How the Other Third Lives

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.

I See Dead People

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.

Churchy

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.

Neighborhooding

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

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

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.