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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

(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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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.?...

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....

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....

Among San Francisco’s myriad neighborhoods, few are as widely misunderstood as the Outer Sunset. Location certainly plays a role. To your average Upper Haight resident – to say nothing of your average South of Market or North Beach resident – this beach-adjacent community may seem as distant as Honolulu, with an N-Judah trip that may rival a flight to Oahu in terms of travel time. But it’s sometimes easy to forget that San Francisco is a mere seven miles wide, and that the folks out west do have phone numbers that begin with 415, rather than 808....

the best place to get a parking ticket in S.F....

(Note to readers: This visit took place shortly before the recent fire at Original Joe’s. We’re innocent.) The 100 block of Taylor, between Eddy and Turk, is not for the faint of heart. Spend some time taking in its considerable distress, and at some point you’re certain to gauge your own capacity for urban America’s torn and frayed seams. Voices here speak in all sorts of timbres. Some holler, while others just mumble incomprehensibly. Nearly all of them sound raspy. The common thread is desperation, and it’s not a pretty sound....

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. 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......

A man in a black leather jacket carefully backs his Yamaha into one of the six motorcycle spaces on Haight at the corner of Shrader. He's here to see Pinback's in-store performance at Amoeba Music across the street later in the evening, but he's also pulled his bike into a world where the warm early evening air is alternately punctured by the scent of patchouli, McChickens, pee, and smoke from silly cigarettes. Plenty of off-street fee parking and reminders of the 1960s glory days are also available. Certain parts of Haight between Shrader and Stanyan have seen better commercial days – specifically, the shuttered and boarded Cala supermarket at its west end, and on a much lesser scale, the former home of taco/burrito retailer Chabela's at 1805 (dormant since the mid-'00s) – and there's no escaping the persistently suffocating sense of flower power and "revolution" around here anytime soon. (Kind bud?) The vibe on the block's sidewalks can be construed as seamy or circus-like (or perhaps both), depending upon one's tolerance for American Youth in Very Big Pants, or for politely deranged men pushing shopping carts and singing "COME TO AFRICA!!" at the top of their high-pitched lungs. But regardless of one's frame of reference, there's always a lot to take in down here in Amoeba Gulch....

Aspiring painters of urban village scenes would do well to get themselves to Bernal Heights at once. From the armada of sandwich boards and the pony-tailed guy enjoying a pensive cup of coffee at Progressive Grounds, to the verdant street trees and the pair of rowdy sidewalk philosophers holding court near the eastern end of the block, it’s quite the bustling display along Cortland Ave. Private lives seem a low priority here, as even the back yards of local bars, cafés, and restaurants are open for business. Sidewalk rest stops are a big calling card on Cortland between Andover and Bennington, the heart of Bernal Heights’ vibrant commercial district. There are benches in front of restaurants (Valentina Ristorante), benches in front of salons (Bernal Heights Nail Care), benches in front of markets (The Good Life Grocery), benches in front of saloons (Wild Side West). The result: A remarkable feeling of community, evinced by how it appears as if everyone might actually know everyone else’s name. It’s like a West Coast version of Andy Griffith’s Mayberry...only on Cortland, there’s no Barney Fife. Auditions may or may not be held regularly at Skip’s Tavern and Wild Side West for the role of Otis the Harmless Town Drunk....

So many characteristics contribute to Pacific Heights’ identity: affluence on eager display, giant square parks, commanding views, boutique shopping, dogs! dogs! dogs! But, one element up here is continually overlooked. Of course, we’re talking about portable latrines on sidewalks. With home construction such a constant in this district, and with so many laborers needing to “tend to personal business” throughout the long workday, it’s no wonder Pacific Heights walkways are lined with blue or turquoise fiberglass toilets. Jackson St. between Pierce and Scott, where three of the nine buildings on the block are currently undergoing some sort of makeover, and where each construction site features its own port-o-let, demonstrates our point as well as any in the area....

A stone’s throw from Lake Merced and San Francisco Zoo, there’s a secluded land where the scent of freshly cut and watered grass wafts through the air. Where the juniper bushes are neatly sculptured and the single-family houses are defiantly unattached to one another. Where untidiness of yard and home is possibly met with scorn and derision among whispering neighbors. On Country Club Drive between Berkshire and Ocean, landscaping is king, putting green lawns and rock gardens remain all the rage, and the number of residents in the 20-39 age bracket appears to be minimal, at most. This block may be an allergy sufferer’s or Mission hipster’s nightmare, and its name may portend false images of Chase and Hilary Whitebread whizzing off in their electric golf cart to the first tee, all bent out of shape about how “the help” failed for the third time this month to feed Shrilly the Pomeranian her Alpo Premium. But, holy smokes, the street’s called “Country Club Drive,” and it’s in San Francisco. We could not resist its pull....

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. 15: Baltimore Way in Crocker-Amazon Just as Four Corners National Monument exploits the fun one can have straddling multiple political boundaries at once, the 100 block of Baltimore Way between Naylor and Cordova holds a certain......

The seaward stretch of Balboa between 37th and 38th Avenues conjures a variety of images, from some of the thickest summer fog around to the Balboa Theater’s weathered sign. The block’s numerous Asian restaurants also merit consideration. Add hockey to the list, sort of. More on that in a bit. Unless you’re an Outer Richmond local and buy your nuts and washers at Crown Hardware on Balboa’s south side, odds are strong that you know this block best for the Balboa Theater, where the scent of butter-slathered popcorn wafts outside day and night. The circa-1926, moving picture house endures as the only one of its kind remaining in this part of town, and it seems to do well showing new releases. One reason for its success may be the fact that, as its sidewalk sandwich board announces, No private picnics (are) allowed in the auditorium. Ask anyone on this side of town what killed the Alexandria or the Coronet in recent years, and they’ll surely tell you: private picnics in the auditorium....

Question: Innes Ave. is in which area of San Francisco? A) Hunters Point: San Francisco’s notorious waterfront/hilltop ghetto, adjacent to a naval shipyard-cum-Superfund site. B) India Basin: Hardscrabble home to industrial businesses galore. C) India Cove: Cozy-sounding name marketed by area developers. D) Hunters Point / India Basin Historic District: Once “India Cove” takes root, the little brown “Historic District” signs won’t be far behind. E) All of the above. Answer: E, or at least that’s what we think. Few San Francisco streets rival the 800 block of Innes Ave. between Arelious Walker and Griffith for wide-ranging Blocker fodder. 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....