The part of SF I work in,

(a few miles south of AT&T Park, for all you baseball fans) is pretty funky; lots of auto body shops, warehouses, and strip malls. It's usually referred to as Bayview, but, as you may have suspected, you'd have to go the highest elevation, climb the tallest tree, and then whip out a pair of high-power binoculars to get any glimpse of the Bay from there.

A lot of Bay Area people are either ex-New Yorkers (and even after thirty-six years and two kids here, that's how I still identify myself) or have spent some time in NYC, so it's a popular past-time to describe the different areas and neighborhoods here in terms of their NY equivalent. (Best example is, if downtown SF is Manhattan, then Oakland is Brooklyn.)

In these terms, Bayview could be certain parts of the Bronx or Queens.

So - being a guy whose lunchtime routine over the past years has been to eat something I brought from home at my desk, then go someplace to read and drink a latte for a few minutes, I realized I may have a challenge. Just to underline the nature of the area, I drove around this week for a couple of miles and could not even find a STARBUCKS. That's saying something.

But I finally did stumble on a corner cafe:

good coffee, nice light, even a decent lunch menu should I need to nosh.

Now if I could just get them to do something about the Spanish hip-hop on the radio....