Your Curbed Cup neighborhood of the year: Bayview

This year’s winner takes title again

By Brock Keeling@BrockKeeling Jan 3, 2017, 9:27am PST

Pier 92 grain silo art project Bayview Rise.

For the second year in a row, nabbing back-to-back victories, San Francisco’s southside neighborhood of note Bayview takes the crown.

After two weeks of voting, sixteen neighborhoods competed for the prestigious honor as San Francisco’s neighborhood of the year. Bayview managed to beat out Inner Richmond by less than 100 votes.

While there was indeed evidence of ballot tampering—shame!—once that issue had been swiftly and justly corrected, Bayview still came out on top.

A photo posted by Michael Zambino (@mienlaza) on Jan 1, 2017 at 8:37am PST

Bayview’s victory exemplifies of a trend occurring over the last couple years—specifically, communities getting together to get the vote out. While areas like the Castro, Nob Hill, and Hayes Valley were able to win their battles via prestige and brand recognition, they proved no match when it came to the power of neighborhood pride—something sorely lacking in other SF neighborhoods these days.

People live in Bayview; it’s not just a ramen/craft cocktail pitstop in between landing a sweet tech gig and heading to the suburbs after cranking out a few kids. Bayview has lifelong residents, something all too rare these days in the city.

A few things led to second-year victory for Bayview. For starters, the historic Bayview Opera House, a circa 1888 building boasting San Francisco architect Henry Geilfuss’s Italianate and Gothic designs, underwent a major overhaul and was brought back to life. New floors, repair of water damage and dry rot, new look inside.

A photo posted by @sf_daily_photo on Dec 18, 2016 at 7:25am PST

In addition, Bayview was one of only two neighborhoods in 2016 where the average San Franciscan could buy a home—i.e., asking prices rarely broke the $1 million mark.

The area was also one of only a handful of neighborhoods to score a new non-transferable liquor license. This will presumably add to the collection of choice watering holes to boot already in Bayview.

One reader sums up the neighborhood of the year best, saying it’s “[o]ne of the last few affordable neighborhoods (by SF's standards), with lots of new businesses opening up alongside historic ones on walkable/transit-accessible 3rd Street and in cool converted industrial spaces."

What more could one want? Congratulations to Bayview on its Curbed Cup win!