I Left My Heart in San Francisco: A Map of Our Favorite Places

A few years ago, I found out that Golden Gate Park and I shared the same birthday— April 4. Although we’re separated by more than a century, the discovery that one of my favorite places in the city is a fellow Aries made so much sense: We’re both ambitious, a little unruly at the edges, and stubbornly committed to reinventing ourselves over and over again.

This year on Saturday, April 4, I hosted a pop-up Birthday Booth at the inaugural Community Streets Block Party and asked strangers and friends alike to answer one question: Where is your favorite place in San Francisco?

At first, I just wanted to use the prompt as a way to provoke my own sense of exploration and discover new places in the city to fall in love with. But after a few conversations, it became clear that this would be a fun little combination data visualization/community engagement project!

I got dozens of responses, and had some fun conversations with people about their favorite places in San Francisco— truly one of my favorite things to talk about with strangers. The vast majority of responses centered on parks: No surprise there, since San Francisco has one of the best urban park systems in the country; most residents live within a 10 minute walk of some kind of open space. It’s possible that the data was skewed by the prompt’s framing on Golden Gate Park, but I also believe that our parks hold a lot of positive memories and the essence of the city’s spirit of connection.

In the map above, responses are color coded according to the frequency they’re mentioned: Blue for unique responses, green for spaces that were mentioned twice, and red for 3+. There’s also additional details on some of the markers if you hover over them.