Hill Walking and View Finding

What a fabulous long weekend! There was sun, there was fog, there was fun and there was a lot of exploring San Francisco and checking out some of the awesome sites around here!

On Saturday, we finally went to see the Mosaic Steps of 16^th Avenue in Golden Gate Heights.  The Tiled Steps (http://www.tiledsteps.org) were created as a result of a neighborhood effort to beautify the 163 steps located at 16^th Street and Moraga in San Francisco.

I had learned of these steps by accident when I was looking to locate the many hidden steps that are tucked in between San Francisco streets. It only took about 5 months to finally get to this part of the city to see this work of art in person.

To get to the steps, we took the N Judah train towards Ocean Beach and got off at 16^th Avenue. We walked on 16^th for a few blocks and up some steep stairs, keeping the top of the hill in sight. When we reached Moraga Street, we turned left and there were the steps! There were barely any people there and we were able to take our time going up the stairs, turning often enough to enjoy the view of the ocean and of the colorful houses that now cover the once sandy terrain of the Sunset District.

 

At the top of the stairs, the panoramic view is breathtaking. To the right, another set of 143 wooden steps promise an even better view from the top of Grand View Park, with a 360 degree view of the city, including the downtown area, the south suburbs of the city, the Golden Gate Bridge, the ocean, the bay, and all of the hills in the city. The name Grand View is well deserved!

After walking around the park, we started making our way down towards Mount Sutro, on Moraga Street, on our way to Twin Peaks, the second planned destination of our Saturday outing.

As we walked towards Mt. Sutro, following the sight of the large tower that adorns its top, we thought about how, while walking around the city, you see tree-covered hills and you can easily think of what the city used to look like before the trees in the lowlands were cut down and people started to settle down here.

Watching these tree-covered, green hills, we imagined being in the wilderness and seeing hills like those. We suddenly realized how big the hills were, and were even more motivated to get to keep walking on, going up and down those hills, until reaching our destination.

After a nice walk, the three of us reached Twin Peaks—yes, Bomber was with us! The view from Twin Peaks is fantastic! Not quite as open as the one from Grand View Park, but what made it special, was the fact that the vanishing point goes down Market Street, all the way to the Ferry Building.

We sat around, took in the view and were appreciative for living in such an awesome city where we can jump on a train, walk a few blocks to go see amazing art on the streets to then go hiking in forested hills, all the way to an amazing overlook from which to appreciate the architectural beauty of the city. Wow… I do love my city!

When we were done, we started making our way down to try to find the nearest train station to catch a train back home. We were surprised at how long the descent was. I guess that in climbing about 3 hills, we slowly got higher and higher, all the way to Twin Peaks.

Back on Church Street, we caught the J Church train and made it back home with one tired puppy on our laps!

On Sunday we went to Point Reyes National Sea Shore. It was foggy. We played in the little bit of sun that managed to make it through the clouds. No pictures came out of that outing, only happy memories!

Monday—Happy Labor Day—we jumped on the N Judah again and headed to the Haight to find more graffiti by Banksy (and to buy more thread for my quilt project!). The destination was 1672 Haight Street, right in the heart of the Haight Ashbury area, where the hippies still stroll around once in a while.

We walked around trying to locate the wall in which the words “This is where I draw the line” were supposed to be painted. To our surprise, the words are now covered by a thick layer of white paint. There is no way of knowing now the words that used to be painted there.

The streets are alive and they are constantly changing, regardless of your artistic and political inclinations.

From here we walked towards Buena Vista Park and this time we ventured in with the intention of exploring it and of making it to the top of the park, to enjoy the views of the city.

Buena Vista is quite large and full of steps and paths leading to the top. On top of the hill, an open grassy field fills with people sunbathing, reading, eating a picnic lunch, or simply hanging out. Absolutely lovely!

We passed the green lawn and walked towards the back of the park, where we found several tree-logs on the ground, all offering an excellent bench from which to enjoy the tall trees, the views that peaked behind them, and the sunshine warming up our skins. We sat for a while before starting our descent towards the Mission.

The red lines show where the Banksy used to be.

We walked on 15^th Street, through the Castro and into the Mission. The next stop, 2140 Mission Street, to see another Banksy. Once again, unfortunately, the graffiti had been covered, this time by a new mural. At least, while walking around the Mission, we saw alleys full of colorful murals painted by local artists!

Do you think those who covered the Banksy murals knew they were painting over the work of a famous street artist?

We moved on, saddened by the fact that both our addresses had yielded no results. As a way of lifting ourselves up, we bought burritos at Taqueria Cancun (Mission St. between 18^th and 19^th Streets) and headed to Dolores Park to eat them.

 

Not surprisingly, the park was full of people enjoying the gorgeous summer day by playing in the sun.

After catching some more rays, we walked down Dolores Street towards Market St. At some point we turned towards Church Street to wait for a train. Instead, the N Judah came rolling down Duboce Street and we hurried to catch it. With us, once again, we had a tired, but incredibly happy, dog.

Minutes later we got off the train, walked up the hill home and called it a day. The weekend had been successful and it was time for us to just relax. I’m going to continue making mental lists of the many places I want to see in San Francisco. I want to make sure I get everywhere I'm interested in. It is so much fun to be a tourist in your own city!

 Enjoy the photos from this week. For more photos, visit my Etsy store at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/WorldPhotosByPaola.

 

Insider Tips from Outsider Fellows!

I skipped a week of writing. 

At the beginning I was just delaying the writing, waiting for the time right time to go take some photos, but the time never seemed to come and I stayed busy with work and life in general. I was getting a bit anxious about the lack of what I thought was inspiration, and by the fact that the days of the week kept passing by and I had not had the chance to explore somewhere, seen something new, or been motivated to take photos.

 

It all started two weeks ago when our friends visited from Paris. They stayed with us and we spent the week showing them around our wonderful city. It was quite refreshing to see San Francisco through the eyes of tourists. Not only did we see the same old things in new ways, but we also discovered many new things in our city.  For example, I had never visited City Lights (http://www.citylights.com), a super cool bookstore founded in 1953 right on the intersection of Broadway and Columbus Streets in North Beach. We had walked pass the bookstore many times but had never gone in. In fact, we hadn’t even noticed it was there.  Thanks to our French friends, we learned about it and got super excited about all the fun books in it!

 

While at City Lights, one of our friends showed us a book about the graffiti artist Banksy.  This “British graffiti artist known for his intricate stencil images with ironic socio-political content” seemed familiar in some ways. I guess I had seen one or more of his famous images on t-shirts or in a book. But, the point is, we learned that we could find some of his original work right here, in San Francisco!

Our friends also went on a self-guided tour of the famous murals that are hidden in alleys in the Mission District. My blog on Street Art had some photos of these murals from one of our first visits to San Francisco before moving here but, since moving here, we haven’t really visited the murals to see what new and fun art is now decorating these alleys.

During our friends’ visit, I didn’t take photos because I was busy being their tour guide and I was simply enjoying showing them around. Seeing how much they loved San Francisco made me want to re-discover our city, to do something new, to see all the exciting things that the city has to offer and that, sometimes, I don’t even know exists!

Our friends left a week ago and it was then that my week got very busy. In the back of my mind I wanted to go out, take some photos but it just didn’t happen. Not until this weekend!

As if things weren’t challenging enough, the weather last week was quite gloomy. The fog didn’t clear until the afternoon and only for a few hours. Evenings were very foggy, windy and cold. As we walked Bomber in the evenings, it was funny to think that this is summer weather in San Francisco!

During one foggy walk, I took some photos. I don’t mind the cold damp weather. I actually like it a bit and it was fun to take photos of the fog, of what the city looks like on a foggy Wednesday evening during the summertime!

We got home when the sun was already down, which meant that I got some cool night shots along the way.

On Friday we set out on a walk with the purpose of taking photos but it didn’t work. We didn’t get quite to where we wanted and ended up just walking around, with our dog. We did see, from one of the hills, some of the fancy sailboats that are in town for the America’s Cup. We sat on the sidewalk on a street corner, and watched the races for a bit. After a while, we got up and moved on.

With the weekend finally here, I hoped to finally be able to find inspiration – weekends are great, they feel so free! So, on Saturday, I headed up to Noe Valley to meet a wonderful friend who was visiting the city (she recently moved out of the city) and, a few hours—and several cups of tea—later, Joe came down with Bomber to meet me to go for a walk somewhere new, hopefully somewhere with a good view of the city.

Having no plan, we started walking up the street. We walked a few blocks and then saw a hillside park called Billy Goat Park. We went up it and got an amazing panoramic view of San Francisco. Because of the time in the day, the fog was already making its way into the bay, and downtown was almost covered in clouds and fog. Nonetheless, the views were quite beautiful.

 

We climbed up and then found some wooden stairs that went down. We followed them down until we reached Laidley Street. We were in between Glen Park and Diamond Heights, but yet it felt like we were in some sort of quirky movie set. The houses were extremely colorful and the shapes were very unusual. There was even a house that had golden eggs adorning the roof, very similar to Dali’s house in Figueras!

The more we walked, the more pleasantly surprised we got by the amount of quirkiness we encountered. We decided to call this walk the Architecture Walk!

After a few blocks we left Laidley St. and continued our walk up Diamond Heights to a nearby dog park. We thought Bomber would not mind a quick sprint before walking back to the train station to head back home.

Today, Sunday, the skies were blue when we opened our eyes to the new day. After taking care of some chores around the house, we headed out, determined to look for two of the works of art of Bansky that we knew were close to us.

Street Art by Banksy

The first stop was Chinatown. On the corner of Grant and Commercial Streets, behind a protective glass, we found the first Banksy. Strangely, there was nobody there taking photos of it. For some reason I had pictured the scene full of people, snapping photos, but that wasn’t the case.

We stared at it for a while. The image depicts a doctor listening to a big spray-painted red heart that is next to a peace sign. Some minutes later, we took a few steps back and saw the full scene. The wall in which this piece of art is painted on is also painted with two huge and colorful dragons. The dragons are, at the same time, located in a very colorful corner of Chinatown. I can see how other people would miss the much smaller, almost hidden piece of political art.

Street Art by Banksy

We left Chinatown and started to walk towards North Beach, to see the Banksy our French friends had seen while exploring San Francisco. Once again, right on a busy corner where books dangle from cables, and poetry is written all over the sidewalk, on the side of a second story of a building, was another street graffiti. This time, the image of a young kid wearing a gas mask drawn next to a caption that read, “If at first you don’t succeed—call an airstrike.”

Street Art by Banksy

Satisfied with having seen 2 of the 7 works of street graffiti by Banksy that are in the city, we walked towards the ferry building, along the water.

Who knew that a visit from French friends would turn into a walk of discovery for us? Well, the truth is that we really got motivated to stick to our determination of seeing a new part of the city every weekend, or as often as possible.

I also learned that perseverance is a great thing. I kept my eyes open, and my camera in my bag at all times and, finally, I got some photos and a blog post to share with you!

Enjoy! For more fun photos, visit my Etsy store at: http://www.etsy.com/shop/WorldPhotosByPaola.