The Mission District is the neighborhood that wraps around Dolores Park. Step off the grass at 19th and Dolores and walk east: a few blocks and you are on Valencia Street, then Mission Street, then 24th Street, where the neighborhood has been cooking, painting, dancing and arguing in Spanish for generations. The park sits on the district’s western edge, which is exactly why a sunny Saturday in Dolores feels like the front porch of the whole barrio.
If you are visiting San Francisco and have time for only one neighborhood away from downtown, this is the one most locals would send you to. It is walkable, it is mostly flat, it gets more sun than the foggy west side of the city, and its food, murals and history all sit within about a twenty-minute stroll of one another.
A neighborhood named after a mission
San Francisco’s oldest neighborhood takes its name from Misión San Francisco de Asís, founded here in 1776 by Father Francisco Palóu under the direction of Junípero Serra. The small adobe chapel at 16th and Dolores streets, dedicated in 1791, is the oldest surviving building in the city and still holds Mass. Beside it stands the much larger Mission Dolores Basilica, rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake and fire. The Ohlone people who lived here long before either building are part of that same ground.
Through the late 1800s and early 1900s the Mission was a working-class district of Irish, German, Italian and Scandinavian families. From the 1940s onward it became the cultural heart of Latino San Francisco, as families from Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and elsewhere put down roots along Mission Street and 24th Street. That is the Mission you walk through today — the murals, the panaderías, the produce markets, the lowriders cruising on a Sunday afternoon.
Murals, music and 24th Street
Balmy Alley, a single lane running between 24th and 25th streets, has been painted and repainted since the 1970s and reads like an open-air textbook of Latino political art. Clarion Alley, between 17th and 18th, does the same job for a younger generation of painters. Precita Eyes Muralists has been leading walking tours of both for decades and is the best way to find out who painted what, and why.
The 24th Street corridor between Mission and Potrero is the neighborhood’s main street: the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, Galería de la Raza, bookshops, bakeries and produce markets that spill onto the sidewalk. Carnaval San Francisco has filled these blocks with drumming, feathers and dancing every Memorial Day weekend since the late 1970s, and the Día de los Muertos altars and procession in early November are among the most moving public rituals in the city.
Eating in the Mission
You can eat extremely well here for very little money, which is one reason the neighborhood is so busy on weekends. Mission Street is taqueria territory — El Farolito, La Taqueria and Pancho Villa are open late and worth the wait. Around 18th Street, a couple of blocks from the park, you will find Bi-Rite Market and Bi-Rite Creamery, Delfina, and Tartine. On 24th Street the scale is smaller and more local: Kasa Indian Eatery, Taqueria El Buen Sabor, Truly Mediterranean, Guerrero Market & Deli. Philz, Muddy Waters and Café UB are good places to sit down with a cup of coffee and watch the street go by.
Getting there
Two BART stations, 16th Street Mission and 24th Street Mission, put you within a few blocks of everything described above. Muni’s 14 and 14R run the length of Mission Street, and the 49 comes down Van Ness and turns onto Mission as well. The J Church rattles through on its way south. Valencia Street has a protected bike lane that plenty of people use to roll right up to the park’s edge.
Driving is possible, but parking is tight and many surrounding blocks are residential permit areas. Transit, walking or a bicycle are the sane choices.
A neighborhood under pressure
The Mission has changed quickly. Rents and home prices here are among the highest in the country, and long-time residents and small businesses have been pushed out at a rate that worries everyone who loves this place.
Being a good visitor counts for something. Buy from the corner market rather than the chain, tip well, do not block driveways or bus stops, and do not treat someone’s front steps as a bench. Simple manners go a long way in a neighborhood that hosts a lot of guests.
Love Dolores in the Mission
Dolores Park and the Mission are one ecosystem. The litter that ends up on the grass came from somewhere, and the picnic that produced it was almost certainly bought within a few blocks of the park. So the same pledge that keeps the park clean also keeps the neighborhood healthy: bring a reusable bottle, cup and utensils, use the blue and green bins, and carry out whatever you carried in.
On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from noon to 8 p.m., volunteers and staff at the Eco-Popup at the corner of 19th and Dolores will help you sort recyclables and compost into the right containers. It takes two minutes and keeps an enormous amount of material out of the landfill.
Everything people love about Dolores Park — the view, the grass, that improbable mix of everyone in the city at once — is downstream of the neighborhood around it. Support the Mission, and it takes care of you right back.
The Mission in five minutes: BART to 16th or 24th Street · murals on Balmy and Clarion Alleys · taquerias on Mission Street · the 24th Street corridor · and Dolores Park, always, at the end.