Best of the Bay 2024 Editors’ Pick: Blandina Farley
It's hard to miss tour guide Blandina Farley . Originally from New Jersey, she's lived in North Beach since the '70s, is known for her natural beauty and one-of-a-kind colorful outfits—a combination of factors that elicits smiles and compliments from just about everyone who catches her educational promenades around town.
With a flair for mixing patterns and fabrics honed as a fashion design student, Farley proves great style isn't about having a ton of expensive clothes—most of hers come from Goodwill, she says—or even, different looks. Her fits always are typically built around her wardrobe staples; baggy, parachute-style pants; a funky cropped leather or print jacket in a bright hue; sky-high neon yellow Fila sneakers; and her signature floppy hat (she owns several in the same style) adorned with flowers or other decorative touches.
Farley's always loved color and credits her parents for instilling an early appreciation for interesting clothes. Her father was a doctor whose office was in the family home. To put his young patients at ease, he often dressed in crazy outfits. Her mother also enjoyed dressing up.
"On Halloween, they used to fight over who got to answer the door—they were characters," she says. "My style is kind of whimsical. Life is so serious sometimes. It brings me such joy when people connect to my style and tell me it makes them happy."
Her tours of North Beach and Chinatown are just as fun and unique. And tasty, too. Unlike most local tour guides, she's actually lived much of the history she talks about.
"I've heard the music and met the poets and artists," she explains. "It's not just stuff I've read in a guidebook. I love sharing the feeling and the people, not only of the past, but also of North Beach today. There are still lots of super-interesting people who live here. I hope that after one of my tours, participants feel a part of the neighborhood in a way they wouldn't if they were walking around on their own."
Farley gives tours of Lower Nob Hill's Music City complex and its surrounding neighborhood. Her most recent project is a tour in collaboration with Club Fugazi's Dear San Francisco production, a show billed as "a 90-minute joy ride through our City by the Bay's busts and booms in a breathtaking aerial extravaganza." Farley's associated trek is designed to enhance the experience of the play's attendees by taking them deeper into the stories of some of the people mentioned onstage.
