Maps of San Francisco

Where the Tourists Snap Photos in San Francisco

This one was created about a year ago by Eric Fisher, whose Flickr stream is full of interesting maps, many of them of San Francisco. The red dots are for photos taken by tourists, and the blue by locals. Yellow means the photo could have come from either a local or tourist. The map represents photos geotagged on Flickr.

Obviously, most tourists don’t seem to take many photos of San Francisco’s neighborhoods outside of downtown, Fisherman’s wharf, Sausalito (not an SF neighborhood), and the Golden Gate Bridge/Marina area.

I’m interested in the subtle distinctions on the map between locals and tourists, though: the locals cluster around Ocean Beach, while tourists tend to snap the Cliff House and Sutro baths, right up the street. Locals who Flickr tend to spend their time in the Mission, SOMA, Dogpatch, and the Inner Sunset—places that generally don’t have specific iconic objects to photograph, but come up big on local color. Locals tend to take the San Francisco-Oakland ferry, while tourists are more often found photographing to-and-from Alcatraz or Sausalito. Oakland’s photos are almost entirely local, while Berkeley’s are a mix of local and tourist, likely because of the university destination.