Backwards

Franklin Street

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Worlds

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!

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

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.