I hate it, just hate it, when folks come to a new city, and waste their time schlepping around to all the predictable tourist traps. You see well-heeled yokels doing this all the time in Seattle. At Pike Place Market (gawking at the fish flingers, having dumb conversations with fish merchants about shipping one crab and a piece of salmon 2,500 miles in a chilled box, and generally getting in my way as I try to shop); at the Space Needle; and finally, falling for the downtown hotel concierge's ultimate and utterly predictable "local flavor" gambit - riding the ferry to quaint little downtown Winslow on Bainbridge Island. Paint-by-the-numbers, all the way.

And so a whole class of visitors manage to have "been" to Seattle without having actually BEEN here. No explorations of Lincoln, Seward or Carkeek parks, no jaunts to Seattle neighborhoods such as Madrona, Leschi or Mount Baker to enjoy the Lake Washington waterfront and sylvan residential streets.

No grokking of what most makes our region unique and provides its NAME, for goodness sakes: Puget Sound (D'oh!). You can do this without a boat, and if that's not clear, prospective visitor, we need to talk about the odd, hidden-away nooks and crannies and fingers of land that jut out everywhere in west and south Puget Sound, and which entirely justify renting a car and clearing a day for getting gloriously lost.

Feeling as I do about stuff like this, it was with high hopes I dove into this WaPo piece on finding the real San Francisco, a place I first visited at age 9 in 1967 (a little young for the serious Summer Of Love festivities, I know); and which I've been back to many times since, especially after moving to Seattle from Chicago in 1994.

Well, the Post's piece has a cute gimmick, citing places that are tourist traps ("Tourist Zone") versus off-the-beaten-path ("Locals' Own"). It's a good start, but still just sort of skims the surface. What the writer seems to forget (except for a nod to the real Chinatown in The Richmond district) is that in San Francisco, the key is neighborhoods.

Like Portero Hill, Bernal Heights, The Mission, Inner Sunset, Outer Sunset, The Richmond, Sea Cliff's China Beach, Pacific Heights, and Japan Town. Just for starters.

Then you gotta ride outta town, either up to Point Reyes National Seashore (you'll have to hike in to the beach); or south to the San Mateo County Coast. Same deal down there: the tourist books will tell you to go to Half-Moon Bay. Uh-uh. Too cute by three-quarters. You want to go a bit further, and hit the windy, empty beaches on the way to the little old Portugese hamlet of Pescadero, where you have the cream of artichoke soup, and Fresh Local Cracked Dungeness Crab at Duarte's Tavern. Or peruse the menu further, and perhaps choose Hog Island Oysters, Crab Cioppino, Seabass Saute, or a Portugese Linguica sausage sandwich. Here's a Duarte's tip: get what some folks call the "half and half" soup: part cream of artichoke, part cream of green chile. And if you're driving in the mountain roads up from the coast, have fun, but you should know that Neil Young doesn't take kindly to visitors, and will escort you off his property with a gun. Or so I've been told.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 14, 2005 10:29 AM

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» It's so crowded, nobody goes there anymore from dustbury.com
Those who follow my World Tour reports will note that I do a fairly respectable job of avoiding the usual tourist destinations. (I mean, three days in South Dakota without... [Read More]

Tracked on February 15, 2005 07:53 PM

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