San Francisco Warning or Danger Tips by Stasigrace

I wasn't sure where to put this tip so it's going under warnings...but it's really just a word to the wise.

Nothing is open in San Francisco (except bars) late at night. When I fell ill with a stomach thing at 3 in the morning, my husband tried to go out to buy medicine, and ALL the drugstores were closed. Resorting to the phone book, we discovered the only 24-hour drugstores were MILES away. Our hotel desk man informed us that getting a cab would be next to impossible (due to the crowds bar-hopping). So I just suffered until the Rite Aid opened at like 7 a.m.

Granted, we were staying in a touristy area (Union Square), but still, you'd think in a CITY there would be SOMEPLACE to go if you are sick in the middle of the night--without having to hop in a cab for a 15-20 min drive!

On the plus side, my husband did discover the fun crowd that hangs around Union Square at 3 a.m. He was propositioned by several prostitutes and drug dealers. Fortunately, we live in downtown LA, so this is normal everyday stuff for us, and it didn't phase him.

I will say one thing for Union Square--the Carl's Jr. was open at 3 a.m. I guess the pimps and druggies gotta have their hamburgers!

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This may sound dumb, but we learned the hard way that you can't share tickets on the BART. Because the machines let us put several dollars on our ticket, we figured we'd be economical and save a tree and use just one paper between us, passing it back and forth as we each went through the gates.

Well, we were stopped by a very surly cop on our way out who bullied us about it. We told him we had plenty of money on the ticket for both of us, but he was about to fine us! He ended up charging our ticket for a couple extra rides (pretty rude!) and letting us go.

Then we saw signs that said we each had to have our own ticket--but there were NO such signs where we bought the ticket!

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