Uh, other random stuff from somebody who lives in the Bay Area:
Hills. Man, SF has some hills. It depends on the area, but you can hit hills whose peaks change steeply enough that buses bottom out and get stuck at the top. There are hills that separate the stick-shift men from the stick-shift boys. You can go around a corner and see that you're at the top of a hill that leads all the way down to the ocean.
(BTW, everything other people said was spot-on, and I'm not a tour guide. I'm just giving my own take.)
Trendy folks in SF can be identified by the fact that they're wearing all black, with the exception of one silver or amber piece of ethnically diverse jewelry. People jaywalk like nobody's business -- it's almost as bad as Berkeley.
Lots of one-way streets, and the city is built to its geography, so there are one-way streets that are tough to get off of once you're on them. Streets change names a lot and hit other streets that they used to be parallel to. If people are unfamiliar with the area and trying to drive quickly, they're boned -- because they miss one turn and have to drive for two miles to recover from that one miss. If your group is in New York, where a lot of the city is laid out intelligently and you can use grids and simple math to figure out where you are, remember that SF is, generally speaking, not like that. If you're playing d20 Modern, I'd be throwing Navigate checks at folks a fair amount of the time.
I usually go up to SF for cultural events, so the only areas I feel qualified to speak to are:
- The San Francisco Symphony hall. Three stories. Small for a symphony hall, and the seats go up at a steep angle. They use odd-hanging acoustic tiles to bounce sound up to the higher levels, though, so it is popularly said that there isn't a bad seat in the place. Drinks are overpriced, and there are a lot of stairs to deal with. You can see all kinds of people at the average symphony, ranging from committed elderly gay gentlemen to young music majors in jeans and T-shirts to wealthy folks in suits and cocktail dresses. The music is almost always good, unless it's that new modern garbage. The symphony has two main entrances -- the cattle-market of the main entrance, where the coat-check is, and the quick second-floor entrance, which is for people who already have their tickets. The two upper floors have balconies that look out onto the city and are wickedly wickedly cold.
(I'm assuming that the cold comments have already been made, right? Clemens was exaggerating when he said "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco" -- the temperature doesn't drop that far -- but the combination of the city design, the wind, and the cultural "But it's JULY -- why should I wear a jacket" effects result in tourists walking around a corner in T-shirts and shorts and getting a strong wind whipping from the depths of whatever that cold level of hell is off to the ocean and back. With wind chill, the temperature can feel about thirty degrees different depending on what side of the street you're on.)
- Greens. It's an expensive all-vegetarian restaurant in Fort Mason center, near a bunch of small art galleries and a large center that I've seen used for a few different conventions (like a Celtic Faire, for example). It overlooks the water, and from the windows of the restaurant, you can look out on the Golden Gate Bridge (unless it's foggy). The art is modern but understated, and the lights are kind of faux-natural -- not terribly bright, in a good way, with no fluorescent glare or anything. Lots of sculpted and polished driftwood, and a cool, pleasant atmosphere. Dinners are expensive (prix-fixe, about $50/person) but very very good. They don't do fake meats, like some veggie places do -- the times I've been there, they did things like vegetable bundles served on rice with an excellent sauce, and other high-falutin' stuff like that. It's a place with a lot of atmosphere, and if the party is meeting or investigating some kind of new-age whacko, Greens is a great place for them to go. The dress is, again, anything from jeans and T-shirts for the artists to cocktail outfits for people celebrating their anniversaries.
(For a place with a similar feel -- all vegetarian, and possibly all Vegan, and definitely all expensive -- you can also go with Millennium's, which is located in the theater district. I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Greens, but it's closer to the seamier parts of town -- the theater district is right next to the places advertising Girls, Girls, and More Girls. I've felt uncomfortable a few times in the district, but I've never been threatened or attacked or anything.)
- Pier 39. Really, anywhere from Pier 39 out to the Ghiradelli Square. It's a tourist trap, and it's a great way to involve the party in a large crowd. Tons of tourists, everywhere. Tons of them. Tons of overpriced stuff, ranging from the usual souvenir garbage to the weird artistic stuff -- both Pier 39 and Ghiradelli square have a few jewelry places and art galleries that cater to people who are absurdly wealthy -- the art galleries usually focus on ocean stuff, with whales and dolphins and incredibly overpriced bronze manta rays that, y'know, if you ever want to get me, I'll take. Pier 39 has a ton of sea lions on rafts that are a big tourist attraction -- they pretty much sit there and sun themselves and knock each other off the rafts and bark and people. For whatever reason, I always think of Pier 39 as being a lot warmer than the rest of San Francisco, but that could just be me. If you're describing it, describe it as not having enough shade or places to sit down, and describe the litter, the smell of fried food, and the constant noise of the crowd.
- Alcatraz. It would definitely be fun for the party to end up there at some point. It's got a lot of good history. Having only been a few times myself, I'm not qualified to talk about it except in the most general of terms. The big yard out back is on a hill, and so there are multiple levels of yard, which would make for an interesting combat area -- as would the excessive amounts of bird poop. I'm sure you can find an Alcatraz map online somewhere. What always gets me is the sort of run-down look, the chipped concrete and graffiti and such. And the not-enough bathrooms. They need more bathrooms. If you believe that places have auras, give this place a sad, almost wistful aura -- there was a lot of anger and hurt here, ranging from the prisoners to the guards who now find the prisoners sort of idealized through the rose-tinted lenses of tourists, and even to the Indians who took over Alcatraz in protest back in... crap, my Cheyenne wife will kill me... 1968? 1969? The government didn't really want to go in and beat people up to put down the unrest, so they didn't do anything, and it was almost like a commune for awhile, until the problems endemic to poorly run communes caught up with them, and they ran out of food and started attracting shifty people who took advantage of the goodhearted idealists who'd started things going.
Anyway, I hope the random bits help.
