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. 26: Amethyst Way in Diamond Heights

Certain blocks speak to specific eras. While the local architecture can play a significant role, perhaps the most crucial factor is one that can’t be defined. It’s a mood we begin to sense as we sift around an area - what we imagine it to have been like so many years before, and in the case of certain places, perhaps how little it’s changed in the years since.

Mission St. in the Excelsior had us thinking 1972 or so. Sturgeon St. on Treasure Island seemed rutted in about 1987. Country Club Dr. in the Parkside had 1954 down pat.

By the same metric, Amethyst Way in Diamond Heights feels like 1966.

Much of Amethyst’s period architecture is so well-maintained, it’s no wonder this peaceful slice of urburbia feels like a time warp back to the days of LBJ’s Great Society. The clean-cut edges of the houses on the street’s north side rival the boxed corners of the hedges that flank one driveway across the street, although there’s no suitable complement to the apocalyptic number of Costco-sized Cheerios and Chex boxes we slyly spot on a shelf inside the same home’s open garage. If the Big One hits San Francisco next week, these folks will have enough bite-size oat and grain snacks to last a full year, maybe two.

Up close, the homes on Amethyst’s south side appear to have been built in a ranch style. A few steps back, however, reveal second stories set subtly off the street, and we instantly imagine game rooms featuring a pool table, color television, and stereo hi-fi all set to play that new Engelbert Humperdinck hit single - or better yet, a freshly unsealed vinyl copy of Revolver. Meanwhile, the fearsome pair of ceramic lions “guarding” the entryway to 57 Amethyst are definitely not figments of our active imagination, particularly in the way each beast lurks in swarming locks of ivy and other foliage.

Throughout our short stay on this gorgeous autumn weekend afternoon, signs of human activity are few and far between: A couple walks with their German shepherd, a letter carrier takes care of business, and that’s about it. Also, a man works to install a new doorbell at 60 Amethyst, and when he pauses to blow his nose, it’s a staccato riff akin to a severely off-key flugelhorn. In fact, it’s so loud, it momentarily drowns out both the constant hum of traffic on Portola Drive and the wind rifling through the adjacent eucalyptus trees. We’re impressed.

Down at the west end of the street, where Amethyst dead-ends into School of the Arts (formerly McAteer High School), the rich scent of pine needles – freshened from the previous day’s rainstorm - seems positively Sierra-esque. There’s a football scrimmage happening down at McAteer’s old football field far below, and the chanting of one of the football teams during a time-out billows up the canyon. We walk back down the street to leave, and turn around briefly to see a crowd of urban hikers coming off Turquoise and onto Amethyst. It’s the biggest news up here all day. Perhaps even since the mid 1960s.

(Photos by the author.)