Hike SF

Chronicle authors, Herb Caen included, gave San Francisco 42 hills back in 1959. Years later, Hansen’s Almanac added one more. Tom Graham, the Chronicle’s walking man, added ten more. And Dave Schweisguth took away a few impostrous hills, but left us with 74.

The least I could do is lend a hand with mapping. So here they are, the famous 43 hills of San Francisco on Google Maps. I’ve also made them available via KML for those of you who want to take them with you.

To celebrate four hours of tedious mapping, I walked over two of the peaks this weekend. The picture above is the intersection of Wisconsin and Madera, the peak of Potrero Hill, 91 meters tall.

2008.03.01 edit: changed “dishonest ones” to “impostrous hills” to clarify that I am personifying hills, and not referring to authors. Tom Graham is one of my heroes, and doesn’t deserve even the faintest implication of being dishonest. Apologies to Tom.

Laurence and I ambled home together from Place Pigalle Friday night, after Michelle’s birthday guests disbanded. Laurence’s presence embiggens my bravery about meandering down sketchy alleys, so I took the opportunity to follow a few side streets.

Near the end of Erie, and a little after 1am, we ran into a fellow named Drew and his dog, Milo. When we mentioned we were just exploring, he started describing his restoration effort. The building from which he’d emerged was for sale, but they hadn’t been able to sell it because of the overwhelming odor ammonia odor emanating from the homeless camp at the end of the block.

Drew’s requests that the city provide basic services like street sweeping and parking enforcement went unanswered, so he started cleaning the 200 foot long block himself. He patched the holes in the fence used by the homeless, cut down dead trees and planted live ones. He had the street power washed and even bleached the sidewalk himself to remove stains and odor.

During this time, the city had only done the block two favors: once a meter maid handed out a couple of tickets to illegally parked cars. And another time a street sweeper came through, but only after Drew paid the driver $20.

Nonetheless, the fruit of Drew’s labor was obvious. The street now is quite nice. So nice, in fact, that the owner is now thinking he might not sell Drew’s building.

Mystery solved. The mansion behind Seth’s is owned by Bob Pritikin, and is called Chenery House. Bob’s big bash happens on Labor Day every year, and is often described as weird and perennially odd. Bob is an adman, hotelier, magician, and one of the finest saw players in the world, apparently. And according to these pictures, his parties tend to draw a lot of local celebrities.

Bob plans to will the house to the city, to be used as either the mayor’s mansion or a cultural center.

The most exciting part about this discovery? You can tour or even rent the mansion.

Tuesday’s commute home was almost ninety minutes, which is long for me, but apparently not bad for rush hour. The shuttle took the “scenic route”, going out by Lake Merced on the way to Glen Park BART, which gave me a good long look at the Sunset monotony. Twas boring even at thirty miles per hour; at three it might kill me.

Orphan blocks pull me in like a moth to a flame, and Castro has one near GPB, so I hoofed right off the shuttle to find it. Why I seek these blocks I don’t know, because they’ve never been very exciting, and this was no exception. Hopes dashed and glum, I decided to phone Jelly for cheering up. Turns out she was on Chenery with Seth, and had cheese! She could have said nothing better, or at least nothing I’d repeat in polite company.

The three met up at Bemis and Miguel, and we opted to descend and follow Chenery to Seth’s new place, eating crackers with Baba Ghanoush all the while. Seth told the story of an eccentric and rich fellow that lives in a huge mansion without street access behind his building. The grounds are carefully tended gardens, the interior is exquisitely decorated, and the owner apparently throws sexy parties and loans the place out to movie makers.

As we parted ways with Seth, Ellie and I walked north along Dolores, and I made a mental note to find out more about the mansion owner.

With most of Inner Mission covered, weekend walks now typically start with a BART ride. Disembarking at Montgomery, I headed down fifth to loop the mall. Since my map’s creation, the mall was built consuming the entire block, save to corner buildings, probably too expensive to buy out. Jessie Street, lopped in twain by posh boutiques, had been strangely reconfigured. Jessie Street intersects Jessie West Street on one end, and Jessie East Street on the other. Pray that if I ever build a mall, I don’t get so lazy with names.

Downtown San Francisco loves a good plaque, as I was reminded thrice during the rest of my walk, once at Mission and Steuart by a plaque commemorating the slain on Bloody Thursday, again by one on Embarcadero that went unread as I was harassed by bums, and finally by a plaque near Broadway celebrating the Pony Express. All three were commissioned and installed by historical societies. This made me think, if I pretend to be a historian, can I spread misinformation in plaque form?

Passing twice over the blocks south and west of Embarcadero, I mostly encountered brick office buildings a fraction of the height of their cousins over the hill. Vacant parks, school administration buildings, water treatment plants and empty parking garages stretched out for miles, leaving me with a sense of isolation in what I once considered the most happenin’ corner of the city. Perhaps the hustle and bustle just has more room to stretch out on the other side of Coit.

If you follow Embarcadero to the end–I mean the very, very end–and you don’t get sidetracked by Jefferson, you should find the humble but elegant Fisherman’s and Seaman’s Memorial Chapel. A small wooden building with F. L. Wright style sits at the very tip of the wharf, facing out towards the Golden Gate. And if you bring a friend more interested in food than beauty, you’ll be steps away from Taylor’s crab carts when you turn to head back.

After the decents down Seward’s slides last week, Ellie and I were kidlike for hours. On the way home, we passed this street sign and had a Beavis and Butthead moment. Minutes later we passed a house addressed 69 Uranus, and had another.

Weeks back, Laurence and I became curious about strange patterns in the buildings in Mission. Along a line from roughly Harrison and 22nd to Dolores and Cesar Chavez lay buildings with strange diagonal shapes. The buildings along that line all seem to be cut by a giant scar, literally dozens of them. In some blocks the scar is an alleyway, in others a park, and in others completely missing.

Walking down San Jose Ave on Monday, I stumbled upon a long thin park, Juri Commons. Aha, that’s part of the scar! As it turns out, the scar was once the San Francisco and San Jose railroad, and was replaced by the current Caltrain tracks after the 1906 earthquake. Home owners along the tracks must have simply started to extend their buildings and fences to consume the abandoned space, except in the blocks were parks were later formed.

The cost of a ride from SF to SJ in the late 1800s was $2.50, or around $35 adjusted for inflation, which makes Caltrain’s modern $7.50 fare seem like a bargain.

If you’ve ever taken the 280 in or out of San Francisco, you’ve probably noticed the winding lines of houses on the southern hillside. They’re like threads in a mile-long rope. Does anyone know the history of these? Who built them, and why like that?

On Sunday afternoon I met several sleepy-eyed friends at the Seward Street Slides, which Matt had discovered days prior. Many of them had arisen at dawn to run a 10k, but all suddenly had boundless energy upon sighting the slides.

Neighborhood folk leave cardboard boxes in the park, because they make for a much faster decent down the roughly 8m tall slides. To accelerate yer plunge further, Matt had the pro tip: sand under the cardboard will act like ball bearings. So for about half an hour, we’d run up the hill with a cardboard slab and fist full of sand, and slide right back down. The true speed demons (e.g. Rob) could get enough speed to shoot right off the end and into the sand pit.

The slides are about 50m up Seward from its intersection with Douglass, on the left side, nestled in a park that contains almost nothing but the slides. It’ll be 34 years old on the 19th.