This under-the-radar Bay Area downtown is stuck in the past (in all the right ways)
By Peter Hartlaub,Culture
Critic
Jan 29, 2026
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A bronze Native American statue sits in the heart of downtown Point Richmond.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
Sutro Baths hasn’t hosted swimmers in San Francisco since it
burned 60 years ago.
But as I attempt a backstroke at the Richmond Plunge, floating in salt water and looking up at a tressed ceiling similar
to the one in Adolph Sutro’s indoor engineering marvel, I feel like a time
traveler in swim trunks, like I’m living in one of those bygone Bay Area stories my grandparents used to tell me about.
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People swim laps at the historic Richmond Plunge pool, built in 1926.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
While much of the region aggressively
embraces the future, Point Richmond is taking its sweet time leaving the past. Chronicle columnist Margaret Patterson Doss wrote in 1968 that the community “sits on the Contra Costa (shore) like a little piece of yesterday that floated across the
bay and stranded itself when the tide went out.”
Generations later, that description still fits. Along with its 100-year-old indoor swimming pool, the town has a triangle-shaped
historic downtown and two early 1900s railroad crossings. The most modern-sounding thing I can say about Point Richmond is that the first ”Toy
Story” was made here.
But that’s part of the charm. This cheap, fun and surprising neighborhood is one of the most welcoming and least touristy destinations in the Bay.
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A dog stands outside of Kaliedoscope Coffee in Point Richmond, one of the small businesses that dot the neighborhood’s triangular downtown.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
Wedged between Interstate 580 and the San Francisco Bay, Point Richmond is a neighborhood of Richmond with its own
small downtown, a hill filled with houses, and a pair of tunnels that bore through the hillside, connecting the village to 295-acre Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline park. Drive north along the freeway toward the Richmond Bridge and the contrast is stark: warehouses
and refinery tanks to your right, the green, tree-lined beauty of Point Richmond’s Nicholl Knob (elevation 371 feet) to your left.
With a population under 5,000, Point Richmond is about one-twentieth the size of the whole city. But with the return
of the Richmond passenger ferry in 2019, which docks a couple miles away near Craneway Pavilion, the town is the most accessible it has been to San Franciscans since the last passenger ferry left the previous station in 1956.
Long before that, Point Richmond was once an island surrounded by water and marshes, on land owned by 1800s farmer
and real estate speculator John Nicholl. The southwest corner of his property dropped like a cliff into the San Francisco Bay, making it the perfect spot to end a late 1800s rail line being built from Bakersfield to the East Bay, with goods continuing by ferry
to China Basin.
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The
Ferry Point Tunnel, created by the Santa Fe Railway company, with a mural by artist John Wehrle.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
Santa Fe Railway bought the rights, bored a tunnel connecting Ferry Point to the downtown area, and a small town emerged.
Nicholl drilled for oil on the city side of the tunnel, dropping 1,200 feet of pipe, but hit nothing but water. So he donated the land. The Richmond Municipal Natatorium (now the Plunge) was finished in 1926, using some of Sutro’s methods to pump salt water
in from the San Francisco Bay.
I see little evidence of this history during my 2.2-mile bike ride from the San Francisco Bay Ferry station to Point
Richmond’s petite downtown. But after crossing tracks at Railroad and West Richmond avenues, I enter a triangular commercial district with theme-park-level charm
and cleanliness.
The Richmond Plunge is still the most dominant structure, with its grand “MUNICIPAL NATATORIUM” sign and tunnel entrance
next door, offering a peek at the familiar Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline. Selma Rowell, 84, is locking her bike
up next to mine, looking refreshed after her morning swim. She’s lived in Point Richmond since 1970.
“Why would I leave?” she says. “It’s a very nice small town and it has never changed. The people are all sweet and
wonderful, and you get to know them all.”
The facade of Richmond’s first firehouse and jail is seen along Park Place in Point Richmond.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
I get what she means as I walk down Park Place, one of the three streets that form the downtown perimeter. I pass
an early 1900s fire station and jail — now a law office — which still has bars inside from the old drunk tank.
Park Place Barbers sits along Park Place in in Point Richmond.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
Park Place Barbers, in a historic building of brick and tile, advertises an upcoming live jazz night at the shop;
I hear the bass lines of Charles Mingus playing on an old stereo before I peek inside. Nearby is Little Louie’s Cafe, a favorite of Pixar staff in the early 1990s when the fledgling studio was stationed nearby.
Next door is the Masquers Playhouse, a 90-seat theater that staged its first production in 1960. (I’m saddened to
learn the troupe’s musical version of Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” ended in December.) In the center of the triangle is a small park. A Native American statue at the triangle’s point is a resting spot for ambitious bicyclists in colorful jerseys
and jackets who ride through town on the 350-mile Bay Trail.
The tiny Point Richmond History Museum, established 1903, sits in downtown Point Richmond.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
On the wide end of the park is the fun-sized Point Richmond History Museum, which has the floor space of a Sprinter
van and has been here since 1903. Across the street, lines form at Maya Taqueria, its outdoor seating popular with the cyclists.
I pass Mom & Pop
Art Shop owner Kelly Nicolaisen, who is outside her vintage wonderland filled with photo art, posters, matchbooks and hats, many of which feature Point Richmond landmarks or slogans. She’s about to smash a small table, which she’ll make into more
art. The shop plans to close in April after a decade — Nicolaisen points out bargains everywhere — but she has nothing negative to say about Point Richmond.
“It’s very artsy, very community-based,” she said. “There are so many places where people can meet and get together.
I know everybody’s story in this town.”
I buy a Fillmore concert poster and two Point Richmond-themed greeting cards and head to the Plunge, where a drop-in
swim ranges from $4 to $8.75. There are lap swimmers, a child learning to dog paddle and a disabled adult being lowered into the pool by two helpers, with ample room for all in the natural-light-filled space. A mural on the far wall features the nearby shoreline,
filled with happy heron and geese.
The historic Hotel Mac in Point Richmond was built in 1911.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
I pivot from my plan to eat at guidebook
favorite Hotel Mac after Nicolaisen recommends Jin Ye, a tiny Chinese restaurant with an $11 lunch special that includes entree, rice, soup and a spring roll. Hungry from my swim, and suspicious of the 1990s pricing, I’m surprised to find it’s more
than enough.
Of all my excursions into under-the-radar Bay Area downtowns — we’re
up to nine! — Point Richmond is the one that came closest to 20th century prices. My round-trip ferry ride, swim, lunch and a visit to the Rosie the Riveter
WWII museum (admission is free) all come in under $30.
There’s so much more to see — the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline, more lush and green than
my last visit; whimsical fairy houses on Washington Avenue — but don’t have time to explore, so I bike back to the ferry with a few minutes to cruise into the
aforementioned museum. It’s just enough time to realize it’s worth its own special trip.
I’m happy on the other side of the bay. But occasionally I get enough of the Waymos, chlorine pools and buildings
four stories and higher. It’s nice to know throwback Point Richmond is just a $4.90 ferry ride away.
Jan 29, 2026
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