Fisherman’s Wharf
Neighborhood in San Francisco, California
Fisherman’s Wharf is a popular San Francisco, California resort and tourist attraction. It covers roughly the northern San Francisco waterfront district from Ghirardelli Square and Van Ness Avenue east to Pier 35 and Kearny Boulevard. The F Market streetcar runs through the area, the Powell-Hyde cable car lines run to Aquatic Park, on the edge of Fisherman’s Wharf, and a few blocks away is the Powell-Mason cable car line.
San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf derives its name and community characteristics from the early days of the town from the mid to late 1800s when Italian immigrant fishermen came to the town to take advantage of the population influx due to the gold rush. The village of North Beach is near the wharf, where most of the Italian immigrant fishermen have fished for local delicacies and dungeon crabs. The wharf has been the hub of the San Francisco fishing fleet from then to the present. The area still houses a number of working fishermen and their vessels although it was redeveloped in the 1970s and 1980s to become a tourist attraction.
One of the United States’ busiest and most popular tourist destinations, Fisherman’s Wharf is best known for being the site of Pier 39, the Cannery Shopping Center, Ghirardelli Square, a Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, the Mécanique Museum, the Fisherman’s Wharf Wax Museum, and the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.
The local area includes plenty of seafood restaurants, including the floating Pier 39’s Forbes Island restaurant, which serves fresh fish. The Fishermen’s Grotto, Pompei’s Grotto and Alioto’s are all the restaurants of the same family for three generations. Other restaurants include chains such as Applebee and Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Local business leaders also said they would oppose every fast food chain other than In-N-Out, as they wanted to maintain the flavor of the decades-old family-owned businesses in the area. One thing they would usually say is that “be up in arms about a fast-food operation coming to Fisherman’s Wharf,” but the family-owned In-N-Out “is different.”
The Hyde Street Pier (part of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park), USS Pampanito, a decommissioned submarine World War II, and the Balclutha cargo ship of the nineteenth century are some of Fisherman’s Wharf’s other attractions. Nearby Pier 45 holds a chapel in memory of the San Francisco and Northern California “Lost Fishermen.”
Next to Pier 39 is a colony of sea lions. They lived months before the 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta. The sea lions were lying on wooden docks, which were originally used for docking boats.
Fisherman’s Wharf hosts numerous events in San Francisco, including a fireworks display on the 4th of July and the Fleet Week displays of the Blue Angels.