Typically the only way to lure me to Fisherman’s Wharf is a ferry ticket to Alcatraz. But these days, the wharf has a new appeal: It’s empty. Many of the knickknack stores, wax-museum “experiences,” and junk-food emporiums are shut down. The sidewalks, save for a few homeless folks and the occasional Lycra-clad jogger, have plenty of elbow room.
Don’t get me wrong. I want the tourists and “Alcatraz Swim Team” T-shirts to come back. The wharf hasn’t been my thing since I was 12 and addicted to Pier 39’s arcade games, but I ain’t too proud to beg for some semblance of kitschy normalcy — not to mention the tax revenues.
For now, it’s a great time to explore nooks and crannies of the city, often overlooked because they stick out into the bay. Fisherman’s Wharf is just the starting point for a walk that often has water sloshing underfoot, not to mention history, hidden treasures, and spectacular scenery that measures up (and then some) to any ramble the city can provide.
Still fleet
Yes, San Francisco still has a fishing industry. It’s a remnant of the glory days, of course, but poke around and you’ll find it. I recommend starting where Jones Street T-bones into Jefferson Street. It’s the heart of the tourist-centric wharf, but instead of clam chowder in a sourdough bowl, you might see a few homeless folks under an overhang.
Cross Jefferson and go north on Al Scoma Way into a time warp. Ahead on the right is an old smokehouse that’s falling apart (there’s no sign of progress in the pre-pandemic plan to revive it). On the left is a wooden warehouse, once used for boat repair, and straight ahead is Scoma’s, one of many venerable wharf establishments that thrives on tourists, political banquets, and grandparents taking kids out for graduation lunches.
This is Pier 47, and you can walk its splintery planks past Scoma’s to view the worn-at-the-edges fishing boats lined up in the cove. At the tip, you’ll have a view of the Hyde Street Pier, currently closed, and dozens of berths for working vessels: tugboats, police boats, and more.
Along the north side of Pier 47 is a larger black-and-white boat, the Anna Marie, and a view of Pier 45, the soul of the wharf. It’s a massive warehouse for many of the city’s seafood firms; a four-alarm blaze there last year was a particularly cruel, 2020-style kick in the teeth that consumed equipment and imperiled livelihoods.
Head back to Jefferson, turn east, and just past the basin filled with more fishing boats, take the first left onto another wooden boardwalk. It circles the basin beneath the “№9 Fishermen’s Grotto” sign. (It’s also grungy, more back alley than tourist path, with signs threatening trespassers with alarms and police, so keep your wits about you.)
The wooden path emerges in front of the yawning front doors of Pier 45’s Shed A, impressive enough that you might miss a much smaller building— a pint-sized chapel built in 1979 with fishermen’s money and labor to honor those lost at sea.
Continue past a jumble of palettes and other equipment, heading east. You’ll see Shed B of Pier 45, home to the Musee Mechanique (spared from the fire, as was the Liberty ship SS Jeremiah O’Brien and the USS Pampanito submarine), and next door, the idled Red and White Fleet ferries. All are closed due to COVID.
Precarious arch
Pier 39 and the sea lion party loom straight ahead, but there’s one more slight diversion: Pier 43. It’s no more than a stub, but it houses the Ferry Arch, a portal (or “headhouse”) in the same City Beautiful style as the pier entrances further east and south, looking out of place and rather precarious on its rickety wooden base, even with renovations after a 1998 fire.
It was once the entry point for rail cars that were shipped across the bay on ferries to join the Belt Railroad that served the length of the city waterfront. The tracks are still there, as is the ramp, adjustable to suit the height of the tide.
If you want to detour into Pier 39, I won’t stop you. (The famous sea lions that haul out in the protected basin are worth the extra walk if you’ve never seen them.) But let’s move on to the lesser seen.
Once past Pier 39, continue along the Embarcadero half a mile. Cruise ships aren’t really my thing, so the empty James R. Herman Cruise Terminal at Pier 27–29 was new to me — a fascinating monolith, like a modern Olympic venue built for crowds and action and glory, then immediately abandoned.
Clattering skateboarders now rule the parking lot and driveway; past them, out at the tip, is a public open space with an excellent perspective on Pier 31, the platonic ideal of an unreimagined city wharf.
This is about the halfway point of the walk, so cross your fingers that Pier 23 is open. It’s a beloved bar and grill, with music in normal times, as well as a loyal clientele. Perhaps the current COVID rules will let you sit outside with a refreshment. It’s a consolation prize, like so much these days, but one worth accepting.
Same goes for our next stop. The Exploratorium gave up its funky charm when it moved from the dank cavernous Palace of Fine Arts, but it gained a setting to take your breath away. It fills the length of Pier 15, which feels like it could reach out and scratch Treasure Island if it had fingernails. Alas, the museum remains closed for now. But the walkway around the pier is open access, and you can have a mini-day of science if you follow it around, as exhibits about waves, sand, and tides are peppered around the perimeter.
This is also a great spot to stop and watch the world go by — not the ships or the cars on the Bay Bridge to the right, but the actual water. This far from shore, just feet above the surface, you deeply feel the bay as a breathing, roiling being. Winter waves and muscular tides provide a show all their own.
Right of way
Around this part of the Embarcadero, tastes change. No more sourdough bowls. No more Applebee’s, IHOP, arcade games, or Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Like the Exploratorium, many tenants down here were drawn to a refashioned confluence of design and environment. Tech companies, architects, bistros, and lawyers mix in with the tugboat pilots, Port of SF offices, and ferry docks.
Then of course there’s the Ferry Building, now an epicurean valhalla. Work up an appetite by winding down, through, and around the next few piers. Pier 7 is for municipal fishing; check out what folks have caught and kept in their plastic buckets. “The Piers,” aka Piers 1.5, 3, and 5, were all renovated around the millennium. And like the Exploratorium, you can perambulate their perimeters. Just keep your eyes peeled for the blue “Public Shore” sign. Don’t miss the two glass cases near the entrance of Pier 3 with the displays of historic photos, either.
There’s been so much written and Insta’d on the Ferry Building, I won’t rehash it here. When the pandemic ends and your rich relatives come visit, take them there. Everything they can’t bring home on the plane will stay in your fridge.
There’s one more stop on our ramble. Past the Ferry Building, you might see a rainbow-hued art installation in the shape of a tower. (It was slated to come down last fall.) Just beyond is ground zero of the city’s climate-change worries, where a massive seawall rebuild, only partially funded by a recent bond, needs to start. When high tides surge into the bay, this patch of sidewalk gets flooded with the briny; during December’s king tides, part of the Embarcadero roadway was shut down. When waves encroach, it’s mesmerizing to watch them breach the barriers.
End your walk with another foray over the water. Pier 14 sticks out 500 feet into the bay for an encounter with the Bay Bridge that, on a stormy winter day, blends water and sky and steel together.
As you walk out, signs on the pier note the predicted sea-level rise in decades to come. It’s a fitting way to end a long walk along a boundary that we’ve created to separate land and water — to mark, even celebrate, our constructed environment and its intrusion into the natural world. And it’s a fitting time to make this walk, as the natural world, in the form of an invisible virus, has dissolved the illusion that we can hold that boundary fast.
