Check out the murals in Balmy Alley

One of the great things about living in the Mission is the number and quality of the murals that you stumble by in the midst of your daily routine. Depending on where you live, that might happen while biking past the Women's Building to Dolores Park, scavenging for clean needles in Clarion Alley or vomiting on the ground on Clinton Park after an afternoon-that-turned-into-night at Zeitgeist. Worth a special trip, though, is Balmy Alley.

Make it an afternoon, perhaps. Get huevos rancheros or tacos at Taqueria Vallarta--located right at the 24th-Street mouth of Balmy--grab a tall boy or two from the corner store across the street and then head into the alley. You will find a block-long stretch of garages and the backs of houses painted in all manner of styles by a number of different artists. (If you're really good, you'll probably recognize the work of a few artists who have done other murals around town.) And once you pop out at 25th, make sure to keep an eye out for another Mission icon: the passed-out drunkard pissing himself in Garfield Square.


Balmy Alley connects 24th and 25th Streets and is between Treat and Harrison. The Women's Building fronts 18th Street between Valencia and Guerrero. Clarion Alley connects Valencia and Mission, between 17th and 18th. Clinton Park is a tiny street off Valencia that smells like hell. If you really dig murals and want the whole shebang, check out the walking tour offered every Saturday morning by the community arts organization Precita Eyes.

Go to Yosemite

So you're from Massachusetts, grew up "vacationing" in Vermont, and went to some small, overpriced liberal arts college in the Northeast. Late in your senior year at said institution, you realized that the soft drone in your ear wasn't a consequence of that drunken tumble down the basement stairs one night at a house party that you self-consciously laughed off at the time but that secretly really did hurt, but was instead the quiet, insufficiently enunciated age-old call of "Go West, young man". Upon graduating, you heeded that call and loaded up your Subaru, bought a tape adapter for your iPod, packed a generous eighth into your glovebox, and "took the northern route" to California.

Fast forward three years.

You've got five weeks left on your lease in Russian Hill, a silver BMW parked in the garage, a letter of acceptance to grad/business/law school at some large, overpriced private university in the Northeast, and the sinking feeling that you should have spent more time in nature and less time in terrible Marina bars, surrounded by vapid, terrible girls and your terrible steaky friends, during your time in California.

What to do?

Do what I'm doing this weekend: go to Yosemite.



Hike Half Dome, do a multi-day backpacking trip starting from Tuolumne Meadows, swim across Tanaya Lake, check out the wonders of the Valley floor...lots of stuff to do.


Yosemite is about 4 hours east of the City. If you don't own a car, rent one, hit up a friend with wheels to come along or consult the craigslist rideshare board. For more information on camping or other, fancier lodging, as well as all the necessary logistical info--directions, trails, points of interest, and so on--check here.