North Beach is a neighborhood in the northeast of San Francisco adjacent to Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf. It has a primarily Italian flavor. North Beach is sheltered from ocean breezes by Russian Hill to the west and often enjoys sunny days when much of the city is shrouded in fog.
Originally, the city's northeast shoreline extended only to what is today Taylor and Francisco streets. The area largely known today as North Beach was an actual beach, filled in with soil years ago.
The neighborhood, particularly on Broadway east of Columbus, was infamous until fairly recently as home to many of the city's striptease clubs. Many of the sex-related nightspots seen in Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry movies, Paul Schrader's Hardcore and TV's The Streets of San Francisco have been converted to other, more mainstream uses. The Condor Club, on the corner of Columbus and Broadway, was opened in 1964 as America's first topless bar. It was then a lobster restaurant. Then a New-Orleans seafood/jazz bar.
Now, again, it is a topless bar. The Lusty Lady, a peep show establishment, is notable as the world's only worker cooperative strip club. The Broadway strip was also home to the Mabuhay Gardens, the Stone and On Broadway nightclubs, which were important venues in the punk rock scene of the late 1970s to mid-1980s. By the late 1990s, however, the economic facts of life asserted themselves and the area's colorful nightlife was reduced to those places that could afford to stay in business.
BAIRDS TRAVEL FAVOURITE NORTH BEACH RESTAURANT