Walking San Francisco

How the Other Third Lives

2009-10-31T18:15:00.000-07:00

Pocket Park, Steiner and Eddy

Date: October 24, 2009
Neighborhoods Covered: Hayes Valley, Lower Haight, Western Addition, Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights, Laurel Heights
Streets Completed: Perine Place, Cherry, Jordan, Commonwealth

To a degree that I don't think is true in other cities, the neighborhoods in San Francisco weave into and out of each other with amazing (and sometimes alarming) ease, their boundaries so elastic as to all but disappear entirely in many cases.

For example, from the park pictured above, you can walk north on Steiner into the heart of several public housing developments, south on the same street toward Alamo Square (with its iconic Painted Ladies and hilltop park), east on Eddy into more public housing and, ultimately, the all-too-human heart of the Tenderloin, or west on same past beautifully maintained, no doubt pricey Victorian homes.

And so it is that on my walk last Saturday, I saw three totally different worlds in the course of a few hours and a few miles. From the hipster, urban, well-off-but-not-insane world of Hayes Valley, I passed through the Lower Haight (more of same, roughly speaking), the eastern side of Alamo Square (wealthier, but still not exorbitant in San Francisco terms), the slightly worse-for-the-wear stretches of public housing in the Western Addition, the getting-richer southern end of Pacific Heights, the no-holds-barred, you-can't-be-serious real estate explosion in Presidio and Laurel Heights, and then that sequence in reverse.

It was, in a word, surreal.

Granted, the Western Addition's cramped projects aren't exactly cheek-by-jowl with, say, the house at Jackson and Cherry that--no joke--takes up the majority of the block. There's a geographic divide between the wealthiest and the least well off, but it's not a huge one. I can't and won't say whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

At any rate, while I'm so used to living amidst the two lower thirds of the city's wealth spectrum that neither the public housing nor the "middle class" homes (I use that term very, very loosely: we're talking about SF, after all, where it's entirely possible for a 1-bedroom condo to run you $799,000), I was stunned by the houses in the collective Heights, and by the neighborhoods themselves.

If, like me, you're accustomed to the look and feel of things in the parts of San Francisco that don't have "Heights" in their names (Bernal being the one exception), it can be jarring to spend time in those lofty neighborhoods. Not only are the houses large (sometimes ostentatiously so: see above) and fancy, but they actually have things like yards, and walls that are not in contact with--or even in proximity to--those of their neighbors' homes. Furthermore, here in the heights there's an almost suburban vibe, with far fewer people on the sidewalks, much less noise, and far less visible activity.

And then there are the holiday decorations. During my tour, a week before October 31, the homes in Presidio and Laurel Heights were what I can only describe as lousy with Halloween decorations. Seriously. Every third house had at least a few token pumpkins or fake gravestones on the lawn, and many of them had enough festive gear to keep those weird Halloween pop-up storefronts in business. It was amusing at first, then slightly bizarre, and then back to amusing. But still a little bizarre. I'm all for holiday spirit; I'm just totally and completely unused to seeing it expressed with such vigor and in such profusion, at least not for this holiday.

Of course, as soon as I headed east on California Street, the decorations (and the giant homes, and the yards to decorate) all but completely fell away. Walking south on Pierce, I glimpsed a few construction paper pumpkins and the like taped to windows, but nothing more elaborate. Though I looked out for festive bits and pieces in Hayes Valley, I saw precisely none.

By the time I was in my own neighborhood once again, I felt like I'd just been jumping around wildly in space and time--from the heart of a city in 2009 to suburbs somewhere else entirely 20 years ago and then back to here and now.

I came home oddly tired.

On the Fort

2009-07-13T20:46:00.001-07:00

Fort Mason Chapel

Date: July 11, 2009
Neighborhoods Covered: North Point, Marina
Streets Completed: Shafter, Pope, Franklin, Franklin East, Franklin West, Quadrangle, Bay, Moulton

Faithful Walking San Francisco readers know that I regularly risk looking like I'm lost, vaguely crazy, or up to no good in order to walk streets that aren't necessarily easy to walk. I've stopped counting how many clearly dead-end, one-block streets I've walked, for example, though I have to say that, by this point, I feel like I've mastered a certain air of nonchalance when strolling such streets, as if such a thing might make the folks who see me pass think nothing of my presence. And, of course, I spend a good chunk of each walk on streets that don't even begin to offer me an excuse for being there: no houses, no open businesses, no clear route to somewhere logical.

So it was that I found myself on Saturday fairly literally walking circles through Fort Mason. My intention, which I thought would be easy, was to finish the last little bit of Franklin Street that juts into the fort. Truth be told, had I left it at that, the quest would in fact have been a pretty simple one: walk in, turn around near the flagpole, walk back out. But no.

While I'm here, I thought, I might as well explore a bit and check these other little streets off my list. Based on looking at my map, this seemed like a reasonable thing to do. (This seems to be developing into a theme these days, no?) What the map doesn't entirely get across is how weirdly intertwined these streets are, how they splinter off into echoes of themselves and then into other streets entirely. It's not quite Bernal Heights, but it's also not exactly a model of military precision.

Here I am, for example, having walked to the end of MacArthur (which, of course, is not actually the end, because it picks up again IN THE PRESIDIO, which is all the way across the Marina--seriously, U.S. Army, could you not come up with another war hero to honor with a street?), which leads me to Franklin West, versions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. I was stubborn enough to walk all of them, which meant passing twice the fellow picking bottles and cans out of the recycling bin behind the Conservation Corps building and passing three times the guy playing football with his kids on the green in the middle of the officers' housing circle. Three. Times. Don't mind me, sir. Nothing to see here.

My seemingly lunatic walking habits aside, though, Fort Mason was a sweet delight. It's one of those parts of San Francisco that feels like it could still be in the 1940s, save for the few signs of modernity (cars, ugly 60s-era block housing for enlisted men, a flag with 50 stars). It was also something of a mini-UN, at least when I was there. In McDowell hall, I saw folks congregating for what looked (based on their dress) like an Indian wedding. On the lawn outside the hostel, a gaggle of 18-to-20-somethings chattered away in French. In the community garden, old Chinese ladies smiled at me as I wandered through the rows shooting photos.

By the time I finally finished the last of my numerous laps to finish every last stretch of street on the fort, I was ready not to be walking anymore, but I had promised myself to finish Bay Street, with the bribe of a cupcake from That Takes the Cake on Union if I did. So I soldiered on through the Marina, around the Palace of Fine Arts, and eventually back, sloggily, across Lombard Street.

The cupcake was worth it, but by the time I finished it I was clearly done for the day, and it was with a weird flash of glee and a big sigh of relief that I boarded the 22 at Union and Steiner and let something other than my own two feet take me home.

Not My Valley

2009-07-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

Valley Street

Date: July 6, 2009
Neighborhoods Covered: Noe Valley, Mission (kinda)
Streets Completed: 28th Street, Valley

Sometimes ridiculous things bring me down. The other day, for example, I had dropped some stuff off at Scrap for a client and was driving back toward Bayshore when I passed a furniture outlet of some sort that displayed on the sidewalk out front a loveseat-and-chair set upholstered in a garish floral velour-esque fabric. Most people would simply drive past, think, "Eh, wouldn't want that in my house" (unless they did, in which case I'll just say that our tastes differ), and never think about it again. But not me. Nope, this living room set got me thinking about how there's so much ugly and cheap (and not the good kind of cheap, which is to say inexpensive but not bad) stuff in the world, how maybe someone would buy this terrible set because it was the only thing they could afford, how depressing it would be to live in a house with this furniture, and on and on. This conversation in my head lasted well onto Potrero, which is to say, entirely too long.

Anyway, I thought back to the ugly living room set as I was trudging up Valley Street the other day.

To be clear, Valley is actually a lovely street, as the photo above suggests, and nothing about it smacked of awful furniture. But the farther I got from Church Street, the more I thought, "Wow, I don't think I could live more than a few blocks away from a major street, especially on a hill, because, man, what's around here, anyway?" Cue the tumbleweeds.

Allow me to be the first to admit that this line of logic is jagged at best. In all of what is officially Noe Valley, I don't think it's possible to ever be more than, what, seven or eight blocks from either Church or 24th Street, so it's not like we're dealing with the Outer Sunset here. (Sorry, OS, but it's true.)

But at the same time, Noe Valley is steeply hilly enough that it's easy to feel that you're deep into somewhere other than San Francisco when, in fact, you're on, say, Valley and Castro. The fact that you can see downtown San Francisco glittering in the distance enhances (for me, at least), its not-entirely-city feel. And if I've realized anything about myself by now, it's that I'm a city girl, so the thought of living somewhere that doesn't necessarily feel like it's part of a metropolis kind of sets me on edge.

The flip side of this, of course, is that neither Valley nor 28th featured the hallmarks of many city (and particularly Hayes Valley) streets: no smeared dog poop, no sprinkles of broken glass from busted car windows, no visible grime, no ridiculous tags on things like mailboxes and garbage cans. They did feature plenty of charming houses, and flowers in bloom, and a calming quiet. I can see how they'd appeal to others.

Me, I'll stick with my sweet little urban alley where, for better or worse, it's impossible to feel like I'm anywhere but in the thick of things.

Slips and Tangles

2009-07-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Franconia Street

Date: July 4, 2009
Neighborhoods Covered: Mission, Bernal Heights
Streets Completed: Mistral, Treat, Franconia, Brewster, Macedonia, Wright, York

Here’s what I think happened: when, in the course of San Francisco’s development, it came time to lay out Bernal Heights, a bunch of city planners got together and got wasted. Soused. The sort of drunk that makes things that aren’t especially funny seem hilarious, and that seriously impairs logic and good judgment. And then they planned the streets.

Because how else can we explain the fact that streets like Brewster and Franconia begin and end multiple times? I’m not talking starts and stops and gaps in between; that’s true of many streets in the city (I’m looking at you, Stevenson). I mean they possess more than one “End: Brewster” sign and tangle around madly from start to finish. (Generally, streets begin with “000: Street Name” and terminate in “End: Street Name.” Just once.)

I had a map as I walked yesterday, but really, fat lot of good it did me. What took me into Bernal in the first place was my desire to finish Treat Avenue, which starts (ingloriously) in back of Best Buy and ends halfway up Bernal Hill. Accomplishing this required me to take a detour onto Folsom to cross Cesar Chavez, and then walk along Precita for a block or so. But wait: not the Precita I’d already walked, the Precita on the other side of Precita Park. For the record, I eventually finished this version of Precita, too, even though I am not officially required to walk both sides of a street. (If I were, I’d never, ever be done. Ever.) Because, hey, it was there, and it took me where I needed to go.

Anyway, I got Treat out of the way and then took a look at my map. I noticed a few small streets feeding off of Alabama a few blocks up and headed toward them. First block and a half of Mullen: all good. And then the Franconia steps appeared. A quick glance at the map suggested that I could walk up them, finish off Franconia fairly quickly, and return to where I’d started on Mullen.

In short, I was wrong.

The reality is that Franconia and its neighboring and intersecting streets splinter off in crazy and totally unpredictable ways, as if the drunken city planners decided their routes by tossing a bunch of broken Pick-up Sticks in the air and then tracing around them wherever they landed.

A while back, an astute reader, in response to my perplexion around Stevenson Street’s multiple starts and stops, noted that there was a good chance it was once an unbroken stretch of road, and that the development of the areas through which it runs could likely explain its now-fractured nature. But it seems that the same can’t really be true of the streets in Bernal, because geography gets in the way. It’s not possible, given the rises and falls of the hill, and the patches of forest in between, that, say, Franconia was ever one (even relatively) straight line that was broken up by the arrival of houses. So why maintain the charade of it being a single street? I’m mystified.

At any rate, I made it out of Bernal Heights eventually, and finished a small handful of streets in the process, then reveled in the straight shot that is York Street. (Of course, it’s a crazy tangle in Bernal, but smoothes itself out once it crosses Cesar Chavez.) Through the Mission, I walked to the whines and pops of fireworks, though it was still much too light to actually see them. By the time York ended at Mariposa, though, things went fairly quiet, so it was the strains of X’s “Fourth of July” on my iPod that led me home:

“Dry your tears and, baby, walk outside/It’s the Fourth of July.”

I See Dead People

2009-07-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Columbarium, Loraine Street

Date: May 16, 2009
Neighborhoods Covered: Hayes Valley, NoPa, Lone Mountain, Upper Haight, Lower Haight
Streets Completed: Grove, Parsons, Willard North, Edward, Almaden, Loraine, Rossi, Beaumont, Lone Mountain, Oak

One of the things I've enjoyed most about this whole insane venture is coming across parts of the city I not only haven't seen before, but in fact did not know existed. Westwood was a prime example of that, and I experienced a similar frisson of excitement when I came across the tiny streets of Lone Mountain and the shrine to dead people therein.

You may know that, due to its relatively minuscule size, and to the fact that land values are freakin' sky high, the deceased are no longer buried in San Francisco, but are rather interred in Colma, the for-all-intents-and-purposes necropolis just south of the city. (OK, I just exceeded my quota of big words for this post, so henceforth--dammit, I mean from now on--I'll attempt to stick to nothing more than two syllables.) The only visitable cemetary I know of within the City and County of San Francisco is the one in the Presidio, which is reserved for veterans and which, I believe, is full. (As always, you are encouraged not to take my word as the last one on this or any other matters of official San Francisco history. But in this case, I might be at least kind of right.)

Anyway, here I was tooling around Lone Mountain (not, evidently, to be confused with either the Inner Richmond, USF, or Laurel Heights) when I noticed a dome poking out from the end of one of the tiny, single-block streets. I assumed at first that said dome belonged to the Greek church I'd passed while doing the Terra Vista loop a while back, but no. It turned out to be the San Francisco Columbarium--which, it turns out, is a place for the ashes of those who choose to be cremated. Who knew? (Clearly I didn't.)

Though I didn't go inside either of the buidings on the premises, I did spend some time walking around outside, which left me feeling ever-so-slightly creeped out (because, hey, death is death) but mostly pretty peaceful. It's a nice spot, though there's some sort of large-scale construction happening behind it, so who knows how long that'll last. For now, though, it seems a much more preferable option, should you happen to kick in SF, than burial in Colma. No offense, Colma.

I left after a while and kept walking, past baseball games in the nearby park, past a baffling number of classic cars (not gathered in a car show-kind of way, just intermittently parked), up and down the staircases and hills that justify the neighborhood's name. By the time I finally dragged myself to Oak Street to head home, I was exhausted, and the slog up (and down, and up, &c) Oak was, if I may, a pain in the ass.

But still. I thought about the walk, thought about what I'd seen, and remembered why this craziness still seems like a good idea: because sometimes, when I least expect it, I find a columbarium.

Plus Ca Change

2009-07-04T18:23:00.000-07:00

Larkin and Broadway (-ish)

Day unknown (I have officially stopped counting; I do know the date, though: April 4, 2009)
Neighborhoods Covered: Civic Center, Tenderloin, Russian Hill, North Point, Polk Gulch
Streets Completed: Larkin, Polk

Preamble
Those of you with a keen sense of time by now have realized that my Quixotic plan to finish this Walking San Francisco project in a year became null and void approximately, oh, four months ago. There are big swaths of streets I've finished, but there are even bigger swaths I haven't even looked at on my map, let alone set foot on. So the walking continues.

And although I've been hideous about updating this blog for the past *cough cough cough* months, I have actually been walking during that time, though in random spurts. What appears below is the post I meant to put up, oh, 3 months ago. Following this one, I'll post another belated report (from June), and, finally, will get myself up to date by writing about today's walk. Thanks for sticking around.

April 4, 2009
Perhaps because it forms the heart of San Francisco’s Little Saigon, with more small stores and businesses in its southern reaches than its neighboring streets have, Larkin presents less of a Midnight of the Human Soul experience as it wends through Civic Center/the Tenderloin than do Polk Street, to its west, or Hyde, due east.

That’s not to say you’re unlikely to encounter the usual suspects (human and/or animal waste on sidewalks; staggering individuals, possibly dressed in a manner that allows for easy and rapid undressing; grime; &c), but, to Larkin’s credit, they’re slightly less abundant than you might otherwise expect.

As with so many of San Francisco’s streets, both Larkin and Polk hit the extremes of income and, if we might extrapolate, human happiness as they coast from one neighborhood to the next. One the one end, the ‘Loin, where unhappiness and things gone very, very wrong are often on display. On the other, Fisherman’s Wharf via Russian Hill, where you can almost smell the money in the air. (What you smell on the southern end is markedly NOT money.) Roundabouts Geary, things can go fairly rapidly in one direction or the other depending on, well, which direction you take.

My trip up Larkin and back down Polk was in sharp contrast to the last walk through the Tenderloin I did, which was, like the perennial 7th grade challenge, grosser than gross. This time around, things seemed fairly staid and normal. On Larkin, the most excitement I witnessed was a waitress literally running two blocks to hand back a sweatshirt a patron had just left in her restaurant. On Polk, I saw a line of tourists on Segways and mobs of Russian Hill dwellers spilling out of coffee shops and bars all along the street. In all, pretty tame stuff.

My only direct interaction with Polk Street’s seedier side was the young woman, clearly messed up on something, who took way, way too long deciding what kind of donut she wanted at Bob’s (for the record: my pick for best donut in San Francisco). When I finally reached the counter, the woman behind it sighed and said, “She’s not well.”

Luckily, and not surprisingly, the donut was worth the wait, and it made me happy enough that my return trip along lower Polk left me unfazed, standard ‘Loin miseries on display notwithstanding.

Back in the Saddle

2008-09-22T22:52:00.001-07:00

Kensington and Ulloa, the day going

Day ??? (I'll get back to you on this)
Neighborhoods Covered: Outer Richmond, Outer Sunset, West Portal
Streets Completed: Dorchester, Allston, Granville, Kensington, Claremont

Oh, Walking San Francisco. How I've neglected you. I'll spare you the excuses, both because I'm not entirely sure what they might be (too busy attempting to decipher boys? buried in work? burned out on writing and, why not, while we're at it, walking?) and because they don't ultimately matter all that much. What matters is that, save for a few random smatterings of streets, I've been a lax Walking San Franciscan, and that's not right.

So yesterday I gambled that the fog oozing through the central parts of the city would burn off near the ocean--or at the very least not get any thicker--and decided to stroll a bit of the Great Highway. It wound up being closer to a sprint than a gambol, as I had plans to go hang out with Mary for a few hours and didn't have a lot of time to spare in the interim, but I did manage to cover Fulton to Lawton and back again. Not too shabby for half an hour or so, especially taking into account my initial pit stop at the Beach Chalet.

I was delighted to find that the vest I wore was definite overkill, and that even with the wind coming off the ocean, it was warm and dry. A perfect beach day--or as perfect as they get here, given that, unless you happen to be drunk on youth and beer and the exhilaration of riding a cable car on wheels, you're probably not going to go swimming around these parts.

After I left Mary's later in the afternoon, I decided to walk some more, because the day was still unbelievably nice, and, from 33rd Avenue, the beach seemed like no more than a few blocks away. (And, indeed, heading west--and downhill--on Kirkham, it felt pretty close; the return/eastbound/uphill trip on Lawton was a slightly different story.)

Here's how the Outer Sunset can conspire against you (which is to say, me) on days like yesterday: the sun is so bright and perfect that it actually seems like a gigantic dollop of lemon yogurt, and, as 5 o'clock creeps up on you, the sky deepens just the subtlest bit to the blue of an unvisited hyperlink. Without an iPod singing in your ears, you can hear the ocean well before you reach it, can hear the gulls forming their posses above the dunes, can hear the rhythmic hum of skateboard wheels as neighborhood boys ride in huge, swooping arcs down the middle of the street, pressed on by the slope down to the water.

And in this almost-fantastical proto-Golden Hour, as you pass little beach cottages with sand dollars lined up on their porches and driftwood perched in their windowsills, you feel a tug back to your beachy youth and think, I could live out here. You ignore for the moment the relative dearth of stores, restaurants, non-residential establishments of any sort and just daydream for a while about having a surfer boyfriend and waking out here at the edge of the world every day with the sound of the Pacific in your ears.

But then you remember that this sunny idyll never lasts, and that life out here can be cold and dark and damp for much of the year. Can be and is. And so the OSu becomes like New York: a place you love to visit, and one that seems to be crawling with attractive men (surfers in the former case, cute Brooklyn hipsters in the latter), but not somewhere you'd really be happy to live.

So I walked back uphill, shedding bits of faulty-logic daydreams along the way. Back to the car, then to West Portal to fetch Indian food for dinner. Having to wait 45 minutes for my order was actually a good thing, as it gave me the chance to finish a small handful of the little streets that weave uphill through, for lack of a better description, the Mt. Davidson foothills. At Ulloa and Kensington I stood in the middle of the street for a few minutes and watched the sun set, thinking heavily about how quickly the end of the day is starting to come now. By the time I wended my way back to the restaurant, the sky had gone dark.

Not long after, I stood on the Israeli's front steps in Noe Valley--miles from the ocean, near the crest of a hill--and brushed sand from my toes, then shook out my socks and closed the door behind me.

NorthBeachChinatownPolkGulchNobHillRussianHill

2008-08-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

Grant Avenue

Day 143
Co-Walker: Monique
Neighborhoods Covered: Financial District, Jackson Square, North Beach, Chinatown, Union Square
Streets Completed: Columbus, Vandewater, Richard Henry Dana Place, Nobles, Wentworth, Newell

There was that house on Jackson Street. I can't remember who lived there first: DaveG? Dan? Shayne? D? They all passed through at one point, though I have it in my head that Dave was there longest--and at any rate, it's DaveG with whom I most strongly associate that place.

Otis and I still laugh about this: whenever anyone would ask Dave where he lived, his reply would vary depending on his mood, who was doing the asking, the day, the weather, and any number of other factors. Often, it was North Beach, and just as often Chinatown, both of which made a good amount of sense, as Jackson between Powell and Mason could be considered part of either (if perhaps leaning a bit more toward the latter).

But sometimes it would be Nob Hill--a bit of a stretch--or Russian Hill (ditto), and sometimes Polk Gulch, which seemed to be thrown in there just as some sort of ringer.

There was, of course, a kernel of truth to Dave's shifting neighborhood claims. In that part of the city, the lines between one 'hood and the next weave and blend and blur, sometimes to the point of non-existence. So within a handful of choices, he could more or less rightly claim to live wherever he felt like saying he lived.

I thought of this as Monique and I walked the length of Columbus while she was here on vacation. (Yes, this all happened more than a month ago; clearly, life has gotten in the way of all things WSF lately. But there you have it.)

Columbus starts (or ends, depending on your perspective) in the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid at Washington and ends, somewhat abruptly, at Beach Street, in the shadow of 10 billion tourists looking for Pier 39. It wouldn't be altogether inaccurate to say that Columbus is entirely in North Beach, as it is that neighborhood's main thoroughfare, but it also wouldn't be wrong to toss in more detail. At its southern end, it dips its toes into the Financial District, and comes within spitting distance of Jackson Square. As it meanders north, it sorta kinda maybe brushes Chinatown. And as it nearly butts up to the Bay, it officially sticks its nose into Fisherman's Wharf. Not quite DaveG's NorthBeachChinatownPolkGulchNobHillRussianHill, perhaps, but not too far off.

To a lesser degree, the same holds for Grant, which we took chunks of on the way back. But unlike Columbus, which maintains a fairly consistent commercial front for the duration, Grant meanders from strictly residential in Telegraph Hill to a blend of housing and commerce in North Beach to a riotous and insane all-out capitalist fiesta in (ironic, no?) Chinatown.

So it was that by the time we'd reached the Chinatown gates, I was 100% officially exhausted and done for the day: so many neighborhoods (and neighborhood-lets) in so few streets and so relatively little time. I was glad to head home and leave it all behind.

Back in the Day

2008-07-01T22:31:00.001-07:00

Where Berry Street ends (more or less)

Day 127
Neighborhoods Covered: Civic Center, Mission, South of Market, China Basin
Streets Completed: 8th Street, Henry Adams, Trainor, Converse, Townsend, King, Norfolk

In 1997, BrainTrust was located down on Townsend, close to South Park, the site of the new Giants stadium, an RV park, a random smattering of buildings, and not much else. I'd found Braintrust online before I left Boston (which is to say, when the Internet was hilariously graphics deficient and less hilariously slower than slow), and it seemed like the best temp agency I was likely to come across in SF, aimed as it was toward, essentially, overly educated kids the agency could place in the dot-coms springing up like non-native plants all over the Bay Area.

When I came to San Francisco to visit in March of 1997, I took BART in from Oakland (where Jenn was good enough to host me) for the interview I'd arranged with BT. I so clearly remember walking from the Montgomery station down to Townsend, and being amazed by how much longer that walk was than I'd expected it to be when I consulted my map. There was south of Market, and then there was South of Market. This was the latter.

Fast-forward a few years to 2000. That BrainTrust interview begat a temp position in the Customer Care department of WebTV, which, despite my best attempts to hold out, became a full-time job with Microsoft. We were in Palo Alto for a while, then in Mountain View, and then, when I'd managed to get myself onto Sloo's team, awesomeness happened: he discovered that another division of Microsoft had office space in the China Basin Landing building in the city, and he arranged for Josh, Geoff, Eric, and I to work there.

Suddenly my commute shrank from a few hours to however long it took the N to get me from the Castro to China Basin. (Granted, that trip sometimes felt like a few hours.) Suddenly we went from an office park in Mountain View to the thick of things in San Francisco. Due in large part to the Interwebby money pouring into the area, SoMa and China Basin started to change, and we could see those changes on a fairly literal daily basis. But still, the RV park remained, there smack between King and Townsend. So did the vast parking lot that spread out before our building, and the equally vast swaths of empty land along the slough that pokes in from the Bay and stretches under the 280 on-ramp.

Over the course of our tenure at China Basin Landing, the pace of change quickened considerably. The CalTrain station got an overhaul. The RV park--somewhat unsurprisingly--was shuttered, and the land sold. The parking lot we could see from our windows filled with construction equipment, and for what felt like an endless stretch of days, we did battle with the sound of pile drivers sending supports for new buildings deep into the ground. New restaurants and shops and parking lots sprang up around the ballpark. Eventually, the division with whom we shared office space was transferred to Redmond. After a few quiet, eerie months in which we were the only ones there, we decamped to One Market to mooch off of another division, and I lost my main reason for keeping up with happenings in China Basin.

It will sound pat and overly obvious to say that the neighborhood now bears almost no resemblance to itself circa 1997, or even circa 2000. One thing hasn't changed: Townsend still offers no sidewalks between 7th Street and 4th Street. Beyond that, there's so little that's the same.

I walked around China Basin recently in something of a stupor. I've seen it since 2002, of course, and have seen the buildings spring from the ground as if they were nothing more than bamboo. But actually exploring things on foot made me realize the radical extent of the differences between then and now. It may as well be a different place altogether.

This will surely sound retrograde, and I can't argue with the need to put this land to use for housing and office space and what have you, but I have to admit to missing the old China Basin, if just a bit. Because for all of the neighborhood's current slickness, for all the appeal of actually having the sort of amenities (grocery stores, banks, restaurants) that were always, always in short supply anywhere south of Market, and for the ability to be there on a Saturday afternoon and see other people around, there's something empty and hollow about the place now.

It's a slippery slope, this ruing old San Francisco, or even not-so-old San Francisco. So much of what's changed here is for the good. But there's a tug, I guess, or a particular sliver of sadness when a part of the city that holds such strong memories of your personal history changes almost beyond recognition, or seems almost to disappear before your eyes.

Seaward

2008-06-15T20:28:00.001-07:00

Irving Street

Day 122
Neighborhoods Covered: Outer Sunset
Streets Completed: None

Past a certain point, the Sunset stops feeling like it belongs in San Francisco. Nor does it really feel like a California beach town, as it's among the least likely to be sunny and clear, its name notwithstanding. The first time I ventured into the Outer Sunset beyond Lincoln Boulevard, I immediately thought, Wow, it's like the Jersey Shore in the off season. That impression has stayed with me, despite the fact that I've never actually been to the Jersey Shore.

From somewhere in the mid-teen Avenues (around 14th, maybe?), there's a slow but steady dip down toward Ocean Beach. Into the 30s, that dip gets more pronounced, and it's clear that you're walking downhill as you head west. It's also clear that the vast bulk of the city's commerce and services lie behind you, as there's precious little by way of retail once you cross Sunset Boulevard. There are a few rough-around-the-edges beach motels, a smattering of restaurants (including a sushi place I remember going to with Julie and Dana many years back, though why we ventured so far out for good but unremarkable sushi, I can't recall), a co-op grocery, a surf shop, and Java Beach--an institution, as far as I'm concerned). If you have greater needs, go elsewhere.

In part, it's this paucity of commerce that makes the neighborhood seem like a coastal town that's been drained, if temporarily, of its lifeblood. There are plenty of houses--in fact, they're as tightly packed as they are throughout the rest of the Sunset and the Richmond (although I must say that the O.S. is in the running for Greatest Number of Architectural Atrocities in the City and County of San Francisco)--but there always seems to be something oddly hushed about things out here. Come on a Sunday afternoon and you may hear the sounds of TVs escaping from a few windows, and may see a few people out on the streets, but you won't encounter much more. Come on a foggy, windy evening and you'll swear the whole neighborhood has gone empty.

Having lived my entire childhood in a beach town that went exceedingly quiet in winter, I can appreciate the beauty of that silence and solitude, but I also know the sense of desolation that can grow out of the quiet. As I walked today, I thought of the Jersey Shore (still, inexplicably), thought of Niantic, thought of how little I'd want to live out in the city's westernmost stretches, despite the possible preponderance of cute surfers. As much as I love the ocean, and would be a miserable git if I didn't live in relative proximity to the water, I don't think I could handle the sparseness or the silence.

So I took Irving to the Great Highway, walked a block south to Judah (past a sweet little mini-park bursting with beachy plants), and, not un-gladly, headed back toward parts livelier.

Peaks and a Valley

2008-06-09T22:54:00.000-07:00

Stanyan Street

Day 112
Neighborhoods Covered: a sliver of the Inner Sunset, Cole Valley, Upper Haight
Streets Completed: Carl, Grattan, Alma, Rivoli, Downey

On Thursday, after a quick trip to a client at the very beginning of Irving Street, I braved the insane wind and walked east. Carl Street I know well, but much of the rest of Cole Valley is uncharted territory. In fact, beyond Carl and Cole streets, it's sort of terra incongita. So I took myself down a few of the little slips of streets that weave between Stanyan and Belvedere to begin to remedy that.

Cole Valley sits beneath several tall things: Mount Sutro, Twin Peaks, and Buena Vista. If you cannot see Sutro Tower looming above you, chances are you're not actually in Cole Valley. And yet, and yet: from the little neighborhood park between Rivoli and Alma, I could see, to my surprise, a good deal of the city stretching out below. To the north I could pick out USF, Lone Mountain, and a swath of the Richmond; to the east, downtown. But how come? I couldn't recall having walked uphill to any significant degree, and, especially from the edge of the park, could almost feel Mt. Sutro hulking behind me. My sense of altitude was skewed, to say the least.

I suppose the city's Valleys--Cole, Hayes, Noe (am I forgetting one?)--share some similarities: a strong neighborhood-y feel, lots of babies in strollers, sweet little main drags. But somehow, perhaps by dint of being nestled between hills high enough to actually make it feel like a valley, Cole Valley seems different. Quieter, perhaps. Cozier. Greener.

Leaving Cole Street for another day, I finished off Carl and took Stanyan a few blocks to Waller in order to complete the western stretch of the street. I veered off at one point onto Downey, on which I was conscious of going uphill--and then back down again. By the time I hit Waller and Scott, I was ready to hop on the 71, so oddly tired and draggy was I. But although I actually managed to pass a bus stop at the same time a bus was arriving, I goaded myself on (because, really, it's a matter of blocks), and walked my weary self home to my own valley.

Backwards

2008-05-31T21:44:00.000-07:00

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.

Other Worlds

2008-05-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

Monsieur Squat and Gobble, West Portal

Day 87
Co-Walker: Katherine
Neighborhoods Covered: West Portal, St. Francis Wood
Streets Completed: West Portal, Ardenwood, Avon Way, Santa Ana, San Benito

So I've decided: San Francisco should have boroughs.

I have no political or logistical reasoning behind this, and I fully admit having no idea quite how boroughs in other metropolitan areas function, exactly. (Does a New York City Borough President = a San Francisco Supervisor, for example? Hell if I know.) But think about it: though everyone might acknowledge that, sure, technically Staten Island and Manhattan are part of the same city, it would be really hard to mistake one for the other, would it not? I think the same holds here.

Take West Portal/St. Francis Wood, for example. Though you can get there from, say, the Castro or the Inner Sunset in a matter of minutes, there's no question on your arrival that you're somewhere else entirely. Katherine and I experienced this anew on Sunday: though we'd both been out in those parts many times before, we were reminded as we traipsed around just how different the neighborhoods feel from so many other parts of the city. So different, in fact, that they may as well be in another city entirely--or at least another borough.

In St. Francis Wood, for example, there are actually roundabouts (one of which is called The Circle, capital T capital C) with fountains at their centers. Fountains! There are also pillars marking the start of the neighborhood, tree-lined streets (yes, there are trees on other streets in the city, but these are...different, somehow), houses with indoor pools, and approximately 45,000 different architectural styles. (No stuffy and overly restrictive enclave, this! You want to do Spanish Colonial crossed with Tudor, you go right ahead.) It all feels totally distinct even from other wealthy neighborhoods; I don't think even Pacific Heights can claim to sport fountains.

Of course, if St. Francis Wood isn't to your liking, you need only go a half-mile in pretty much any direction to find yourself in another neighborhood entirely, and one with a completely different feel. Because here in San Francisco, we're like the World Showcase at Epcot Center: dozens of different lands cheek-by-jowl, yet somehow all one.

200, Baby!

2008-05-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

Terra Vista

Day 85
Neighborhoods Covered: Western Addition, NoPa, USF
Streets Completed: Atalaya, Hemway, Loyola, Temescal, Chabot, Kittredge, Roselyn, Tamalpais, Annapolis, Nido, Vega, Terra Vista, Arbol, Encanto, Barcelona, Seymour

In my very earliest days in San Francisco, my friend Becca, a student at USF at the time, took me up to the school's Lone Mountain campus to show me the view from the top of the hill. Eleven years later, give or take a month, I climbed Lone Mountain again, this time in the middle of walking the streets that thread around the university.

From the top of the staircase, on a clear day (which Friday was) you can see a broad swath of the city's middle, dotted with landmarks (Sutro Tower, the spires of the USF cathedral, Golden Gate Park). I stood for a while looking at this vista and, after a few tries, gave up on trying to frame a photo of it. I'll let the pictures Becca and I took back in 1997 hold that view.

(A pause here: although the months following my arrival in SF were by no means halcyon, and there's a lot in them I don't miss, it's hard not to be struck by the occasional pang of longing for a time when everything about this place was new and fascinating and open to exploration in a way it could no longer be as I got to know the city better. There's so much I discover every time I walk somewhere now, but the tone and timbre of those discoveries are different, in hard-to-describe ways, from the experience of, say, seeing Ocean Beach for the first time. It almost feels like a romance: no matter how much, how profoundly, and how durably you may love someone, there's a bittersweetness to the fact that the particular headiness of your early days together can only last so long.)

I came down from Lone Mountain and did a gentle back-and-forth on the adorable block-long (though--hallelujah!--open-ended) streets staggered between Golden Gate and Turk, then headed slightly east to explore the egg-shaped neighborhood between Turk and O'Farrell and Masonic and Broderick.

It was here, as I marveled at how different in style this clutch of houses were from those I'd just seen steps away from USF, and at the crazily banked back (or was it front?) yards of the homes along the perimeter of the neighborhood, and at the loveliness of the geometric pastels of the architecture against a wildly blue sky--it was here that I finished my 200th street. Terra Vista, congratulations on that honor. (And, yet again, I am consciously avoiding any tabulations of the number of streets that remain.)

Fits and Starts

2008-05-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

Day 80
Neighborhoods Covered: Marina
Streets Completed: Prado, Casa, Rico, Retiro, Avila, Toledo, Mallorca, Cervantes, Alhambra, Capra

When it comes to San Francisco neighborhoods on opposite ends of the spectrum, I believe Bernal Heights and the Marina would make a lovely Exhibit A. While Bernal is one giant uphill (scroll down a bit to read my previous post if you don't believe me; those words are the rock-solid truth, I tell you!), the Marina could not be flatter. There's just no noticeable incline or decline anywhere north of Lombard. The neighborhood defines flat. And on Sunday afternoon, that was totally fine by me, as my willingness to tackle hills did not exist.

In Bernal, you're unlikely to find much by way of high fashion; when I showed up to a client's there dressed in black pants (not slacks, pants), she jokingly told me I was way overdressed for the neighborhood. In the Marina, au contraire: while I wasn't slitheringly hideous, I felt like I stood out for being so lackadaisical when it came to my habille.

And while it's possibly a gross oversimplification to say so, I'll do it anyway: whereas Bernal is probably among the leftiest of the lefty, the Marina is one of the neighborhoods that could likely be dubbed Home to Republicans.

But if there were Republicans out and about on Sunday afternoon (and I'll bet there were), they left me free to wander the labyrinth--it is a labyrinth, and a particularly insane one at that--of Spanish-themed (see above), sherbet-colored, sun-splashed streets that make up this neighborhood that could not be closer to the Bay if it tried (except in the event of an earthquake, in which case the landfill on which it was built could give way, or so we're told). Midway through my stroll, I stopped by Kara's Cupcakes for a Sweet Vanilla to speed my steps, and ate it slowly as I retraced my route a bit to hit a few of the streets that begin and end at random points along the neighboring calles. (Hey, when in pseudo-Spain....)

After finishing Capra, I'd had my fill of the Marina for the day, and my feet were starting to hurt, so I headed back to my car. And although, as I sat there and consulted NFT, I considered driving west a few blocks and doing some of the small streets that border the Palace of Fine Arts, ultimately I decided against it. So it was up the crazy steep hill that is Gough Street, then down the other side, back to my Valley, where almost no one appeared to have just come from the gym and the Bay was nowhere to be seen.

Uphill Both Ways

2008-04-29T22:42:00.000-07:00

Bradford Street

Day 71
Neighborhoods Covered: Bernal Heights
Streets Completed: Nevada, Prentiss

I didn't pick the hottest day of the year to traipse around Bernal Heights--that would've been Sunday rather than Friday--but it was damn close. And while you (if you are anything like me) might think of Bernal as a neighborhood with some gently sloping hills and one big crest with a radio (TV?) tower rising out of the top, allow me to correct you (and myself): it's all uphill, in every possible direction.

What I thought would be a simple walk in the sliver of time I had before a client meeting wound up feeling like a hike to the base camp of Mt. Everest. SO MUCH UPHILL. Needless to say, I was sweaty and gross by the time I was done--due in part to my overzealous layering before leaving home--though I'd like to think I managed to air out sufficiently before I reached my client's doorstep. To her credit, even if I did smell, she didn't complain.

One thing I noticed while walking constantly uphill is that Bernal is exploding with renovations and development. It's literally impossible to go a block on many streets without seeing at least one house being redone, and sometimes it's several. I also passed several workers doing some sort of sidewalk repair/creation/grading, including the fellow at the bottom of the steps leading down from the topmost block of Nevada Street (fine, fine: there was a bit of downhill) who cheerfully asked me to step around the concrete he'd just poured and told me that if I came back the following day, the sidewalk would be all ready for me. It all makes me wonder what's happened out in this neighborhood to spur such a fiesta of change and renewal.

I have much more of Bernal to do (and several people who've volunteered to do it with me; Scott and Dana, you're on the hook), but I've made a solemn vow that I'll wait for a crappy, overcast day to finish off the rest of the damn hills, leaving about six or seven blocks of Cortland to stroll when it's sunny.

Bayward

2008-04-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

Dinghies near the Aquatic Park

Day 66
Neighborhoods Covered: Civic Center, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Fisherman's Wharf
Streets Completed: Van Ness

For much of its length, Van Ness is a markedly unexciting street. Pass Symphony Hall, City Hall, and the opera house down around Grove, head north, and watch as you slowly ascend (at a gentle grade) into boredom.

This is not to say that there's not a lot happening here. It is, after all, technically a freeway (Highway 101), and it has plenty of apartment buildings (and more going up all the time), stores, restaurants, hotels...even a few fancy-pants car dealerships. But perhaps because it's so wide and so busy, all of that kind of blends together into blah.

Stay with it past Lombard, though, where much of the traffic heads toward the Golden Gate bridge (and some toward the Not-Really-Crookedest Street in the City) and it livens up considerably. Not so much in terms of surroundings, though there's a stretch around Bay and Francisco that looks like it's been plucked straight out of Paris or Milan, so boulevard-ish is it; rather, it gets better because of what's ahead.

And what's ahead is the Aquatic Park, the municipal pier, and, beyond, the Bay, Alcatraz, Angel Island, and the hills of Marin. On clear days (like Sunday was), it's a pretty stellar sight.

I walked Van Ness to its very, very end--not North Point, not Beach, but the very foot of the pier--and then kept going onto that pier, which I'm really surprised is open, considering how decrepit it is: actual chunks of the wall have totally worn away, leaving exposed rebar and a clear view to the water beyond. But there it was, so there I walked, past people fishing and families picnicking, all of us being battered by the wind.

I didn't linger, both because I was getting tired of attempting to keep my hair from blowing straight up from my head and, more importantly, because I'd gotten the idea to go to the Ghirardelli store for a free chocolate square and was thus losing the ability to focus on anything else. I did linger a bit near the beach on the edge of the Aquatic Park, marveling at the fact that there were people actually swimming there (some of them without wetsuits--how and why, people??), but then was on my way.

I did the quick Ghirardelli walk-through (free square: chocolate and peanut butter--totally delicious) and then took North Point back to Van Ness, where I walked a few blocks and then got on the 47, which took me back south, and back to the bland.

At the Other End

2008-04-19T00:17:00.000-07:00

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.

Cracked out

2008-04-10T20:57:00.001-07:00

Krims Krams Palace of Fine Junk, Turk Street

Day 52
Neighborhoods Covered: Western Addition, Civic Center, Tenderloin
Streets Completed: Dodge Place, Olive, Myrtle, Hemlock, Ophir, Trader Vic Alley, Cosmo, Shannon, Isadora Duncan (Adelaide), Hobart, Derby, Elm

The Tenderloin may not be the most hideous neighborhood in the city (What is? Check back in December.), but it's definitely up there on the list. Though there are some lovely old buildings, a good smattering of mini parks, good cheap restaurants and dive bars, and several places to catch live music or theater, there are also many, many examples of what happens if you throw your life away and don't do much (if anything) to try and retrieve it.

On Sunday, I headed out from home and did a weaving back-and-forth on the short east-west streets running roughly between Van Ness and Larkin, then headed into the 'Loin. Although the parting of the clouds and the sudden, bright arrival of the sun made for some warmer strolling and some striking photos, the improved weather did nothing to help the neighborhood as a whole. It was still deeply, seriously grungy and overwhelmingly redolent of urine.

Perhaps because it was Sunday afternoon, I passed several families with small children as I was out and about, often right before I passed (or stepped around) folks weaving down the sidewalk or sprawled out on same, incoherent and messed up on something. At the corner of Hyde and Turk, I passed a woman and a man sharing hits off a crack pipe literally moments before I nearly walked into a couple pushing a stroller and leading two slightly older kids by the hand--and that just depressed me.

This might be a borderline Republican thing to say, but I have such limited sympathy for the inhabitants of the 'Loin who cause and then wallow in their own misery, and I feel so much for the people who make their homes in this neighborhood because, by and large and like it or not, it's where they can afford to live. There are complexities and subtleties to addiction such as it's manifest on these streets, and I don't dismiss them easily. But still, it's so incredibly frustrating and sad to see the polarities of existence in this grid of city blocks.

Eleven years in the city have shown me many things, and I've long been inured to most of them. On Sunday, though, long after I'd walked home and moved onto other things, the image of those two groups at Hyde and Turk stuck with me. I hate to think what those parents have to teach their kids not to see.

Back to the Beginning

2008-04-06T22:52:00.001-07:00

Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden, Golden Gate Park

Day 48
Co-Walker: Jee
Neighborhoods Covered: Outer Richmond
Streets Completed: None, though we were one measly block away from knocking off Point Lobos

Last Wednesday I drove way, way, way out into the Richmond (as in 44th Avenue and Point Lobos) to walk and talk with my friend Jee. It had started out as an overcast and chilly afternoon, but by the time we reached the Great Highway, both of us had stripped off our coats and were wishing for sunglasses. That didn't last long--the wind picked up again a while later, and the sky started to cover over--but it was pleasant while it did.

Being out here again sent a few pangs knocking around inside me, because it was here at the western edge of the city, here on streets that I'd never before set foot on, here with my (then-) boyfriend at my side, that the idea for Walking San Francisco was born. I could've imagined at the time (and did) that I would actually adopt the cockamamie plan that was brewing in my head as we walked east from Sutro Heights in search of the pizza restaurant we never found, that I would indeed hoof it all over the city. What I couldn't have imagined back on that brilliant fall day (and, in fact, did not) was that with one brief and shining exception, that boy would opt himself out of my walking project, among other things.

So it was weird to be out at the edge of the world telling Jee the whole breakup story while simultaneously juggling memories of the pre-breakup world: that time at the Cliff House, that time at Sutro Baths, all of those sweet photos from Land's End....

But, of course, we don't live in the world of Memento, and I'm not relegated solely to returning to those memories I already have; I also get to collect new ones. So there's the nascent memory of Jee's hilarious and delightfully Jee-esque response to my claim that sometime soon I'll hoist myself back into the dating pool (a response that's unprintable here). There's the mental image of the bottom button of her jacket undone over her swollen belly. (Another boy!) There's the sweet thought of the Queen Wil garden explosive with tulips--a limited time offer.

And, as always, there's the sense of calmness and steadying I got--that I always get--as I looked out over Ocean Beach, past the surfers poking around in the waves, out to the unbreaking, unchanging line of the Pacific.

In the Land of Jesus and Anthropomorphic Foodstuffs

2008-04-02T21:56:00.001-07:00

Royal Baking Company, Mission Street

Day 47
Neighborhoods Covered: Excelsior
Streets Completed: Baywood, Bannock, Gloria, Amazon, Italy, France

What are we San Franciscans referring to when we describe a location as being "way, way the hell out there"? We may well be referring to the Excelsior.

Along with Visitacion Valley and Park Merced, the Excelsior is as far south as you can go and still be in San Francisco. In fact, walk far enough on a few streets and you'll seamlessly stroll into Daly City--and unless you're paying extraordinarily close attention and/or very carefully studying a map, you won't know it.

As it happens, I was paying extraordinarily close attention and studying a map, so I managed to keep myself on the SF side of things (an effort abetted by the fact that I walked mainly east and north). From the Balboa Park BART station, I headed down a markedly unbeauteous stretch of Geneva (with a few quick detours down one-way streets and back) until I hit the European Union: a passel of streets named for countries and cities located across the pond. Well, except for Amazon, one of a handful of streets given South American place names. Why so few? I have no idea. (But I bet Eric Fischer does. Eric is also undertaking to walk every street in SF, and as you'll read on his blog and in the comments he's left here, he actually makes serious attempts to tie in facts about things like city history and urban planning, which I'm much too lazy to do.)

Anyway, I did a few residential streets (Amazon, Italy, France) and then took Mission north, intending to walk only a few blocks and then hop on a bus. But then I just kept walking, and by the time I finally gave in and hobbled onto a 49, I was essentially at the tail end of Bernal Heights.

An aside here: the buses along this stretch of Mission were, at least while I was there to see them, amazingly punctual and frequent. I would estimate that either a 14 or a 49 (two of the major routes that run from this end of the city to downtown/Fisherman's Wharf, respectively) passed me every 4 or 5 minutes. This never seems to be the case the closer they get toward the city center: they thin out markedly. I can understand the forced slowing as Mission Street gets significantly more crowded and difficult to maneuver above Randall, but it's almost like half of the buses that start out on these routes give up halfway through. Yet another Muni mystery.

ANYWAY, allow me to summarize the parts of the Excelsior I saw:

Jesus. Lots and lots of Jesus. Also some Buddhists (or at least supplies for them).
Several signs involving anthropomorphic (and possibly cannibalistic) foods.
Many, many, many bars.
Clear views into both the exotic hinterlands of Daly City and downtown San Francisco.
A pervasive fried chicken scent radiating several blocks in seemingly every direction from the Popeye's at Geneva and Mission.

I can't say I was as smitten with this neighborhood as I was with Westwood, but it seemed like a sweet place, with kids playing baseball in the park and houses with miniature lawns and an odd number of 1950s Chevy pick-ups. I'll be back: I have many more cities and countries to go. I may even dip a toe south of the border into DC.

O Saisons, O Chateaux

2008-03-31T22:05:00.000-07:00

Montecito and Northwood, looking southwest

Day 44
Neighborhoods Covered: Glen Park, Sunnyside, Westwood, Ingleside, and a slice of the 'Loin
Streets Completed: Montecito, Eastwood, Westwood, Northwood, Southwood, Greenwood, Wildwood, (wait for it...) Homewood, Pizarro, San Ramon

South of the Mission/Glen Park/Bernal Heights and east of the Sunset, San Francisco becomes an utter mystery to me. The city goes on quite a bit farther south from this unofficial line of demarcation, but I couldn't really begin to tell you what's there, other than a few landmarks like City College and Monster Park (formerly 3-Com Park, formerly Candlestick Park, now perhaps the only NFL stadium that sounds like it's actually some sort of highly specific Disneyland).

There are no doubt hundreds of San Franciscans who live in the southernmost part of the city rolling their eyes at that last paragraph and wishing to remind people like me that SF doesn't end where 280 begins. All very valid: our lovely city is more than the Financial District and places tourists would actually go. So on Saturday afternoon I took BART to Glen Park and pointed myself south.

My plan was to take Monterey down to the foot of Mount Davidson, head briefly west, and then pop north again on Joost. The first part of that plan came to pass, somewhat unexcitingly, but then I was drawn astray.

But first, a few notes on Monterey Boulevard.

Monterey cuts through several mini neighborhoods, starting in Glen Park, winding through the totally inaptly named Sunnyside (sorry, but naming a region of SF Sunnyside pretty much guarantees that it'll be socked in by fog for most of the year) and down to what may or may not officially be considered Westwood (slash St. Francis Wood Jr.). It is not, I'm sorry to say, an especially lovely street, though it's a bit more interesting than you might think. And when I say "interesting," I mean it in both the sincere sense and in the "I really want to call [whatever] hideous/offensive/painfully ugly/beyond description, but I shall exercise restraint and instead call it interesting" sense. As in, you know, "My, what an...INTERESTING sweater." That kind of interesting.

Anyway, Monterey has your run-of-the-mill interesting, largely in the form of the Sunnyside Conservatory, which looks like it was once really lovely and is now vaguely spooky and fascinating for being a bit ramshackle, utterly devoid of windows, and run riot with plants and trees. It's up a few steps from the road, and is the sort of thing you would never see were you driving past (unless you happened to be intently looking at the side of the street the whole time, in which case you should not be driving, or at least not driving in front of me). According to the placard near the front gate, the Conservatory is the beneficiary of some Parks Department bond funds and is scheduled for a fix-up this year. I hope--likely in vain--that they leave the tree bursting through the back windows.

The arch "interesting" aspect of Monterey Boulevard is its residential architecture, which is, um, something else. There are, to be fair, many buildings that are fairly pleasant, if unremarkable, and there are plenty of boring apartments that were clearly products of the 70s. And then there are the hybrids: older buildings that are quite nice if you don't look at all of the stories at the same time, because taking in the whole enchilada means you'll see what looks like a normal home on the top two floors being attacked by some sort of circa-1983 "embellishment" (I use the term loosely) on the ground floor, or vice versa. You'd almost think it had been an accident if it didn't keep happening. Note to building owners here: Edwardian and Miami Vice do not play well together.

It was while contemplating this collective architectural mess that I came to the intersection of Monterey and Montecito. Due quite possibly to laziness--Montecito went downhill, where anything toward Mt. Davidson would go, yes, uphill--but also to the siren song of the cottage-like house on the corner, I decided to alter my course.

And, well, holy hell if I didn't walk straight into some other time and place altogether. It was almost as if someone had pulled down a new scenery scrim the moment I crossed Monterey, and all of the sudden here I was in Middle America, or some British suburb somewhere, or a California town from many miles and many years ago. I was delighted.

Where Montecito hit Northwood, I sat on a bench in a mini park and took the photo above (which actually shows Ingleside, not Westwood, and therefore doesn't do the latter neighborhood justice). I could hear geese honking somewhere, the whir of BART in the distance, what sounded like skeet shooting (or, who knows, plain old shooting) somewhere far off. As I walked the looping streets of the neighborhood, I passed dog walkers, people unloading kids and gardening supplies from their cars, three young girls in bikinis having a water balloon fight, a guy pulling weeds from his front yard. The houses were adorable, the gardens in front of them crazy riots of spring growth and color. There were porches! There were driveways! There were front yards! I fell crazily in love.

It helped that, over the course of the hour or so I spent gamboling about in Westwood, what had been a cloudy and cool day turned bright blue and warm. By the time I finally finished as much as my legs would allow in this little enclave and headed out to Ocean Avenue, I was on a serious (and somewhat insane) natural high. Only as I started to fatigue while walking toward the Balboa Park station did I come down a bit.

But not for long: as I trudged over the 280 overpass, I thought I heard my name, and--deus ex machina!--I turned to see Dana and Brad waiting at the light. They'd been at a barbecue in Ingleside, had just been talking about how my project would require me to walk ignoble stretches like this particular bit of Ocean, and voila, there I appeared.

And voila! There I got into Brad's car just in time for the light to change and gratefully accepted a ride home, bubbling the whole way.

Unexpected

2008-03-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

17th Street at South Van Ness

Day 43
Neighborhoods Covered: Pacific Heights, Civic Center, Mission
Streets Completed: South Van Ness

There are some markedly unlovely stretches of South Van Ness. In fact, it's probably not wildly unfair to say that much of the street is not actively, charmingly beautiful. But get beyond the freeway on-ramp and feeder lanes and beyond whatever we might call 14th to 19th, and lo, it's actually not bad. There are even some strikingly pretty and very stately homes, which the rest of the street certainly doesn't lead you to expect.

Friday evening's rain, which started as a drizzle and picked up heft as I walked, deterred me from pausing too long to check out these houses in detail, so I did the next best thing: finished off South Van Ness at a brisk clip, walked back up Valencia to Papalote to fetch a burrito, and went to Dana and Brad's to discuss the progressive sketchiness (or de-sketchiness, depending on which direction you're headed) of the north-south streets in the Mission.

First, though, an aside. You didn't really think I'd make it through an entire post without one of these, did you? At any rate, please, someone explain to me the preponderance of young, loud, obnoxious college kids at Papalote on Friday night. Where did they come from? There's no campus--excepting a non-residential City College branch--anywhere remotely near Valencia and 24th. Were they bused in from somewhere? How did they decide on Papalote? And does this mean I'll never be able to go there again on a weekend night without finding myself in the middle of a conversation being held, loudly, from one side of the room to the other, a conversation accentuated with the international "raise the roof" arm movements and other interpretative gestures?

But I digress.

Anyway, after waiting for approximately seven years for my burrito, I made my way to Virgil for wine and chatter. When I mentioned to Dana and Brad the few really lovely houses I'd seen on South Van Ness, Brad told me the street used to be a fairly posh one, until the 1906 quake happened and what had been a fairly undeveloped area became a magnet for rebuilding, broad and flat as the land down there was. So the richies hauled tail to Nob Hill, leaving their mansions behind. Some of those houses still stand, and several of what are now homes on the streets between the main thoroughfares were once carriage houses or other outbuildings.

What all of this doesn't quite explain is why streets like South Van Ness, Folsom, and Harrison are so bland and semi-industrial where the teen streets (13th, 14th, and so on) cross them but get (relatively speaking) much nicer toward the 20s. Was the destruction of the quake worse along the lower streets, and the redevelopment more dramatic? Were those areas always more industrial, with the residential sections huddled farther south? Or has there just been an invisible fire line of sorts somewhere around 19th, above and below slightly different worlds sprang up?

Heart-rending

2008-03-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

Bonita Street

Day 37
Neighborhoods Covered: Russian Hill
Streets Completed: Bonita, White, Rockland, Russell, Eastman, Allen, Warner, Sharp

After a relatively walk-less week, I drove to Russian Hill on Saturday afternoon and spent some time strolling before I was scheduled to meet with a client. It was a day so beautifully, stupidly perfect that I had one of those experiences where I feel so much love for San Francisco that it almost physically hurts, though in the best possible way. You know the feeling: you feel so much adoration for someone or someplace (or, I suppose, something) that your heart feels like it's been punched, though gently.

I'd missed that sensation, and it was really sweet to have it back for a while.

I zigzagged down from Hyde to Polk, where Russian Hillers were out en masse. As always, having used the temperature inside my house to gauge what I should put on before going out into the world (when will I learn?), I was significantly overdressed. Where others were walking around in shorts and t-shirts, or in sundresses, I had on jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, and a light jacket. Even for ever-cold me, it was too much, and I actually found myself starting to sweat, at which point I gave in and took off the jacket.

By and large, Russian Hill is not my scene. It's too far from Hayes Valley to be a place I regularly go out (she says, as if she regularly goes out anywhere) and is, on the main, too expensive and boutique-y to be an appealing shopping destination. I've got expensive boutiques all around me in my own neighborhood, thanks.

But it seems to be an interesting mix of chains (Starbucks, Walgreens, Peet's, Crunch), hip restaurants and bars, the aforementioned upscale shop, and regular, unassuming places that have been there for years. And it's a really nice place to walk, what with the cable cars on Hyde and the bustle of the few main drags, provided you can handle a few hills.

On Polk Street, a saxophonist had set up in front of one of the coffee shops. The sun was everywhere, and the sidewalks were thronging with people. I walked a few blocks, ducked down tiny Bonita Street en route, and headed back uphill at Broadway, where I could still hear jazz floating through the air. I ping-ponged between Hyde and Larkin, focusing on side streets (and finishing seven of them) before going back to the car to drop off my jacket and pick up my tool kit.

And then, reluctantly, indoors

Running San Francisco

2008-03-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

Day 33
Neighborhoods Covered: Hayes Valley, South of Market
Streets Completed: 10th Street, 11th Street

I may have neglected to mention in my original post covering the Walking San Francisco rules and regs that running the streets of the city serves the same purpose as walking them, if at a brisker pace and without the real possibility of stopping to snap photos. (Please. It's all I can do not to drop my iPod when I run; I would demolish my camera.) Crawling would probably count as well, though you would catch me dead (or severely inebriated) before you'd see me allowing my mitts to touch the DISGUSTING sidewalks of this city. (En route to a client's house last summer, I passed a mother and her young son on 22nd Street near Guerrero and was alarmed to see that the boy was barefoot. I mean, we all know I'm the farthest possible thing from parent material, but I would so unbelievably never allow a child to tramp barefoot through the hideous garden of glass, grime, and general grossness that is our sidewalks. What was she thinking?!)

Ahem.

Anyway, I decided to take advantage of this on Tuesday by knocking off two of the shorter numbered streets on a jog. It seemed a nice counterpoint to walking the interminable 3rd Street on Sunday. So I ran: down 11th, along what may be the most vile and poop-smeared stretch of Division (I know, I know: most of Division is vile and poop-smeared, and who am I to issue superlatives?), and back up 10th. It was, I'm sorry to report, a pretty boring run, but it did get the job done. Plus, my side butt has most definitely been in need of a workout more strenuous and side butt-engaging than walking, and this was just such a workout.

But I can't help thinking that I missed something interesting somewhere along my route. I mean, I wasn't exactly speeding along with such velocity that my surroundings blurred, but my attention and effort were much more focused on speed than keen, detailed observation. So I go back and forth here. Upside: two streets down in about half an hour. Downside: not much to report from the journey. Upside: less than a minute on Division. Downside: no chance to search for unusual visuals along the way.

Perhaps I'll save my runs henceforth for the streets I'm not so keen on walking--the remainder of Evans (yes, it goes on, and on) comes to mind. But even those, if I were to look closely enough, might toss out something I wasn't expecting to see.

Rapid Development and Urban Wastelands

2008-03-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

Terry A. Francois Boulevard

Day 31
Co-Walker: Scott
Neighborhoods Covered: Mission Bay, Dogpatch, Central Waterfront, Bayview, India Basin, Western Addition, Japantown, Civic Center
Streets Completed: Hollis, Western Shore, Lottie Bennett Lane, Inca Lane, Bertie Minor Lane, Zampa, Cleary, Peter Yorke, Daniel Burnham Court, Cedar, Starr King

Today's award for Most Accommodating Friend goes to Scott, hands down. Not only did he agree to walk with me despite having a slight hangover, not only did he drive us down to Mission Bay (thus sparing the wait for the T), and not only did he cheerfully stroll random stretches of the San Francisco waterfront and step through the chaotic construction happening there, he also was the best possible sport when I led us directly into the middle of the city's industrial wasteland.

So, see, we walked along the water for a while (and not, I might add, quite the most scenic stretch), then headed south along 3rd Street until we hit Cesar Chavez, at which point I claimed we should head west in order to reach Jerrold, where we'd find a Ritual Coffee outpost in the Flora Grubb Garden Center. As it happens, of course, Jerrold in fact east of 3rd, and the more we walked, the farther away we got. We turned off of CC and onto Evans, but really, that was of no help whatsoever, and by the time we reached the corner of Evans and Rankin--where the street signs actually creaked as they swung in the wind and, as Scott said, "I expected to see a tumbleweed roll by and to run into some old guy saying, 'You all aren't from around these parts, are you?'--we knew Ritual would no longer be in our plans.

We made our way back to 3rd and retraced our steps until we got to 22nd, where we swung west again, but accurately this time, and stopped for lunch at Piccino. It was a stellar, mild day, so we sat outside lingering over lunch, dessert, wine (for me), coffee (for Scott), and a long conversation about relationships. As we finally wended our way back down Tennessee to the car, I realized that for the first time in several weeks (almost precisely four, in fact), I was actually effortlessly happy. That's not to say I haven't had good moments in the past month, but rather that they've all come with an asterisk of sorts. For a few hours this afternoon, that asterisk disappeared.

After Scott dropped me home, I took a short break and then decided to head out again to take more advantage of the day. This time I went north, taking Webster to Geary and tackling the tangle of streets in and around the St. Francis Co-op. (Much of this was, strictly technically, trespassing, but I managed to make my way back to public streets without incident.) I spent some time walking around the Washing Machine Church at Geary and Gough, which I've driven by a billion times (approximately) but have never before seen up close. It's fascinating, and must be stunning from the inside on a day like today. I was content to shoot a few photos and move on.

Something heavy is starting to lift. Though I still often feel like I'm wearing one of those back bracing belts that's been fitted with weights so that there's a downward pull on everything unless I redouble my efforts, on days like today I get to take the belt off. And looking out over the Bay through a chain-link fence, or walking (very rapidly) down a street that's totally new and strange to me, or stopping in the square of an apartment complex to watch the moon come out on one side of me and the sun slowly start to lower on the other, I feel a flutter of calmness.

I've missed that.

Out of the Swing

2008-03-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

Days 25-29
Neighborhoods Covered: North Beach, though I can barely claim even that
Streets Completed: Scotland, Via Bufano (Grover)

It's been a slow walking week, and I mean that both literally and figuratively. My parents were here through yesterday morning, and in order not to run them into the ground, I cut my standard walking pace in half; and although we did a fair bit of perambulating (and they did even more on their own), we didn't cover much new ground. I have precious little to report, then, for this stretch of the project.

I'd hoped to change that today, when I had a bit of time between clients this afternoon. I even toyed with the idea of taking the N out to my second client--in the Inner Sunset, on a block of lower Irving Street that's (almost literally) painfully familiar to me, lying as it does between E's house and the commercial innards of the area--and swooping through a few streets there or in Cole Valley.

But then I realized that I don't yet trust myself to maintain my composure in this neighborhood, and it would be poor form indeed to scrape my emotions raw as I walked and then try to be fully present and with it for my client. (As an aside, it's an odd thing indeed when the person you want most to see in the world and the person you're most frightened of seeing are one and the same. I'm still so used to just knowing the former.)

So I drove instead. Even driving, though, made my heart feel a little like this. Dear InSu, it may be a while before I can handle you in anything more than the most delicate and fleeting of doses.

The Bridge

2008-03-11T18:04:00.001-07:00

Enduring Monument

Day 24
Co-Walkers: Mom and Dad
Neighborhoods Covered: um, Lower Marin? Outer Marina? Pacific View?
Streets Completed: Golden Gate Bridge

Is the Golden Gate Bridge technically a street in San Francisco? Sort of, yes, in that it's designed to convey people and vehicles and, depending on your perspective, it starts or ends in SF. But sort of no, too, as it probably officially becomes Marin County at a certain point, and also serves no stated purpose beyond the aforementioned conveyance. The tollbooths and Gifto Shoppu (for real) on the southern end of the bridge may pass for commerce, but there are, of course, no stores, houses, or points of industry on the bridge itself--none of the stuff encountered on your run-of-the-mill street, that is.

But no matter. My parents were in town and it was a beautiful day, so we joined the hordes and hoofed it across the bridge on Sunday.

Here's the thing: the Golden Gate is, of course, San Francisco's most recognized and ENDURING (please see above) monument, recognized around the world as a symbol of the city. And it's probably an engineering marvel or something, too. But since watching The Bridge, I can't see it or drive across it--much less walk the whole span and back--without half expecting someone to pitch himself off it.

I know that's a terrible and maudlin thing to say, but the fact is that for all of its splendor, the Golden Gate Bridge is the world's #1 suicide landmark. In 2004, the year in which The Bridge was shot, 24 people--or approximately one every 15 days--jumped from the bridge. (That's the official, known figure; there may have been more.) Assuming that figure hasn't changed significantly in the past few years, it's fair to guess that suicides on the bridge could happen at any time, regardless of how crowded or deserted the walkways might be. So now I keep half an eye on people standing along the rail whenever I'm on the bridge. And that's fairly creepy.

But I'm happy to report that although I had my eyes out, Sunday's walk brought nothing more than the standard flow of tourists, runners, cyclists, and Code Pink protesters. (OK, perhaps those last aren't quite so standard, but they were a sight to see, accompanied as they were by a literal small army of CHP and bridge officers. See photos of them here.)

It was a long and generally pleasant walk (although the traffic noise gets a bit deafening after, say, 50 feet), and by the end of it I got to revel in a decent sense of accomplishment, even if I didn't actually get to check anything off my Official List of Streets.

Churchy

2008-03-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

Church and 29th (now a pediatrics clinic)

Day 22
Neighborhoods Covered: Lower Haight, Castro/Mission, Noe Valley, very edge of Glen Park
Streets Completed: Rose (for real this time), Hermann, Church, Alert

In my fantasy world, I was going to walk all of Market--soup to nuts, nose to tail--on Friday, and thus would be able to highlight a huge pink line through the center of my Walking SF Progress Map. But by the time I got back from a breakfast meeting around 10, I remembered that I don't in fact live in my fantasy world; I live in a world in which I must do things like finish reviewing the edits of my manuscript and knock off some bookkeeping and generally attempt to maintain my status as a functioning, responsible, business-owning adult who doesn't go gallivanting off at any half opportunity.

Plus, I was really quite tired, and still not feeling like whatever had filled up my sinus passages for the two days prior had fully taken its leave.

So I did my book work and a whole mess of other Responsible Adult stuff and then scaled back my goal a bit, figuring I'd aim instead to finish Church Street.

I walked from home to Church (weaving through various Lower Haight streets to finish off bits and pieces that remained undone from previous walks), then tackled the hill by Dolores Park before deeming any more of that type of walking folly and waiting for the J to take me out to 30th. From there, I threaded back and forth on various streets (up 30th a jag to finish the final stretch of Church at that end, back down one block of Chenery, up the same stretch of 30th again, but farther this time, down Day, back down Church to get back to 30th, and on and on), thinking that this whole thing is a bit like a Car Talk puzzler.

I'm sure if someone with keener mathematic analytical skills than I could take a map of the city and plan out walking routes that would require no doubling back, no missing parts of any street, and no cheating. And perhaps I'll send this quandary in to Click and Clack and let them Puzzler-ify it. But in the meantime, I haven't found a way to avoid retracing my steps on many of these jags. Strategy? What strategy?

Anyway, I eventually wound up on Church headed north, and I stayed thus until I reached Elizabeth, thinking it would be a good little side street to check off my list. I got as far as Noe before realizing that the damn thing goes on forever (approximately), so I headed down to 24th and looped back to Church. Why do I refuse to look at a map in these cases? How stubborn can I possibly be? (NB: rhetorical question. No replies, please.)

I took Church back to 20th, scooted over to Dolores for a few blocks (which I'd already covered on the Church side of things), and then went back to Church to finish my final block: between Market and Duboce. Done! All 19 blocks of that sucker down.

Now only 90 million blocks of everything else to go. Speeding right along here.

Bits and Pieces

2008-03-06T19:54:00.000-08:00

Day 20
Neighborhoods Covered: Telegraph Hill
Streets Completed: Bellair, Midway

Day 21
Neighborhoods Covered: Financial District
Streets Completed: Trinity

It's been a slow and relatively walk-less few days. Yesterday I had a sliver of time to kill before seeing a client in Telegraph Hill, so I parked the car and did a quick scoot around the surrounding streets. The day was brilliant, clear, sunny, and from the upper reaches of Chestnut Street (which clearly dead-ends into a wall at this point, though that didn't deter me), I could see far into the East Bay.

What surprised me was how quickly Telegraph Hill comes down to earth--and I mean that literally. Walk down a few blocks from Chestnut (perhaps on, say, Bellair and Midway) and you're roughly at sea level. It didn't seem like such a rapid decline on the way down, and for part of the walk back up things seemed nice and easy. But then I hit the 1900 block of Grant, which is at, like, a 90-degree angle, and changed my tune slightly. By the time I got back to my car, I had to shed my coat and pause for a moment to catch my breath before reporting to work.

Today found me down on Montgomery with a client all day, so the most I could squeeze in during business hours was one mini street (Trinity) and the random assortment of blocks that got me to and from Madeline's at lunchtime.

When I left around 4, I was struck by the desire to knock off a good stretch of Sutter (the first block of which I'd trod earlier in the day) until I actually started walking. I got as far as Grant (much flatter at this point) before my sinuses made my head feel close to explosion, so I gave up the ghost.

On the bus home, though, I started plotting for tomorrow. Should enough sinus drainage (yes!) occur by then, I've got one long-ass street I intend to knock off once and for all. Stay tuned.

Half-Hearted

2008-03-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

Liguria Bakery

Days 18 and 19
Neighborhoods Covered: Financial District, North Beach, Telegraph Hill
Streets Completed: Halleck, Child, Edgardo, Edith, Pardee (Jack Micheline Place), Kramer, Gerke, Harwood (Bob Kaufman Place), Medau, Krausegrill, Telegraph Place

I disagree with the Bond film. The world is not enough? Really? Maybe for James Bond, but for most of us I think it's just plenty, thanks, and some days perhaps a touch excessive. The past two days have sort of felt like that for me.

Yesterday I just felt sort of tired and heavy, and although I managed to function well enough, my walking was limited to the well-worn path between home and garage, and then back from Josh's after we did some work. By the time I left his house it was dark and I wanted nothing more than to be off my feet, so I didn't even attempt a new sliver of Minna or an additional block of 8th Street.

Today my head started to explode with what's either a proto-cold or serious allergies, leaving me feeling leaden and weary and, as a bonus, beholden to the kind of body-racking sneezes that it's hard to handle gracefully. (Luckily, most of them happened when I was on my own.) Nonetheless, after a few hours with a client in Telegraph Hill, I figured I'd take advantage of being in the neighborhood and do a quick stroll.

On the upside, I finished enough streets to bring my completed count to 104 (please, no calculations as to the minute percentage this represents in terms of actual streets in SF), it was a stunning, sunny day, and being outside actually cleared my head (and nostrils) for a while.

But still, my heart was only halfway in it. Although I've walked alone for every day of this project but one and really haven't minded, today that aloneness started to pull at me, perhaps because it's also starting to truly sink in in general. I had a few interactions with people as I walked--including the guy in tiny Gerke Alley who, as he left his house, noticed me meandering purposefully into his dead-end street and said, "Hey, how's it going?", perhaps in an attempt to determine whether I was a woefully lost tourist or just nuts--but they had to contend with a lot of silence. (In fact, the silence on Edith Street was so complete and so profound that, for a moment, it seemed impossible that I could actually still be in the city; it felt much more like the Italian town, high on a hill, where J and I stayed in a converted castle back in 2002. That place was quiet.)

It's tempting, then, to take a break for a few days, let these sneezing fits pass, and try to line up a few walking partners before I head out again. This project has been great thus far as a diversion and a source of alternate purpose, but for today, at least, that was not quite enough.

Romeo and Juliet

2008-03-03T20:07:00.000-08:00

Sonoma Alley

Day 17
Neighborhoods Covered: Financial District, Jackson Square, North Beach, Chinatown
Streets Completed: Mark Twain, Balance, Gold, Hotaling, Merchant, Osgood, Hodges, Bartol, Prescott, San Antonio, Pollard, Fresno, Dunnes, Romolo, Margrave, Varennes, Genoa, Sonoma, Bannam, Jasper, Jack Kerouac Alley (Adler), Saroyan Alley (Adler)

I take it back: SoMa isn't the neighborhood to beat in terms of tiny side streets and alleys. North Beach is.

I've been to North Beach and environs (Jackson Square, Telegraph Hill, Chinatown) over and over in my years here, but somehow never registered much beyond a few favorite haunts and the main drags. But not until I started to take the area block by block did I realize just how many small streets there are. Over the course of a few hours yesterday, I finished 22 of them. (Fear not, Monique: there are many, many, many more to go.) They were, needless to say, utterly empty of tourists, and, in most cases, utterly empty even of residents.

There's a lot to love about North Beach in general, even the stuff purists might sniff at. For every "authentic" "Italian" restaurant along Columbus, there's another that really is, even if it's actually a few blocks off on Grant. There's Vesuvio, Specs Adler's, Stella, Liguria Bakery, Mama's, and, of course, Mario's. There's Washington Square Park's blend of Chinese ladies doing tai chi, tourists trying to figure out how to get to Coit Tower, and various scruffy denizens. And City Lights always reminds me that good things are possible.

But when you step away from the center of things, the place opens itself up even more. For example, North Beach is full of what are called Romeo and Juliet houses: buildings with a main entry in the middle and two perfectly symmetrical apartments on either side. Why Romeo and Juliet? I wish I knew. (If you know, please e-mail or post a comment.) You'd think that if Romeo and Juliet had actually survived, they'd want to live together. At any rate, they're pretty charming, and you don't see them in quite the same abundance elsewhere in the city. You also don't see them on Columbus or Broadway or Grant.

The neighborhood's side streets and alleys offer up other things you wouldn't see elsewhere. Through an opening in a garage on San Antonio, I got a perfect view of Sts. Peter and Paul church with the hills of Marin a perfect green behind it. On Pollard, I saw buildings constructed right in (on?) huge solid chunks of the rock that underlies the area (and sometimes pops to the surface, apparently). On Sonoma, I saw the pastel-perfect houses pictured above, as well as the only decorated fire escape I've yet to encounter anywhere, ever.

By the time I headed back towards Market, I was slightly loopy with heat and the beginnings of serious foot fatigue, but still I had to stop myself from ducking down any more alleys. (Not an easy thing to do.) There's something so fascinating to me about all of these small, out-of-the-way streets that I almost fear it's like I'm eating dessert first, and that all of the big streets that await me will be something of a letdown.

Clarion

2008-03-02T17:36:00.001-08:00

Clarion Alley

Day 16
Neighborhoods Covered: Castro, Inner Mission
Streets Completed: Reservoir, San Carlos, Sycamore, Lexington, Clarion, Wiese, Caledonia, Julian, Woodward

It's true that the Mission can be scruffy, scuzzy, sketchy, creepy, dirty, call-it-what-you-will. Caledonia, for example, is currently tops on my list for Alley Most Teeming with Human Misery, and it forks right off of the lights and crowds and action of 16th Street. And let us not even discuss the stretch of Mission from Division to 18th.

But for all of its roughness at times, the neighborhood does have an insane number of amazing murals, many of which you'd be unlikely to see were you not to duck down a few of those less-than-inviting streets. (Even Caledonia has murals, though I didn't study them in too much detail.) I was especially blown away by what I found on Clarion Alley.

Clarion runs between Valencia and Mission and 17th and 18th. I literally can't count the number of times I've walked past it--that stretch of Valencia is one I walk all the time, and have for years--but yesterday was the first time I actually walked down it.

As with Berwick South of Market, pretty much every inch of every wall on Clarion is covered with art. Each panel is by a different artist, so no matter what your preferred style (or even, to a certain extent, medium), you're bound to find something interesting. (And if you don't, well, perhaps you have better things to do with your time than meander down random alleys and check out street art.)

Somewhat surprisingly, the murals are relatively tag-free, whether because taggers are satisfied with mailboxes, blank walls, and street signs, or because they actually have some respect for the amount of love and effort put into these works, I wouldn't know. But it's refreshing nonetheless, as it's not unusual to see even the most beautiful and elaborate murals elsewhere in the neighborhood and throughout the city defaced with unrelated graffiti.

Awesomely, it appears that Sycamore Street--one alley over--is headed for the same mural-rich fate, although there are a few houses that front it, so perhaps there will be a few gaps in the action. In my book, that's such a great thing to see, and if you go during daylight hours, take your time, and watch where you step, alleys like these make for some pleasant strolling.

Stomping Grounds

2008-03-01T13:37:00.000-08:00

What was once home

Day 15
Neighborhoods Covered: Castro, Mission
Streets Completed: Ford, Hartford, Hancock, Dorland, Oakwood, Linda, Lapidge, Bird, Dearborn, Camp, Albion, Rosa Parks

For my first six years in San Francisco, I lived in the Castro, in a flat on Sanchez shared with three other housemates. (I actually passed my first few months here in a house on Cesar Chavez with my friend Kristen from Vassar and her two housemates, until one of said housemates--the polyamorous hydrocolon therapist--decided she "didn't like [my] energy" and essentially requested that I make myself scarce. By that point, I was happy to comply.) For a long time, things were good.

The Castro was, for me, perhaps the best possible neighborhood in which to come into my own in my adopted city. As a woman, I found it utterly non-threatening; having been catcalled repeatedly in the Mission (which I neither expected nor knew quite what to do with), it was a relief to be in a place where I was almost certainly of zero sexual interest to a huge percentage of the population. I also loved the sense of community, the fact that the heart of the neighborhood was clustered around a few streets, and, pat as it may sound, how everything always seemed to be sprouting with color and vibrancy. I even grudgingly loved the chaos of Halloween there (before things went seriously downhill).

Yesterday I walked through a bit of the Castro, and for all that's much the same (the Sausage Factory--a pizzeria [surely no double entendre intended]--still seems to be going strong, as do many of the bars that have been there for years) there's just as much that's changing. Castro Video had signs posted in its windows noting that, although it had been around since the dawn of Betamax, it was closing its doors. Other storefronts on Castro and along 18th had been ripped out and were in the process of being renovated. And, of course, there's the Diesel store on the corner of Castro and Market. It used to be a bank.

All of this made me wonder what it would be like to be a gay man who'd lived in the Castro since it was a relative enclave of safety back in the 60s and 70s. Would I welcome the changes, or would it seem like too many unrecoverable things were being lost? (It's entirely possible, of course, that much of what made the Castro what it once was has long since been lost, and that the appearance of another new Rolo doesn't cause much of a ripple anymore.) There's no question that the Castro is still, in many ways, the heart of many subsections of gay culture in the city, but I'd be curious to know whether, to those who've lived there for years, the neighborhood feels like it's drifted from what it once was--and, if so, whether that's good or bad.

I left 460 Sanchez for the sanctuary of my own place in Hayes Valley in 2003, having grown impossibly fed up with the frustrations of communal living and with the landlord's blatant desire for us all to move out and free up the rent controlled lease. (Subtle hint that he wasn't exactly concerned with what happened to us: when a chunk of my housemate Abby's ceiling fell down onto her bed, his first response was a half-joking, half-serious, "Well, tell her she probably shouldn't sleep in that spot.")

I don't know how much longer the others held on, but I do recall hearing a few years back that the landlord had finally got his wish and promptly set about making a bevy of improvements. When I looked up at the flat yesterday, I could see some of them: a new window in the bathroom, a skylight (!) and a new light fixture in the kitchen, repaired front steps. (They were so bad at one point that the Post Office stopped delivering our mail, saying that our mail carrier, who was pregnant at the time, couldn't risk injury by trying to navigate them.)

So much has changed.

Neighborhooding

2008-02-29T16:42:00.000-08:00

Day 14
Neighborhoods Covered: Hayes Valley, Lower Haight, Duboce Triangle, Corona Heights, Castro, Mission
Streets Completed: Laussat, Walter, Pond, Prosper, Chula, Hoff

Where does one neighborhood end and the next begin?

That seems a particularly twisted designation here in San Francisco, where there are swaths of the city divided into seemingly random (and tiny) sections--cf. District 4, with Diamond Heights, Miraloma Heights, Sherwood Forest, Monterey Heights, and on and on and on--others where 'hoods seem to go on forever, and still others in which marginal neighborhoods that abut more preferable areas take on qualifying adjectives in an attempt to disguise their true natures. (Nope, nope, not the Tenderloin: it's Lower Nob Hill, please.)

I thought of this yesterday as, in a relatively moderate number of blocks, I managed to traverse pieces of six neighborhoods. Between leaving my house and arriving at my client's on 14th Street, I hit four of them. The other two lay between the Castro Muni station, where the client dropped me off, and 16th Street BART, where I got on a train for Berkeley.

My friend Scott, who moved here from Boston last year, found himself amazed at how much San Franciscans define others by where in the city they live. He happened to find an apartment he liked near Alta Plaza park, and in conversation after conversation, people would ask what neighborhood he lived in and then think they had him tagged when he replied, "Pacific Heights."

There's probably a solid kernel of truth in some of the neighborhood-based stereotypes we make--if you're living in Russian Hill, for example, there's a very good chance you don't have a strictly limited income. But the hard and fast assumptions just don't hold, especially because the lines between neighborhoods are so fluid. When you can cross a street and officially be in another section of the city altogether, how accurate can these divisions (and the ideas that come with them) really be?

To Map or Not to Map

2008-02-28T14:49:00.000-08:00

Carmelita detail

Day 13
Neighborhoods Covered: Lower Haight, Hayes Valley
Streets Completed: Haight, Lloyd, Carmelita, Potomac, Germania

Before I left the house yesterday to finish Haight and a few peripheral streets, I considered taking a map with me. I specifically had in mind the Realtor's map I've been using to track my progress, which is one of your standard all-encompassing, fold-out, If I'm Looking at this, I Am Probably a Tourist map.

And for that reason, I opted to go map-less.

Even when I am a tourist, I hate looking like one. In other cities, even foreign ones, it takes getting severely lost for me to be willing to consult a map; I'd much rather get myself slightly lost and then rely on my sense of direction (usually, though not always, quite good) to get myself un-lost again. Plus, I dislike giving off the sense that I am not of a place, even if that would be wildly obvious were I to, say, open my mouth and not be able to choke out more than a few words of the local language.

Here in my own city, I'm especially loath to give off a tourist vibe, especially since a big part of the motivation for this walking project is to see all of the stuff visitors to the city (and, for that matter, most city residents) never see. I also don't want to put myself in the path of anyone who might seek out tourists as easy prey for harassment. So despite the fact that I might stop every other block to take photos and jot notes, I've been walking map-less.

Which, I must say, is sort of dumb. Being out sans map yesterday meant that I missed finishing a few streets that were broken up by a block because I didn't know they continued beyond what I could see. It also meant that I did some hackneyed backtracking at certain points to land myself where I wanted to be. Not exactly tragic, either of those, but just annoying enough to make me rue my occasionally-more-stubborn-than-is-truly-necessary nature.

Because, really, on the residential side streets of the Lower Haight in the middle of a blazingly sunny afternoon, there was little chance anyone would take me for a tourist, or care if I were, or bother to interact with me in any case. So having a map wouldn't have been a bad thing.

My compromise, then, will be to keep my petite NFT with me in my walking bag so I can at least consider planning where I'm going rather than just letting myself gambol.

West and Back

2008-02-26T20:42:00.000-08:00

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.

Back to the Streets

2008-02-25T19:49:00.000-08:00

Berwick Place

Day 10
Neighborhoods Covered: Civic Center, SoMa
Streets Completed: Birch, Ash, Redwood, Grace, Washburn, Dore, Sheridan, Ringold, Heron, Berwick, Gordon, Bernice, Isis, Kissling, Lafayette

Things cleared up a bit. It was an odd and difficult day through the mid-afternoon, and for much of it I didn't think the rain would actually let up. But it did, and by the time I got back from Trader Joe's it was hysterically windy but dry, so I put the car in the garage and headed out on foot.

I started by knocking off a few runty streets around Civic Center. Redwood was the tough one. It starts (or ends) at Franklin, dead ends into the back of a building, and continues on the other side of Van Ness. Per the rules of this insane venture, I had to walk this jag, and so I did...only to encounter a guy coming out of the apartment building that backs up to the alley. He had a bike and appeared to be off on a ride. I was on foot and appeared to be walking purposefully toward a concrete wall, only to discover--will you look at that!--that the street down which I was striding ends abruptly! I reached the wall, walked along it, and then headed up the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Bike guy watched me the whole time, no doubt (and understandably) assuming I was up to no good. Luckily, the whole jaunt took about 35 seconds and I was once again on my way.

I crossed Van Ness to finish Redwood (open-ended in this stretch, I'm glad to say) and then went south.

By this point, you may be weary (as I'm growing) of SoMa adventures. It is, to date, the most wildly over-represented neighborhood in this project, and I've barely scratched the surface. But unlike, say, the Richmond, where alleys don't spring from every single street, below Market those suckers are everywhere. I finished 12 of them yesterday, and hells if I haven't only just begun. The Mission has its share, too, but nowhere near the staggering preponderance of SoMa's.

And so it's sort of lather, rinse, repeat: oh, is this a vaguely sketchy one-block alley that clearly runs directly into an insurmountable obstacle (building, chain-link fence, combination thereof)? Don't mind me. And this one--it appears to be one street broken into chunks that require me to dash through traffic to complete en masse. Please, allow me. Over and over and over again.

All of this kvetching isn't to say, though, that there aren't delightful things to see and smell (not kidding!) down here. Berwick Place--which, believe me, you would never casually happen upon--is essentially one big, colorful, varied mural. In the middle stretch of Dore Alley, home to an annual Folsom-esque street fair (albeit on a much smaller and more focused scale, inasmuch as Folsom can be said to be unfocused, which it really can't, but I digress), the smell of baking cookies hit me so strongly I had to look around and wonder whether I hadn't wandered in the wrong direction and hit the back of the cookie factory on Folsom. (I hadn't. And yes, there's a cookie factory on Folsom.) On Division, in the shadow of the freeway ramps, where it's seriously imperative to watch your step should you not wish to make shoe contact with unpleasant substances of various stripes, the wind made the eucalyptus trees rustle and filled the air with their scent. I never even knew there were eucalyptus trees on Division.

William Styron once wrote an essay called "Time out of Mind" about his struggle with depression. For him, time out of mind was something not to be hoped for, something uncontrollable. But when I thought of that title yesterday as I walked, it had a different meaning. My time out of mind (and, equally importantly, out of heart) was "This American Life" on my iPod, the wind so strong it felt almost physically cleansing, and, for a little while, the need to do little more than put one foot down, and then the other, and try to take in what was around me.

Blame It on the Rain

2008-02-24T10:30:00.000-08:00

Day 9
Neighborhoods Covered: Almost unspeakably small strips of the Mission and Pacific Heights
Streets Completed: None

Yesterday started out sort of overcast and, by mid-day, had turned hideous. In the later part of the afternoon, as I worked in the relative hush of a client's living room on the fifth floor of a Pacific Heights apartment building, I could see the rain battering the windows and hear the wind howling in the chimney. Not exactly pleasant walking weather.

And, indeed, I did almost no walking, except for the jags to and from my garage and then to and from my car: a mid-block to mid-block span of York Street while visiting my Shanti client, and a trail from Webster, up Buchanan, and onto Jackson to get to my client's.

Today may not turn out to be any better. For every slash of bright, clear sunlight, there's an equal and opposite pouring of rain, and I'm not quite sure I'm willing to risk being soaked sideways to knock off a few streets. But from my front window I can see a patch of blue, so perhaps there's hope. I could use some movement, and could seriously use some distraction.

Middle Earth

2008-02-23T09:30:00.001-08:00

Irving, looking West

Day 8
Neighborhoods Covered: A minuscule, happenstance sliver of Pac Heights and a slightly larger sliver of (it's true) the Central Sunset
Streets Completed: None

My friend Mary lives on 33rd Avenue at Judah, well on the way to the ocean and far enough out that the city starts to feel like another place. (A few more blocks west, in fact, and it puts me in mind of a Jersey beach town in the shoulder season.) Mary and I have a running joke: she consistently tries to get me to believe that her bit of San Francisco is called the Central Sunset, and I retort that it's too far out to be considered central, though I will agree to call it Middle Earth.

Last evening I went out to spend some time with Mary, and before I left home I looked at my map to plot a few streets to walk before we met up. And there it was: a shaded portion of the city called the Central Sunset, encompassing 33rd Ave. at Judah. How right she was.

My stroll in the CS was brief and brisk (making it not so much a stroll after all, I suppose), but it was a beautiful time of day for it. I walked for only about 15 minutes, and in that time the sky went from riotous with a sunset to all but empty. That first part never seems to last long enough.

Dark and Rainy

2008-02-22T08:32:00.000-08:00

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.

Up and Down

2008-02-21T20:47:00.000-08:00

Day 6
Neighborhoods Covered: Hayes Valley, Western Addition, Japantown, Pacific Heights, Fillmore, SoMa
Streets Completed: Hemlock

I took yesterday's lunch meeting with the interior designer who's just joined the networking group I belong to as an opportunity to tackle decent chunks of Laguna (up to Washington) and Fillmore (back down to Hayes). The resultant pink lines on my Map of Progress are satisfying, though one of these days I'm determined to knock out, say, Geary in one swoop, so I can start highlighting and keep on going until I hit the blue of the Pacific.

(Total aside: the cadence of that last phrase reminds me of Neko Case's "Set out Running," the song by which I took her on as my musical patron saint back in 2004. It makes me sigh that the song feels relevant again; I thought I had moved on to something like "That Teenage Feeling.")

Anyway, the early part of yesterday afternoon was lovely walking weather: sunny, blue, not too warm, not too chilly. By the time I left lunch and headed south, though, the sky had started to darken, and within a few hours the temperature had significantly dropped. No rain, luckily, but by the time I passed through Hayes Valley and briefly stopped home on my way to Josh's, it had ceased to be a pleasant strolling day. So I took a more or less direct route to his house, detouring only to cover the block of Minna between 9th and 8th.

A note here about Stevenson: City planners, why insist on attempting to keep it one street? It runs from well downtown all the way to 14th Street, but it's almost impossible to walk more than one block of it at a time. It repeatedly dead ends into buildings, parking lots, other streets, what have you. Was it once an unbroken stretch of road, or has it always been such a jumble? Was there a Stevenson in SF history who was promised a street spanning x-number of blocks, obstacles be damned? It makes precious little sense.

North SoMa? Northern Mission?

2008-02-20T10:26:00.001-08:00

Power Exchange

Day 4
Neighborhoods Covered: A bit more of Hayes Valley, plus whatever we might call what's directly south of Market and West of South Van Ness
Streets Completed: Hickory (last few blocks), Lily, Colton, Brady, Otis, Rose, McCoppin, Elgin Park, Pearl, Pink

Monday was overcast and chilly, which was perhaps the perfect weather setting for the blocks I walked. I finished off Hickory and did a whole mess of other little streets, including several in the odd neighborhood that sits in the crook of the elbow formed by Market and South Van Ness.

Here again, some truly interesting buildings and tableaux run up against a roughness that's not pretty or romantic, really, but just rough. On Brady there's a letterpress studio, a hair salon, an architectural firm, and a sign shop, and there's also a view of the ventilation fan for the Van Ness Muni station (or perhaps for BART as it runs under this stretch--hard to tell). I passed a few people who looked at me vacantly, and then we all went on our ways.

Down Jessie and Stevenson, in the shadow of the PG&E substation (or is it AT&T? I looked right through the signs), there are simple houses that look like they've come straight out of a c.1900 print of San Francisco: low, long, wooden, with a strongly Western feel. They were all dark and quiet when I walked past.

While I'm here, I may as well do...

Day 5
Neighborhoods Covered: None to speak of, though I guess I could count a minuscule slice of Civic Center
Streets Completed: None, alas

Late on Monday, a bit of my world exploded. On Tuesday I was barely functional, though I did manage to walk to the Civic Center post office in an attempt to mail a package, only to turn around and leave after seeing a long, immobile line and only one clerk actually dealing with things other than stamps and money orders.

So I walked in the rain to my car, drove to a client's in Russian Hill, then later drove back through the rain to the PO at Potrero Center. Once home, I was in for the night, my body heavy and weak like it'd be drained of a bit too much blood.

And now a new impetus: walking as distraction. Walking to forget. Walking because my legs can still move, and I achingly need that movement.

Slices of SoMa and a Bit of Hayes Valley

2008-02-18T15:52:00.001-08:00

Hickory Street

Day 3
Co-Walker: Erik (partway, at least)
Neighborhoods Covered: Bits and pieces of SoMa and Hayes Valley
Streets Completed: Mary, Mint (yes, all 3 blocks, collectively)

Yesterday we went down to Mint Plaza to have coffee (while sitting down! inside!) at Blue Bottle. While in the area, we popped in to take a look at an apartment for rent in the Mint Plaza Lofts building (because, hey, why not?), which was quite lovely but also quite exorbitantly priced, then battled the crowds at the Puma and Apple Stores briefly before fleeing.

After Erik got on Muni to head home, I went back down to Mission to fork off onto a few of the little side streets there. Here's the thing about this part of the city: there's a lot of cool stuff, including a dizzying number of awesome old buildings, but it's also pretty grimy, fairly sketchy, and not entirely welcoming once the sun goes down. I happened to be there during daylight hours, but still. Here as elsewhere, is it worth the risks of living in a marginal neighborhood to score an unusual, really interesting house/apartment/condo? This skirts the whole topic of gentrification, but I'll save my full spiel on that for the Mission.

On my way home, I walked most of Hickory Street (save for the little tail that juts off of the west side of Octavia, which I'll hit this afternoon). Five years in Hayes Valley and I've only ever been on one block of this street before. Like Linden, though, it's one of the alleys that make this neighborhood what it is.

Stepping Out

2008-02-16T18:54:00.000-08:00

It started like this: last fall, on the day of what I think was the SF marathon (but what may have been some other road race), Erik and I took the N out to the Great Highway and started walking. We headed north to the Cliff House, then up into Sutro Heights and east along Geary and Clement.

As we walked, it occurred to me that although I had been on many of the same streets in cars or buses at some point, I'd never before experienced them on foot. Doing so that afternoon meant seeing those streets in entirely different ways, and I figured it'd be interesting to repeat that experience throughout the city.

So here it begins: as of yesterday, my goal is to walk every street in San Francisco by the end of the year. This includes both streets I've walked hundreds of times already, like Octavia and Valencia (portions of which officially made the Walked list as of last evening), but also those I've never been on, and currently have no idea actually exist. I want to see familiar streets in a different light, and experience unfamiliar ones for the first time. Moreover, I want to get a deeper, broader sense of the city I've called home for the past 11 years.

Herewith, a few guidelines:

My definition of "every street in San Francisco" includes alleys, dead-ends, and those tiny slips of roads that seem barely consequential enough to bear names. This definition doesn't include freeways (101 over the Golden Gate Bridge being the only exception) or major roads that don't have sidewalks.
Any street I've walked before yesterday doesn't count. I'm starting with a clean slate.
I plan to track my progress on paper maps, unless someone more technologically savvy than I can figure out how to customize a Google map to make my steps trackable online.
I'll be taking photos and notes of interesting things I see, eat, drink, and experience along the way and posting them to this blog.
If I can get on the ball, I may buy myself a pedometer so I can also tally my actual steps.

I'd love company on any portion of this quest. If there's a part of the city you've always wanted to explore, a street or two you've driven down a few times but haven't experienced on foot, or a favorite neighborhood you'd love to show off, please let me know. It would be great to have you along.

Check back often for updates on where I've been, what I've seen, and who's been along for the walk.

Onwards!