SF Mission: Coffee Country

Migrant Footsteps Audio Walk: San Francisco Mission Neighborhood


 

What’s in a cup of coffee?

On this walk, poet Jorge Argueta remembers his own journey to San Francisco as a Salvadoran refugee, exploring the dark secrets of the City’s coffee industry and a continuing fight to call the Mission “home.”

  • To get started, download the CalMigration App and this tour, grab your headphones, and meet us in Downtown Los Angeles. This tour starts opposite 25th Street and Balmy Alley.

  • For the best experience, fully charge your phone or tablet, bring headphones, and download the tour on wifi in advance.

    Augmented reality scenes appear throughout the tour. When prompted by the narrator, activate the scene by selecting the [Start AR] button on your screen.

    RESTROOMS

    • Restrooms are available inside Temos Cafe and Medicina Para Pesadillas bookstore, both locations we visit mid-way on the tour.

    TIMING & ACCESS

    • This audio portion of this tour lasts about 35 minutes. The distance traveled is approximately 0.4 miles, and is mostly flat (total elevation change 20ft). There are no steps up or down to enter landmarks.

    • This tour is best taken between 12pm and 5pm, when all the stops on the tour are open.

    • Consider allowing an additional 30 minutes to an hour to explore suggested stops, shops and landmarks along the way.

    • Audio transcripts of this tour with closed captions are available here.

    • This tour was created in February 2023 and edited in December 2023. While we make an effort to keep things current, you are walking through a living neighborhood and sometimes things change. Be curious, and embrace the unexpected.

  • Learn more about the history of San Francisco’s coffee industry and the Sanctuary City movement through our learning guide and lesson plans.

This tour is part of Migrant Footsteps, a series of free immersive audio walks developed by the California Migration Museum that break through the traditional museum walls to tell the living stories of immigration, one neighborhood at a time.

Get the App

Download the CalMigration app, select your tour and get started.

Don’t forget to fully charge your phone or tablet, and consider downloading the tour on wi-fi in advance.

Explore More Stories

  • Downtown LA: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

    60 MIN / BEGINS AT EL PUEBLO DE LOS ANGELES HISTORICAL MONUMENT

    Take a walk down bustling Olvera Street, “a Mexican Street of Yesterday in a City of Today,” and uncover the story of millions of Mexican Americans who were coerced into leaving Los Angeles in the 1930s and how this still resonates today.

  • SF Japantown: Returning to the "Harlem of the West"

    45 MIN / BEGINS AT STUART HALL HIGH SCHOOL, 1715 OCTAVIA STREET

    It’s 1945, and Japanese American families, who have just endured 3 years of incarceration as “enemy aliens,” are returning to San Francisco. In their absence, the neighborhood has transformed into the “Harlem of the West.” Can this new place feel like home again?

  • SF Castro: At Home in the Castro?

    55 MIN / BEGINS AT TWIN PEAKS TAVERN, 401 CASTRO STREET

    In the 1950s, Eureka Valley was a sleepy Irish Catholic enclave. Then an era of gay migration transformed this neighborhood into a queer homeland: a place with a global queer identity.

  • SF Chinatown: Look Up

    65 MIN / BEGINS OPPOSITE OLD CHINESE TELEPHONE EXCHANGE AT 754 WASHINGTON STREET

    When a disaster destroys Chinatown in 1906, San Francisco elites see an opportunity to erase a hated neighborhood for good. But its residents have other ideas. This is the story of how one Chinese-American businessman helped reinvent the idea of “Chinatown” to save his community.