Perched on a hillside above the gritty, funky streets of San Francisco’s Mission district, Bernal Heights feels a world removed from the city below. And that’s exactly the way the locals like it.

“Bernal isn’t the next neighbourhood in San Francisco; it’s the last neighbourhood in San Francisco,” says Reema Bahnasy, a public relations executive who moved there when she returned from a stint abroad in Singapore last year. “It’s almost like a secret hiding place.”