Bayward

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.

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.