Those Hills of San Francisco

I've been roaming around in "street view" on my Google map of San Francisco and am beginning to feel that I really don't want to WALK to Swensen's Ice Cream Parlor even if it is only 6 blocks away.  It's all uphill until Leavenworth.  This is a good time to hop onto the trolley buses that run along Union and between the #41 and #45 one should run by every 5 minutes.  I've been scoping out the neighborhood and there aren't any stores to browse along Union anyway until you get to Hyde Street where there is Swensen's on one corner, the Zarzuela tapas restaurant on the opposite corner, a Searchlight Market and an interiors store.  This is a residential neighborhood.

You plunge downhill on Union after Larkin (and I'm behind a Trolley Bus now on the Google street view) and things begin to liven up and become more commercialized when you make a left on Polk Street (which is where the hardware store is).  After that, of course, comes Van Ness Avenue and that is the outer limit of our San Francisco walking experiences.  As kids I don't think we ever walked out that far, much less ventured beyond Van Ness.  We had lunch at Tommy's Joynt and that was Van Ness for us, except when we were driving out of town.  We did go to Golden Gate Park but frankly I don't remember how we got there.  I don't ever remember taking any public transportation except for the cable cars.  We took taxis.  However, when I went to the UC San Francisco Dental School, I would take the East Bay Transit from Albany to the San Francisco Station and then take the Parnassus bus up to Parnassus Avenue so I have a lot of experience with SF buses, not to mention the fact that Will and Camila were born on Mt. Parnassus or maybe it is Mt. Sutro.

But back to Polk Street, where there is a Crunch Fitness Gyn that has taken over the local theater and advertises "Love, Fitness, Happiness" on the marquee.  Polk Street is bicycle route #25 so I hope that means it is flatter than the other streets in the neighborhood.  Now that we are on the flats, there is a Russian Hill Bookstore, lots of restaurants, quite a few dry cleaners and "interior" stores, and a French lingerie store (no Victoria's Secret here!).  I only hope these establishments are still in business in March since one never knows how long ago these Google street views were photographed.

When Polk hits Broadway we are out of the chic area and into Walgreens with a big parking lot and a block later at Pacific the Jug Shop and its parking lot, where we could stock up on liquor for a month.  But there are definitely a lot of restaurants along this stretch, like Tai Chi, whose name refers not to the exercise but to the fact that they offer both Thai and Chinese food.  Polk wouldn't be a bad street to walk on as it is flat and there are lots of restaurants and stores, including the Big Apple Discount Store.

Now we are on Polk between Sacramento and California Streets and supposedly this is Nob Hill, although it looks awful flat and plebian to me.  Within this block is Swan's Oyster Depot, the favorite seafood spot for locals according to Frommer's.  I vaguely remember Andrew Zimmern (or was it Anthony Bourdain?) eating here in one of his TV episodes.

A few blocks south on Bush is the Alliance Francaise which has a Tuesday movie night where they show French cinema at 6:30 pm (or 7 pm if you speak French).  This is in case we have some unspent energy at the end of the day.

By now we are almost at Polk and Sutter and the street is getting a bit less interesting with the International School of Cosmetology, GNC and the Lush Lounge.  It's beginning to look like LA because there are palm trees bordering the street (we haven't run across too many tree-lined streets in San Francisco so far).  It's time to walk a block over to Van Ness and catch a bus to somewhere else, unless we want to have lunch at Tommy's Joynt at Van Ness and Geary and have a pastrami sandwich (or lamb shanks on Thursday).