North Beach & Chinatown

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101 Music store in North Beach.

Overview

Dumplings and rare teas are served under pagoda roofs on Chinatown's main streets – but its historic back alleys are filled with temple incense, mah-jongg tile clatter and distant echoes of revolution. Wild parrots circle over the Italian cafes and bohemian bars of North Beach, serving enough espresso to fuel your own Beat poetry revival.

Attractions

Must-see attractions

  • SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. 15th August, 2017: historic san francisco chinatown neighborhood

    Chinatown Alleyways

    North Beach & Chinatown

    If you look close today at the clinker-brick buildings lining these narrow backstreets, past the temple balconies jutting out over bakeries, acupuncture…

  • SAN FRANCISCO - SEPT 2, 2017: The Beat Generation lives on at City Lights bookstore in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco.

    City Lights Books

    North Beach & Chinatown

    No one could have predicted the cultural force City Lights would become when it first opened in 1953. Sure, it had a proletarian ethos suggested by its…

  • Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill Boulevard, San Francisco, USA

    Coit Tower

    North Beach & Chinatown

    If you want to really see San Francisco, head to Coit Tower, a 1933 art deco beaut designed by Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard that sits high up on…

  • San Francisco: Chinatown, Grant Avenue (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images) *** Local Caption ***

    Chinese Historical Society of America

    North Beach & Chinatown

    Picture what it was like to be Chinese in America during the gold rush, transcontinental railroad construction, and Beat heyday in this 1932 landmark,…

  • Waverly Place

    Waverly Place

    North Beach & Chinatown

    Grant Ave is Chinatown's economic heart, but its soul is Waverly Place, lined with flag-festooned, colorful temple balconies and family-run businesses…

  • Portsmouth Square

    Portsmouth Square

    North Beach & Chinatown

    Chinatown's unofficial living room is named after John B Montgomery's sloop, which staked the US claim on San Francisco in 1846. SF's first city hall…

  • Tien Hou (Tin How) Temple in Chinatown atop 125 Waverly Place.

    Tin How Temple

    North Beach & Chinatown

    There was no place to go but up in Chinatown in the 19th century, when laws restricted where Chinese San Franciscans could live and work. Atop barber…

  • Chinatown Dragon Gate

    Dragon's Gate

    North Beach & Chinatown

    Enter through the Dragon archway donated by Taiwan in 1970, and you'll find yourself on the street formerly known as Dupont in its notorious red-light…

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