Blocker’s scope may confine us to the sidewalks 98 percent of the time, but on occasion we’ll find ourselves on certain blocks that demand a few steps outside the confines of our usual corridor. Nowhere is this more evident than along Battery between Greenwich and Filbert, a tree-lined street hemmed in by Levi’s Plaza on both sides. Granted, there’s not much to do up here unless you’re either an employee on break from one of the area offices, or merely someone always on the lookout for yet another place in the city to laze it up. But it’s a pleasant enough hideaway that’s a leafy antidote to the clatter and clang of nearby Fisherman’s Wharf or the Financial District. And you never know when you may be overrun by a just-passing-through posse of early teens in matching tees.... [continue]

They don’t come any more rich with Blocker fodder than Folsom between 6th and 7th Sts. You’ve got four lanes of auto traffic zooming in one direction only. You’ve got an infamous ultramega dance club on one corner, and an “urban communal retreat” that certain people just call a big sex cult on another. You’ve got $30 back waxes, the ice cream man, hella lofts. There’s light industry. There’s an enormous, lovely city park. There’s a guy walking down the sidewalk with a black cat slung over his shoulder. Let’s go.... [continue]

Monterey Blvd. isn’t quite the time warp we’ve seen elsewhere around town—we’re thinking of Mission in the Excelsior; we’re also thinking of Amethyst in Diamond Heights. But just the same, it’s clear that few things have changed in recent years (decades?) on this Sunnyside thoroughfare between Edna and Foerster.

Something else is apparent as well: Several businesses here go out of their way to not let us forget what street we’re on. Monterey Cleaners operates its own plant. Monterey Auto Service is an official brake and lamp adjusting station. Immediate neighbors Monterey Pizza and Monterey Salon ought to join forces and offer some sort of meat lovers’ pedicure special. Monterey Blvd. proudly wears its status as Official Business District of Sunnyside like a big blue #1 ribbon at the county fair.... [continue]

Good grief. You’re really struggling getting your luxury SUV into that space in front of Tena Pro Nails, aren’t you? Do you have an 11 A.M. pedicure appointment? It’s a few minutes after the hour...

Upon quick glance, Portola’s main business drag, San Bruno Avenue, seems acutely workaday compared to a few of its neighborhood-cousins around town. If Russian Hill is a cute little summer dress and the Mission is an old Air Supply T-shirt worn tightly and ironically, Portola is a pair of blue Levi’s—straight-leg ones. And the hair looks terrific.... [continue]

Within a minute of Team Blocker’s arrival on Steiner between Haight and Waller, a mammoth tour bus rolls south down Steiner. Hunh? Clearly, it’s coming from Alamo Square up the hill a few blocks...but where it’s headed, we’re unsure. Duboce Park for a game or two of slobberball? Perhaps a little exercise up and down the Sanchez steps? Seems an odd route for a tour coach, seeing as how the Lower Haight has always been one of San Francisco’s most locally geared neighborhoods — as homegrown as its natty sibling, the Upper Haight, sometimes isn’t.... [continue]

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.... [continue]

We’re well off Broadway — actually, we’re just off Lombard — in the toppermost reaches of North Beach. In fact, we’re not far from where the old neighborhood abuts the landfilled tourist stronghold that stole North Beach’s shore years ago. It’s OK — we’re safe here from Crazy Shirts etc., although there’s a Bay Quackers vessel rolling by a few steps away over on Columbus. A moment later, an artist — shirtless, but sleeved — emerges for a smoke from Tattoo City at Mason and Lombard on this pleasant spring afternoon. He spots the amphibious truck carting visitors up North Beach’s diagonal commercial drag and can’t disguise a mild scoff. San Francisco loves its visitors from Cincinnati and beyond; it just gets a bit hrumphy when groups of them venture south of Bay St. in bright yellow military transport vehicles dating from World War II. Perhaps it’s not such an unfair reaction. But today, that debate’s beyond our scope and interest. We’ve landed on this residential block around the corner from Joe DiMaggio North Beach Playground and Pool, and we’re totally looking for action on a sunny Saturday. We find it: live music, street retail, plenty of pedestrian traffic, even a preening housepet.... [continue]

Certain San Francisco neighborhoods portray themselves as having captured a small-town feel amidst the big city bustle. But almost as often, closer inspection reveals these marketing pitches to be all arm without enough follow-through. Laurel Heights? Sure, it’s leafy and quiet, but since when does Smallville, USA have more salons, antique home furnishing retailers, and high-end fashion boutiques as it does grocers? Bernal Heights? Potrero Hill? We’re getting warmer, but the former’s brimming progressivism and the latter’s choice perch above downtown’s high-rises don’t align with what you get in genuinely small California towns such as Chester or Bishop. West Portal, however, boasts real follow-through – the retro Space Age streetcar station notwithstanding, of course.... [continue]

There’s a woman over there wielding a paring knife, daring the throng to come closer by yelling for their attention every few seconds. There’s a live fish flopping around in an entryway, and not far from that, a bunch of dead chickens in a window. And here comes a couple men, sending fresh loogies flying at low angles. Sidewalk jostling, auto honking, bus exhaust. River traffic is heavy. Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.... [continue]

Our visit to 24th St. between Noe and Castro invites comparisons between this block and other particularly precious, retail-heavy blocks we’ve chronicled. We’re thinking about the 3400 block of Sacramento in Presidio Heights; we’re also thinking about the 1800 block of Union in Cow Hollow. The inevitable similarities between the three stretches are impossible to ignore, but where we found virtually nothing purposely funny on Sacramento and very little to laugh with on Union, there’s a certain humor here on 24th St. that’s a welcome change from the suffocating self-awareness that often weighs down the atmosphere of most boutique-rich areas.... [continue]

(Harvard.) In an imaginary world where San Francisco neighborhoods are represented by stars’ hairstyles, the Marina is Bryan Ferry – artfully coiffed, with a subtle smattering of muss to keep the wispy-haired skeptics on their toes. Bay St. between Broderick and Baker, on the western edge of the Marina, embodies this aesthetic as well as any residential block in the district. Since nothing remotely unusual appears to happen here much – short of the odd cataclysmic earthquake and subsequent fire (see: October 1989) – it’s up to the block’s architecture, immaculately trimmed foliage, and occasional through-walker to provide a bit of Blocker-style backbone. Otherwise, we’re relegated to a piece about all the college alumni license plate frames and window decals slapped on cars parked along this street. Not such an enticing slant.... [continue]

Channel St. is the only street in San Francisco where none of the residents live on land. Where a pair of waterfront parks line the entire length of the street (and one of the few remaining creeks in town). Where a long-defunct tugboat and heady pile of fragrant tree bark don’t seem out of place alongside the road.... [continue]

It’s the dead of San Francisco winter and 46 degrees — 46 degrees! — but that’s not stopping certain hardy residents of the sizable apartment structure at 1214 Polk from opening their windows and drying their laundry au naturale. We’re impressed. 46 degrees in San Francisco, particularly along this gusty urban corridor between Bush and Sutter, feels like autumn in the Yukon. This is the southern edge of Polk’s transitional zone, where it emerges from the sleazy chic of “nitespots” like Vertigo and Blur and slowly crawls toward more prim territory northward up into Russian Hill. The upstairs residences on this block are decidedly ordinary, but there’s a dichotomy at work between, for example, the stained glasswork at O’Reilly’s Holy Grail and the $5 haircuts and $20 facials across the road at the International College of Cosmetology II. Of course, Polk St. has always been known as one of San Francisco’s more diverse business thoroughfares.... [continue]

In the tussle over the mantle of San Francisco’s Most Tucked-Away Neighborhood, Visitacion Valley gets our vote...particularly if by “tucked-away,” one really means “neglected.” Geographic and economic isolation have contributed to infrastructural decline - and crime - here for quite some time, although earnest efforts are being made these days to turn the tide. The block of Leland between Peabody and Rutland is dually zoned for business and residence, so the street is one of Viz Valley’s main drags. There’s plenty of foot and auto traffic here, and the 56 Rutland bus even shuffles by on occasion. Businesses bookend the nondescript strip as post-WWII housing, other small commercial concerns, and a pair of bottlebrush trees fill in the space between. Pretty? Not quite. But, utilitarian? Sure.... [continue]

During our visit to this block of Collingwood, between 21st and 22nd Sts., we ask three residents which area neighborhood they most closely identify with. We get three different answers. 1: “Noe Valley – although I guess, technically, Noe Valley’s northern border is 22nd.” 2: (Shrug.) “I don’t know. Maybe the Castro? Eureka Valley? What is Eureka Valley? I suppose you can’t really call this a valley, since it’s up on a hill.” 3: “Do you live around here?” Not quite the consensus we’re hoping for. But surely we can all agree that the 400 block of Collingwood is San Francisco’s preeminent home of sidewalk birdhouses.... [continue]

It’s early on a Saturday afternoon, and we’ve somehow found our way to Paris. OK, we’re not in Paris. Rather, we’re poking around mellow South Park between 2nd, 3rd, Brannan, and Bryant Sts., where arrondissement 94107’s narrow ellipse of green space merely feels a bit Parisian. The scene in the park is, for the most part, typical and ephemeral: young parents with their kids at the playground, couples chatting on benches or picnicking at tables, dogs and their attendant humans. Falling leaves pepper the ground with muted autumn color. South Park’s twist on the familiar neighborhood park theme, however, is the regular presence of down-and-out’ers at its west end. Nobody seems to demonize the two or three unshowered men hanging about, and while we’re not interested in joining them for a game of checkers or anything, it seems to be a case of no harm, no foul – at least on this afternoon.... [continue]

Certain blocks speak to specific eras. While the local architecture can play a significant role, perhaps the most crucial factor is intangible...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, how little it’s changed in the years since. Mission St. in the Excelsior had us thinking 1972 or so. Country Club Drive in the Parkside had 1954 down pat. Sturgeon St. on Treasure Island seemed rutted in about 1987. Amethyst Way in Diamond Heights feels like 1966.... [continue]

We’ll start with the token blue-collar business. Down toward the Laguna end of this block of Union, a red banner plastered on the home of plumbing/heating/appliance specialists A. Valente & Sons defiantly announces, We’re Here 100 Years – Get Used To It. One of its signature ramshackle red Ford pickups sits across the street, and the stubborn survival of such an unsophisticated enterprise along this, the Yankee Stadium of big-league boutiquery, gets us wondering: Will women’s fashion retailers BCBG Maxazria or Pavillion de Paris still be making sales here early in the 22nd century? Can Marc Jacobs handbags and Lennox heating systems forever co-exist on Union St.?... [continue]

As Financial District blocks go, the 200 block of Front St. is notable for the human scale on which it’s built. The tallest buildings here between Sacramento and California rise a mere five stories. There’s plenty of potted foliage to counteract those “concrete jungle” accusations often lobbed this neighborhood’s way. No less than three popular, sit-down restaurants line its sidewalks. And unlike how things get on canyon-shadowed Sansome St. two blocks to the west, sunlight enjoys more than 15 minutes of daily fame on this stretch of Front. There’s more white-collar bustle than hustle occurring here toward the latter end of the lunch hour on an autumn Friday. Women slow their usual breakneck gait on the return to the office, while men dressed down to the eights in business-casual wear (it is a Friday, after all) appear to have dialed down their strides as well. Some women are decked out in heels and skirts, while others go less formal in flats and pants, but to their credit, it’s clear there’s no single look among them. The men? Not quite. We see the same striped shirt (always tucked in, of course) on three different men between the ages of 25-40 in under an hour.... [continue]

At one end of Ivy St., the vibrant sounds of Afro-beat float across Octavia from the African Outlet. A single pigeon observes the sidewalks and street from its lofty perch upon a sill of the Ivy Hotel, kitty-corner from the retailer. Nobody knows if the pigeon has taken note of the owl less than ten feet above its head. At the other end of Ivy St., low income housing strikes a weary pose across Laguna, a relic from the era when Hayes Valley was known as a freeway-slashed slum. Turning 90 degrees to the left, the newly gentrified and boutique-crazy Hayes St. is a 30-second walk to the south. Visible from our vantage point is a corner retailer, Alabaster, that deals in self-styled “treasures for the home.” Clearly, Hayes Valley remains in a state of transition. Even the pigeons can’t see everything going on here.... [continue]