Stockton St, North Beach

I love North Beach! It has everything you could possibly want and it's so easy to get around via the MUNI (bus) or cable car or cab. Columbus Avenue is the main drag and it's a bit heavy with traffic, especially on the weekends, which is why parking the car and walking is key. There are 9 parking lots in North Beach.

It's relatively flat, with a few slight inclines here and there. North Beach has great restaurants and it borders Chinatown, Financial District and Fisherman's Wharf. You'll never go hungry with all of the restaurant choices from Italian (of course) to French, sushi, Thai, steak, and Chinese. Plus there's a cafe on every corner. You'll definitely satiate your shopping fix in cute boutique shops on Grant Ave.

It doesn't have a movie theater but they do show movies sometimes in Washington Square Park.

It's a great place to visit and hang out because it has a mix of locals and tourists, and any place tourists want to visit, has got to be a cool place to live.

North Beach is, in my view, for tourists, horny people, and singles; perhaps you fit into more than one of these categories. I took my parents here when my boyfriend and I lived in Hayes Valley. We had the obligatory meal at The Stinking Rose, which I later had to repeat with the boyfriend’s parents. Strangely enough, the roasted garlic bulb with baked brie is actually better at a pub we went to near Ghirardelli Square. The region has done a fairly decent job of keeping the strip clubs off of Columbus Ave. One evening here in particular that I recall was Fleet Week, when naval ships dock in SF. What a great night to people watch and, if you are out with a couple of single friends, to be reminded of how beautiful you are, even if you’re not feeling it. I ventured into a tame Broadway strip club of the peep show variety with the Hayes Valley boyfriend. While what the parties on both sides of the class did was R rather than X rated, the downsides included shuffling for small bills to feed into the slot, enduring the wicked awful smell, and trying not to touch any of the walls in the small booths where a dance floor of sorts can be viewed. All I can say is, I have no curiosity left about what the world, portrayed in Madonna’s Open Your Heart video, is really like. What’s best about North Beach, in my view, are the views. The rolling streets open up vistas of the Transamerica building and Coit Tower, which tops Telegraph Hill. You can hike up the kill, then take the elevator to the top of the tower when it’s open. You can work off your margherita pizza by climbing the Filbert steps Telegraph Hill. English teacher and pun-nerd (punnerd?) that I am, I was sure that I would eventually hear about North Beach’s tendency to celebrate “coitus”, obviating a gesture to the very phallic and aptly named tower. But this is the kind of joke I, a not funny person, would get the guts to attempt after the powerful vapors of alcohol has spirited away my eloquence. Bottom line about North Beach: sex and food. One of my favorite Literature professors at Claremont McKenna College, in a class called European Modernist Fiction, began our study of Joseph Conrad by stating, “Every pleasure in life comes down to three things: eating, defecating, and sometimes, to a lesser degree, sex.” North Beach, you’re 2 for 3. Not bad. And thank God SF is only 7 square miles.... because try to get a taxi after midnight and you will be hoofing it to your abode.