The San Francisco neighborhood known as North Beach hosts a world of hidden charms. Greg Pabst, CityListen tour guide, offers some tips about where to find some of them. For visitors, these tips will show you a side of San Francisco you will not forget. For natives, if you haven’t experienced these spots, perhaps now’s the time…

Guest blogger: Greg Pabst

Favorite pub/bar
Hard to say. There are so many in North Beach. Let’s break it down this way.
While it’s still light out: San Francisco Brewing Company, one of the first brew pubs in California. It’s also got this amazing ceiling fan that makes you think you’re in Burma and Kipling is on the stool next to you. Try the Emperor Norton Lager or the Alcatraz Stout Ale. Food’s good, of the satisfying high-end saloon genre.
When it’s dark out: Specs. Dusty old display cases show all sorts of ephemera, like a stuffed mongoose and cobra locked in an eternal life and death struggle - Disney can’t match this stuff. A sharks jaws – and lots more - hang from the ceiling and a handwriting analyst may stop by to expose your inner self for a few dollars. If the box of postcards is available, you’ll read remarks by Specs regulars from their adventures across the world. My favorite is the wag(s) who send cards from the most exotic - and mundane - places with the same message, “Didn’t find it here, either.” No food, just a fair pour (Specs is the only unionized bar in SF).
If you don’t care about illumination: Vesuvio was founded by Henri Lenoir (naturally, not his original given name) who invented “poetry that’s recited to jazz” in order to make a buck off the Beat Movement. A gas lamp flickers above the bar and sometimes they’ll run an ancient Magic Lantern show of racy pictures from the 1890s. If your great-granny lived in San Francisco in that era, you might not want to look too closely. Take your drink up to the balcony and you’ll see my name on a metal plate installed in the James Joyce booth. It’s a long - and pretty boring - story. But when my USF students discover it, it makes me seem much more rakish than I am. I like that.

Best place to people-watch:
take a table among the dozen or so caffes (the Italian form of the word uses the double-f) along Columbus Avenue. Camp out and watch the promenade.

Alternate people watching: try Washington Square on the weekend for a pick-up volleyball game, an art exhibit or an oysters and Guinness festival.

Most unusual semi-scheduled experience:
hang around Green Street Mortuary just west of Columbus, on a Saturday and wait for the uniformed brass band to lead Chinese funerals down Columbus on their way to the cemetery. The band is all Caucasian and the honored (and family) is Asian. I haven’t yet found anyone, Asian or Caucasian, who could explain
if this has any significance.

Best view:
top of the city garage on the north side of Vallejo between Powell and Stockton. Take the elevator at the top of the pedestrian ramp and push the button to the top floor. Watch your step when you get off the elevator. I mean it. The view is so amazing that you’ll forget and stumble on the parking curbs.

Best view alternate:
walk (or take the #39 Coit bus) up Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower and go inside to check out the 1930s fresco murals painted by a group of semi-starving artists. It’s a sort of socialist-lite version of life in the Golden State as crops are harvested, bread is baked, protests are registered, libraries are browsed and at least one citizen is robbed in plain sight. Afterwards (fog permitting), take the time to view the hilltop panorama of city, bay and sky.