“I’m doing a long walk today. Would you like to join me?” I texted a friend recently.
“A hike?” he texted back, clearly confused.
While escaping to a local nature trail on a sunny weekend is a normal activity for San Franciscans, walking in the city — especially without a purpose and through neighborhoods that aren’t yours — is an oddity here.
I moved to the Bay Area from Tel Aviv, a city so congested with traffic that walking and biking are the only viable options. Memories are created along the way, vivid sensations are imprinted, meshing into a strong sense of the city’s what and why. In San Francisco, a city spread out compared to Tel Aviv and factually hilly, locals tend to opt for Lyft Pools. Leisurely walking seems to be relegated to tourists.
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As a result, my San Francisco experience has been patchy at best — a sequence of dots that won’t connect. I was eager to feel San Francisco through my legs and my eyes. I wanted to watch the city change from neighborhood to neighborhood and be one with the uneventful everyday landscapes. I was also growing tired of the Main Street predicament that San Francisco, like many other American cities, is touched by: blocks upon blocks of nothingness, with intermittent busy streets featuring businesses, life, and pedestrians. I saw these streets alone, again and again, and nothing else. I wanted to know more. This is how the walks were born. I decided to tackle a different street every weekend and walk it end to end.
The views and real estate envy walk
Starting point: Noe Street at Laidley Street
Ending point: Duboce Park
Length: 2 miles
Duration: 1.5 hours
To counter the dominance of main streets, I started with a mainly business-free stretch and explored Noe Valley. Noe Street begins as a narrow alley, with enviable houses and a luxurious feel. In many spots along the way, it resembles Echo Park, with relaxed palm trees and modern architecture.
The walk takes me up and down steep hills, with views of Sutro Tower on my left and the rest of the city on my right. I marvel at the city’s layered landscape and suppress sharp pangs of real estate envy as I quietly progress, encountering only the occasional mailman or your run-of-the-mill fit lady walking her dog. On a street corner, two young couples are having a lively discussion about buying real estate in Santa Barbara. Gorgeous, elaborate homes reveal snippets of their treasures: a sculpture, a fuzzy armchair, a gallery wall. The air is crisp, heavy with wealth and prosperity beyond my understanding.
As Noe Street curves into Dolores Heights, I notice construction sites. This neighborhood is settled, but Dolores Heights is still being developed. Now I’m in the Castro, and as I cross Market Street, heading toward Duboce Park, the opulence of moneyed San Francisco is all but gone.
Sustenance
Noe Street offers eating options like the popular Vive la Tarte and Boulangerie. But do yourself a favor: Shortly after the walk starts, veer off to Douglas, a stylish neighborhood café and grocery where you can observe women in shearling-lined Birkenstocks shopping for premium produce while sipping matcha and browsing Kinfolk.
The foods and avenues walk
Starting point: Geary Boulevard at Land’s End
Ending point: Geary Boulevard at Divisadero
Length: 4 miles
Duration: 2.5 hours
Geary shoots from the Richmond to the Fillmore, through Japantown and the Tenderloin, before spitting you out at Union Square. Unlike Noe, it’s neither cozy nor pretty. It starts wide, lined with rows of utilitarian-looking apartment buildings, and reminiscent of suburban Israeli cities hastily built to accommodate immigration waves.
Around 37th Street, I get a glimpse of the upscale Sea Cliff neighborhood—not physically gated but clearly marked by two massive brick posts. Yet Geary’s grandeur is a catalog of the city’s faiths: the beautiful Russian Orthodox Holy Virgin Cathedral, a Tuscan-looking mortuary, a Catholic church.
It’s fascinating to watch the nature of businesses change block after block. The boulevard is dotted with unfussy, decades-old eateries. I eat a pirozhok (stuffed pastry) from Moscow and Tbilisi bakery as I walk past dim sum spots and Russian banquet halls. Signage leaves no room for doubt: Perfect Manicure. Speak Polish Delicatessen. Life and death, spirituality and consumerism.
Sustenance
Buy some pastries at Moscow and Tbilisi mid-walk. For lunch, I stumbled upon Konomama, a new healthyish Japanese curry spot that already feels appropriately lived-in.
The resident tourist walk
Starting point: Steiner Street at the Painted Ladies
Ending point: Steiner Street at Lombard Street
Length: 1.8 miles
Duration: 1.5 hours
I lose all Bay-resident cynicism whenever I visit Alamo Square. The views, the trees, the guaranteed sunshine, the tourists engineering composition shots with the Painted Ladies — this place can melt the toughest of hearts.
Playing tourist for a day, I walk from Alamo Square to the water I can see from its top. Steiner Street, which runs parallel to better-known routes like Fillmore and Divisadero, was the perfect choice for the task, offering changing views of the city’s many contradictions.
I say goodbye to the bucolic square and walk downhill. Around Eddie Street, the gray, boxy, low-income housing is a stark contrast to the Craftsman structures behind me. By Anza Vista, in Pacific Heights, things get expensive again as I huff and puff up and down the hills into Cow Hollow. This is a lively route. Many people, to my delight, have decided to take comfort in the shady, manicured street. The marina welcomes me with even more people, embodying the cliches I’ve come to internalize: leggings, windbreakers, Apple watches, adorable babies. Steiner dead-ends into bustling Chestnut, so I cut over to Fillmore to stand by the water. A sense of accomplishment settles in, even as I watch perfectly matched couples do planks in the grass.
Sustenance
Facing a peeling parking lot on Steiner’s intersection with Geary, Jane the Bakery is a safe bet for a delicious sandwich or a glorious pastry. For a celebratory end-of-walk glass of wine, Rose’s Cafe is cute and friendly.
The very urban walk
Starting point: Folsom Street at 1st Street
Ending point: Folsom Street at Precita Park
Length: 3.3 miles
Duration: 2 hours
While I love bringing visitors to photogenic Hayes Valley and Alamo Square, it is the gritty urbanity of certain San Francisco enclaves that really attracts me. For my final walk, I pick Folsom Street — car garages, secret alleys, and busy underpasses. Downtown, Folsom still tries to impress the conference-goers and business-trippers that crisscross it. Skyscrapers, new condo buildings, fast-casual eateries, and gyms make appearances.
Things quiet down by Sixth Street, in SOMA, and the glitzy hustle and bustle is replaced with concrete-and-asphalt tranquility. Nondescript startups, I imagine, loom above me behind glass doors and windows. Restaurants I’ve never heard of, like Rocco’s Cafe and Basil Canteen, feed men in white button-ups. Treeless, brick-clad alleys branch out from the street and lead to garages, mysterious lofts, and art studios. Dive bars, quiet now, lurk behind heavily curtained vitrines. This is a different kind of San Francisco, without frills or Victorians. But hey, there’s a Target and a huge store offering designer lighting fixtures.
After 13th Street, past the Vespa-dotted parking lot of Rainbow Grocery, the highway runs above homeless encampments, and the Mission is buzzing with new construction, preparing to house the high-low mix of overpriced light fixtures and Target pillows, and I get a reminder of where I am. Folsom turns quite residential after that, with beautiful buildings and lush trees. As I walk parallel to Mission Street, Spanish-speaking kids mill around their buildings. The aromas of laundry and something garlicky stewing escape into the street. Precita Park surprises me with its out-of-nowhere lushness, and I think, “San Francisco is beautiful.” But having walked all over it, this statement now feels like less of a cliché. Not something I blurt to Tel Avivian friends, but something I know deep down in my heart and soles.
Sustenance
Stable Cafe is an Outer Mission staple, with a welcoming yard, excellent people-watching, and good coffee. In SOMA, the very urban Sextant Coffee is another fun stop. But maybe next time I’ll muster some courage and stop by the place that had only a monochrome sign reading Eat Sushi.
