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Looking for diversity, well San Francisco has plenty of it, as well. Every ethnicity and preference group finds a home in San Francisco. There is certainly the mandatory of any large US city Chinatown, and a surprising Japan-town, home to probably as many Koreans as the Japanese. North Beach neighborhood is unmistakably Italian. And then there are the "Russians" more on them later... Non-standard sexual preferences are the norm in the Castro. Hippies are still chilling at Haight-Ashbury, the place where the entire movement began in the sixties. The clubby 20-somethingsdon't stray far from SoMa, just across Market St. from the plusher financial district with the adjacent Union Square.

For more information on San Francisco Bay Area points of interest, look at this list from the California Division of Tourism.

Now, about the "Russians"... An unusual thing about the Russian-speaking community of the San Francisco Bay Area is that there is more than one. And each one of these communities has little interaction with others.

Most prominent are the recent (mostly Jewish) Russian-speaking immigrants living along Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. Walking down Geary between 14th and 26th Avenues it is hard not to notice the similarities between this street and Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. Our own mini version of Odessa is less saturated and smaller than New York's, but then again San Francisco itself is like an apple seed when compared to the Big Apple.

It is not long before one notices the contrast between that and the oldest San Francisco Russian-speaking (Russian Orthodox) community. Geographically close, but worlds apart, these communities have nothing in common, but the language.

The third notable Russian speaking community is geographically dispersed and centered approximately 40 miles south of San Francisco in an area called the "Silicon Valley." Russian-speakers that belong to this group tend to be most affluent and very well educated. On the one hand, this group is the most diverse culturally and on the other very strictly characterized as mostly men in their 20s and 30s.

Some of the local groups have recently opened up their own websites on the internet. To learn more about the local Russian-speaking community, please visit our forums and then come visit us here in the Bay Area.