At the Other End

If Walking San Francisco had a tree frog mascot, this would be it.

Day 61
Neighborhoods Covered: Hayes Valley, NoPa, USF
Streets Completed: Hayes, Fell

April has been a completely nutjob month in terms of work-related happenings, which means that, while I may in fact be earning back the money I've just forked over to the US Treasury, I feel like I barely have time to do things like eat and bathe, let alone get out and do decent chunks of walking--or any chunks of walking, for that matter, beyond those that take me to and from Muni and my garage.

But on Tuesday, though I probably could've (and should've) put the time to better use, I figured I'd end my great walk-less streak by finishing off Hayes and Fell streets, seeing as they're fairly convenient to my front door.

Because they're both so close to me, and, in fact, unavoidable in terms of getting to the car or the underground, I walk stretches of them every single solitary day. But almost never do I find myself on their western stretches (which, for my purposes, is essentially anything beyond Buchanan) on foot; in fact, until a few months ago, I hadn't been on the westernmost end of Hayes Street ever--not in a car, not on a bus, not on foot. I sort of forget that it's there.

All of which made walking that stretch fairly fascinating. Hayes starts at Market Street, goes through a weird and bland corridor of multi-lane chaos for a few blocks, narrows a bit to become the (delightfully or maddeningly, depending on your perspective) main drag through Hayes Valley, heads uphill toward Alamo Square Park, drops down into the recently invented neighborhood of NoPa (North of Panhandle), and eventually starts to sprout a few stores and cafes and laundromats once it crosses Masonic.

But those businesses are so different from their counterparts here on the eastern end of things: no fancy shoe stores, no sit-down restaurants, no modernist furniture meccas, no wine palace. Just a storefront music school crammed with VHS tapes, a science-themed expedition company (Tree Frog Treks, whose mascot you can see above clad in what appears to be part of a polyester leisure suit), a pizza place, a cafe, a gallery, a cleaners that evidently does not accept infants for laundering, and a few other spots. [Belatedly, an aside: must a leisure suit by definition be made of polyester? Is the no-wrinkle fabric what makes it suitable for non-work pursuits?]

Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is how (relatively) unbelievably quiet things were out west on Hayes. At a time when things are pretty clogged at this end, I could count on two hands the cars that passed me between Masonic and Stanyan.

But then I turned onto Fell, where, of course, that quiet dissipated. And I can report that the western end of this street is just as insane as the eastern stretch, though much, much lovelier, if only from Stanyan to, what, Baker, where it runs the length of the Golden Gate Park panhandle. It ceases to be quite so alluring once it hits Divisadero.

Still, there's something satisfying to it as it rises to a crest at Fillmore and then dips back into Hayes Valley. I shot my final photos for the evening at that crest and followed the hill down, against the streams of traffic, back to the work waiting for me at home.