On a Mission with Jed

In addition to great coffee, Ritual offers a long table for working in the back, and a little parklet outside.

One of my wife and my favorite things to do is go to this place in the Inner Richmond called Green Apple Books. We're both bibliophiles, so we'll go there and spend a lot of time.

There's a great dim sum place nearby called Good Luck Dim Sum. Good Luck is the kind of place where two people can spend $15, and you're incredibly full, and then you still have a thing of leftovers. You can pick it up and take it to the park and eat it there. If you're not into dim sum, there's a place called Bunn Mi that I think is the best banh mi in the city.

Cozy, not creepy, Paxton Gate feels like the museum gift shop you'd find if you turned your eccentric explorer grandfather's attic into a museum.

One of our other favorite places is a place in the Mission called Wise Sons Deli. You can't go wrong with the Reuben there. They make their own pastrami, and it's the best I've ever had.

If we're in the Mission, we'd walk up and down Mission and Valencia, and just window shop. On Valencia, you can't go wrong with Ritual. That's quality coffee. Borderlands Books is an amazing place for sci-fi, fantasy type books. Paxton Gate has great quirky nature stuff and jewelry. It's really interesting and a fun place to browse. They have some weird taxidermy.

Right next to Paxton Gate, there's a pirate store. I think the deal is they wanted to open a tutoring center and couldn't get it zoned, so they opened up a pirate store. There's tutoring in the back.

The Wild Side with Trevor

There's Bernal Heights. It's on the outskirts of the city, a bit. There's a lot of cool stuff there--cool bookstores, a local market. Untouched is the wrong word, but it's just like from another era. Which era? Just from a long time ago. There's a local butcher shop, a local coffee shop.

The bulletin board outside the Good Life Grocery in Bernal Heights offers harmonica lessons.

Founded in 1962 in Oakland, the Wild Side West moved to Bernal Heights in the '70s.

Bask in the sun in the garden (or even this back room) at Progressive Grounds.

There's an awesome bar there, called Wild Side West. It's one of the older lesbian bars, from the '60s. Their backyard is really cool. The bar sits on a hill, so you walk down all these flights of stairs, and there's a beautiful garden. It's nice to bring a book there and sit, even if you're not there to drink. It's just cool for a bar to have a garden--you don't see that much.

Since you're out there, go to Noe Valley. There's a great bookstore called Omnivore. The full name is Omnivore Books on Food. It's all cookbooks, food writing, food journalism. It's one of my favorite bookstores in the city, and they have good events, too.

A lot of this is a bit further out from the city, so people don't quite make it out there. In the Outer Richmond and Sunset as well, there are a lot of cool places that people who live here don't even know about, closer to the beach. There it's pretty residential. So you'll see like, a house, a house, a house, a pizza place that looks like it's in someone's living room, a house, a house.

SF's real Chinatown with Marcus

So, the Inner Richmond. The Inner Richmond is like, the real Chinatown, and I'd start there.

If it's a naughty day, I'd go to one of the fast food-y dim sum places: Good Luck Dim Sum. It's the kind of place where if you take too long, you get yelled at by the ladies, and there are like seven wobbly tables. The soy sauces comes out of ketchup bottles. It is low key. I'd be there to get the sticky rice with chicken, in lotus, which is like $2. You can have that and a cup of porridge, and it's super good and super hearty.

The original Green Apple Books on Clement St. is full of handmade signs and book recommendations.

There's a really good bookstore down the street, Green Apple Books--both new and used. There's an annex to that, which also has periodicals. They've opened up another store that's next to Golden Gate Park.

I always see people in Golden Gate Park and they're just on their phones. You know, it's like, don't sit on your phone and be in the park. Walk to Green Apple, and buy yourself a book and read it in the park. It's one of those places where they're always playing weird music, like Japanese death metal or something. I am a huge fan of all the cultural institutions in Golden Gate. The De Young is great, so if you have a friend with a membership, go with them.

After that... I don't go that often, but there are farmer's markets everywhere. Everywhere. Like, there's one in front of the Kaiser Permanente. If you don't have a chance to get out of the city around San Francisco, go to one of the farmer's markets. It's a good representation of why California people are so spoiled when it comes to food.

NightLife with Mariella

I'd start in North Beach, on Columbus Street, because it's great for gelato--and people-watching. You can get an Irish coffee at The Buena Vista Cafe, which is kind of their thing. 

From there, walk along the water at Crissy Field. I'd recommend seeing the Palace of Fine Arts and the Conservatory of Flowers.

If it's a Thursday night, I'd go to Nightlife at the Academy of Sciences, which goes on from 6pm until 10pm. You have to go early, though, to get planetarium passes. It's every Thursday, and you can just grab a glass of wine and walk around. They have food, but I'd recommend getting dinner nearby at Sushi Bistro, on Balboa and 5th.

Crissy Field offers close-up views of the Golden Gate bridge.