It would be easy to spend a fortune in San Francisco, thanks to its classy restaurants, fine hotels and fabulous shopping. But you can have a great time without dropping a bundle. Here are some free - or nearly free - things to do in the City by the Bay:
Golden Gate Park:
Free entertainment abounds in this 1,017-acre refuge that stretches through western San Francisco toward the Pacific Ocean.
Among the possibilities:
Visit the Japanese Tea Garden. Like many other San Francisco parks and museums, the garden normally charges admission but waives it at certain hours - in this case, at the start and end of the day. (Hours vary seasonally.)
Watch lawn bowling. The San Francisco Lawn Bowling Club competes on carefully cropped lawns edged with tidy hedges and flowers.
Better yet, take a free bowling lesson at noon on Wednesdays. "Wear flat-soled shoes," the sign advises. Maybe you'll learn what those red, white, yellow and blue markers along the edges are for.
Take the kids to the playground. Teeter-totters, jungle gyms, swings, low wooden bridges, tunnels and other play structures will keep them occupied. If not, there are always pigeons to toddle after.
Take a free guided walk through the Strybing Arboretum, every day at 1:30 p.m., also at 10:30 a.m. on weekends. There's a Garden of Fragrance and a Biblical Garden, among others.
Ocean Beach:
This is it - the farthest west you can journey in the city, the edge of terra firma.
Seals and pelicans hang out (sometimes) on Seal Rock. Even if they're not present when you are, you can enjoy the fresh sea air and the sun glinting softly over the ocean. Waves crash with awesome grandeur against the rocks and shore - and this is the "peaceful" ocean. And over there - a long, long way over there - is China.
And then there's the Musee Mecanique - museum of old-time carnival-type machines such as Love Teller, Grandmother Predictions and Laughing Sal. The museum itself is free, but it costs 25 or 50 cents to turn on the machines.
Eating doesn't fall into the "free" category, but you have to eat somewhere. Several eateries perch above Seal Rock; Cliff House is the most famous.
Haight-Ashbury:
Walking here is a stroll back in time - 30 years, to be exact. It's still the Summer of Love in this realm of colorful Victorian houses and psychedelia.
At paraphernalia shops, such as the Smoke Shop and Pipe Dreams (the latter of which brags on itself as "The Haight's original smoke shop"), you can buy such devices as bongs, blown-glass pipes and rolling papers. ("If you remember the '60s, you weren't there," Dennis Hopper said. If you have to ask what these things are for, you weren't there, either.)
Black-light posters exalt Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead. Shop facades are painted in phantasmagoric murals, and tie-dyed T-shirts are everywhere. The counterculture is alive and well, it seems.
Bumper stickers are a popular front-door decoration on houses: "Food not bombs," "No war," "Meat stinks," "Rats have rights." Some things never change.
Just as there must have been back in the '60s, lots of spaced-out, burned-out people hang around, panhandling and talking to themselves. But they're dressed in basic '90s grunge, not bell-bottoms, tie-dyes and flowing hair.
Not everything in Haight-Ashbury relates to psychedelia. Bulletproof II sells vintage clothes for $7 a pound - lots of print polyester shirts and fake fur jackets along with some nice, dressy dresses from the '50s. The Haight Fillmore Whole Food Co. offers organic produce, raisin bran with organic raisins, vegetable chips. Cafe menus are scrawled on blackboards in rainbows of chalk.
Shops keep irregular or casual hours; many don't open until afternoon, and others sport signs saying "Be right back." Many post notices: "Check bags at counter."
Perhaps what's most surprising (aside from the frozen-in-time factor) is that Haight-Ashbury is so big. The Victorian houses go on and on along Haight Street and up and down cross streets as far as the eye can see. (That's usually a few blocks; you can't view beyond the top of the hill. And here, as all over San Francisco, there are lots of hills.)
Grace Cathedral:
You'd visit cathedrals in Europe, right? This Episcopal cathedral at 1051 Taylor St. is just as deserving of your attention as those, although it's several centuries younger. In fact, its facade was patterned after that of Notre Dame (sorry, no flying buttresses). In a further nod to European artistry, the front doors are replicas of Ghiberti's famous bronze doors for the Baptistery in Florence.
The church's interior is just as gloomy as that of any European Gothic cathedral on a gray day. You can admire the stained-glass windows, the upper tier of which is modern in design, as is the rose window.
The adjacent chapter house and cloisters continue the French theme, in more simplified fashion. The austerity of the paved courtyard is somewhat offset by the calla lilies and white azaleas that bloom there.
Cable Car Museum:
This is a fine way to find out how cable cars work, anyway. Believe me, you will wonder. You can see for yourself at the museum at 1201 Mason St. - accessible by cable car, of course. The cars operate without motors or power of their own; instead, they grip cables that run under the street. The cables move at 9 1/2 miles per hour, pulled by big wheels.
The machinery screeches and groans; no wonder the cable cars make so much noise. (Even the street makes noise; you can also feel the vibration when you walk across the tracks.)
The mechanically minded will appreciate the details. The museum also displays historical photographs, including some of San Francisco after the earthquake of 1906. In one photo of the Nob Hill area, almost nothing was left standing.
A Buddhist temple:
It doesn't cost anything just to look around Kong Chow temple, 855 Stockton St. But getting your fortune read, so to speak, is much more interesting. You pay $3 for a bundle of incense; if all you have is a $5 bill, you get a bigger paper-wrapped bundle.
The temple occupies the fourth floor of a plain, modern building in Chinatown. Under a pyramidal skylight, you'll find heavily-carved and silk-draped altars, Buddha statues and brass urns in which incense sticks burn. The air is thick with the rich, fragrant scent. Plates and bowls of oranges, meringues, cooked chicken and raw rice serve as offerings. Old Chinese women chant and arrange strings of what appear to be paper dolls on the floor.
The man who takes the money will show you how to light the incense in the flames of an oil burner on the altar, then place the sticks on the altar and at spots around the room. Then you burn gold, red and orange paper adorned with Chinese characters. It looks too pretty to burn, but apparently that's what it's for.
When prompted with sign language, the man points out a wooden container of sticks on the altar. You shake the container until one falls out, with the number 26 on it. What does it mean? For 25 cents, it's exchanged for a pink piece of paper inscribed with Chinese characters. "Good luck," the man offers by way of explanation, seemingly using up his entire English vocabulary. It's not very specific, but what do you expect for a quarter?
Look at art, antiques and more:
The secret to thinking of galleries and shops as free entertainment is to consider them museums. If you pretend that the works are simply not available for purchase (as some are not, for anyone in normal circumstances), you can relax and enjoy them instead of trying to figure out how you can afford to take them home.
Some entertaining places to visit:
The Hologram Co., Ghirardelli Square - It's chock full of amusing, amazing images that move as you walk past them: a finger that beckons, a shark that leaps out at you, a ballerina pirouetting, a woman sipping wine.
Jackson Square Historic District antiques shops: C. Mariani Antiques, 499 Jackson St. - With its huge gilt mirrors, vast tapestries and inlaid wooden furniture, you'll feel like you're in a castle, instead of a small shop in one of the restored mid-19th-century buildings of Jackson Square, near Chinatown. Don't even look at the price tags. Spencer Smyth Gallery, 495 Jackson St., specializes in antique posters.
If you're inclined to spend now and regret later, try tricking yourself. Stroll down Maiden Lane - a short, alley-like street just east of Union Square - for a bit of window shopping. You can enjoy the magical metallics of BritexFabrics; the Spartan, neutral garments and displays of Jil Sander; the richly-colored Provencal fabrics and furnishings of Pierre Deux French Country, the pure luxury of Chanel. You won't be tempted to spend a dime if you take this walk at 9 a.m.; the shops don't open until 10.