Hike SF

Yesterday’s walk through Boston, biased by hunger, took me through Faneuil Hall, a collection of cookeries like you’d find in a mall, only denser. My approach towards a line of teriyaki was interrupted by a woman I’d previously seen shoveling through the trash. In hand she had a half-eaten dinner and in mouth she had nothing but shrill screams that the rice and meat were undercooked.

She looked enough unlike a hobo that the poor manager eventually threw fifteen bucks at her (twice the price of a chicken dinner), just to get her to go away. She continued to screech, but fortunately she was so short that I was able to make my order over her head once the staff simply started to ignore her.

The chicken was delish.

Since Tuesday, Ellie and I have been in Boston for an optometry conference. So while she goes to conference events during the day, I entertain myself however I can. Wednesday I chose to loop the peninsula on foot. Twas north of 95 degrees and 40% humidity when I departed. An hour and a half later when I returned, my clothes were soaked through with sweat, and my tongue had turned to sandpaper.

Bostonians like to refer to theirs as the walking city, when what they really mean is the geographically small city, or perhaps the hellish for drivers city. In half a dozen hours, I’ve already zigged and zagged through everything interesting downtown. Historic buildings, cemeteries, and shopping districts all clump together in a few square miles. Today, amidst a tangled mess of roads–many original, I’m sure–I hunt for postcards.

On Saturday Ellie and I strolled up into Hayes Valley to meet Brandon and Cooper. We each bought 32oz bottles of beer and lazed on the grass at Alamo Square for an hour, hoping that one of the hipster kids playing chicken on a neighboring roof would fall to the sidewalk. We even left a useless voicemail for Laurence, who’s out of the states for a month.

On our way down the hill to Cooper’s place, I lead us down a side street in the projects named, innocently enough, Friendship Court. We were right about here when two cops parked on McAllister barked, “Are you tourists?”

“No. We’ve lived in SF for years.”

“Well, you look like tourists, and you shouldn’t be around here. Gang members like to shoot tourists because they tend not to testify. There have been two shootings just on this block in the last twenty hours.” He was stretching a bit, according to this SF Chronicle article, “2 shootings in 12 hours,” which indicates that the last shooting was at least 48 hours prior. The officer went on to say, “When you see police officers out here, it’s dangerous, and you need to go somewhere else.”

We humored him and continued on McAllister instead of reversing down Friendship Court, but were all downright perplexed about his advise. When we see police officers casually hanging out and drinking Starbucks, we should assume that we’re in grave danger and no one will protect us? We later agreed that his underlying point was probably, “you’re too white for this neighborhood.“

Roughly once every three weeks, I spend half a week oncall, confined to work and home. Starring at my pager with fear and loathing, I incessantly refresh my email inbox, and politely decline invitations for most things fun (and all things outdoors).

Since starting this challenge, pacing has become an oncall habit. I just can’t sit still any more. To the front of the house, look around, then back to office chair. Then to the farthest possible bathroom to pee, then to the balcony, then to the kitchen. Why the kitchen? I’m not hungry. Water, maybe. Then back to the bedroom. Oh, I already had a glass of water, I better take this one back.

Several folks have asked how I keep track of my progress. If my work as a sysadmin has taught me anything, it’s that I should never trust a single system to store any important information reliably. Because I don’t want to end up starting over–or massively backtracking–I keep track of things in three different formats.

First, I carry a small Moleskine notebook; when I turn onto a street, I jot down the name in a big long list. I use acronyms for street names pretty heavily, because really I only have to disambiguate amongst all streets that intersect a particular road. So the list might say, “SVN, 21, Shot, 23, V, 24 E.” That would be South Van Ness Avenue, left on 21st Street, right on Shotwell Avenue, right on 23rd Street, left on Valencia Avenue and ending at 24th Street.

When I’ve settled in at home or on the shuttle, I convert that path into black lines on a map of San Francisco that’s included with the notebook. I hash out finished blocks and typically spend a while cogitating about my next walk by pondering blank spots on the map. Unfortunately the book cuts off a large amount of the southern part of San Francisco, including about 80% of the Bay View, so eventually I’ll have to also get a complete map.

A few times a week I also plot my walks as paths in Google Earth, which is just a digital copy of the notebook. I slap a date stamp into the path name, sometimes include a few notes in the details, and then export a KML file. On my web server, a small script slices that into various meaningful subsets. You can look at the raw list of files here. I’m working on a page that will draw Google maps of any of these, but work has left me with little free time lately.

So there you have it, a completely paranoid way of redundantly manually encoding the same basic information over and over again. At least it doesn’t include Gantt charts.

Sunday I arose at the crack of mid-afternoon and glared disdainfully at the large unfinished section of map covering Potrero and Brandon’s favorite neighborhood, Dogpatch. I’ve nearly spanked Mission Bay, but the area south is completely untouched except for a stroll after stuffing myself at Hard Knox Cafe. So still a bit hung-over from last night’s whiskey bar visit, I loaded up on water and struck out over the hill.

Near the Potrero projects, 22nd turns into a dead end for cars and a sloping dirt path for walkers. The path itself was neatly kept, and surrounded by carefully managed flowers and shrubbery. There are even a few bright blue wooden benches strategically tucked into shady parts of the trail. Google has a decent picture of the lower outlet.

At the end of 23rd, the wreckage around an old PG&E building reminded me of a scene from downtown Grozny. Bits of debris and graffiti were everywhere, and the surrounding fence enough barbed wire to make a supermax prison blush. Strangely enough, the facility seemed to still be operating, because the parking lot had several shiny new company trucks parked neatly in a row. The randy monkey above is a paste-up from the end of 23rd, right before the fence, roughly hyah.

A block over on Humboldt, the power company had claimed a large portion of what once was a public road. I was met by a gate and a elderly security guard, to which I played dumb, saying I was just trying to find an access road to the bay. “This place isn’t for casual walkin’,” he said, wrinkling his push broom. Having obviously had no visitors in days, he tried to be helpful, but I assured him I’d figure things out myself. “Have a good one,” I shouted back. “Likewise!”

After winding through the neighborhood for hours, I returned home for dinner. It proved to be a record day, 19.9 km (12.4 miles), nearly a half marathon. At this point I feel pretty good about taking on all 15 miles worth of streets on Treasure Island with Coop.

Minutes–nay, seconds–after last posting, I disembarked from the shuttle at the edge of Lake Merced, and struck out north along Sunset Boulevard. The wide grassy thoroughfare was obviously meant to be a grand and beautiful park, but I found it more trafficked than pleasant. The grass is consistently brown, weeds are taking over, and empty dirt patches are appearing. The trees, on the other hand, seemed healthy and beautiful, so walking along through the patchy shadows was still enjoyable.

What I’d never noticed before is the careful naming of streets. As I passed Yorba, Wawona, Vicente, Ulloa, Taraval, Santiago, and Rivera, it occurred to me that these are all in alphabetical order. With the exception of a few major streets, this pattern continues up into the Richmond, ending with Anza. I was disappointed that they copped out on “X” since I’ve always wanted to live on Xiphoid Lane. Did the founders of this quiet district not have a dictionary?

The monotonous fabric of the Sunset is interrupted by a gigantic reservoir between Ortega and Quintara, 24th and 28th. An eight block man made pool of water, I thought, must be more exciting than yet another block of wooden cubes. After ascending a few hundred feet up Quintara, as I finally approached the fence, I expected blue glimmering water sprinkled with ducks, maybe a lilly pad or two. But alas, all I found was two four-block slabs of concrete concealing underground tubs. The ocean of rock was guarded by two hispanic fellows lounging near the egress of their RV, and several large signs assuring that they mean business.

After cresting the peak of Quintara, which is nearly as tall as Mount Davidson, if bullets of sweat are any accurate measure, I slid down 9th av, feeling like I’d finally entered the real city. Being unfamiliar with the UCSF campus, I chose to follow Kirkham to its end, and meander through the school onto Parnassus. The road (plus some steps) deposited me into a Saunders Court, which at night proved quite vacant, but even more impenetrable. After following every strip of concrete that resembled a walkway, I eventually lamented, reversed, and eventually found access to Parnassus via stairs along the edge of Koret Vision Lab.

When I finally arrived home at nearly 11, Ellie was cooking me a late dinner. I showed off my strap rash, told her some stories, then curled up to devour tasty treats.

We arrived an hour late to Kate’s on sauntering Saturday, fortunately the short notice meant that no one was waiting. A rowdy bunch–probably from the Marina–dominated the bar when we arrived, but soon departed to continue their pub crawl. Once they’d left, Brandon nicked a discarded map that divulged their route, weaving up from Townsend up through Chinatown and ending on Columbus. Each of the six bars had six pint icons next its name, and the caption instructed you to check off one per drink. This level of alcoholic ambition, I thought, deserves some respect.

After downing our greasy grub (which hit the spot, but was slightly sub par), we hit the streets, ambling down to the end of Natoma. The first block skirts the transbay terminal, and all the rest is composed only of alleys. We finally heard from DQ near 6th, and agreed to meet him at the corner. He was only a few blocks behind us, so it wasn’t long to wait.

6th between Folsom and Market are among the most crowded with homeless folk in the city, and they proved to be particularly active at dusk. They laughed and joked, hemmed and hawed, and played games of chicken with passing cars. Upon DQ’s arrival, one of them came closer to compliment his pants, a black and red number, with a punk rock tone. The stranger handed me his jacket and playfully addressed DQ, “I’ll fight you for those pants!”

Quick to retort, DQ jumped into the exaggerated pose of an 1920s boxer and fired back, “then put up your dukes.” They shuffled their feet and spun fists for a bit, but eventually decided just to shake hands. As we walked off, the stranger made a faint attempt to be compensated for his character, but they group already had too much momentum.

Rather than reversing onto Minna once Natoma was done, we chose to beat a path to Toronado for drinks with Hobe. The only two things I remember learning later that night were thus: 1) Rosemunde is even more delicious with beef chili and 2) Ellie’s afraid of cemeteries.

Update: no sauntering Saturday this week. Ellie and I have other plans.

Join me for a walk tomorrow, Saturday, June 9th, at 4pm. After a pint at Kate O’Brien’s, we’ll be walking up Natoma, end-to-end, and down Minna. By “end-to-end” I mean every bit except the one lonely block in Inner Mission. The whole trip should only be about four miles, and we’ll be jaywalking about two dozen times, since neither Natoma or Minna are granted stop lights on cross streets.

When we’re finished, we’ll do whatever we want, probably more drinking.

My morning stroll took my down 15th and back up 13th today, wherein a claw and shovel were grappling huge chunks of scrap in much the same way a baby would with plastic straws. Picking them up, putting then down, picking them up again. I stopped and stared for a few minutes, but was unable to detect a pattern.

Further along, two homeless men were walking down Howard–one with a bike, obviously stolen. They bragged both about petty crimes, thievery and betrayal in the Tenderloin. “Slapping that bitch,” and “smoking rocks.”

After half a block, I tried to make my way around them. “Whoa, mister comin’ through,” the short one said. “Kick him out of the way,” said the tall thief, “he ain’t worth shit.” They both laughed, and stepped aside to make a path. This must be an old joke, I thought. And I’m not a connoisseur, but that’s a pretty nice bike.

Along Market below 7th, a swarm of transients were ambling back and forth across the wide sidewalk, forming an urban gauntlet. Their ranks were thick, but an unexpected gap surrounded the audio shop. As it turns out, no amount of street hardening can prepare you for Celine Dion blasted from twenty thousand dollars worth of amplifiers.