Sports & Recreation >>

• Sports & Recreation Readers' Poll
  Readers' Poll Winners:
  Best Foot Race: Bay to Breakers Best Bike Race: Critical Mass Best Hike: Marin Headlands Best Place to Skateboard: The Embarcadero Best Gym: Crunch Best Bike Shop: Mike’s Bikes Best Ski/Snowboard Shop: REI Best Pickup Basketball Game: The Panhandle Best Public Tennis Court: Dolores Park Best... More >>
• Best Public Golf Course
  Gleneagles GC
  While highfalutin Harding Park gets all the headlines, this scrappy nine-holer gets the nod from hard-core locals, who prefer their fairways narrow and their golf without frills. There's no tee times or butt-kissing at the bag drop. Just pay your greens fees at the counter and let it fly. The... More >>
• Best Tennis With a View (1 Comment)
  Potrero Hill Recreation Center
  Look, your backhand ain't what it used to be. And maybe your serve is so bad you consider underhanding it to avoid another double fault. But there's no reason your game needs to self-destruct on an ugly tennis court. That's where the Potrero Rec Center comes in handy. Nestled among the pines on... More >>
• Best Urban Soccer
  Mission Playground
  Ever notice how the commercials during the World Cup always show kids in other countries playing soccer everywhere but the pristine grass pitches that define America's soccer landscape? Future stars are training in the back alleys of Rio, the hardened thoroughfares of Mombasa, and the street... More >>
• Best Bocce Ball Court (1 Comment)
  Aquatic Park
  Twenty-three centuries ago, or so it's said, a couple of bored Roman centurions started tossing around a few handy boulders, attempting, in an early and distant relative of horseshoes and penny-pitching, to come closest to a designated smaller stone some distance away. Fast-forward and -westward... More >>
• Best City Bike Ride
  The Museum Loop
  It's a bike tour with a mini Alp d'Huez climb, a museum rest stop, and dramatic ocean views that truly inspire one to want to keep it a secret. Begin the ride at the mouth of Golden Gate Park on JFK Drive. Head west on JFK, wheel past the rose garden and the buffalo paddock, then swing right at... More >>
• Best Bike Event
  North American Cycle Courier Championships
  Bike messengers are a unique and secretive species, and one of their holiest events is this annual weekend of competitions and merrymaking. Over Memorial Day weekend, the streets and bars of San Francisco will fill with bikers from around the world as the best of the best slug it out in alleycat... More >>
• Best User-Friendly Bike Shop
  Box Dog Bikes
  Bike shops, like record stores and plumbers, can sometimes be a bit daunting to deal with, but not so the friendly confines of Box Dog Bikes, a worker-owned collective in the Mission that opened in '04. With a helpful staff, affordable accessories, and quality products, the shop always offers a... More >>
• Best Bike Bags
  Chrome Transport
  There's something gratifying about buying a bike bag that's been, as the Web site attests, "created to endure biking 10 hours a day in the rain, mud, snow, and grit," even if the most cycling you ever do is from your front door to Muni. Local manufacturer Chrome designs and makes its bags right... More >>
• Best Bowling Alley
  Presidio Bowl
  With all the great outdoor sporting outlets in San Francisco, it seems bizarre that anyone would want to spend the day indoors, tucked into shoes that someone else recently wore, throwing a heavy spherical object down the same lane, over and over. But then again, sometimes bowling just feels... More >>
• Best Place to Ice Skate and ... Bowl?
  Yerba Buena Ice Skating & Bowling Center
  Turns out that ice skating and bowling is the chocolate and peanut butter of the recreational world. Two great tastes few knew went so well together, this unconventional combination of activities hosted in one complex is a good option to consider when entertaining visitors with differing tastes... More >>
• Best Place for a Game of Pickup Chess
  Cafe La Boheme
  If you love chess but don't like to squabble over the spoils of the game, steer clear of the chess mayhem on Powell and Market and head over to Cafe La Boheme in the Mission. La Boheme's chess-friendly staff makes the cafe a preferable alternative to the Buckingham Palace of chess three BART... More >>
• Best Place to Play Ping-Pong
  Thee Parkside
  At an establishment that bills itself as San Francisco's premier dive venue, you'd best not be expecting some slick Olympic setup. No, ping-pong on Thee Parkside's back patio is a ramshackle affair. The table sags and the paddles are frayed (last time we were there, one paddle had the editorial... More >>
• Best Place to Be a Kid Again
  Seward Slides Minipark
  There is something exhilarating about zooming down a giant slide so fast that you land — boom — on your ass. Given our current rash of innocuous swirly slides, most playgrounds don't exactly offer adults and daredevils a spontaneous whoosh of excitement or a desire to get down and... More >>
• Best Arcade (1 Comment)
  Riptide
  Entering Riptide is not unlike descending into hell, or maybe Vegas: It's a dark, cacophonous maelstrom populated by jittery, glassy-eyed lost souls illuminated by flashes of Mephistophelian fire. In other words, it's an absolutely ideal 21st-century amusement palace. The 12,000 square feet are... More >>
• Best New Playground
  Helen Wills Park
  It's not exactly a new playground — Helen Wills Park has been offering the denizens of Russian Hill a bit of recreational breathing space since World War I — but a couple of years ago the old girl got a dazzling facelift that amounted to a stem-to-stern, all-inclusive,... More >>
• Best Yoga Studio
  The Mindful Body
  In a city populated with yoga studios of all kinds — offering ashtanga, hatha, Bikram, power yoga, body-shaping yoga, vinyasa, and so much more — the Mindful Body stands out as a quiet beacon of peace in the midst of an ancient practice that has become a frenzied trend. Tiny,... More >>
• Best Kayaking by Day (1 Comment)
  Sea Trek Kayak
  There are many ways to explore the bay, from kite-surfing to paddling to taking the ferry. But one of the most sublime is by kayak. Sitting close to the surf in a small brightly colored boat somehow makes you feel especially connected to the water and to the wildlife in and around it. Based in... More >>
• Best Indoor Rock Climbing
  Mission Cliffs
  Always wanted to try rock climbing but feared grave injury? Or are you a seasoned pro stuck in the city visiting your relatives when all you really want to be doing is perfecting your climbing and belaying skills? Look no further than Mission Cliffs, a local climbing community fixture. For the... More >>
• Best Physical Fitness Guru
  David McGuire Fitness
  Physical exercise guru David McGuire is always cheerful, even though he gets up at 4 o'clock every morning. But don't let that put you off. He's the best fitness instructor around. A former ballet dancer with a background in competitive gymnastics, McGuire isn't the typical barrel-chested gym... More >>
• Best New Gym (6 Comments)
  UCSF Bakar Fitness Center at Mission Bay
  If there were ever a reason to go back to school, UCSF's new fitness center at Mission Bay could be it. Luckily, you don't have to be a student to join the gym, which offers brand-spankin'-new equipment, pools, youth and family programs, group fitness, recreational sports, aquatics, outdoor... More >>
• Best Hike
  Land's End
  The Northern California coast is no tropical paradise of white-sand beaches and gentle turquoise waters. Our ocean is cold and rugged and full of sharks. Our surfers brave dark, 50-foot waves that crash into rocky underwater caverns. Nowhere in the city is our harsh splendor displayed better... More >>
• Best Bayside Stroll
  Municipal Pier to Black Point
  San Francisco wasn't always the perfect geographic rectangle we know today. Originally the Financial District was a cove, North Beach was an honest-to-god beach, and the Marina District was a placid swamp lapping at the shores of Cow Hollow. Aside from Ocean Beach and the Presidio, the only... More >>
• Best Place for Outdoor Sex
  Golden Gate Park
  Al fresco sex is tricky to come by in any big city. There simply aren't enough secluded spaces to get it on without being carried off by the cops. But San Francisco is blessed with one of the largest urban parks in the country, where there is no shortage of sublime spots for lovebirds to enjoy a... More >>
• Best Coastal Getaway (1 Comment)
  Half Moon Bay
  Midway through William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life, the play's protagonists escape the Sturm und Drang of angst-choked San Francisco by heading down the coast to Half Moon Bay. Excellent suggestion. After a tranquil 45-minute drive along the ocean, drop your bags at the Old Thyme Inn (779... More >>
• Best Camping Getaway
  Buckhorn Recreation Area
  After nearly 60 years in the automobile business, 86-year-old Cal Worthington has slowed down a little, spending much time at his 38-square-mile ranch near Orland, 18 miles west of Chico, flying occasionally to any of his four dealerships in his personal Lear 35. While it's not easy to catch... More >>
• Best Local Sports Radio Host (1 Comment)
  Gary Radnich, KNBR (680 AM)
  The man has his share of critics, who knock him for everything from his sometimes adversarial relationship with the English language to his habit of talking about non-sports topics. But forgetting for the moment that he reportedly earns around $1 million a year for his radio and TV duties,... More >>
• Best Sports Columnist
  Gwen Knapp, San Francisco Chronicle
  On pure reflex, it would be easy to offer Knapp backhanded praise for winning this category. After all, her competition includes Bruce Jenkins and Ray Ratto, columnists whose every offering tempts readers to follow Oedipus' example and stab out their own eyes. But such backhandedness would be a... More >>
• Best Free Baseball Viewing
  Outside AT&T Park
  In a world where a single beer at a baseball game can cost you $8, it's nice to be able to call attention to this incredible, freakish, low-profile act of generosity from AT&T Park, home of the Giants. If you stroll around the stadium on the waterfront side, you'll see a gate, and you'll catch a... More >>
• Best Giants Player
  Omar Vizquel
  He turned 40 in April, but we like to call him Ageless Omar. Last season, his 18th in the Major Leagues, he batted .295 and collected 171 hits, the third-highest total of his career. And as he has every year since breaking into the bigs in 1989, Vizquel made the expanse between second base and... More >>
• Best Warriors Player
  Monta Ellis
  In the recent past, on those rare instances when the Bay Area sports spotlight fixed on the Warriors, Baron Davis and Jason Richardson soaked up most of the incandescence. But the '06-'07 season proved what SF Weekly prophesied a year ago: Ellis represents Golden State's future. The second-year... More >>
• Best Niners Player
  Frank Gore
  Fans who attended Niners' training camp last summer could see how much faster, stronger, and just plain better Gore looked than Kevan Barlow, the team's starting tailback in 2005. Head coach Mike Nolan noticed, too, trading Barlow before the '06 season began and turning Gore loose on opposing... More >>
• Best Place to See Nude People Run
  Bay to Breakers
  It's true: The people you generally don't want to see naked are the ones who, shaved and tanned hides bared in glory, will be out in droves at Bay to Breakers, a historic footrace held on the third Sunday in May that embodies the true spirit of San Francisco like hardly any other event. Both a... More >>
• Best Dance Teacher (4 Comments)
  Amara Tabor-Smith
  Amara Tabor-Smith is one of the few people in the Bay Area who can start teaching a high-powered dance class at 8.30 in the morning and have the entire room shaking their booties with wild abandon five minutes later. As one of the instructors at Rhythm and Motion/ODC Dance Commons, Tabor-Smith... More >>