In the Land of Jesus and Anthropomorphic Foodstuffs

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

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.