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Blocker: 1500 20th St.
Exploring San Francisco through the lens of individual city blocks, Blocker is a weekly series by Charles Hodgkins. Look for it on SFist each Wednesday, around the lunching hour.
Blocker, No. 9: 20th St. in Potrero Hill
In a city as spectacularly hilly as San Francisco, 20th St. in Potrero Hill may well be the finest roller coaster ride on offer. Of course, the speed limit is only 25 mph (as it should be through a neighborhood), so you’ll have to resist the temptation to get on your bad motor scooter and go roaring up and down 20th’s undulations all Evel Knievel-style.
Aside from Potrero’s most obvious geologic property – it’s a real tall hill! – what’s most striking is how self-contained it is. (All that’s missing is an old-timey single screen theater, and anyway, who wants the hassle of having to clean spilled soda and Junior Mints anymore?) It may lack the restaurants strung along 18th St. down the hill, but 20th St. between Missouri and Connecticut speaks to Potrero Hill’s autonomy as well as any block in this eminently pleasant neighborhood.
The block’s got residences. It’s got businesses. It’s got a couple MUNI lines that roll through on occasion. There’s no need for a parking permit. Although nobody will ever mistake it for the Avenue of the Giants up in Humboldt, it’s got a whole bunch of nascent-to-mature street trees lining the sidewalks. And as with so many of Potrero Hill’s short east-west blocks – all a fraction of the length of those marathon South of Market blocks to the north – this stretch of 20th St. is utilitarian and attractive. It wins on both counts.
It’s a gorgeous, cloudless summer day as a mother and son wait for the 48 bus on a bench facing away from the street, adjacent to Billy’s Dry Cleaners. Across the street, just up from Good Life Grocery, we inspect a police telephone and have a mind to jokingly call in a complaint on a jaywalker, before coming to the conclusion that the disused phone probably hasn’t been operable since the filming of Bullitt. Small businesses along the west end of the block sport barbershop poles, real estate firm logos, and the State Farm Insurance shield. Over at brand-spanking-new Jay’s Deli, which occupies the ground-floor corner unit of a large apartment building at 20th and Connecticut, it sounds as if the pair of 20-something fellows seated at one of the sidewalk tables are animatedly bellyaching about the women in their lives. It’s a cliché exchange, with one guy doing most of the griping, and we keep waiting for the canned laugh track to come in.
The squatty, round-tiled home at 1521 looks plucked from the Avenues across town, while the mildly yellow, classic Victorian next door at 1527-31 is so lovely, it could well be on leave from the southeast side of Alamo Square. Humbler, yet inviting homes line the north side of the street.
Standing at 20th and Missouri and gazing down the street’s corridor to the east, the giant quarry in east Oakland’s hills dominates the clear view across the blue bay water. To the west, imaginary motorbikes attack Potrero Hill’s Giant Dipper, flying up and over the crest at Rhode Island. Turning north, it’s Mission Bay’s big dig in the foreground and Financial District towers beyond. And to the south, Potrero’s infamous, southside hill-hugging public housing lies well beyond the pair of Pinkies nail salons in our midst, straddling each side of Missouri on 20th. It’s one of San Francisco’s most diverse vistas, and where we stand might be the nicest spot of all.
