Living in Inner Richmond, San Francisco

Clement Street runs the commercial spine of Inner Richmond with one of the city's densest concentrations of pan-Asian restaurants and grocers, a corridor sometimes called the city's "second Chinatown" for a retail mix that spans Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmese, Korean, and Russian kitchens within a few blocks of each other. Green Apple Books has sold new and used titles from a creaking, multi-room storefront at 6th Avenue and Clement since 1967, one of the city's last large independent bookstores and a fixture of the strip since well before most of its current neighbors opened. Golden Gate Park's northern meadows run along Fulton Street a few blocks south of Clement, giving Inner Richmond residents easy access to the park's lakes, gardens, and trails without the tourist crowds that gather near the Music Concourse further in. Quiet, dense rows of Edwardian flats and small apartment buildings fill the residential blocks north and south of Clement, giving Inner Richmond a more settled, less transient feel than the commercial strip's variety suggests.

No BART or Muni Metro line runs through Inner Richmond, and residents rely on buses along Clement Street or Geary Boulevard, or a walk to Inner Sunset or the Presidio's edge, for a rail connection.

A walk down Clement Street's restaurant row, then a few blocks south into the park's quieter northern meadows, is Inner Richmond's daily rhythm — a restaurant-dense address that costs a step less than the flashier neighborhoods closer to the water, with a safety rating near the top of the city's rankings.