West and Back

Haight Street at Steiner

Day 11
Neighborhoods Covered: Well, none
Streets Completed: See above

Yesterday saw me in Walnut Creek in the morning, then back to the city in the afternoon and straight to my client's apartment, with a paltry quarter-block of Jackson street covered. By the time I left at 6, I was so exhausted and so desirous of getting home that even taking a tiny detour to hit Bromley (off of Webster) was out of the question. So it was another day of walking to and from my garage, with little else in between.

I tried to make up for that today.

Day 12
Neighborhoods Covered: Lower Haight, Upper Haight, sliver of Hayes Valley
Streets Completed: Page, Belcher

The business cards Jenn ordered for me from 4x6 have been languishing at their pickup spot (a Mailboxes Etc.-type place on Haight and Masonic) for weeks now. Since it was a fairly spectacular day and I had the morning free, I decided I'd go fetch them.

I headed west on Page and stuck with it to the end, then walked one block south on Stanyan and headed back down Haight.

Here's the thing about Haight Street: it is, of course, one of San Francisco's most famous and iconic streets, and it's undoubtedly colorful and lively and all of that, but I really, wildly don't love it. I'm not trying to make some hackneyed pun there (I don't love Haight, yuk yuk yuk); it's just not a street I'm inclined to spend a lot of time on.

Granted, it's not as bad during the day as it is at night, when the crowd is an all-too-perfect blend of street kids and bar-going kids, and walking it today wasn't actively unpleasant. But still. It's grimy and often odoriferous, and the watered-down and oddly materialistic hippie thing tires me.

I accomplished the card-fetching goal, though, and even had the baffling but delightful experience of being in the store at the same time a trio of parents (viva San Francisco) were getting their six-day-old daughter's passport photo taken and application completed. I've never before seen a baby so tiny or so red. She was 14 inches long.

At Fillmore I went south toward Safeway (needing to replenish my TP supply before the one roll I had at home ran out), taking a detour down Belcher before hitting the behemoth. I love sweet little Belcher Street, which I used to walk down daily when I lived in the Castro and had to take the N to get to China Basin for work. I was happy to see that it's the same as I remembered it.

On my way home, laden with TP, I finished off my final block of Page Street (between Laguna and Octavia), making it the first actual 5+ block street I've finished. A few more blocks of Haight tomorrow and I can add that to the list, too.