Backwards

Franklin Street

Day 101
Neighborhoods Covered: Hayes Valley, Western Addition, Pacific Heights, Marina
Streets Completed: Gough, Franklin

I see more of Gough and Franklin streets--significant one-way south- and northbound thoroughfares, respectively--than I necessarily care to, leading as they do to places I want or need to be in the northern parts of the city and then back to my trusty if crumbling garage. They're often clogged with traffic, and Franklin is notorious for being a Street on Which There Always Seems to Be Some Damn Thing or Other in One or Both of the Curb Lanes. When I'm in my car, they hold very little mystery or allure.

I've also walked bits and pieces of both of them before, but when I set out heading toward the Bay--i.e., north--on Gough last Sunday, it occurred to me that I couldn't recall walking either street against traffic. For some reason, I'd always gone with the flow, at least for stretches of more than a few blocks. So when I turned myself around, everything changed.

I know it'll sound pat and overly simplistic to say that seeing Gough from the opposite direction, and then repeating that experiment on Franklin, was eye-opening and fascinating, but that's the truth. There was the usual pleasantly jarring effect of seeing on foot what I'm only ever used to seeing from a speeding car (in which I'm at the wheel and should really not be gazing at the scenery)--all much slower, all much more detailed--added to which was the tweak of seeing things normally unviewed by all but the back of my head.

So I saw the clutch of houses on Gough near Vallejo that still appeared to be fully decorated for Christmas: garland, wreaths on the doors, lights hung. (Hello, luvs, it's MAY.) I saw street art on Franklin that would be utterly invisible were I not on the sidewalk and not heading south. I saw minute details of buildings that I never knew existed, even though I pass them on a thrice-weekly basis.

And perhaps because it was Memorial Day weekend, with light- to nonexistent city traffic, or because I was sort of lost in my own world for a while, or because I was oddly focused on how the late afternoon light kept shifting between flat and grey and huge and golden--perhaps because of any of those things, or maybe because I was taking things backwards, it seemed for the tenure of my walk that there were almost no cars out. So for a while, with those distractions gone, two streets I know perhaps too well showed me things I never would've guessed.