San Francisco sci-fi...location help needed!!

[boredstephanie]

1) which area of San Fran would clubs (night clubs) be likely to be located in?
um no idea, I'm not 21 yet so I can't get into any good clubs xP Look on yelp for nightclubs!
2) which is an area where the poorer people live (one of the characters is unemployed, where would he be likely to live?)
hmmm hunters point or the tenderloin
3) which is an area that you would NEVER walk through after dark, even if someone PAID you, because chances are you would get mugged. And re-mugged. And maybe mugged some more. Like rough neighborhoods are what I'm after.
hunter's point xP
4) which is a more suburban-y place where you see nice houses with four floors and an attic, and a nice front yard, and driveway and all. I'm hoping for somewhere slightly secluded, too. Don't worry about the price range--the characters are rich, they can afford it
St. Francis Woods is surrounded by kind of poor places but once you go into St. Francis woods theres a lot of beautiful trees, every house has a front lawn with flowers. High ceilings and some of the houses have beautiful gates in front of their huge front lawn. Theres a fountain in the middle of the community too. I don't think if its that suburbany (its a bit more extravagent) but thats the best I can think of
5) a nice coffee shop that most people would know and go to (and please not $tarbucks. Please)
no idea, I would refer to yelp
6) a mall or shopping area located close to the place where the poorer people live (I know, why would someone build a mall near people who don't have the cash to buy stuff? But just close-ish would be good enough. Maybe biking distance?)
ummm honestly I don't know but SF has a good public transportation system so really anyone can get to any part of the city fairly easily through muni/bart.
7) and, not really a location question, more of a culture question--is Wiccan/magic type of stuff widely accepted in San Francisco?
Honestly I don't know anyone who is Wiccan but I think in SF, these kind of things are generally more accepted than in other places since SF and the bay area in general is very liberal. If I had to guess, I would say the Castro might be the most liberal part of the city since that is where it is most gay-friendly.

[SunshineDuk]

As a Berkeley native, I want to reiterate what was said up above about the Bay Area consisting of WAY more than just San Francisco itself. San Francisco is very strongly a non-isolated city, despite having to go across bridges to get to the other major parts of the Bay Area. Oakland/Berkeley/Richmond and San Rafael/Sausalito/Marin are all very definitely important parts of the San Francisco area.

Also, if you really do want a big isolated house on a hill, there are two places you could pull one off, though both are about an hour's drive from San Francisco proper. Behind the Berkeley hills you've got Orinda, Moraga, Lafeyette, and further out Danville, which are way more sparsely populated, and do have a fair number of mega-mansions out in the nearby hills. (I went to high school with kids from there--the parties they threw were pretty crazy, let me tell you.) Driving up the other way (due North) from SF, Mill Valley is home to some similarly palatial homes, though they're much closer together than the ones out towards Orinda.

I'd definitely spend time with maps of the Bay Area, familiarize yourself with the look of it. NYC is a very apt comparison--the different parts of the Bay Area are all very different from one another, but still interconnected. Also check out a map of the BART system, as it's vital for getting around, but only goes to certain places.

As for SF/F viability, frankly it doesn't get much better than San Francisco. It's full of weirdness, historically and currently. I actually just got done running an urban fantasy tabletop campaign set in SF. Good times ensued, I assure you.

~Duk

[Ramenth]

1) which area of San Fran would clubs (night clubs) be likely to be located in?

All of them. Well, that's not true, but there are a lot of areas of San Francisco with nightclubs. The Marina, Northbeach, and Down Town all come to mind.

2) which is an area where the poorer people live (one of the characters is unemployed, where would he be likely to live?)

South San Francisco.

3) which is an area that you would NEVER walk through after dark, even if someone PAID you, because chances are you would get mugged. And re-mugged. And maybe mugged some more. Like rough neighborhoods are what I'm after.

I'm seconding the Tenderloin, but also some parts of the embarcadero, especially near the Greyhound station.

4) which is a more suburban-y place where you see nice houses with four floors and an attic, and a nice front yard, and driveway and all. I'm hoping for somewhere slightly secluded, too. Don't worry about the price range--the characters are rich, they can afford it

Pacific Heights

5) a nice coffee shop that most people would know and go to (and please not $tarbucks. Please)

Not a clue, though Borderlands would work if you want to go meta. They're a coffeeshop, but mostly a Scifi/fantasy bookstore. 

6) a mall or shopping area located close to the place where the poorer people live (I know, why would someone build a mall near people who don't have the cash to buy stuff? But just close-ish would be good enough. Maybe biking distance?)

San Francisco doesn't really have Malls in my experience. It's too Urban for that. If you're willing to have your characters travel, then definitely Hilltop Mall over by Richmond. If you're staying local... I don't know.

7) and, not really a location question, more of a culture question--is Wiccan/magic type of stuff widely accepted in San Francisco?

... No. It's not unaccepted, but, I'd argue that it's not more accepted in SF than it is anywhere else in California.



As a Berkeley native, I actually want to disagree with the Bay Area consisting of way more than San Fran. The Bay Area certainly does, but we're really not that much like NYC. The San Francisco Bay Area and the city of SF are quite different, especially in terms of microcosms. Unless you plan for your characters to be spending quite a long time commuting (Traffic is lethal, and parking is impossible) then spreading your story out too far may cause problems. SF has everything you seem to be looking for, without needing to throw yourself across the Bay Area. As much as we're one unified place, we're not really very unified.

At the end of the day, most Bay Area people don't go into the City except when they're going into the city. It's not a big deal, but it's also not a nightly thing. Every major area (Berkeley, Oakland, SF, Marin [well, maybe]) has their own cultural stuff, their own food, and their own events. There's a lot of crossover, but not nearly as much as New York City has. We're a lot more spread out than NYC, too.

[WizardJay]

Grrrrr. F*cking grrrr. I had this whole big thing written up here, and then my browser decided to play the Spinny Loading Icon game and I had to restart it, and I lost it all. Note to self for future endeavors: try copying posts every paragraph or so.

Okay, let me try again, though it probably won't be as long. I am not a San Francisco native: I was born and raised about twenty-five miles south, in a place called Redwood City. I'm not all that familiar with the city, nor am I entirely comfortable with it. I guess it's a bit like a fairy: very interesting and attractive and mysterious, but an undercurrent of danger and secrets and not all that pleasant things. Like most cities, it's got roughly two sides to it, and like a lot of other cities, there's no real defining line: the gritty stuff flows around the pretty stuff, so you're not gonna get far from it. Which really works for a supernatural story/setting. There's lots of locations you can do stuff in or have stuff set there. Golden Gate Park is REALLY high on my list of recommended locations: lots of areas to hide secret meetings and even a fairy court or two. Also, there are a LOT of areas with lots of overpasses and highways splitting and rejoining: lots of shadowy places for dark things like trolls to hide.

General notes: google maps and google street view are truly your friends. If Jim Butcher had had that when he'd gotten started on The Dresden Files, he'd get a few less light-hearted ribbings from fans. :p But it's very useful for planning routes and chase sequences. Wikipedia is another great source of information, so you can learn about famous districts, streets, and the history of the place. Even just googling stuff like "magic shops in san francisco" will get you some good results, though I'd recommend playing around with names a bit to avoid getting into trouble.

Other people have touched on the fog, but it's really worth bringing up: Frisco is FOGGY. We're famous for it, and for a fantasy/science fiction story it helps create an air of monsters hiding in the fog. Even in summer, it's cool and windy. In winter, it's wet and miserable. If you've got the sun, then it can get hot, but San Francisco is right at the end of the peninsula, jutting into the passageway between the ocean and the bay, creating some fun weather conditions. It's also hilly: from certain areas, you can see almost the whole city, while from others, you can't see anything besides huge skyscrapers and roads. Lots of roads. Though there are always trees, the smaller kind you get in cities that are planted regularly along the street.

The area around San Francisco - the Bay Area - is just as varied as San Francisco, and there's a lot of areas there for someone to get away to for an adventure or two, though relying on fast travel between any of these areas is silly at best. Traffic can get bad in San Francisco. I think the worst I've ever experienced was about an hour or so to go ten miles, and I just needed to drive across a highway running over San Francisco. So, hard to get around, but relatively easy to go to another location to expand your view. And of course, once you leave the San Francisco area, you've got Wine Country to the north, mountains to the east (eventually), Monterrey Bay to the south… there's a lot here. Also, the San Andreas fault is a great location for a ley line (I live about three miles away from the fault line, seriously)… oh wait, sorry, you're doing a science fiction story. Um… lots of wooded areas within about fifty miles of San Francisco to hide stuff in. Heck, Angel Island might be a good place for an alien landing site, and it's just across the bay from the city.

As for your questions… sorry, I'm not so hot on locations. I can do a bit of thinking and come up with some stuff for ya, if you'd want.

Man, all of this stuff is making me want to set an urban fantasy book in San Francisco. Where was Elaine working out of again? I can't remember.

[arianne]

Funny how you never see the fog in Hollywood movies on San F

And, um, when you say FOGGY, do you mean, "Jim, I can't see my fingers in front of my face?" or more like, "There is a mist about your person?"

I'm worried that the weather conditions might not be as good as I thought it was (grrr Hollywood for misleading me). Most of the action in the book happens at night, though, so maybe by then things will have cleared up and it will merely be a little chilly and a little misty?

[WizardJay]

Funny how you never see the fog in Hollywood movies on San F

And, um, when you say FOGGY, do you mean, "Jim, I can't see my fingers in front of my face?" or more like, "There is a mist about your person?"

I'm worried that the weather conditions might not be as good as I thought it was (grrr Hollywood for misleading me). Most of the action in the book happens at night, though, so maybe by then things will have cleared up and it will merely be a little chilly and a little misty?

Probably because fog is an impossible to control factor in filming. And it depends. Sometimes, it's just a generic fog around the whole city, other times visibility is down to about a thousand feet. If it helps, the fog is usually an early morning thing, burning off as the sun rises, though it can last for a while. So, it's not tule fog bad, but it can be VERY bad. We only get it a few times a year down here in Redwood City, so I've got some experience with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_fog
Here, have some cool pictures.

I actually have been in a fog almost bad enough to not be able to see too far in front of me. The problem was that I was on the freeway. Not a pleasant experience to basically see a big lump of fog then FOOMP everything's white and you can't see a thousand feet in front of you.

[arianne]

Oooh, pretty fog!!

 

Okay, never mind *blushes*

It sounds like my night clubbing tale will not have a problem then....well, unless it rains.

Fog on the freeway has got to be THE scariest thing in the world...how did you get out? Or did you just stop and wait for it to fade? Or something?

[WizardJay]

Oooh, pretty fog!!

 

Okay, never mind *blushes*

It sounds like my night clubbing tale will not have a problem then....well, unless it rains.

Nope, you should be okay. Unless something exceptional is going on, of course.

Fog on the freeway has got to be THE scariest thing in the world...how did you get out? Or did you just stop and wait for it to fade? Or something?

Slow down, lights on, and drive very cautiously.

[arianne]

Just wondering if San Fran buildings have fire escapes, or if I'm channeling NY...?

Also, are there such things as boardwalks? I'm thinking of setting a scene in a boardwalk like place, but I guess it could just a street with a few vendors or something too.

[MouseWynne]

I think most apartment buildings in the US have fire escapes certainly the newer buildings in San Francisco
have them....

There's no boardwalk as such in S.F but Fisherman's wharf and the Embarcadero district
comes pretty close - It has street vendors, shops, Ghiradelli Square (the old Ghiradelli
chocolate factory which is now a mall type place) the Wax museum, and all kinds of
other businesses. They are all pretty much on the south side of the street - the north side
is the bay and various piers and docks.

[Fyrchick]

Just wondering if San Fran buildings have fire escapes, or if I'm channeling NY...?

For the purposes of this thread, YES, buildings have fire escapes. OR they have an approved second means of exit. This is true for pretty much any state or city or town that has a building code and inspection office. You will find fire escapes on older buildings, buildings that were converted to apartments and anything that only has one way into and out of a multi-story building.
Most buildings constructed after 1970 or so will have an interior escape stairwell or something that provides 2 ways to get out of every apartment. Sometimes it is to a hallway that has a fire escape at the end or a separate landing on a single fire escape. Also, most cities only allow metal escapes if it is more than 3 stories.

I can give you the whole fire code thing, but I don't think you have insomnia!

[Quantus]

Fog on the freeway has got to be THE scariest thing in the world...how did you get out? Or did you just stop and wait for it to fade? Or something?

Its basically like driving in torrential rain where you cant see past you hood, just without the noise and traction issues. 



Fwiw my dad just said the following in an unrelated conversation:   "It's like Oakland:  you have the Hills and the Flats.  The Flats have shootings everyday, and the Hills hear about them on the news.  Well, some of them."

[arianne]

I wonder if someone could tell me how far it is from the Tenderloin area to St. Francis Wood (or is it Woods?) I've bought a couple of SF guide books and tried to find St. Francis Wood on it (there's just a place called "St. Francis Hotel"...is that in the general area?) which is just next to the Tenderloin.

I was going to set my "rich people" scenes in the Bay Area, but that's really far away from the Tenderloin (which is the main stage for another bit of the story).

On a totally unrelated note, isn't it frustrating that guidebooks will tell you about the best places to go for live music, but not the best place to meet vampires....? Very inconsiderate, that.

[Fyrchick]

I wonder if someone could tell me how far it is from the Tenderloin area to St. Francis Wood (or is it Woods?) I've bought a couple of SF guide books and tried to find St. Francis Wood on it (there's just a place called "St. Francis Hotel"...is that in the general area?) which is just next to the Tenderloin.

I was going to set my "rich people" scenes in the Bay Area, but that's really far away from the Tenderloin (which is the main stage for another bit of the story).

On a totally unrelated note, isn't it frustrating that guidebooks will tell you about the best places to go for live music, but not the best place to meet vampires....? Very inconsiderate, that.

Using the handy-dandy Google maps (which is really fun to play with) it gives an average walking distance of 4.3 miles and driving about 8. That just using one route for each method. You can enter any waypoint you want if you are interested in a specific route or whatever. I love this feature because you can use street view to make accurate descriptions of the route.

[meg_evonne]

Carrie Vaughn did an amazing job describing San Francisco in her last Kitty book.