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Blocker: 000 Sussex
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.
View the map of all published Blocker episodes.
Blocker, No. 12: Sussex St. in Glen Park
Few San Francisco burghs are as tucked away as Glen Park. Despite the ingenious presence of a BART station and a handful of popular restaurants (Chenery Park, Gialina, La Corneta), the neighborhood isn’t the kind of place most people randomly end up on a stroll or a ride. Unlike, for instance, Hayes Valley, or much of the Mission, you make a bit of an effort to get here.
Aspiring to become a high-profile destination-neighborhood is not on Glen Park’s agenda. Its reputation as a charming, homey little district stems from narrow, hillside lanes such as Sussex St., where the mood is assuredly residential. There’s something vaguely coastal New England in the air at certain moments along this block between Castro and Diamond, and it stems from more than the street’s name. It could be called Constantinople Place and we’d still be tempted to naively pin the “Cape Cod meets San Francisco” tag on the place.
Clearly, a few bungalows along the south (downslope) side of Sussex make us pine for a bowl of white chowder as we walk around. The manicured look of certain front yards, the crocheted curtains at 23 Sussex, the 15 mph speed limit...it’s all very grandma’s-town, in all the right, slow ways. Perhaps the pair of grey-haired matriarchs chatting at the picket fence in front of 47 Sussex have something to do with this.
But this is not Truro, Massachusetts. This is San Francisco, where the 80-year-old (ancient!) structure at 53 Sussex is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and features a neon “Namaste” sign in its front window. Where the front door at 32 Sussex looks like it should lead into a South of Market loft rather than a Glen Park flat. Where the late afternoon gusts up here rock every set of windchimes into complete cacophony. Where someone’s firing up a barbecue upwind from us, and it’s smelling real inviting.
Ever wonder if neighbors try to one-up each another with paint jobs? You may, if you ever take a good look at 52 and 54 Sussex. It’s as if whomever watched the other house get slathered in green first, thought to himself/herself, I’ll see your mint ice cream and raise you a pea soup. Tie goes to the greenest.
Irrespective of whether it’s underground or overground, foliage plays a significant role here on the southern flank of Gold Mine Hill. Upwardly mobile tree roots at the western end of the block make Sussex’s sidewalks a slight thrill-walk, while general leafiness up and down the street suggests San Francisco may be more of a tree city than those arbor-snobs in Vermont and southern Utah want to admit.
Finally, this block of Sussex seems to enjoy a split personality, purely by geographical necessity. A number of A-frame-peaked homes on the northern (upslope) side of the street – particularly toward Diamond – are set far off the road and well up the hillside, with garages built at street level. More traditional flats line the north side of the street back toward Castro (which, like Diamond, does not connect with its better-known stretch over the hill to the north). Across the street, it’s bungalow after bungalow, with a couple of larger, taller homes tossed into the mix – some cared-for places with cozy front porches, some decayed places with musty front porches.
Sussex seems to capture the residential essence of Glen Park: humble and limelight-shy, but worthy of its own close-up all the same. Sometimes the supporting actor puts on the best performance.
