

Inner Sunset is a favorite neighborhood to most all San Franciscans, despite some of the worst weather in the Bay Area. It's just three miles from the Pacific Ocean directly in the middle of the fog zone.

Why is this community adored? It will and always will maintain the laid back feeling of a small town. A small town that has the best restaurants, edgy shops, and ethnic mix of people.

The average resident of Inner Sunset is married, raising a family, and owns his or her own home. This neighborhood is known for its excellent primary and high schools and a great place to grow up.

Sights in the area include Golden Gate Park on the perimeter of Inner Sunset, Ocean Beach is to the west, and the zoo just south.

Restaurants galore populate the area, including P.J.'s Oyster Bed (expect to wait in line) and Yummy Yummy (naming it twice was not an overstatement).

Shopping is a plus here as well, including numerous flower shops along Irving Street. Whatever you desire, it's guaranteed you will find it in Inner Sunset.