Exploring San Francisco through the lens of city blocks, Blocker is a regular series by Charles Hodgkins. Look for it on SFist every other Wednesday, before the lunching hour.

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Blocker, No. 37: Serrano Dr. in Parkmerced

Every now and again, we’ll hear a resident of one of San Francisco’s older, more visitor-visible neighborhoods dismiss the western side of town in one fell swoop, and fog often doesn’t even come into play. Is that even San Francisco out there?, the statement often riffs atonally; common targets are the Richmond, Sunset, and/or Parkside.

Rarely is Parkmerced whirled into west San Francisco’s pooh-pooh (quite different from “poo poo”) stew. Before its come-live-here advertising campaign carpet-bombed a great percentage of MUNI vessels the last couple years, Parkmerced was one of the city’s lowest-profile neighborhoods. Maybe it still is. One thing’s certain: It stands alone within San Francisco, and not just geographically.

The planned community of Parkmerced — one word, not two, our team of copy editors keeps reminding us — was built by an insurance company back when American families still gathered around the hi-fi to listen to fireside chats by the president. We understand there are several subregions here, but it’s the seemingly student-heavy north side of the neighborhood that most piques our outsider interest. Positive indicators like 20-year-olds slouched over from the weight of backpacks, as well as Vote 4 THC decals slapped up on apartment windows, tell us we’ve hit our mark.

Other than one jarhead who inexplicably blares Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” as he circles around looking to park his Honda, it’s surprisingly quiet here, considering it’s a student community. Dishes clatter through an apartment’s open kitchen window, a few seagulls squawk overhead, and a stiff breeze blows through five giant pines that line the block. That’s about it for commotion, really.

Of course, San Francisco State isn’t a big-time sports school, nor is it known as a four-year-party tuition vacuum for unsuspecting parents. In fact, the young adults shuffling up and down this block of Serrano on their way to or from the campus a block over confirm SFSU’s regular-guy/gal image. They look like normal college-age kids, brows slightly furrowed as they perhaps consider upcoming spring semester finals while walking and texting on their phones. Some do a better job than others of not tripping over tree roots poking through the occasionally bumpy sidewalks underfoot.

But the students aren’t the defining characteristic here. And although they’ve taught us a brand new word (“circularizing”), the tiny black signs on many front doors warding off peddlers, solicitors, and other purveyors of unwanted marketing material aren’t what we’re likely to most remember after our visit. When we think of Parkmerced from here on out, we’ll probably think of awkward and flimsy porticos.

Clearly, Parkmerced management at one time or another had grand things in mind for the development’s structural aesthetic. Front entryways of several apartment buildings along Serrano feature sets of towering pillars, as if every passerby is expected to stop and gape before loudly remarking, Magnificent!! The initial, semistraight-faced goal with these narrow, white columns may have been to imitate Virginian colonial revival on a humble — very humble — scale; the end result, however, is befuddled amusement at how completely out of place they are.

We cautiously approach one of the fiberglass porticos and knock on it. It sounds like it looks: real hollow. We surmise that a wayward Vespa traveling at 25 mph could probably crumble one good, and from the looks of the leftmost “colonnade” at 166-168 Serrano (where plenty of other disrepair is already afoot), perhaps this has already occurred.

Apart from the silly columns, certain aspects of Parkmerced buildings recall inglorious moments in twentieth century mid-density design — chiefly, a boxiness often associated with the era’s public housing, mixed with elements later seen in so many suburban condominium complexes. But we’ll go on record as being fans of the shared courtyards accessible through many of the pillar-framed entryways. Parkmerced’s garden-centric layout is apparently the object of appreciation in certain landscape architecture circles, and during our visit, we can understand why — it’s hard to find fault with a Weber Kettle and a couple of lawn chairs on a tiny back patio.

It’s neither on Rice-A-Roni boxes nor visitor travel itineraries, but Parkmerced is certainly San Francisco. You might need to double-check your map at first, though.

(Photos by the author.)