Sanchez stroll convinces slow-street skeptic

Sometimes, it seems as if San Francisco is rapidly going down the drain. A crisis every day. So maybe it’s time to take a walk in the slow lane, right down the middle of Sanchez Street through the heart of Noe Valley.

Sanchez is one of 30 residential streets where through vehicle traffic is limited and people are allowed to walk or run down the middle of the street — or ride a bike, skateboard, wheelchair or unicycle. The program, called Slow Streets, was born in the spring of 2020, only a month after the COVID pandemic shut everything down.

Some of the street closures were controversial — shutting down the Great Highway, for example. But some were a big hit. A mile-long section of Sanchez, a mostly flat section between 23rd and 30th streets, is one of four roadways that are now permanently slow.

The Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs the city streets, made the decision in September after the usual series of studies and hearings, a slow process in itself.

“It was an example of the city and the neighborhood working really well together,” said Christopher Keene, a founder of Slow Sanchez, a neighborhood group that led the fight. Their motto: “Reinventing San Francisco one street at a time.” It sounds like a revolution, and in a way it is. Those of us who grew up in the city know how much a car means: freedom to go where you want, anytime. So any barrier was looked on with suspicion.

I believed that myself until a slow stroll up and down Sanchez Street the other sunny afternoon. I thought it was a great San Francisco walk, though I have to admit, Noe Valley is a very nice neighborhood. It was a bit of a walk on the mild side of town.

My stroll began at 29th and Sanchez and headed north. It seems odd to walk up the middle of the street; it felt like I was leading a oneman parade. I kept watching out for cars. One or two did show up, but I dodged out of the way, forgetting that the traveler on foot owns the slow street.

It was not crowded, unlike the big neighborhood block party on Halloween and on Phoenix Day, a community celebration in October that jammed Sanchez Street. This slower afternoon there were couples strolling, a few runners, a covey of bicycles, a family out for an autumn city walk — kids, parents, an older woman moving carefully using a walker. At 26th and Sanchez a young father used the empty street to teach his daughter one of life’s great lessons: how to ride a bike.

The Noe Café at 26th Street seemed to be a good place to take a break. The place was a laundromat not long ago but was converted into a cafe “just as the pandemic began,” said Christian Ritter, one of the owners. The pandemic and the slow street began at nearly the same time. A blessing in disguise. “It was good for business,” Ritter said. “Kids and families and the community all came by. We love it. Slow Streets can only help our business.”

Andrew Williams III, a big man who had two small dogs with him outside the cafe, had just finished a walk. He is a native San Franciscan — “born and raised,” he said — and has lived in the neighborhood for 27 years. He rents a place and walks a block or two to catch the J-Church streetcar to get to work. He likes the feeling that the slow street has brought to Noe Valley, he said.

“It’s almost a smalltown feeling in a big city,” Keene said.

The intersection with 26th is kind of the Times Square of Slow Sanchez. Besides the Noe Café there is a cluster of small businesses. One is the landmark Antique Clock Repair shop, with a huge clock face, the hours marked in Roman numerals in one window and an assortment of old-fashioned clocks in another, like a monument to low tech.

A child care center is not far away, and down the street at Clipper and Sanchez streets is Bethany United Methodist Church, which traces its San Francisco roots back to 1852. The church was early among Methodist congregations to foster and grow its LGBT membership.

The slow walk also included a Chinese restaurant, a tailor shop, a small street library offering free books to passersby and rows of Victorian houses that were new when Noe Valley was out in the country and the easiest way to get downtown was to take the Castro Street cable car.

But Noe Valley is one of those San Francisco paradoxes. It’s beautiful to look at and interesting to visit. But living there is out of reach for most San Franciscans. Real estate websites estimate that some of those handsome 130-year-old Victorians near 29th would sell for $2 million. A 1960 condo at 1338 Sanchez was listed last week for $1.8 million.

Most people seem to like Slow Sanchez, but not everybody. Dorian Clair, who owns the clock repair shop across from the Noe Café, has mixed feelings. He liked the idea at first, but on further review, he’s not so sure. He says closing down the street has made it harder to park for himself and his customers who bring large clocks for repair.

“It’s been terrible,” he said. “Sometimes I have to drive around for 30 or 40 minutes. And I get expensive parking tickets.”

And because Sanchez crosses more than a dozen other ordinary streets, people on slow Sanchez forget the cross streets are full of traffic. It seems to be a particular problem in late fall, when the sun goes down by 5 in the afternoon. It happened one evening last week when I saw a runner, dressed all in dark colors, forget himself and dart out of Sanchez in front of a car on 29th. If the driver hadn’t been quick to slam on the brakes, there might have been a slow tragedy.

Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle Paul White and his daughter, Eva, 8, walk on the section of Sanchez Street in Noe Valley that has been closed to through car traffic.