Not My Valley

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.

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.