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.

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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 his bloated rock opus here. Reagan never demanded it be torn down.

But just the same, the barrier that slashes across this block of Broadway between Taylor and Jones is an honest-to-goodness, can’t-walk-through-it, one-more-hyphen-and-it’s-the-end-of-everything wall. You can walk around it. You can sit on it. You can sit in it – bay-facing benches are cut into its concrete. Superior athletes can probably hurdle it. But drivers? Your hands are tied.