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, around the lunching hour.

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Blocker, No. 36: Mason St. in North Beach

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.

Noted Pizza-Roll fans, we're not one to patronize pizza establishments in order to stifle late-night sodium cravings brought on by binge drinking. (Really, with Pizza Rolls you transition from freezer to toaster oven to mouth in record time, seamlessly.) But the this idea of a late-night pizza ban is insane. There's no better word for it.

In North Beach fights breakout and mild vandalism occurs after bars close at 2 a.m. This chaos, typical for any city, makes some of our sensitive city dwellers cranky before bedtime. Or whatever. So, the City Planning Commissioners somehow got it into their heads that closing pizza parlors on the the Broadway strip, pizzerias that normally stay open until 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., before 2 a.m. will solve a slew of problems. According to the Examiner:

Closing the parlors at 2 a.m. or earlier could curb violence and public drunkenness and reduce litter from pizza boxes and plates, Central Station police Capt. James Dudley told commissioners at the meeting. Dudley said earlier club closing times could also help solve problems in the area.

But the closure could spell out certain death for Cable Car Pizza and Broadway Express Pizza -- establishments that rely on the late-night revenue. Are lingering drunks such an issue for SFPD that it's worth forcing restaurants out of business? Seeing as how it's their job, can't the fuzz handle a few tipsy, Drakkar-Noir-soaked partygoers?