Sports & Recreation >>

• Readers' Poll Winners
  Best Foot Race Bay to Breakers Best Bike Race AIDS ride Best Hike Mount Tamalpais Best Place to Skateboard Embarcadero Best Fitness Club Crunch Best Martial Arts Studio Quantum Martial Arts Best Bike Shop Valencia Cyclery Best Ski/Snowboard Shop SFO San Francisco Best Public Tennis... More >>
• Best Marathon
  The San Francisco Marathon
  As the warmer months approach, the race is on for your marathon money, with an onslaught of organizations wanting you to compete in their runs. Upward of 15,000 people hit the pavement every year for the city's most scenic sprint, though — the San Francisco Marathon. Although we prefer the... More >>
• Best Foot Race in a Gorilla Suit (1 Comment)
  The Great Gorilla Run
  This 7K race through Golden Gate Park began last year with the amazing sight of 425 runners dressed up in gorilla suits (which participants are given after signing up and paying the entry fee), all to benefit the Gorilla Organization's efforts to protect endangered mountain gorillas in Africa.... More >>
• Best Jogging Spot to See Native Plants
  Restored WPA Trails on Mount Sutro
  Before 1886, the 904-foot hill behind the UCSF Medical Center then known as Mount Parnassus was covered in low brush and chaparral, just like the rest of San Francisco. Mayor Adolph Sutro celebrated Arbor Day that year by planting the hill with thousands of blue-gum eucalyptus trees, that era's... More >>
• Best Indulgent Cross-City Hike
  Ferry Building to Windmills
  Begin with a fortifying bayside nosh at the Ferry Building, then head up one of the city's great thoroughfares, Sacramento Street, through the canyons of the Financial District and up vertiginous Nob Hill. Take a breather at Huntington Park, savoring the rarefied oxygen, and then descend to Polk... More >>
• Best Outdoor Basketball Court We Can't Tell You About
  Somewhere on States Street
  The people who play pickup games at the best basketball court in San Francisco don't really want you to know anything about it. So we've decided on a compromise. We'll tell you about the court, but only on the condition you never show up. Ever. Understand? Great. On a beautiful sunny Saturday,... More >>
• Best Sporting Goods Store
  Sports Basement
  Here's what kind of operation Sports Basement runs: When its store on 16th Street closed in 2007, the staff installed two employees and a jug of refreshments on the sidewalk. All three stayed put for months, and anyone who missed the huge "We've moved!" signs got the message shouted to them. The... More >>
• Best Health Club with a Bar
  The Sports Club/LA
  Size does matter in health clubs. You don't want to feel like one of those workout ants, following a trail of sweat to the next machine, and then have to stand and wait because of overcrowding. Try the Sports Club/LA's numbers on for size: 127,000 square feet over three floors, including six... More >>
• Best Driving Range
  Presidio Golf Course
  The year 2006 was bad for the casual, sometimes ironic activity of hitting buckets of golf balls, for that was the year SOMA's beloved Mission Bay golf complex shut down and became a vacant dirt lot (which it remains). But relief can still be had within the city proper. The range at the... More >>
• Best Public Pool
  North Beach Pool
  Three years after an extensive $7.5 million renovation, North Beach Pool remains the city's sleekest public watering spot. Two parallel 90-foot pools are housed in a low-slung luxury-liner-like milieu of aqua-green mosaic tiles, a retractable skylight, and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on... More >>
• Best High-Risk Water Sport
  Kite Surfing at Ocean Beach
  Kite surfing in the bay is nasty enough — freezing water, hellish currents, oil tanker captains playing chicken with the bridge footings. But the hardiest waterfolk have cast an eye toward a body of water that has made killing people a matter of record for decades: Ocean Beach. When... More >>
• Best Sportswriter
  The Betting Fool
  Even before readers began to read his first column a decade ago, the Chronicle's Betting Fool scored major points with his moniker. It was an explicit acknowledgement of the simple truth that few newspapers and no TV network that broadcasts sports will admit: Many Americans watch sports because... More >>
• Best Place to Play Pétanque
  Pétanque Bowling Field, Golden Gate Park
  Golden Gate Park has so many tucked-away, little-known attractions — the cardplayers' shelter, the fly-casting pool, the archery field, the lake reserved for model yachts and sailboats — it isn't surprising that there's a tree-lined clearing set aside for the purpose of playing... More >>
• Best Yoga Studio
  YogaKula
  What makes YogaKula (formerly Yoga Sangha)so dang great, considering the surfeit of studios in the area whose sun salutations could vie with the best of 'em? Pure, utter unpretentiousness is what. Maybe it's the gritty brand of Mission Street down-hominess — flyer-posting anarchopunks... More >>
• Best Aerobics Alternative (6 Comments)
  Bombshell Betty Dance Burlesquercise
  Tired of the gym? Yawning at yoga? If your workout routine needs a little oomph and maybe even a dose of va-va-voom, get off the treadmill and slap on those pasties. Bombshell Betty is the eponymous shimmy-shaker who leads gaggles of women — from shy coeds to brassy grandmas — to hot... More >>
• Best Drop-In Dance Lessons
  Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
  Attention all dancers at heart still stinging from the bun-headed bitches and stage mothers who made dance class hell back in high school: There's a place to dance and enjoy yourself in high-quality classes without the catty pressure of a studio setting. From Tuesday to Saturday, the Mission... More >>
• Best Steep Hill Bike Ride
  Broderick Street
  You think you're a champion because you can ride your bike up California Street? Think you're king of the mountains because you can creep your way up 17th Street from the Castro? Think you know hills? Well, we'll give you some hills! Dalewood as it circles Mount Davidson hits 25 percent for a... More >>
• Best Outing with the Kids
  Tandem Bike Trip to Tiburon (Plus Ferry Back to S.F.)
  Every adult who has fidgeted for two hours in the Bay Area Discovery Museum's Clifford the Big Red Dog exhibition — or whatever other child-intoxicating abomination has been installed there since — knows how achingly boring it can be to take the kids to, well, places where kids want... More >>
• Best Bicycle Shop for Rookies
  Pacific Bicycle
  If you've finally decided to buy a bicycle but suddenly realize you don't really know anything, then get yourself over to Pacific Bicycle. The employees are all avid riders, and will take plenty of time to show you what kind of bike will fit your body as well as your price range. That amount of... More >>
• Best New Skate Shop
  Mission Skateboards
  With a half-dozen of them in San Francisco, skate shops are not exactly rare in this town. But the city has been missing a back-to-basics shop — that is, until Mission Skateboards opened late last year. Instead of overtly catering to money-burning sneakerheads the way other shops do,... More >>
• Best Place to Skate Under the Influence
  16th St. between Church and Mission
  A boozy midnight barge down 16th Street's seamless blacktop is a great way to enjoy the city after dark. It's also the most fun way to violate the city's bullshit ban on skating at night or in the street. Powerslide, split lanes, and skitch your way to that fifth tall can of Tecate. If you're... More >>
• Best Legal Skateboarding Spot
  "Third and Army"
  A rectangular plaza initially created to accommodate lunching factory workers, Third and Army (more like Indiana and Marin) has existed as the city's unofficial public skate park for more than a decade. Flush with the Islais Creek channel, the spot is iconic for its block-long stretch of waxed... More >>
• Best Place to Practice Parkour (Sorta Legally)
  The Bunkers in the Presidio
  In the unofficial sport of parkour, there are no teams or regulations, just acrobatically inclined individuals traveling a short distance in a straight line — the more wall-scaling and rooftop leaping, the better. For the traceurs who use public stairways, ledges, and lampposts in their... More >>
• Tastiest Walking Tour
  The San Francisco Gourmet Chocolate Tour
  Three hours of purposeful walking around the Embarcadero, Financial District, and Union Square while inhaling a gluttonous amount of candy confections is precisely our idea of getting fit and happy. Some fabulous highlights of the Bay Area chocolate boom that has taken off over the past few... More >>
• Best Far-Out Flashback
  Flashback Tour of Haight-Ashbury
  Forget the Gap store at Haight and Ashbury. This two-hour walking tour through the symbolic birthplace of the flower child revolution is all about the '60s, baby. And to keep things light, your guide is a comedian. Starting at the Peace Cafe in the Red Victorian Bed and Breakfast at 1665 Haight... More >>
• Best Yacht Club for Nonboaters (1 Comment)
  Mariposa Hunters Point Yacht Club
  As cookie-cutter loft renovations turn Third Street into a wasteland of yuppie money, you have to hold on fast to the old-school charm of a place like the Mariposa Hunters Point Yacht Club. Created in 1932, the waterfront property is a working-class watering hole without an ounce of pretension,... More >>
• Best High-Art Ping-Pong
  Ping Pong Gallery
  Joey Piziali, co-owner of the Ping Pong Gallery in Potrero Hill, got skunked, and the rules are the rules. "I had to crawl ass-backwards under the table," he admits several months after the crushing defeat at one of the gallery's bimonthly social gatherings. Piziali and his partner, Vanessa... More >>
• Best Local Sports Heroes
  Man, does the Bay Area have some crappy teams or what? It's not easy to assemble a list of bests for some of the worst teams in professional sports. This is what we came up with. Best Giant Tim Lincecum www.giants.mlb.com Tim "The Enchanter" Lincecum is perhaps the first Major League player... More >>