REVEL IN THE COMFORTABLE IN NONCONFORMITY OF SAN FRANCISCO.

Byline: Story by Eric Noland Travel Editor

SAN FRANCISCO - A troupe of belly dancers was working out along a bike path in Golden Gate Park, and it was clear some members prized girth over grace.

A mass poetry reading was being waged in Washington Square, a few blocks from where beat laureate Allen Ginsberg penned ``Howl'' a half-century ago.

In the Haight, 19-year-olds sported the hair and clothing styles of the Summer of Love, as if they had pored over their parents' album covers of Big Brother and the Holding Company to ascertain definitive hippie fashion sense.

Behind the right-field wall at PacBell Park, as we watched the Giants through a special knothole-gang fence, a fan leaped into the frigid waters of McCovey Cove - without a wet suit - to chase a foul ball.

San Francisco's eclectic spirit is alive and well here at the dawn of the 21st century, which is in some ways reassuring. Author Rand Richards, who wrote the outstanding ``Historic San Francisco,'' believes the city's laissez-faire sensibilities have deep roots: hospitable Indians, laid-back Californios, bawdy gold seekers, live-and-let-live Asians, iconoclastic beats, dropped-out hippies, tolerated vagrants.

As a result, you never know quite what you're going to find when you turn a corner in San Francisco, and that's much of the city's appeal.

To experience the essence of the city by the bay, however, you really have to get out and about, exploring distinctive neighborhoods, roaming through parks, sifting through the city's culture and history.

It's probably heresy to relate the following to a prospective visitor to San Francisco, but here it is anyway: If you're delving into the soul of the city, go nowhere near Fisherman's Wharf (other than to catch a ferry to Alcatraz). It's a crass shadow of its former life as the scruffy domain of crab fishermen. Today, stores crammed with tourist merchandise and stands hawking clam chowder in a bread bowl present a false, tacky environment in which no local would be caught dead.

Instead, leave your car in the hotel parking garage (or at home in L.A.) and immerse yourself in the city. On a recent four-day stay here, we got around by BART train, bus, cable car, taxi, streetcar, bike, boat and foot. Here are some of the experiences that await anyone with a spirit of exploration:

Out among 'em

OK, granted, the belly dancers were on hand for a special event in Golden Gate Park, a Sunday AIDS walk, but the sprawling expanse at the west edge of the city is nonetheless a hive of activity on weekends and a great place to spend a few hours.

You might encounter, as we did, dance lessons, lawn bowling, a blues band in concert, rental rowboats navigating Stow Lake, a glorious bed of dahlias at the Conservatory of Flowers and drummers beating out a pace for participants in an awareness walk of some kind (they seem to be held weekly).

One of the best ways to get around Golden Gate Park is by bike. Part of John F. Kennedy Drive, an east-west road through the park, is closed to vehicle traffic during the day on Sundays, and you can pedal about half the length of the park (1 1/2 miles or so) without having to dodge any SUVs. We had a 9-year-old in our group, and he reveled in this rambling ride.

Be sure to get a bike lock when you rent (Avenue Cyclery on Stanyan Street is a good choice), because many park pathways are off-limits to bikes. There might be places where you want to lock the thing up and wander off on foot.

Afterward, slip into the Haight, now becoming thoroughly gentrified (the case for many of San Francisco's once-ramshackle neighborhoods). Mix easily with the neo-freaks at the Cha Cha Cafe, where the Caribbean grub is superb.

Another of San Francisco's excellent open areas lies along the northern edge of the city. Crissy Field, a former World War I-era airfield that is part of Presidio National Park, has been wondrously transformed into the Golden Gate Promenade, a walking and biking path along the bay shore from the Marina District to Fort Point.

Native plants have been reintroduced among the sand dunes and tidal marshes, and interpretive signs provide information about Crissy Field's heritage (including the nugget that it was named for a guy who signed up for a transcontinental flying exhibition but crashed and died the first day out). But the best part of a visit here is the setting: the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island in view, the bay lapping at the shore, cool breezes raking the landscape.

Expendable shoe leather

Though San Francisco is a relatively compact city, its steep hills can quickly sap the strength of even the most intrepid walkers. That's where the public transportation comes in: Take it to an area you wish to explore and save your energy for the steep ascents in that neighborhood.

A terrific way to learn about the city's diverse regions is a City Guides walking tour, offered for free by the San Francisco Public Library (though an envelope is passed at the end for donations). There are more than 60 guided walks to choose from, though some are only offered seasonally. Subjects include Victorian San Francisco, the earthquake and fire of 1906, North Beach's literary heritage and the murals of the Mission District.

We opted for a 1 1/2-hour tour of Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower, and trailed after a knowledgeable volunteer guide, Gail Todd, as she led us down such San Francisco oddities as the Filbert Steps. Here the ``street'' is a boardwalk and staircase down a nearly vertical slope. Cottages built in the 19th century rise from precarious angles, and the stair steps traverse a serene garden of vines, shade plants and mature trees.

At Napier Lane, we were told we'd reached Filbert's midpoint - it's 130 steps up to Coit Tower, 130 steps down to Levi's Plaza. We took her word for it.

Telegraph Hill wasn't always this steep. It sloped gently to the bay to the east before entrepreneurs decided to gouge it out to generate ballast for sailing ships.

The tour took us past a number of 1850s and 1860s homes, some meticulously restored, others with peeling paint and front porches in danger of collapse at the lightest tread.

We also got a treat - a good look at a squadron of green parrots that patrols the east side of Telegraph Hill. They're escaped domestic pets that banded together to raid the wild bird feeders of the dwellings here.

City Guides has a Chinatown tour, but a better choice might be Shirley Fong-Torres' Wok Wiz walking tour. It provides a glimpse into the culture and folklore of San Francisco's Chinese community, with visits to Taoist and Buddhist temples, herb shops and several food purveyors.

``To be where little cable cars ...''

You can't visit San Francisco without taking a ride on one of these charming little wooden conveyances as they strain up and over the summits, the cable whirring beneath the street, brakes grinding, the bell clanging at the crossings.

They're not here just for the tourists; residents ride them, too, to avoid the withering climbs up Russian and Nob hills.

Most visitors line up at Fisherman's Wharf, at the foot of Hyde Street, for a ride south across the city to Market Street. As a result, the wait at both locations can be interminable.

For a much shorter wait, seek out the cars that cross San Francisco on an east-west axis along California Street (between Van Ness Avenue and the Embarcadero). Once you're aboard, grab a seat on one of the open-air wooden benches that faces out, or stand along one of the running boards. At $2 per ride, it provides a delightful perspective on the city.

The cable cars were first installed in the 1870s because horses were suffering so terribly lugging loads up the hills, according to Richards' book. The system was almost eliminated entirely in the 1940s, when it was widely felt that gas-powered buses had made cable cars obsolete, but a determined contingent of San Franciscans - this is a perpetually activist city - waged a successful fight to save them.

The cable cars were declared National Historic Landmarks in 1964, two years after Tony Bennett immortalized them in his signature ``I Left My Heart in San Francisco.''

Hangin' in North Beach

A sign in the City Lights bookstore reads, ``Welcome. Have a seat. Read a book.'' And you genuinely get the sense that no one would bother you if you sat down with a William S. Burroughs volume and read unhurriedly for an hour or two. The store stays open every day of the year until midnight, which is appropriate, because it is particularly popular with the city's night crawlers.

The upstairs poetry section is exhaustive and wildly diverse - Russian futurism, Latino political activism, postmodernist Urdu poetry from the Middle East. It's a legacy that has been nurtured since Lawrence Ferlinghetti co-founded the publishing house and store in the 1950s.

Across Columbus Avenue is another '50s time warp, Tosca Cafe. It's a dark bar with red-vinyl stools and Enrico Caruso and Maria Callas on the juke box (which, alas, was busted during our visit).

Mission statement

This is the kind of city where you might find the San Francisco Philharmonic playing Aaron Copland for free in Mission Dolores Park on a Sunday afternoon, as we did.

Afterward, as we straggled up Dolores Street with some of the musicians, we couldn't resist poking around in Mission Dolores, a 1791 adobe that is the oldest intact mission in the entire California chain.

Masses are still celebrated in a chapel that has 4-foot-thick walls and a roof held together by redwood timbers tied with rawhide strips. In a small side yard is a lovely cemetery, overgrown with cedars, roses and lavender, holding the remains of San Francisco's earliest civic leaders.

Inside a small museum is a photo taken right after the 1906 earthquake. In it, you can see that the original church, with its unreinforced walls of mud bricks, is still standing while the newer basilica next to it has been reduced to rubble.

How fitting: In a city with a long and checkered history of nonconformity, even the buildings stubbornly refuse to abide by the laws of probability.

Eric Noland, [phone]

eric.noland(at)dailynews.com

IF YOU GO

TRANSPORTATION: If you're flying into San Francisco or Oakland, don't bother renting a car (unless you plan to leave the city, for the Napa or Sonoma wine country, for example). This is a compact city, and traffic snarls up easily. The uninitiated driver might also be unnerved by the steep hills. Parking is expensive and can be difficult to find - and do you really want to try to parallel park on one of those streets with a 20-degree grade? BART, the city's subway/commuter rail system, now has a stop at San Francisco International Airport - on the Departures/Ticketing Level of the International Terminal Main Hall. It will whisk you right to downtown (the one-way fare to the Embarcadero stop is $4.70). BART is not a good option if you're heavily laden with luggage, as there is no place to store it in the train cars, but it's a snap if you're traveling light.

If you find a bargain fare to Oakland International Airport, the trip into San Francisco is still an easy one. In front of the terminal, look for the signs for the AirBART automated ticket machines. A $2 ticket will get you onto a shuttle bus for the 10-minute ride to the Coliseum station. You want a Blue Line train to Daly City or SFO, and the fare to the Embarcadero is $2.85. The entire trip from the airport curb to downtown required just 50 minutes.

Once in the city, you can pick up a Muni passport for durations of one day ($6), three days ($10) or seven days ($15). Purchase them on the cable cars or at the cable car turnaround stations. They're good for cable cars, buses and the classic streetcars that run along Market Street. Information: www.transitinfo.org.

WALKING TOURS:

--To survey the variety of free walking tours offered by City Guides, which is sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library, visit www.sfcityguides.org or call [phone].

--Shirley Fong-Torres' Wok Wiz walking tour of Chinatown is offered daily. Cost is $40 including a dim sum lunch. Tour only is $28. Information and reservations: [phone] or [phone]; www.wokwiz.com.

GOLDEN GATE PARK: This park is administered by the city government, and finding information about its activities on the Recreation and Parks Web page is unimaginably convoluted. Try this: First visit www.sfgov.org/site/recpark-index.asp. At this point, clicking on ``Golden Gate Park'' will get you only a map of the park. Instead, click on ``Activities Calendar'' in the left menu to find Golden Gate Park events grouped by month.

For bike rentals, Avenue Cyclery, at 756 Stanyan St. (southeastern corner of the park), is a good option. You can rent by either the hour ($5) or the day ($25), and the rate includes helmets and locks. The shop stocks plenty of bikes for youngsters. (Down the street, Golden Gate Cyclery couldn't accommodate the 9-year-old boy in our group). Avenue Cyclery: [phone].

CRISSY FIELD: Though it is part of the Golden Gate Recreation Area, Crissy Field has its own information line and Web site: [phone]; www.crissyfield.org.

MISSION DOLORES: 3321 16th St. Open daily from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults, $2 for children. [phone].

OFF THE SHELF: An excellent new guidebook to San Francisco, Michael Petrocelli's ``Off the Beaten Path'' ($12.95; Globe Pequot Press), crackles with insider tips and practical information. Another fine resource - especially if you can get your hands on it before your trip - is Rand Richards' ``Historic San Francisco'' ($16.95; Heritage House). It's a lively and informed account, and includes self-guided walking tour information for important buildings and features that are still standing. An old reliable for visiting the city is ``Access: San Francisco'' (HarperResource; $19.95), because its neighborhood-by-neighborhood structure will enable you to find an interesting place for coffee, lunch or a drink no matter what part of the city you've strayed into.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box, map

Photo:

(1 -- 2 -- color) San Francisco's signature Transamerica Pyramid is visible through greenery on a walking tour of Telegraph Hill, top. In Golden Gate Park, above, weekend visitors row lazily toward Rustic Bridge on Stow Lake.

(3 -- 4) Under the twin towers of the Basilica, a statue of Junipero Serra, father of the California missions, graces the garden of San Francisco's Mission Dolores, above. At left, a cable car - beloved by tourists and commuters alike - prepares to ascend California Street.

Eric Noland/Travel Editor

Box:

IF YOU GO (see text)

Map:

San Francisco

Jorge Irribarren/Staff Artist