‘Time Travel’ to San Francisco’s Previous at These Native Haunts

There aren’t many locations that make you’re feeling such as you’ve stepped into ’90s San Francisco. But, fortunately, Dog Eared Books on Valencia Street is one among them. 

“If somebody wants a taste of what the Mission District felt like in 1995, they can walk into here, and it feels like that,” bookseller Scott Soriano instructed this reporter in May. “A little bit of the San Francisco that used to be.”

Not precisely, after all. Many issues have developed since its inception as a used bookstore round 30 years in the past. But with the maze of cabinets, posters and artwork masking each inch of the wall and a welcoming angle that allows you to stand round and simply learn for some time, “Dog Eared feels like a long-lost home,” he mentioned. 

“This hasn’t always been a conscious effort,” Soriano mentioned. “At some point — probably when every new store seemed to be a white box — we recognized that our aesthetic is an asset.”

Lisaruth Elliot, a historian, agreed. And she would know — she co-directs Shaping San Francisco, a neighborhood historical past undertaking that hosts talks and strolling excursions all through the town’s neighborhoods and corridors, together with Valencia Street. 

Being house to storefronts like Dog Eared was simply one among Valencia Street’s many makes use of over time. Valencia additionally was once: the main transportation route for Irish funeral properties transferring the deceased to Colma, the middle of ladies’s and lesbian tradition within the ‘80s and ‘90s, and the hub for South Asian anti-imperialist activism. 

“It’s actually enjoyable to take a look at the completely different ways in which areas have been used,” she mentioned. 

Off the crushed path

Elliot’s viewers is essentially curious San Franciscans or Bay Area residents who need to study extra concerning the metropolis they’ve lived in or close to virtually their total lives.

“The kind of feedback we got is, ‘I’ve lived here my whole life. I didn’t know about that pathway. I didn’t know you could get there from here and you showed me some new ways to get around my neighborhood.’” Elliot mentioned. In her excursions, folks need to know, “How do I get off my own beaten path of moving through the city?”

There will be many causes these residents — outdated and new — need to step into previous a long time. 

“I think it has a lot to do with the gravitation toward the technology industry, which is something that doesn’t hold tangible concrete things of the past in high estimation,” Elliot mentioned. 

“People are yearning for that sense of connection. We talk about it all the time, right? This disconnectedness, the … dropping out of social interactions,” she mentioned. “The pandemic did not help.

“Connection is a really strong motivator,” she mentioned.

In the spirit of being a vacationer in your personal house, KQED compiled some key locations that make you’re feeling like you may have “time traveled” to San Francisco’s storied previous. Or, no less than, near it. This consists of historic and preserved landmarks, legacy companies and native spots which have curated themselves as throwbacks to an earlier time. 

Head outside

First off, some common suggestions from a historian:

San Francisco landscapes have been drastically reengineered over time. Consider one of many largest examples: Mission Bay, which is not a bay, Elliot mentioned.

“I look to our natural areas, our open spaces, as places that have not been preserved in time, necessarily, but where you can experience, even if the skyline has changed, a sort of sense of the city as it may have been,” Elliot mentioned.

Places, she mentioned, just like the Presidio, Bayview Hill and Fort Funston.

“You still have so many spaces within the Presidio that give you a sense of what the plants were, even before the Spanish came,” she mentioned. “A lot of work has been done to do that recognition of those plants.” 

(The Presidio even has a pet cemetery from the 1950s, which is open to the general public.)

Visit preserved buildings

There are additionally historic buildings, like San Francisco’s well-known Coit Tower. 

“If you go into Coit Tower and you’re looking at the murals, you can feel like you’re there at the same time that the muralists were painting in the 1930s, which is very rare,” Elliot mentioned. “Museums change. But Coit has this quality of transportation back in time, especially if you get a chance to walk up through the second floor.” 

She additionally urged The Old Mint downtown, which was constructed through the Gold Rush and operated from the 1860s to the Nineteen Eighties. 

You also can discover a checklist of officially designated landmarks in the city on the SF Planning web site. The state additionally has its personal round-up of historically designated spots.

Explore neighborhoods

Elliot mentioned that with the mission of visiting San Francisco’s previous, the western neighborhoods are an incredible wager — particularly among the companies and eating places within the lovely Inner Sunset and Inner Richmond. 

“Maybe it has the advantage of being farther in distance from the downtown economic centers, but time does seem to stop in some of those places — in a good way,” she mentioned. “I think that’s really great that those neighborhoods have retained their character.”

Another key neighborhood is North Beach, San Francisco’s Italian American neighborhood with beatnik corners — additionally proper subsequent to bustling Chinatown, which is a deal with at night time.

And this reporter could be remiss to not point out the Haight-Ashbury, which preserved, restored or recreated a few of San Francisco’s finest ‘60s imagery.

But where in these neighborhoods should you check out, specifically? Conveniently enough, the City of San Francisco has a Legacy Business Program, which keeps track of spots that have operated in the city for 30 years or more and “contributed to San Francisco’s historical past or identification.”

You can discover a map of over 400 of those companies on San Francisco’s city website.

KQED staffers even have suggestions for favourite locations to go to when they’re feeling the necessity to escape 2026. (Keep in thoughts, if you’re fascinated with heading out to those spots, make sure to examine if they’re open or require an appointment!)

1700s

1800s

Early 1900s

Thirties

Nineteen Forties

• House of Prime Rib on Van Ness Avenue
• Gray Area, a venue at the moment devoted to inventive know-how, however its previous as a theater remains to be obvious, within the Mission
• Swensen’s native ice cream store on Hyde Street

Fifties

Sixties

Seventies

Nineteen Eighties

Nineties

2000s

Other sources and methods to discover San Francisco historical past

Keep in thoughts: The following is simply the tip of the iceberg of the entire methods you’ll be able to discover the town’s previous.

Walking excursions

Archives and museums

Also, for actual historical past followers: There will likely be a complete model scale of the city on show for the primary time in additional than 80 years at Pier 9 this winter. 

“Created between 1938 and 1940 by more than 300 artisans, the San Francisco Scale Model is a hand-carved wooden replica of the entire city,” in accordance with a social media post selling the construction’s new house. “Originally conceived as a tool for civic planning, it allowed people to see San Francisco as a whole, understand how it worked and imagine what it could become.”

KQED’s Gabe Meline, Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí, Sam Shaw, Becca Bright, Rikki Gates and Laura Klivans contributed to this text.

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