Dark and Rainy

Day 7
Neighborhoods Covered: Hayes Valley, Castro/Mission
Streets Completed: Landers, Harlow, Dehon, Sharon, Ramona, Rosemont, Clinton Park, Brosnan

By the time I headed out on my walk last evening, the sun that had earlier been making one last push from the west to crack through the cloud cover everywhere else was gone, and the rain had started again. But the air was milder than I thought it would be, and there was something calming about being out on foot at that time in the evening, when so much around me was happening in cars.

I took Laguna to Market, and crossed Market at Church to walk Landers, a little two-block street between 14th and 16th that will forever be associated with Shayne and Daryl, who lived there for a few years back when all of our lives converged so heavily. (Shayne and D, I miss you, and think of you often.) After Landers I turned onto 16th and did a few of the one-block streets that sprout off of it.

Here's the thing with these tiny dead-ends: there's no way to walk them without looking slightly odd, or slightly lost. It's not like there's any doubt that they're longer than they seem from the main road, or that perhaps there's a secret way out on the other end (with the possible exception of a few of those Corona Heights streets that suddenly spring into stairways, but we'll get to those later). No. It's clear all around that they offer no outlet and won't suddenly grow in length. So I walk down them purposefully, perhaps pausing at the far end to contemplate the vista (junior high school cafeteria! heavy machinery in the back of the PG&E substation! parking lot!) before turning back. Not that anyone is watching me (that I know of).

I did a decent handful of little streets, some of which ended abruptly and some of which fed through to something else--such as Clinton Park, which between Valencia and Guerrero turns a corner and becomes (wait for it) STEVENSON! I walked the final block of Stevenson. Now I just need to go back and fill in all of the random 200-yard stretches of it scattered south of Market.