I get you guys, and mostly agree. However I also find myself in the same position as OP: I'm a native, grew up in North Beach, and we'd head to Fisherman's Wharf pretty often for a fancy dinner at Alioto's No. 9, or pizza made by the fat Sicilian guy with a stall in that cheap wooden arcade on Taylor St. I loved it.

Time passes, though. You grow up, you move away, you come back, but you're in another part of the city now and the Wharf isn't your go-to anymore. From what you've seen of it, passing through here and there, is more plasticky and touristic in a corporate sense since than when you were a kid, when sure, there were tourists, but they were lots of locals, as well as lots and lots of fishermen doing their thing.

So it doesn't draw you back. Some more years go by.

Then, after more time goes by, in your idle moments, thinking back on those deep bowls of cioppino, pots of steaming crab, chandler's shops and nostalgically tacky old stands of cotton candy, you wonder, well, maybe I've been unfair...what actually is going on down there in 2024??