What to Do in San Francisco at Night Without Drinking

I got sober in my twenties, when going out meant going out. After thousands of sober nights in San Francisco, here is what I have learned about enjoying the city after dark without a drink.

I have spent a lot of nights not drinking. Thousands of them.

I got sober in my twenties, when going out meant going out. I am Gen X. We didn't have wellness lounges, adaptogenic cocktails or an entire shelf at Whole Foods devoted to beverages designed to make you feel like you were drinking without technically drinking. We had bars. We had clubs. We had restaurants where somebody inevitably said, "Should we get a bottle?" And if you weren't drinking, particularly when I first got sober, you had to figure out what exactly you were supposed to do with yourself.

I figured it out.

And after living in San Francisco for decades, I can tell you something that doesn't get said enough: this is one of the best cities in the world to be in at night without drinking.

Not because San Francisco has finally discovered the mocktail after many years… (I used to send restaurant managers recipes when they didn't offer non alcoholic beverages!) Because there is so much else to do.

The mistake we make is assuming we need to replace drinking with another beverage. I don't think we do. Sobriety eventually taught me to stop asking, What am I going to drink instead? and start asking a much better question:

What do I actually want to do tonight?

That question opens up an entirely different San Francisco experience.

Start With a Neighborhood, Not a Reservation

This is probably the most San Francisco thing about me: I can leave the house intending to do one thing and disappear into a neighborhood for three hours. You can too.

I love this.

Pick North Beach. Pick Chinatown. Pick Clement Street. Pick the Mission. Pick Hayes Valley. Go somewhere with enough life around you that you don't need an itinerary every fifteen minutes.

North Beach is particularly good at night because it still feels like itself. Go into City Lights and wander. I don't care if you need another book. I certainly don't. That's never stopped me.

There is something deeply satisfying about being in a bookstore at nine o'clock at night while half the city is sitting three doors down drinking. Nobody is asking you to optimize anything. Nobody is asking what you do for work. You can pick up a book of poetry you don't understand, read three pages of something you would never normally choose and put it back.

Then walk.

Look in windows. Notice the old signs. Watch the people. Go into Chinatown. Find something to eat.

One of the gifts of sobriety has been learning that an evening doesn't need to be impressive to be memorable.

Go Do Something That Requires Your Attention

This is where San Francisco becomes a gift.

Go to the Exploratorium After Dark. Go to Thursday NightLife at the California Academy of Sciences. Go see the Symphony. Go to SFJAZZ. Find a small theater. See Dear San Francisco at Club Fugazi.

Yes, some of these places serve alcohol. I don't care. It's not a big deal, and you don't need to make it a big deal either.

There is a difference between being somewhere alcohol exists and making alcohol the reason you're there.

That distinction has mattered enormously in my own life. I don't need the entire world to become sober for me to enjoy it. I want something interesting enough that drinking becomes irrelevant.

Give me an aquarium at night. Give me a planetarium. Give me an acrobat flying over my head in North Beach. Give me music that makes me forget to check my phone.

I want to be engaged. Increasingly, I think this matters beyond sobriety. We are all so overstimulated and simultaneously under-engaged. We scroll while watching television. We text during dinner. We listen to podcasts while walking while checking email while wondering why our nervous systems are exhausted.

Then we call drinking "relaxing." Sometimes what we actually need is to do one thing.

Walk After Dinner

I do this all the time. Walking has become a huge part of how I experience San Francisco, and these days it is also part of how I regulate my nervous system. I pay attention to what happens in my body when I move through the city without rushing toward the next thing.

After dinner, don't immediately call the Uber. Walk.

Obviously, use your head. San Francisco is a city, not Disneyland. Know the neighborhood, stay where there are people, and if something feels wrong, listen to that feeling. I am a very big believer in listening to your body.

But when it makes sense, take the long way.

Walk the Embarcadero when the Bay Bridge is lit up. Walk through North Beach after dinner. Wander Valencia while people are still spilling in and out of restaurants. Walk through Chinatown when the daytime crowds have thinned.

And put your phone away for the walk. This is one of the practices I have become almost annoyingly passionate about: look up.

Our brains have become trained to look for what is next. The next restaurant. The next text. The next photograph. The next dopamine hit. San Francisco rewards the opposite behavior. Look at the architecture. Look at the light coming through somebody's apartment window. Look at the old woman walking her tiny dog in a sweater. Look at the ridiculous hill you're about to climb and reconsider every decision that brought you here.

This is the CITY.

Make Dessert the Event

Why did we collectively decide cocktails deserve ninety minutes but dessert gets seven?

I would like this investigated.

Go get ice cream. Find an Asian dessert café. Order bingsu. Get something warm from a bakery. Find a great cup of tea.

I am a tea person, and one of my favorite things is finding somewhere to sit with an actual pot of tea rather than treating the end of dinner as the signal that the night is over. There is something wonderful about saying, "Let's go get dessert," and meaning that this is where we're going next — not because we need something to replace alcohol, but because dessert is delightful and we are adults and can apparently make these decisions for ourselves.

One of sobriety's lesser-discussed benefits: nobody can stop you from ordering cake at nine o'clock.

Go Somewhere a Little Weird

San Francisco should never become too polished. That would ruin it.

Take a ghost tour. Find an odd little performance. Go see magic. Look up what is happening that night rather than automatically defaulting to whatever has the most Yelp reviews.

Some of my favorite experiences in this city have happened because I followed something that sounded vaguely interesting. This is also how I travel now.

I want the thing I wouldn't have found if I were only checking the "Top Ten Things to Do" list. I want the neighborhood bookstore. The hidden garden. The strange staircase. The person making one very specific thing extraordinarily well.

That is the San Francisco I am always looking for.

Or Do Something Radical: Go Somewhere Alone

This took me longer to learn. There was a time when sitting alone in a restaurant would have made me feel like I was waiting for somebody.

Now I love it.

I'll sit at a counter. I'll bring a book. I'll watch what's happening around me. I'll eat something wonderful without negotiating where everyone wants to go or whether someone is ready for the check.

Being alone and being lonely are not the same thing. Sobriety taught me that. Aging has reinforced it. There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from realizing you don't need another person — or a drink — to validate the fact that you're having a good evening. Sometimes I'll look around and think: I am completely content right now.

That is a very different kind of high.

Give Yourself Something to Find

This is where things get fun. Instead of making a list of places to go, give yourself a mission.

Find the most beautiful doorway in Chinatown. Find something you've never eaten. Find an independent bookstore. Find a staircase you've never climbed. Find a piece of public art nobody else seems to notice.

Take three photographs and don't post them anywhere.

Walk five blocks before looking at your phone.

If you're with someone, separate for ten minutes and each come back with one thing you think the other person missed.

This is the kind of thing I do naturally now. I notice. I don't think that is incidental to sobriety. When I was drinking, so much of life was organized around changing how I felt. When do we get there? Where are we drinking? Is there enough? What's next?

Sobriety slowly turned my attention in the opposite direction.

Instead of trying to change the moment, I learned how to be in it. That is really the foundation of The Sober Lens and, ultimately, of Sober in San Francisco.

Try This: One Sober Night in San Francisco

If you're reading all of this thinking, Fine, Lane, but what should I actually do tonight? — I've got you.

Here is one of my versions of a great San Francisco night. No bar hopping. No complicated reservations. No feeling like you're doing the "sober alternative" to the real evening.

You're just having a really good night in San Francisco.

5:30 PM — Start in North Beach at City Lights

Begin at City Lights Booksellers, one of those San Francisco institutions I never get tired of.

Don't rush through it.

Give yourself at least thirty minutes and don't immediately head toward the section you normally read. Go upstairs. Pick up something strange. Read the first page of a book you've never heard of.

Here's your first little Sober Lens assignment: find one sentence you want to remember.

You don't have to photograph it. You don't have to post it. Just remember it.

This is harder than it sounds.

6:15 PM — Walk Into Chinatown

Leave City Lights and walk toward Chinatown.

This is one of my favorite transitions in San Francisco because you don't need a car, a plan or even very much time to feel like you've entered somewhere completely different.

Don't make the walk something to get through.

Look up.

Look at the balconies, the signs, the windows, the old buildings and the people doing completely ordinary things in a neighborhood that visitors sometimes treat like a museum.

Take Grant if you've never been here before, but wander off it, too. Chinatown gets more interesting when you stop following the obvious route.

Your second assignment: find something you would have walked past if I hadn't told you to pay attention.

That's the whole game.

6:45 PM — Dinner in Chinatown

Now eat.

For a classic Chinatown experience, Z & Y Restaurant on Jackson Street is known for Sichuan food and is a great place to make dinner the centerpiece rather than the thing you rush through before going somewhere to drink.

Or choose somewhere smaller that catches your attention while you're walking. That's part of the point of this itinerary: I don't want every minute predetermined.

Sit down. Order something you've never had. If you're with someone, put both phones away until the food arrives.

If you're alone, even better.

Get the table.

One of the great pleasures I've discovered as I've gotten older is eating alone without feeling as though I'm waiting for someone to show up. I'm not waiting.

I'm having dinner.

8:15 PM — Walk Back Toward North Beach

Now take the long way.

This is when Chinatown and North Beach begin doing that beautiful San Francisco nighttime thing — the lights come on, restaurants fill up, people are heading somewhere, and suddenly you realize you don't particularly need to be heading anywhere.

This is your Capacity Moment.

Before automatically moving on to the next thing, check in.

Do you actually want more stimulation? Are you tired? Energized? Curious? Would your body rather walk for twenty minutes than sit through a show?

I teach this all the time: capacity changes.

Your itinerary is allowed to change with it.

8:30 PM — Choose Your Own Adventure

If you have energy, this is where the evening can split.

Go see Dear San Francisco at Club Fugazi, the acrobatic love letter to the city performed right in North Beach.

Or keep walking and head back toward City Lights, Columbus Avenue and Washington Square.

If you want something quirkier, look for an evening magic show or one of the small performances happening around North Beach. This neighborhood rewards people who haven't scheduled themselves into submission.

And if your nervous system is saying, Absolutely not, we have done enough, listen.

You don't win San Francisco by exhausting yourself.

10:00 PM — Dessert

If you still have room in both your stomach and your evening, finish with something sweet.

Find gelato or a late-night dessert in North Beach, or wander until something looks good.

This is where I would normally say order one and share it.

But I know myself better than that.

Get your own.

Then sit somewhere for a few minutes before calling the car or heading home.

No scrolling.

Look around.

Think about the sentence you found at City Lights earlier in the evening.

And ask yourself one question:

What did I notice tonight that I would normally have missed?

That is a sober night in San Francisco.

Not a night where alcohol was removed and we desperately searched for enough activities to fill the hole.

A night where there wasn't a hole.

You went to one of the world's great bookstores. You walked through two of San Francisco's most historic neighborhoods. You ate something wonderful. Maybe you saw a show. You had dessert. You walked. You noticed things. You were actually there for all of it.

And this is only a few blocks of the city.

There are dozens of nights like this hiding all over San Francisco.

That's exactly what I created the Sober in San Francisco Guide to help you find — and the Treasure Hunt takes the idea one step further. I give you the clues, but you have to look closely enough to find what's hiding in plain sight.

Consider this itinerary your first clue.

Discover the Sober in San Francisco Guide + Treasure Hunt →

You Don't Need to Replace the Cocktail

This may be the most important thing I can share with you.

Eventually, the question gets much bigger and much more interesting.

What do I want my life to feel like when I'm actually here for it?

That is the question I've been answering for almost thirty years. Lately, after going through my own period of nervous-system collapse and having to slow my life down considerably, I have come back to it in an entirely different way. I don't need more stimulation. I need experiences I can actually absorb. I want to remember where I was. I want to taste my dinner. I want to notice the person I'm with. I want to walk home knowing what the air felt like. I want to be there.

San Francisco is extraordinarily good at that kind of night if you let it be.

Because I don't think the goal of traveling — or sobriety, for that matter — is to remove something from your life.

It's to become available for what was there all along.