A southern experience in Northern California.
As a Southern California native, living in the south bay home of the beach cities and I have recently ventured up north to explore Northern California. I have always heard back and forth talk about how different the two regions are. One thing that has always stayed constant is that Northern California is completely different from Southern California. Well during my visit to San Francisco, over the Thanksgiving break, I had a day to explore some of San Francisco and scope out the differences and similarities.
On my quest to compare the two regions I first had to try out the food. Southern California has great and dare I say some of the best Mexican food. And I wondered if the spicy and flavorful taste would still be apparent in San Francisco.
What I discovered is that, it is possible to get delicious Mexican food so far from the border. As I walked into El Toro Taqeruia located on Valencia Street, I walked into a clean, colorful restaurant with workers eager to make fresh food. What is unique about El Toro is not just their fresh food that contains no preservatives or MSG, but their prawn style foods. The prawn tacos, burritos and quesadilla’s have big juicy and well seasoned prawns that are twice the size of regular shrimp. It brings shame to the average shrimp taco. (And you know that this place is good, because it was busy even the day after Thanksgiving).
The next place I explored was the pier. Now Southern Californian has a reputation of some pretty prestigious piers such as the Santa Monica pier, a carnival over the sea and places like Hermosa and Manhattan beach that offer an exciting night life. I had to see what Pier 39 had to offer.
Street performers are often attractions at many beaches and piers. Most common performers in Southern California include break dancers, musicians and maybe a few magicians, and puppeteers. However, the street performers I saw at Pier 39 were very enthusiastic and committed to their craft. Walking up to the pier I saw at least three or four street performers and musicians. One of the most noticed performers were the Skelton man who will blatantly flirt with anyone women who wants to take a picture with him. Also a robotic man covered in metallic paint, with wings, and spinning toys that make noises coming from his costume. Sometimes the pictures can speak for themselves.
Pier 39 is also a great place to shop and eat. Occupied by many souvenirs shops, Pier 39 is the place where you can get a wide range San Francisco apparel for a good price. At “ Only in San Francisco” you will find postcards, beautiful photos of San Francisco bay, sweaters, t-shirts, hats, shot glasses, magnets and just about every little miscellaneous item with the letters S.F. on them.
After shopping one can definitely work up and appetite. Fortunately for me there was Pier Market that offers fresh food alongside clean and fast service. I had to try one of my favorites from back home which is the New England clam chowder. Just as creamy and rich as I was use to, I was more than satisfied with my delicious clam chowder filled with chunks of fish and potatoes. And with great chowder and fresh fish caught daily, Pier Market is definitely a rival for Southern California’s seafood.
And a good meal isn’t complete without something sweet, and Pier 39 has shops to satisfy anyone’s sweet tooth. There are Trish’s mini donuts, and the Candy Baron with candy from decades ago. And not to worry, all the candy was made in this decade just originated from years back.
My exploration came to an end when I reach the end of the pier, but I couldn’t turn back too quickly. I had to take a second, more like a few minutes to gaze into the horizon, where I got a perfect view of Alcatraz and caught the sun setting over the Golden Gate Bridge. As I tried to adjust my gaze, I remember the horizons from back home and thought to myself, the San Francisco bay horizon can be just a breath taking.
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