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.

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Blocker, No. 20: Broadway in Russian Hill

It’s never achieved the kind of celebrity the fallen Berlin Wall did. It doesn’t separate clashing cultures the way Belfast’s Falls Road / Shankill divider still does. Roger Waters didn’t perform his bloated rock opus here. Reagan never demanded it be torn down.

But just the same, the barrier that slashes across this block of Broadway between Taylor and Jones is an honest-to-goodness, can’t-walk-through-it, one-more-hyphen-and-it’s-the-end-of-everything wall. You can walk around it. You can sit on it. You can sit in it – bay-facing benches are cut into its concrete. Superior athletes can probably hurdle it. But drivers? Your hands are tied.

Still, certain persistent drivers don’t take no for an answer so easily – particularly those coming up the steep grade from the east. As we observe the scene from a perch along the north end of the wall, a man approaches the wall slowly in a red Honda, and when he sees the only available space on the block at the moment – wedged right up against the wall on the south side of the street – he backs off. His car would fit easily, but he’s clearly not at peace with the proposition. Two other drivers over the course of the next ten minutes feel the same strain, and also give the space a miss.

Cars and the skittish drivers who operate them aren’t the only story way up here, well above the busy tunnel corridor far below. Of course, there are the views – compromised as they may be on this autumn day, as the city’s fog pretends Russian Hill is Twin Peaks’ stunt double in the way it floats over the neighborhood before petering out on its eastern slope.

There is also much creeping foliage along the way; it is green, and it is good. Walls are tightly slathered in close-cropped ivy, hedges around the palatial homes on the north side of the block are precisely box-cut, and the low-hanging twin willow trees halfway down the east side of the hill envelop everything under their substantial canopies.

Walking straight across Broadway’s estimated 18% slope is an exercise in maintaining one’s balance, and it’s much more difficult than you’d expect. Then again, walking straight up or down this hill is enough of a tough trick in its own right. We feel particular sympathy for the teen boy tasked with pushing his bicycle up the sidewalk, pack on his back and plastic bag of groceries over his left wrist. At one point, a downhill-aimed tourist jokingly remarks to the boy, You can’t ride up this hill? The kid ignores the comment and soldiers onward and upward, game face intact.

Stairsteps on sidewalks this steep don’t always work so well for everyone – namely, bicycle-pushers and pedestrians lengthy of stride. A pair of runners steady themselves as they boldly come rumbling down the steps on the north side of the street, and they make it a point to touch each and every one on their way down. We’re pretty sure they didn’t leap the wall at the top of the hill, but for all we know, they may have.

But in their hasty descent, it’s likely they’re missing our favorite part of this visit: Someone around here is cooking something, and there’s are several cloves of garlic involved in the recipe.