Restaurants, bars, music, dance, running, biking, things to do with kids  or guests or dogs, and anything else we could think of. We can think of few things more insanely misguided than voicing our opinions about the best place for … Continue reading →

It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco and one of the fastest growing; Dogpatch, long a forgotten patch of real estate on the city’s central waterfront, has big plans. Actually, it’s always had big plans. Dogpatch dates back to the mid-1850s, when gunpowder manufacturers built factories there, outside the original Yerba Buena city limits to avoid the new city’s ordinance forbidding “dangerous industries.” From that point on – and especially after the construction of a bridge leading from downtown to Potrero Hill and the Bayview District, making the district much easier to reach — and continuing through Dogpatch’s industrial prime, the neighborhood was magnet for large manufacturers like The Tubbs Cordage Company, the Union Iron Works and, later, Bethlehem Steel, for ship builders and other heavy industry. A steady flow of immigrant workers followed. Continue reading →

The pie chart combines house and condo MLS sales for May. This table breaks out the percentages separately for houses and condos:  

For well over 100 years, Potrero Hill’s real estate market was one thing; now it is another. Prior to the tech boom of the 1990s, Potrero was a place to find modest Victorian and Edwardian homes in various stages of … Continue reading →

In the 1700s, Spanish missionaries named the hill overlooking the new village of Yerba Buena “Potrero Nuevo,” in English “new pasture.” At the time, that’s what Potrero Hill was: a pasture, untouched except for the cattle using it as grazing ground. Plenty has changed about Potrero Hill since then. Continue reading →