Walk 5 & The cool gray city of love

• Posted on Dan
• in city walks, San Francisco
• on September 9, 2007
• 2 Comments.

The city plan of San Francisco was laid out with straight lines, much like Washington DC. However, the planner didn’t change any of the straight lines to accomodate for the 42 hills that make up the city. So, San Francisco was built on hills too steep for roads or at least any horse & buggy back in the olden days of road building. Really some of the roads are too steep for cars today. We heard the tires of a Lexus SUV screech as it tried to push up a hill while it’s front end left the pavement for a few seconds. Hundreds of staircases were built to access different areas where roads couldn’t work. Neighborhoods were built among these footpaths, and now the only access is by climbing stairs. Smart. Anyway, we bought a book which has several walks/hikes/tours planned out for anyone interested that leads you around the city by these paths and stairs, where cars can’t go. We started with walk 5, which led us around parts of the city we knew, but pointed out so much we had never observed before. The book said this was an architecture heavy walk – i.e. you’re going to see a lot of houses you can’t afford.

I had to lean against these nice people’s Bentley to get a decent picture.

The cool gray city of love, so said George Sterling.

The guy had just gotten done waxing it. Seriously, he parks his antique Aston Martin on the street because he had something else under a cover in the garage. I’m guessing around 1959 Aston Martin… $125k at least?