San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Enjoying the paths less taken
It has been more than three months since the world shrank and maybe in that time some of us have had a chance to rediscover the pleasures of walking for pleasure. It’s one of the few good things to come out of the coronavirus pandemic.
Today is the perfect day to celebrate the art of the long walk — it’s the first Sunday of what is now officially summer and the longest Sunday of the year.
San Francisco has always been a walker’s town; it’s in the bones of the region. My brother, my sister and I always walked to school from Potrero Hill down to the Mission District and back again every day. Country kids rode school buses because their schools were far away from home, you know, out in the country. But we were city kids, so we walked. But that was back in the old days, back before the virus, when kids went to school.
So now, the coronavirus has brought walking back, and it has put limits on where to walk. For a long time, the authorities took a dim view of a walk in the woods. In Marin, they blocked parking places near trailheads, and other counties made it clear that the parks were for locals only. Muir Woods was closed. So was Yosemite. We were told in no uncertain terms to stay away from Lake Tahoe. That’s changed now, but it had a side effect.
It kept city people in their own neighborhoods; San Franciscans rediscovered San Francisco. The same thing probably happened all around the Bay Area. I don’t know for sure. I’m sheltering in place.
I thought I knew the city pretty well, but coronavirus walks made me rethink where I walked. For one thing, I wear a mask — and that makes me wary of people without masks. There are a lot of barefaced runners, taking deep breaths. I avoid them.
We are told, too, to avoid crowds, keeping 6 feet away from everyone else. That eliminates one of my very favorite walks, from downtown San
Francisco to North Beach through the Stockton Street tunnel, into Stockton’s amazing Chinatown shopping district, and on to North Beach. I loved the vibrancy of the crowds, the shops, the bustle of the most famous parts of the city. Not anymore. Too much hustle and bustle.
The same thing applies to Mission Street, the main drag of the Mission and Excelsior districts. Or even Montgomery Street, once the Wall Street of the West. Too many people.
So, I tried the streets less taken. One Sunday morning, I found myself at Stockton and Sutter streets with time for a long walk. This time, I headed down Sutter toward Market Street and then worked my way north along Sansome and Battery streets at the eastern edge of Telegraph Hill. There were views of the bay and warehouses repurposed to other uses, tracks from vanished railroads, and signs painted on old brick walls, a bit of faded grandeur. I had driven this street hundreds of times and never noticed. Walking gives you time to notice.
Seeking an alternative to busy Mission Street the other day, I cut right on 17th Street and then south on Capp Street. Capp had a tough reputation not long ago, but it was quiet and empty that day. Capp Street, like others in this part of the Mission, is lined with classic San Francisco houses, most of them well over a century old. A lot of them look to have been modernized and repainted, gentrification on the march. At 22nd Street is a big church with a tall steeple and a rose window, a typical bit of turnofthelast century Carpenter Gothic architecture. When it was new, it served a German congregation, its cornerstone, its words in German, is still visible. The Germans moved away and for a while the building served a Latino congregation. Now it is the Hua Zang Si Buddhist temple. An interesting example of the tides of changes that have swept over the Mission.
On a foray in and out of Noe Valley a week ago, I decided to skip upper 24th Street, with its wine shops, bookstores, restaurants, markets and places that sell everything from fine cheeses to chocolate doughnuts: a nice but crowded urban stroll. Instead, I took parallel Elizabeth Street and headed east. I was rewarded with a walker’s delight of beautiful houses and small back alleys, running north up the hill that leads to the next valley. Wow, I thought, even the side streets have side streets.
Walking lets you see things you may have taken for granted before, like the amazing clarity of light these sunny days. It may be due to the lockdown that came after the virus hit. Business slowed to a crawl, there were fewer cars on the road and half as many buses. There is less gunk in the air; it is so clear that looking at Twin Peaks from Noe Valley, you can almost count the blades of hillside grass.
“The light of San Francisco is a sea light … ” Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote. And you can see it best at Ocean Beach, another favorite walk. If the fog holds off, you will be able to see up to Point Reyes and the rocky Marin coastline. If you make it as far as the Cliff House, you will be able to see far out into the ocean, and maybe a ship heading out to sea.
If you wait long enough, you will notice toward late afternoon how far north the sun sets on this longest of Sundays, how the waves kick up in the Golden Gate when the tide is ebbing.
Next year, we may be able to travel the big wide world again, but this year, we can walk to explore our own small world.
Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cnolte@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @CarlnolteSF