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The Rock by Night

BY CLARISSA MEILY

A night tour of Alcatraz offers spectacular city views alongside a creepy and haunting look into the famed isolated prison on the bay.

You know the story.  Whether it was “The Rock” or “Murder in the First“, you have undoubtedly heard of Alcatraz.  Deemed the “inescapable” prison, due to its location on a small island off of the San Francisco bay, Alcatraz Island has grown into one of the city’s largest tourist attractions, and rightfully so.  After 29 years of operation, from 1934 to 1963, the island was declared a National Historic Landmark in the mid-1970s and today offers (aside from spectacular views of the city) a chilling look into the mid-20th century prison experience.

While most visitors witness the Rock by day, the night tour of Alcatraz offers a unique look at the infamous island.  The ferry departs Pier 33 at 4:20 in the evening, just in time to watch the city shrink behind you as the sun sinks into its last register.  The evening begins with a ferry tour around the island, a guided walking tour up to the prison, and proceeds with the most chilling and enthralling audio tour you are likely to experience in this lifetime.  Inside the prison, the tour weaves you through the day to day lives of Alcatraz’s captives, invites you into the depths of a maximum security cell, and haunts you with the voices of prisoners past.  Best of all, it recounts moment by moment descriptions of some of the Rock’s most exciting escape attempts, all the while pointing out the bullet spray holes, tunnels crafted from stolen spoons, and dummy heads left as evidence before you.

Wandering the island under the cover of night heightens the sense of mystery around the abandoned prison and  imparts a much more haunting experience than the typical daytime tour.  The ferry departs at 7:20 pm carrying its visitors back to the mainland, leaving you with a glittering view of San Francisco by night, and the exhillerating thrill of having lived through someone else’s nightmare.

For more information or to book a night tour of Alcatraz, visit http://www.alcatrazcruises.com/.

Mar 01, 2010 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

SF Beer Week Kicks Off

BY CLARISSA MEILY

Attention beer lovers!  SF Beer Week kicks off today, starting with an opening gala at Yerba Buena Center.  Beer-centric events will take place throughout the city including:

Beer to Brakers – A group bicycle ride through the city, with stops at Gordon Biersch and Thirsty Bear breweries.  Someone thought this was a good idea…

Brew On Premise – Devil’s Canyon is opening the doors of its professional brewing system to aspiring brewers.  The five hour process allows you to create enough of your own beer to fill a 13 gallon keg.

Speakeasy - Whole Food Collaborative Brew Launch – Speakeasy and Whole Foods have teamed up to create a special brew of their own.  Intriguing.

There are a slew of other events ongoing throughout the week, including several multi-course “beer dinners” at some of the city’s most popular eateries (Anchor & Hope and Bar Crudo, among many others).  Celebrate the world’s oldest and most popular form of alcohol, get out there and pour yourself a cold one!

A full listing of SF Beer Week events can be found here:  http://sfbeerweek.org/schedule

Feb 05, 2010 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

The Fillmore

The Fillmore has maintained its place as one of San Francisco’s favorite music venues since Bill Graham, rock promoter extraordinaire, brought it to life in the mid-1960s.  Here’s a look inside.

BY CLARISSA MEILY

Climb the winding staircase at its entrance and the first sight to greet you at The Fillmore is a crystal chandelier and a tub full of shiny red apples.  Legend has it that Bill Graham used to greet concertgoers at the door with a tub full of apples and the tradition stuck.  Take one and proceed to notice the frame upon frame of rock legends – Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, the Who, Led Zepplin, and just about every iconic musician since – lining the walls before you.

Once a hub of the infamous counterculture of the 1960s, The Fillmore has seen a long history of closing, reopening, closing, and reopening yet again since then (yes, there’s even a film).  Now restored to its original site on the corner of Geary and Fillmore, The Fillmore has earned itself a reputation as one of San Francisco’s favorite music venues.  Dimly lit chandeliers, creaky wood floors, and photo covered walls set the ambiance, echoing with history and a warmth that is almost palpable.

At standard capacity, the venue accommodates a mere 1,200 concertgoers (1,199 to be exact.  Don’t be late.) which makes for an incredibly intimate show.  Its floor plan is easy enough to navigate – one large rectangle.  For the weary, benches line the east wall of the main room, while the bar lines the west.  Coat check costs three quarters and balcony seating is available on the second floor, providing early birds with a sweeping view of the crowd and stage below.

The acoustics are solid all around and the venue has the capacity for some pretty astounding light shows, should the artist feel so inclined.  If you are lucky enough to make your way into the front row, no barriers stand between you and the band.  No security wall, no press gate.  Drinks and elbows on the stage if you please.

As you leave, a last long-held Fillmore tradition leaves with you.  A free concert poster.  Lucky you.  Sure the venue may have fallen from the hands of Bill Graham into the ever expanding grip of LiveNation.com, but the character and charm of The Fillmore still resonate.  In a city so rich with music history and culture, watching live music is a necessity, and there is no better setting.

Find the line-up of shows at The Fillmore at http://www.thefillmore.com/

Jan 28, 2010 | Categories: Music | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave A Comment »

The City That Knows How

BY CLARISSA MEILY

San Francisco has earned itself countless nicknames throughout its 230-year history (“Paris of the West”, “Baghdad by the Bay”, the cringe-inducing “Frisco”), but perhaps none quite so vague as William Taft’s “The city that knows how”.  What Taft meant at the time, I haven’t a clue, but no title more specific would succeed in capturing the broad and elusive nature of the city.

The variety of rich subcultures of food, art, literature, music, and more, that thrive within the city’s 49 square miles, allow for a largely subjective experience.  In search of solace, it is home to the warmth of independent coffee shops and musty second-hand bookstores.  Mondays in the Financial District, San Francisco is a metropolis, teeming with black suits dwarfed in the shadows of skyscrapers.  Choose to drink your beer at the narrow, ninety year-old mahogany bar of North Beach’s Tosca, or among the suited, happy-hour loving masses at the Marina’s self-proclaimed “gastrotavern”, The Tipsy Pig.  Choose to eat your fish taco after an hour and a half-long wait at the trendy organic restaurant Nopalito, or for $2 on the streets of the city’s gritty ‘Little Mexico’ in the Mission.  Choose what you may, you will find that – in the painfully ambiguous words of William Taft – San Francisco “knows how”.

Home to the Summer of Love, the Beat Generation, the Great Quake, and the fortune cookie, it is a city brimming with color, vitality, and history.  Just as notorious for wealth and elegance as for homelessness, for vegan hippies and  high-tech innovators, century-old cable cars and Zipcars alike, Victorian architecture and one gigantic pyramid building.  It is a city of curiously balanced contrasts, the beauty of which lies in its chameleon-like ability to adjust and transform itself according to audience, inhabitant, visitor.

Jan 23, 2010 | Categories: Things to Do | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »