How an Arts and Culture Lover Should Spend Two Days in San Francisco
Whether you’re a fan of Jackson Pollock or Jack Kerouac, Jimmy Stewart or Jimi Hendrix, the City by the Bay’s enduring, always evolving arts and culture scene has something for you
At just 49 square miles, with a population less than 850,000, San Francisco is a relatively small city, but it looms large in the imaginations of people all around the world. From the Gold Rush in the 1850s to the Beat movement in the 1950s, the Summer of Love to the present-day tech revolution, the foggy City by the Bay has contributed an outsized influence on American culture. This is a place that changes faster than almost any other, and it continues to have a rebel identity all its own.
Perhaps because of its image as a home to free thinkers — not to mention its unquestionable status as the most beautiful city in the lower 48 — it still draws creative types who make it an eternally vibrant, lively metropolis. Whether you want to sit on the same barstool Jack Kerouac once frequented, see the house Janis Joplin lived in, pay tribute to gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, frolic in the park from Full House, jump in the Bay like Kim Novak did in Vertigo (we strongly advise against this), or scope out world-class museums and street murals, San Francisco offers something for every art lover and culture vulture. Here’s how to dive deep into a city where anything goes.
Who I am: I’m Justin Goldman, a former editor of Hemispheres who grew up in the Bay Area and has written numerous guides to San Francisco over the last decade. I’ve lived in some of the city’s more under-the-radar neighborhoods — Bernal Heights, NoPa, the Outer Richmond — as well as in Oakland, and have visited just about every museum, gallery, concert hall, sports arena, vista point, bookstore, and landmark bar and restaurant in the Bay.
Before You Go
First thing to do when you land in town: You can see world-class art literally right after you land in town. The SFO Museum exhibits rotating works of art in more than 25 locations around the airport and its terminals. A particularly affecting example, on display through March 22, 2026, is the AIDS Memorial Quilt, a piece with nearly 50,000 panels dedicated to more than 110,000 people around the world who have died of AIDS-related illnesses.
Need to Know: San Francisco hosts a wide variety of music, art, and literary festivals throughout the year. Golden Gate Park, which held three massive Dead & Company Shows earlier this summer to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead, is also home to the Outside Lands Music Festival in August and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in October. The Litquake literary festival also takes place every October, and there are many, many other arts and culture events going on all the time. (Broke-Ass Stuart is an excellent resource for what’s happening in any given week.)
Take this home: The historic City Lights Bookstore is the epicenter of San Francisco’s literary scene, and it has an upstairs room dedicated to poetry and the Beats. (The late owner, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was a Beat poet himself.) The shop also has plenty of contemporary books about the city. Our favorites include Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, and Gary Kamiya’s Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco.
Where to Stay
Two Days of Art and Culture in San Francisco
Day 1: Art-filled palaces, Beat culture, and the hotel bar where you’ll leave your heart
Morning
- Start your jaunt around the City by the Bay with breakfast in a place that has serious artistic, cultural, and historic bona fides. The Palace Hotel was originally opened in 1875, then was destroyed, along with most of the rest of the buildings in the city, by the 1906 earthquake. It reopened in 1909, along with its show-stopping lobby restaurant, the Garden Court, which sits beneath an atrium made of more than 80,000 pieces of stained glass. Take breaks between bites of your smoked salmon and caviar omelet to stare up at that ceiling, and then on your way out poke your head into the hotel bar, the Pied Piper, to take a peek at the namesake Maxfield Parrish mural on the wall.
- Right around the corner is the city’s premier arts institution, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. SFMOMA’s permanent collection features works by Frida Kahlo, Henri Matisse, and Yayoi Kusama, among others, and the terrace has a verdant living wall paired with an Alexander Calder sculpture gallery. Fans of quirkily twisted takes on pop culture won’t want to miss the upcoming “KAWS: FAMILY” special exhibition, opening November 15.
Afternoon
- As cool as it is to see world-class art in a modern museum, there’s something even more rewarding about seeing it in situ. Coit Tower, the 210-foot-tall Art Deco landmark that stands sentinel at the top of Telegraph Hill, is a piece of art in and of itself, but it’s just as impressive on the inside. In 1934, the Public Works of Art Project commissioned more than 20 artists to paint Social Realist murals on the tower’s interior walls. These colorful works give a glimpse into what life in San Francisco was like during the Great Depression.
- Walk down the hill and fast-forward a couple of decades to the 1950s, when the Beats ruled San Francisco. North Beach was the hub of their literary renaissance, thanks to City Lights, so start your tour by stopping in and buying a copy of Howl and Other Poems, then cross Jack Kerouac Alley and have a Bohemian Coffee — doses of brandy and amaretto are what make it bohemian — at Vesuvio Cafe, a favorite haunt of Kerouac and Neal Cassady. Next, pop across Broadway to The Beat Museum and pick up a “Howl for Ginsberg” coffee mug, then head up Columbus Avenue to Washington Square. Take a seat on the grass and enjoy the same lovely (and lively) green space that inspired Beat authors such as Richard Brautigan.
- Still feeling poetic? Stroll back down Columbus and quench your thirst for both words and wine at Golden Sardine. This new wine bar doubles as a poetry bookstore and publisher, and it often hosts readings and book release parties. Grab a book by a local author and read a few stanzas while enjoying some tinned fish and cheese and a glass from the expertly curated list, which has a notably strong riesling selection.
Evening
- North Beach borders Chinatown, and it’s just four blocks down Chinatown’s main drag, Grant Street, to get from Golden Sardine to Empress by Boon. Located in what was once one of the neighborhood’s most venerable banquet halls, this restaurant from Michelin-starred chef Ho Chee Boon serves modern Cantonese cuisine (think Jasmine tea–smoked short rib buns and braised pork belly with cloud ear mushrooms) in a gorgeous space with an ornate central gazebo and sweeping views of the city. Blink, and you might think you’re in a Wong Kar Wai film.
- Go for a nightcap at the Fairmont San Francisco. Stop outside by the statue of Tony Bennett to sing a few lines from “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” — this is where Bennett first performed the song in 1961 — and then proceed down to the hotel’s basement and the Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar. Conceived by a Hollywood set designer and originally opened in 1945, this marvelous tiki bar is built around a lagoon in which a boat serves as a floating bandstand and artificial thunderstorms periodically strike. If you, like me, believe that kitsch is art, this is the place for you.
Day 2: Street art, scenes from classic cinema and classic rock, and an NBA star’s restaurant
Morning
- The Mission District has long been the hub of San Francisco’s Mexican and Central American communities, and while gentrification has hit the neighborhood hard, you can still get a feel for the city’s Latino legacy here. Start with a breakfast of chilaquiles or huevos rancheros at El Mil Amores, a new local favorite named for a 1954 Pedro Infante film. Burn that meal off by strolling down to 24th Street and doing a Precita Eyes mural tour. The Mission, and in particular Balmy Alley, bursts with street art, and on your guided 90-minute walking tour you’ll see a lot of it — and learn about how it reflects the struggles of Latinos both in the U.S. and south of the border.
- For a somewhat lighter diversion, head back up Valencia Street, where early 2000s hipsters (yours truly included) roamed, and stop at a couple of quirky shops that happen to stand right next to each other between 19th and 20th Streets. First is 826 Valencia, a “pirate-supply store” that award-winning local author Dave Eggers founded to help fund a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching writing to disadvantaged kids. Slip on your new eye patch and go next door to Paxton Gate, a cabinet-of-curiosities-style place that sells everything from taxidermy and framed butterflies to artisan jewelry.
Afternoon
- Hop on a bikeshare or hail a rideshare to breeze through a series of historical and cultural sights on the way to the Legion of Honor. Take the right route, and you can pass by the giant rainbow flag at the Castro’s Harvey Milk Plaza, dedicated to the late gay rights leader and first gay man to be elected to public office in California, and then Alamo Square Park, where you’ll see the Painted Ladies, a row of gorgeous Victorian houses made famous by the opening sequence of Full House. When you get to the Legion of Honor, you’ll see the 101-year-old landmark museum Jimmy Stewart followed Kim Novak into in the quintessential 1950s San Francisco film Vertigo. What you won’t see is the portrait Novak stared at in the movie; it mysteriously disappeared in the years since.
- Continue your self-guided pop culture tour by heading into Golden Gate Park. Make a quick stop at the De Young Museum to take in an exhibit of Paul McCartney’s photos of Beatlemania (on through October 5), then do a lap around the track at Kezar Stadium, where Clint Eastwood catches the serial killer in the quintessential 1970s San Francisco film Dirty Harry. It’s just a short walk from Kezar to the heart of the Haight-Ashbury District, where you can spot the hippie heyday homes of the Grateful Dead (710 Ashbury Street), Jefferson Airplane (2400 Fulton Street), Janis Joplin (122 Lyon Street), and Jimi Hendrix (1524 Haight Street). Cap off the rock ’n’ roll nostalgia tour by picking up some vinyl at Amoeba Music.
Evening
- Outside of the tech boom, one could argue that the Bay Area’s most notable contribution to American culture over the last decade has been the NBA’s dynastic Golden State Warriors. Pay your respects to one of the greatest basketball teams ever by having dinner at Meski, a new Ethiopian-Latin place in Lower Nob Hill co-owned by Dubs star Draymond Green. Come for the pollo guisado sambusas and the tomahawk bistec; stay for the bumping scene at one of the liveliest restaurants in the city.
- There’s only one way to close out a San Francisco culture tour: A show at the Fillmore. Great bands are always playing this storied ballroom: Carlos Santana first got on stage here in the ’60s after climbing a drainpipe and crawling in Bill Graham’s office window; Tom Petty once did a 20-show run here; and this fall’s lineup includes pop star Jason Mraz and bluegrass queen Molly Tuttle. What you’re really here for, though, is the art — specifically, the hundreds of historic concert posters lining the upstairs lounge and mezzanine. Toast to Jerry, Jimi, Janis, Jefferson Airplane, and every other legend that played here, then dance the rest of your night away.
If you have three days
All of the above, but add...
- Venture across a bridge or down the peninsula, and you’ll find the wider Bay Area has plenty more to take in. Looking for fine art? About an hour’s drive south, Stanford University’s campus is home to the B. Gerald Cantor Rodin Sculpture Garden, which boasts one of the largest collections of Auguste Rodin works outside of Paris, including a bronze cast of the astonishing The Gates of Hell.
- San Francisco has a pretty good theater scene — this fall, for instance, you can catch Into the Woods at the San Francisco Playhouse, Shucked at the Curran Theatre, and Les Misérables at the Orpheum Theatre — but Northern California’s best playhouse is in the East Bay. Berkeley Repertory Theatre has been staging innovative productions by up-and-coming and established playwrights for more than 50 years, with many of them going on to national acclaim. This season’s lineup includes a one-woman show by Tony-winner Laura Benanti and Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California, which has already had runs on Broadway and the West End.
If you have four days
All of the above, but add...
- Sausalito, across the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, is one of the most scenic spots in the entire Bay Area, with its views back across the water toward the city. The cute, walkable waterfront ends at a collection of houseboats that any music fan will want to check: While staying on Bill Graham’s boat here in 1967, Otis Redding began writing “(Sittin’ on) The Doc of the Bay,” which remains both his — and perhaps San Francisco’s — most enduring song.
- There’s a lot of money up in Napa Valley (about an hour’s drive north of the city), meaning Wine Country is also home to a lot of great art. You can see monumental sculptures at the di Rosa Preserve, paintings by Francis Bacon and Robert Rauschenberg at Hess Persson Estates, and colorful murals in the Napa Rail Arts District. And, you know, drink plenty of great wine while you’re at it.