What's up,? You're watching Vagabrothers,
and this is our guide to San Francisco. Let's go.
Good morning Vagabuddies. What's going on?
Welcome back to the channel.
It is a beautiful day here in San Francisco.
We're here for a couple of days, but we're going to do our best to have the perfect day in San Francisco.
What are we up to today, bro?
Well we're currently starting the day at Ritual Coffee,
which is a local roaster here in Hayes Valley,
which is a cool little pedestrian area.
There're all these sidewalk coffee shops, and
although we were right around the corner from the Painted Ladies,
the famous houses from Full House,
we're going to go try to show you the essence of the city..
different neighborhoods, different historical sites, cool bars and restaurants.
So that is the goal for the day, and
so far we're starting off with this coffee.
Everything's from Costa Rica.
It's all direct trade "pura vita" coffee, and it's pretty good.
Let's get this adventure started, shall we? We shall.
We're going to go to the founding birth spot of San Francisco.
Stop number one is the San Francisco Presidio.
Just in front of us is the San Francisco Bay,
the largest natural harbor in California.
The Golden Gate Bridge and the entrance to the bay,
known as the Golden Gate, is just over there.
But this is where it all began for San Francisco.
Presidios were Spanish colonial military garrisons named because they preside over the area,
and they were designed to protect the Spanish system of missions, which was the backbone of California.
Twenty-six missions from San Diego to Sonoma to our north.
There were four military garrisons: San Diego, Monterey
Santa Barbara and here in San Francisco.
It was built in 1776, designed to protect from all enemies, but never fought a battle.
It was eventually taken over by the United States military,
which recently turned it over to the park system.
This is pretty cool. We've just stumbled upon actual
archaeologists on a dig at the old Presidio site,
and it says questions welcomed.
So I'm wondering if we can ask some questions.
What do you guys find down there when you guys are digging?
What's the most common artifact that you find?
The most common artifact that we do find..
a lot of tile and like structural ceramic.
So much tile... so it's just like..oh, more tile, more orange piece.
I mean just look look at this.
There's a tile right there. There's the orange right there.
There's the.... here's more right here.
It's pretty cool to see this going down right here.
I remember being in elementary school back in San Diego
and going to the Presidio in San Diego
and having the opportunity to help archaeologist with an excavation,
and I think that that was what really instilled in me the
appreciation for archaeology, and one of the reasons why I studied anthropology and archaeology in college.
So it's really cool to come here to the Presidio, see young enthusiastic
archaeologists digging up a bit of the past and trying to understand more about the foundation of this place.
Most of what you see here is from the American period
after California was annexed by the United States following the Mexican-American War.
But the fortunes of San Francisco and California as a state would change drastically in the year
1848 with the discovery of one important metal.....
gold.
Our next stop is the Hyde Street Pier,
and this is a great place to really get a grip on what happened here during the Gold Rush.
In 1848, San Francisco had around a thousand people.
By the end of 1849, there were over 25,000 people.
What changed was when a man named James Marshall on the South Fork of the American River,
not far from here ,found a large golden nugget.
When Mr.Marshall found that large gold nugget on January 24 1848,
he supposedly said," Eureka,"
which means in classical Greek, "I found it."
And it's still the motto of the Golden State.
Gold prospectors came from all over the world,
some by land, but most by sea.
San Francisco was a major port of entry for people trying to strike a rich.
Gold here was so strong that the sailors that brought the miners here also
got caught up in the fever and left their ships here in the harbor abandoned, creating
what was known as the Armada of Golden Dreams.
Many of the immigrants who came here are still known today..
Levi Strauss started a dry goods store and eventually jeans;
Ghirardelli, an Italian immigrant, who made chocolate,
and Wells Fargo, a bank that specialized in
shipping gold bullion across the states from the mines.
There're many immigrants whose names
we've never learned about in the history books .
So to learn more,
we're going to head over to Chinatown.
We have just exited the cable cars,
and usually on our channel,
we really encourage you guys not to do the touristy things,
but when in San Francisco,
most definitely ride the cable car.
That was one of the coolest experiences I think I've ever had, man, honestly.
You are easily amused, but it was very cool.
The cable cars are definitely very iconic and so are these Victorian houses that we've been passing along the way.
San Francisco is unique in the United States in that most of the city is the same style of architecture.
It's a building style that start in the 1800s, but really became uniform after the 1906 fire.
Basically, there was a massive earthquake that ruptured gas lines and caused a fire that destroyed
three quarters of the city, displaced half the population and killed thousands of people.
It was rebuilt in this style that you see now,
and there are still some historical bits from before,
such as the place we're going right now... Chinatown.
Now we're in Chinatown.
Along with the 49ers came tons of immigrants from China,
eventually making up one in ten San Franciscans.
But they were prohibited from mining on the basis of race,
and so they built up a huge service industry around the mining community.
Chinese quickly realized that in order to survived, they had to adapt
Chinese culture to American tastes, especially with food.
And on that note, it's lunchtime.
Okay, so we've ordered a little bit of everything.
There's a bunch of different regional cuisines here,
but we have some Cantonese style dim sum;
We have some Taiwanese style chow mein;
and we have some Cantonese style pork char siu.
And everything looks incredible.
And now we arrive to Marko's favorite period of time, ever.
We're jumping forward through a couple of decades.
But we're right next to Chinatown,
here at Citylights Book Shop.
In the 1950s there was a generation of poets, writers, and
Bohemians called The Beat Generation,
most famously Jack Kerouac, Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, a bunch of people.
they all kind of lived in Chinatown because the rents were cheap.
And this bookshop was the center of their San Francisco Renaissance,
kind of an alternative to post-World War Two
conformity of buying a white picket fence house in the suburbs.
These guys were out here having fun, and yeah.
So if you like On the Road,
a lot of it takes place here in San Francisco.
but more specifically the Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac's
lesser known novel features a scene where all these poets
came together the first time at a poetry reading in a bookshop.
This is the bookshop.. Citylights.
The Specks Twelve Adlers across the street from Citylights bookshop,
and this is where a lot of those writers
we were talking about used to hang out
after poetry readings or maybe before. It's a cool spot.
It's one of those bars where you see like a ton of different
memorabilia to keep your attention for hours at a time,
and the beer's not bad either.
It's one of those type of places where
you can just drink all day long because it's dark.
It'll be this dark in here when it's actually dark outside.
So it's one of those places where you can spend a long time
sitting and thinking, drinking and being creative.
I'll leave you guys with a recommendation.
One of my favorite things is listening to Jack Kerouac read his writing over Steve Allen jazz piano.
So there's one that starts off, "There was a little alley in San Francisco," assuming it means this one right here.
I'll leave a link in the description.
All right so moving forward in history>>>>
We have moved to the neighborhood of Haight Ashbury,
and we are at the former home of the world famous,
revolutionary rock band, The Grateful Dead.
They lived in this house from 1966 to 1968.
At the time, they were known as the Warlocks, and
we actually just had a moment to speak to the current owner.
He said when they bought it,
the place was totally destroyed.
There were 30 Deadheads living in this home, and the
person who sold to him said that if you buy this house you will never find peace.
There's a constant stream of people coming.
There is a constant stream[ Look at the tree] of people coming here and paying homage to the Grateful Dead.
If you do come here, be polite, be respectful, but pay homage.
And don't don't carve your name into the tree, okay?
Obviously, Jerry's been here.
This is the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love 1967
when the counterculture foundation that the beatnik laid blossomed into full-scale
alternative lifestyle here in San Francisco.
Ever since then San Francisco has been a center of alternative culture in the United States,
and we're right down the block from where the hippie revolution took place in 1967
and then took over the world.
Started here and spread everywhere else.
Perfect place to catch a sunset for your perfect day in San Francisco is Twin Peaks.
No, not the cult classic David Lynch show of the1990s,
the recent Netflix reboot,
but the mountain in the center of the city.
Well, it's actually two mountains.
That's why it's called Twin Peaks. Touche`
We've made our way down from the top of Twin Peaks to the Mission District,
just kind of like the Latino District.
This is where the mission was, and it continues to be
"muy latino," which is great.
We are on our way to a restaurant,
which supposedly has the best burrito in the country.
We're going to do our due diligence here and make sure it's the best.
We are from San Diego, which means we're absolute snobs when it comes to Mexican food.
We think we have the best burritos in the country.
Let's see what it's like here.
This is the carne asada burrito.
It's a good burrito.
It's not the best burrito.
So there's definitely two sides this neighborhood.
There's what we just saw
and we're going to kind of finish it up at one of the newer spots, the newer side of
the Mission District by getting a cocktail.
A pretty sweet day. A pretty sweet city, epic city.
Really dig San Francisco ...great vibes,
beautiful architecture, cool people and good restaurants, and good bars.
You can't really ask for too much more.
Maybe a little bit more clement weather throughout the year.
But today was a really sunny day,
and we had a good time.
Bless you. Bless you.
I love S.F. We've got to spend more time up here.
I know that we did not cover everything.
If you are a local or if you've been here, and you have your own comments,
throw them down in the comments section.
And enough of this SoCal -NorCal beef.
We love you guys up here. Honestly. Yeah.
I've got to sneeze again.
I think what he was about to say is: if you enjoyed this video,
please give it a big thumbs- up; share with your friends,
and subscribe and turn on notifications, if you have not already.
Give us your tips down the comment section,
and we'll try to include it in a future video
and hopefully come back here to San Francisco soon.
In the meantime stay curious, keep exploring,
and we'll see you guys on the road.
Peace.