Don't pretend you're too cool to gawk at the sea lions, who canoodle, belch and scratch their backsides on the docks of Pier 39. As many as 1300 come to laze in the sun, as they have since 1990, providing many photo ops from January to July.

Sinister, freckle-faced Laughing Sal has creeped out kiddies for over a hundred years at this wonderful vintage arcade museum that’s as fun to look at (for free) as play. If you splurge a few quarters you can play everything from start-your-own bar brawls in coin-operated Wild West saloons, peep at belly dancers or feed your inner Ms Pac Man.

Putting the cable in ‘cable car,’ this museum occupies a still-functioning cable-car barn, and shows off three 1870s cable cars as well as those famed cables that pull those cute open carriages stuffed with tourists up and over the hills.

Anton Refregier won the WPA’s largest commission to depict the history of Northern California in murals at the Rincon Annex Post Office, just as WWII erupted. Work resumed in 1945, finished in 1948, and was deemed ‘communist’ by McCarthyists in 1953. The murals are now a National Landmark.

Inside the mighty beaux-arts dome, the splendid rotunda of San Francisco City Hall has ringing acoustics – a worthwhile spot to sit and consider of triumph and tragedy that has occurred here, including Harvey Milk's 1978 assassination. There are public art exhibits in the basement, and free tours from the tour kiosk.

Everyone loves Oracle Park for its bay-front views during baseball season (April to October). If you can't get a ticket, you can watch for free from the archway along the waterfront promenade on the east side of the park.

Always free, this Parisian-styled café hosts a variety of events including live music and DJ sets several days a week.

When weather cooperates, the 1017-acre park of redwood, green meadows, and museums is a perfect setting to laze half a San Francisco day. Plus a lot is free, including weekly concerts and events like Hardly Strictly (an annual bluegrass festival) and Shakespeare in the Park. But better yet there are free lawn bowling lessons every Wednesday at noon.

The Wave Organ is a sound system of PVC tubes and concrete pipes capped with marble from an old cemetery built right into the tip of the Marina Boat Harbor jetty. Tones shift depending on waves, winds and tide - sounding alternately like spooky breathing on a phone to nervous humming of a dinnertime line chef.

You can bike across, but it’s just as fun – if you are dressed right – to walk across the world’s most beautiful bridge. It’s 1.7 miles across (it’s possible to catch a bus back – though some visitors just walk halfway across, take in the scene, and return). The walkway is on the eastern side – facing the bay, Alcatraz and the city – so it’s hard to get much of a Pacific view through the traffic. It’s not open to pedestrians 24 hours; check the website for opening hours.

Built in 1861 to protect the city from - get this - Confederate attacks that never came, Fort Point is now more famous as the spot where Kim Novak lept into the frigid waters of the bay in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It’s an ideal vantage point for views of the Golden Gate Bridge if you aren’t up to the walk across.

Near Corona Heights Park, a 520-foot summit near the Castro with superb views over the city, the Randall Museum is a free, family-ready place with live-animal exhibits and hands-on workshops.

The Mission's hot spot for trial by fire is on wee Clarion Alley, where street artworks are peed on or painted over in a jiff unless they deliver enough to last a little while. Nothing stays (art) gold here. Even Andrew Schoultz's mural of gentrifying elephants displacing scraggly birds - a local favorite - faded over time. Go see what's new.

Amoeba Music is a huge record/CD store made out of a former bowling alley on Haight Street. A music lover could spend hours there. Either troll the $1 bins for the glory of vinyl, or time it for the frequent free show set up in the corner.