SF
Guide

The ridge between the Marina and the Western Addition with some of the highest property values in San Francisco. The Haas-Lilienthal House at 2007 Franklin, an 1886 Queen Anne Victorian, opens for public tours as one of the few large 19th-century residences accessible to visitors. Fillmore between Pacific and Bush is the commercial spine. California Street cable car runs the southern edge.

Italian-American neighborhood since the 1880s, where the Beats wrote in the 1950s. City Lights opened at 261 Columbus in 1953 and published Howl in 1956. Liguria Bakery at 1700 Stockton has run since 1911, focaccia-only since around 1950. Caffe Trieste at Vallejo and Grant runs live opera most Saturday afternoons, started by the Giotta family in 1956.

Gilbert Baker designed the rainbow flag and first flew it here at the June 25, 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade. Harvey Milk ran Castro Camera at 575 Castro from March 1973 and was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977 (California's first openly gay elected official), assassinated at City Hall November 27, 1978. The 1922 Castro Theatre reopened February 6, 2026 after a $41 million Another Planet restoration.

28,000 to 35,000 people in roughly 50 square blocks, most in single-room-occupancy hotels built after the 1906 fire. Zoning protections won in 1981 by community organizing kept the SROs residential. More than 400 buildings are on the National Register as the Uptown Tenderloin Historic District. Larkin between Ellis and O'Farrell was formally designated Little Saigon in 2004.