Exploring San Francisco through the lens of city blocks, Blocker is a weekly series by Charles Hodgkins. Look for it on SFist each Wednesday, around the lunching hour.

Blocker, No. 3: 8th Ave. in the Inner Sunset

A flier on a telephone pole at the corner of Ortega and 8th Ave. screams for vengeance: “$2500.00 reward to the person who can positively identify the shooter of a red-tail hawk in the canyon behind the houses on the east side.” The phrase “dastardly deeds” even emerges from the fist-shaking archives. It’s surprisingly strong conviction for this southeasternmost block of the Sunset, where the catch of the day is otherwise tranquility, with a side of handsome sidewalk lampposts and a few plum tree chasers.

South of Ortega, 8th follows a few bends before petering out altogether once it enters leafy Forest Hill, and hopefully nobody’s been illegally gunning down predatory wildlife over that way lately. On this block between Noriega and Ortega, the street parallels Laguna Honda Canyon, which 7th Ave. slices through downhill to the east. The eastward elevation drop isolates this corner of the Sunset more than you’d think. Trying to get up here from down there? Trek through Forest Hill, where the Sunset’s street grid dies a sweet death, or head up to Lawton before doubling back around the north slope of the crest. Allow an extra few minutes, either way.

Hemmed in by Mt. Sutro to the east and Golden Gate Heights to the west, there’s a quiet architectural mishmash at work here. At the south end of the block, a modern, multi-unit building featuring a keypad security entry system offsets a few boxy apartment structures across the street. The latter employ beams that support the living units above while acting as parking space dividers below (not the place to be during an earthquake), and it all strangely screams “college town!” when you’re not really expecting anything of that sort in these parts, even with UCSF down around the way. Meanwhile, the five-unit building at the northwest end boasts one or two vaguely deco touches over its main entrance.

And this being the Sunset, a handful of California bungalows populate the east side of the street, where a premium seems to be placed on front-end modesty and, as seen from 7th Ave. below, back-end decks. There’s that one nice bench in front of the currently unoccupied bungalow at 1864, though. We tested it. It works.

The mild breeze of traffic floats up from 7th near Clarendon, but as popular a vehicle route as it is, it’s no interstate. The living seems easy up here at the end of the grid, where things feel more cordoned off than usual in San Francisco. Just watch where you fly.