Blocker: 800 Innes

The immutable racket of welding equipment and other power tools punctures the Monday afternoon air out here along the shores of the bay. The day’s action at Zebra Awning and Nueva Castilla Metal Fabrication is in full noisy swing. Protective eye goggles are often part of the work uniform along this part of Innes - and on Sundays, so is prayer: At the eastern end of the stretch of small warehouses stands MarketPlace Fellowship.

It’s an unlikely spot for a place of worship, but no less likely than one for a castle-turned-brewery-turned-studio. And speak of the devil, that’s the old Albion Ale & Porter Brewery behind the ivy-lined walls and iron gate at 881 Innes, across the street. The ornate, 137-year-old stone structure – updated in the 1930s after years of Prohibition-inflicted neglect – is now a private home, with space rented out to working artists. A peek through the Wonka-reminiscent gate reveals a lavishly landscaped front area that looks more South Yorkshire than southeast San Francisco. We have it on good authority that invitation-only parties occur here on occasion, oompa loompas and rivers of century-old beer be damned.

A walk down the narrow sidewalk along the south side of Innes, past the Albion Castle and the colorful, two-story houses next door, brings the Hunters View housing projects up the steep hill into grim focus. The sign at the foot of the broken glass-strewn steps demands, NO DUMPING, but neighborhood scofflaws seem to have already given these instructions the proverbial finger by dropping a number of bags and boxes full of trash directly under the sign. In Russian Hill, such an offense would be grounds for hanging by toenails. In an area as troubled as Hunters Point, where asbestos lingers in the air from construction of a condominium development a quarter-mile to the east at the old shipyard, and where life among the decades-old apartments doesn’t look much healthier than it was 20 or 40 years ago, the crisis-priority meter is calibrated a bit differently.

The tired tenements loom bleakly over Innes Ave. and the bay cove behind it, and as with San Francisco Housing Authority’s Potrero Terrace property a few miles to the north, the bitter irony of the projects’ sweeping views is thicker than all the toxic waste buried by the Navy down the street.

Small flourishes of optimism crop up across the road. Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ) has set up shop on the ground floor of one of the two recently built apartment buildings on Innes’ north side, and the district’s Health & Environmental Resource Center is a short walk up the sidewalk from LEJ. Each office appears much more vibrant than Hunters Point Restaurant, which despite its claims to the contrary, doesn’t look like it’s been open 24 hours on weekends for quite some time. However, the pay phone in front does feature a dial tone, and if the sign in the window still carries any weight, all domino players are indeed welcome inside.

Vehicles whiz by on the wide, four-lane road; most of them blithely ignore the 35 mph speed limit. A humble patch of red berries and nasturtium blooms through the chain link fence at the foot of the steps leading up to Hunters View, where a pair of kids are currently hauling a vacuum. Bedrock emerges through the hillside soil, suggesting this area may be more quake-proof than other parts of the region. A 19-Polk MUNI bus makes its penultimate stop on Innes before reaching its terminus at the gate to the old shipyard. Its route begins along the northern waterfront, behind Ghirardelli Square – seven or eight miles, and almost as many worlds, away.