Commercial Street

North Beach & Chinatown

Back when the red lights of Commercial St could be seen from the waterfront, this strip provided many provocative answers to the age-old question: what do you do with a drunken sailor? Conveniently located across Portsmouth Sq from San Francisco’s City Hall, this hot spot caught fire in 1906. The city banned its 25¢ Chinese brothels in favor of white-run ‘parlor houses,’ where the cost of basic services was raised to $3 – and watching cost $10 at the faux-French Parisian Mansion.

Today on Commercial St, 10 bucks gets you a couple of hot dishes of dumplings at City View.

��ϲʼ�ʱ��'s must-see attractions

Golden Gate Park
4.47 MILES
When Frederick Law Olmsted, architect of New York's Central Park, gazed in 1865 upon the plot of land San Francisco Mayor Frank McCoppin wanted to turn…
Haight Street
2.84 MILES
Was it the fall of 1966 or the winter of ’67? As the Haight saying goes, if you can remember the Summer of Love, you probably weren’t here. The fog was…
Chinatown Alleyways
0.13 MILES
If you look close today at the clinker-brick buildings lining these narrow backstreets, past the temple balconies jutting out over bakeries, acupuncture…
City Lights Books
0.27 MILES
No one could have predicted the cultural force City Lights would become when it first opened in 1953. Sure, it had a proletarian ethos suggested by its…
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
0.62 MILES
When the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art expanded in 2016, it was a mind-boggling feat that nearly tripled the institution's size to accommodate a…
Coit Tower
0.6 MILES
If you want to really see San Francisco, head to Coit Tower, a 1933 art deco beaut designed by Arthur Brown, Jr. and Henry Howard that sits high up on…
Golden Gate Bridge
4.14 MILES
Few cities boast a structure so iconic as the Golden Gate Bridge, commemorated in everything from films like The Maltese Falcon to not one but two emojis…
Dolores Park
2.63 MILES
Welcome to San Francisco's sunny side, the land of street ball and Mayan-pyramid playgrounds, semiprofessional tanning and taco picnics. Although the…

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Nearby North Beach & Chinatown attractions

1. Portsmouth Square

0.06 MILES

Chinatown's unofficial living room is named after John B Montgomery's sloop, which staked the US claim on San Francisco in 1846. SF's first city hall…

2. Waverly Place

0.08 MILES

Grant Ave is Chinatown's economic heart, but its soul is Waverly Place, lined with flag-festooned, colorful temple balconies and family-run businesses…

3. Tin How Temple

0.08 MILES

There was no place to go but up in Chinatown in the 19th century, when laws restricted where Chinese San Franciscans could live and work. Atop barber…

4. Chinese Telephone Exchange

0.09 MILES

California's earliest high-tech adopters weren't 1970s Silicon Valley programmers – they were Chinatown switchboard operators c 1894. To connect callers,…

5. Old St Mary's Cathedral & Square

0.09 MILES

California's first cathedral was started in 1853 by an Irish entrepreneur determined to give wayward San Francisco some religion – despite the cathedral's…

6. Chinese Culture Center

0.1 MILES

You can see all the way to China from the Hilton's 3rd floor inside this cultural center, which hosts exhibits ranging from showcases of contemporary…

7. Spofford Alley

0.11 MILES

Sun Yat-sen once plotted the overthrow of China’s last dynasty here at number 36, and during Prohibition, this was the site of turf battles over local…

8. Wentworth Place

0.13 MILES

Dragons bring this shadowy brick byway roaring to life. The narrow entryway is illuminated with 'Dragon Boats Chasing Moonlight,' a new mosaic mural…

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������ϲʼ�ʱ����'s must-see attractions

Nearby North Beach & Chinatown attractions

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��ϲʼ�ʱ��'s must-see attractions