Hunter Pence—yes, that Hunter Pence, the two-time World Series champion who adopted this city as hard as it adopted him—recently posted a simple question on Threads: "SF locals, where's your favorite quiet spot in the city?" More than a hundred comments later, and what poured in wasn't a list of tourist attractions. It was a love letter to the corners of San Francisco where people go to breathe. We dug into the replies, verified what's real, and added some context. Here are our favorites.
The Brazen Head
3166 Buchanan St, San Francisco, CA 94123
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This one needs some explaining. A bar? On a list of quiet spots? But The Brazen Head isn't a bar in the way you're thinking. There's no sign on the door. There's no TV. There's no thumping playlist competing with your conversation. What there is: dim amber lighting, dark wood paneling, stained glass accents, and a staff that swaps your silverware between courses like it's 1955 and standards still mean something. They call themselves a "talking bar," and they mean it—this is where you come to actually hear the person across from you.
Open since 1980 in the heart of Cow Hollow, The Brazen Head has somehow stayed under the radar for four decades despite being packed almost every night. The bar stays open until 2 a.m., and the kitchen runs late enough to save you from whatever bad decision you were about to make at a taqueria. Order the NY pepper steak and a martini, settle into a booth, and let the rest of the city fade out.
Transamerica Redwood Park
600 Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94111
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Coastal redwood trees were trucked in from the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1972 and planted in the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid, which is exactly the kind of absurd and wonderful thing San Francisco does. The result is a half-acre grove that feels like it has no business existing in the Financial District — fountains, benches, dappled light filtering through massive canopy. FiDi workers eat lunch here without looking at their phones. That alone should tell you something.
The park also functions as a rotating outdoor gallery. In 2025, twelve surrealist bronze sculptures by Max Ernst lived among the redwoods in a free exhibition that drew art lovers from across the city. New installations from the ICA SF and landscape artist Lily Kwong are continuing that tradition into 2026. Whatever's on view when you visit, the trees are the main act — and they're not going anywhere.
Dynamo Donut & Coffee
2760 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110
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Everyone knows Dynamo for Sara Spearin's absurdly good donuts; the maple bacon apple, the passion fruit milk chocolate, the rotating seasonal flavors that read more like a pastry chef's fever dream than a donut menu. What far fewer people know is that behind the tiny storefront on 24th Street is a full garden patio, landscaped and quiet, tucked completely out of sight from the bustle of the Mission sidewalk.
Spearin opened Dynamo in 2008 after years cooking at some of the city's best restaurants, including Foreign Cinema and the late, great Stars. The back patio was part of the original design, and regulars treat it like a second living room. Grab an espresso and whatever seasonal donut speaks to you, then disappear into the garden. You'll forget you're ten feet from one of the most chaotic commercial strips in the city.
Billy Goat Hill
Access from 30th & Laidley St or Beacon St, San Francisco, CA 94131
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The first thing you'll notice is the view: the Bay Bridge, the downtown skyline, the rooftops of Noe Valley spread out below like a model train set. The second thing you'll notice is that almost nobody else is here. Billy Goat Hill sits at the eastern edge of the San Miguel Range in the Glen Park neighborhood, and it's the kind of place where you can sit in the grass for an hour without hearing a car horn.
The hill has a beautifully weird history. It was once a rock quarry operated by the notorious Gray Brothers, whose shoddy practices and refusal to pay workers led to one of them being shot dead on site in 1914; the shooter was acquitted to courtroom applause. Today it's a nature preserve with wildflowers, switchback trails, and the lingering legend of a rope swing that perpetually appears and disappears from the eucalyptus trees at the summit. Even without the swing, the quiet at the top is the real draw.
Sutro Heights Park
Point Lobos Ave at 48th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94121
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If you've done Lands End or the Sutro Baths, you've probably driven right past this place. Most people do. But the former estate grounds of silver magnate and one-time San Francisco mayor Adolph Sutro sit on a bluff above the ocean with views that make you understand why a rich guy in the 1880s said "yes, I'll take this entire headland, please." The formal gardens are long gone, but the wide paths, the windswept parapet, and the remaining statuary give the whole place a melancholy grandeur.
Sutro Heights is technically part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which means the National Park Service keeps it in good shape without turning it into a production. On a weekday afternoon you might share the overlook with two people and a very determined seagull. The views stretch from Ocean Beach to the Marin Headlands, and on a clear day you can watch container ships drift through the Golden Gate like slow-motion parade floats.
Ingleside Sundial
Entrada Ct, San Francisco, CA 94127
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This one came straight from the Threads replies, and it's a perfect deep cut. Tucked into a residential cul-de-sac in the Ingleside Terraces neighborhood, the Ingleside Sundial is exactly what it sounds like: an actual working sundial set into a small circular park surrounded by homes. It was built in 1913 as a centerpiece for the Ingleside Terraces development, and it's been quietly telling time ever since.
There's no commercial anything within immediate view. No crowds. Just the sundial, some benches, manicured hedges, and the kind of residential hush that makes you realize how much of San Francisco is actually neighborhoods where people just live. On a sunny day—and it does get sunny in Ingleside, more than the Sunset, fight me—it's one of the most pleasantly odd places to sit and do absolutely nothing.
Bernal Hill
Bernal Heights Blvd, San Francisco, CA 94110
Park details
You probably know Bernal Hill. The red-and-white radio tower is visible from half the city. What you might not know, and what one particularly helpful Threads commenter laid out in detail, is the move: walk past the radio tower, follow the fence line around to the far side of the hill, sit with your back against the chain link, and face west. From here you get the full sweep of the Mission, the fog rolling over Twin Peaks, and on the Fourth of July, an unobstructed front-row seat to every illegal firework launched from backyards across the neighborhood.
The main trail up Bernal Hill is well-trafficked, especially on weekends with the dog-walking crowd. But the backside of the hill, past the tower, is reliably empty. The grass is dry and golden most of the year, the wind picks up, and the silence is the kind that makes your ears ring a little. It's the sound of a city that, for once, isn't asking anything of you.
Shakespeare Garden
335 Martin Luther King Jr Dr, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA 94118
Park details
Behind a wrought-iron gate near the California Academy of Sciences, a small walled garden has been growing the flowers that appear in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets since 1928. There are over 200 species in here—violets, daisies, poppies, roses, lilies—and bronze plaques with the corresponding quotes set among the plantings. A bust of the Bard himself is reportedly one of only two casts of its kind in the world.
The garden was the brainchild of Alice Eastwood, the former longtime director of botany at the Academy of Sciences, and it has the feel of something a very specific kind of person loved into existence and then trusted the rest of us to take care of. On weekday mornings the gate is usually open and the garden is nearly empty. It's the sort of place where you sit on a stone bench, read a few sonnets, and feel temporarily like the kind of person who has their life together. The crabapple trees bloom in April if you want the full effect.
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94133
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You could argue that City Lights doesn't belong on a "quiet spots" list. It's one of the most famous bookstores in the world, it's in the middle of North Beach, and on any given Saturday the ground floor is shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists taking photos of the Howl display. But one Threads commenter was very specific: "the rocking chair upstairs at City Lights." And that person is absolutely right.
The Poetry Room upstairs is the quietest room in North Beach. It holds one of the largest poetry collections of any bookstore anywhere, with thousands of volumes from Auden to Zukofsky. There's a bay window overlooking Columbus Avenue, photographs of the Beats on the walls, and, right there by the window, the Poet's Chair, a rocking chair that Lawrence Ferlinghetti himself placed in the store decades ago. Sit in it. Pick up a volume. The sign downstairs says to put your phone away and be present, and up here, you will. Founded in 1953 and designated a San Francisco landmark in 2001, City Lights is where this city decided that books and ideas and free speech were worth fighting for. The least you can do is sit down and read for a while.
A few more quiet spots from the thread that deserve a mention: the Lands End Trail, every single SFPL branch, Lafayette Park, Mt. Davidson, the memorial bench overlooking Glen Canyon near Christopher Park, and the Sunset Dunes at sunset. One person said "a sailboat." Another said "my house." Fair enough.
Thanks to Hunter Pence for asking the question, and to the SF locals who answered, including @josiehasthoughts, @djoneknite, @crazeedelicious, @dugw, @proopdog, @bigsnacksloudpacks, @jesshsinclair, @heymxjayp, and everyone else who shared their spots. Even the ones who refused to.
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