A local gay resident, who’s been walking every street in San Francisco for the past four years plans to finish his last stretch along Washington Street over Pride Weekend.

Mission District resident Walter Parenteau will complete a four-year project to walk every street, alley, and staircase in San Francisco Saturday — including Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island — in celebration of Pride Weekend, according to the Bay Area Reporter. The last leg of Parenteau's trek will begin at Sue Bierman Park at Washington and Drumm streets, joined by friends and others who have followed his years-long effort.

The project gradually took shape out of his daily life in the city, reportedly beginning as routine walks between the Mission and Parenteau’s job at St. Anthony’s Foundation in the Tenderloin, where he leads the “Hygiene Hub,” offering showers and laundry services. Over time, those commute routes expanded into planned excursions, eventually becoming a deliberate effort to cover the entire street grid.

Parenteau, who has lived in San Francisco for 22 years, said the experience pushed him into unfamiliar corners of the city and shifted how he understands its neighborhoods.

“It was a real joy to learn every nook and cranny,” he said, speaking to the BAR.

He said his interest in long-distance walking dates back to college in Vermont, after reading A Walk Across America, and resurfaced in 2012 during the 99-Mile March for Education and Social Justice, an Occupy-era walk from Oakland to Sacramento that ended in a rally at the state Capitol. While attending San Francisco State University and living in the Haight at the time, Parenteau reportedly began extending his own walking routes across the city, first informally and then with increasing intention.

Some of Parenteau’s routes stretched across large sections of the city, with walks often spanning multiple neighborhoods in a single outing.

Each walk was tracked on a large paper map kept at home and color-coded by year, with progress checked in real time using a phone photo of the map alongside Google Maps. He told the BAR he kept the system entirely analog throughout, never switching to apps or digital tracking tools, aside from sharing a couple updates on Threads.

As the project progressed, Parenteau moved from familiar commute routes into scheduled neighborhood-by-neighborhood walks, often after work. Evening walks became part of his routine, offering quieter streets and more intimate glimpses of the city and its everyday life.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, when it's wintertime, I won't want to go walking because it'll be dark at 5 p.m.,’" he said, “but what I found was just how much I loved walking at nighttime.”

Related: SF Father Walks 50 Miles In One Day to Raise Awareness For Pedestrian Safety

Image: Walter Parenteau/Threads