San Francisco’s Ups & Downs
I was deep in slumber when I heard the cable car bell, then the mournful moan of a foghorn. San Francisco, my brain registered another day of climbing hills, hill after hill, endless mountains of hills, Alps of hills, Matterhorns of hills more than 40 of them.
I could swear all those hills weren’t here when I last visited two decades ago. Maybe my knees were just 20 years less arthritic then.
I had plotted my three-day trip carefully on a map of the city, choosing to stay at a hotel on Bush Street because it was just a few blocks from everywhere I wanted to visit - and less than a block from a cable car stop.
I plunked down $10 for a three-day cable car pass and figured anywhere the cable cars didn’t go, I would walk.
It all looked so flat on that nice city map.
My first stroll was down steep Bush Street - leaning backward, taking tiny toe-first steps - to Powell Street, where I waited for the cable car. When it arrived, it was overflowing with tourists. So I decided to walk two blocks to California Street, where I could catch a cable car on another line.
But the walk was uphill, the kind of uphill where you have to lean forward just to keep your balance and, with your chin somewhere in the vicinity of your knees, you try to put one foot ahead of the other. I made it halfway before I gave up.
With only a half-hour to get to Pacific Heights for a tour of Victorian houses, I tucked my cable car pass in my pocket and began trying to hail a cab. Taxi after taxi sailed by.
Finally, a $1 tip induced a hotel doorman to hail me a cab.
Outside an imposing Victorian in Pacific Heights, I learned that I, along with a dozen other tourists, had signed up for a 15-block sightseeing hike uphill - there seems to be no other direction in San Francisco. The first few blocks were steep, but manageable.
Then an Alp with sidewalks loomed before us. We dragged ourselves up the hill after our lithe, bubbly tour guide who strode along, never breaking a sweat. We followed her up another hill. And another. And another. We tried to listen to her running commentary on the old buildings as we fought to catch our breath. We leaned against the fine old houses and panted and puffed. Finally, as we headed uphill into Lafayette Park, some members of the group began to walk backward.
“Takes the strain off your knees,” one man puffed as he backed slowly up the slope. I tried it, nearly fell over backward, and returned to right-side climbing.
The tour over, I pulled out my map again, finally beginning to project hillsides onto that flat plane of streets. It was only three blocks to the cable car line, according to the map. It was uphill, I discovered, really uphill. I climbed and I climbed, and as I leaned against a signpost at the top, trying to catch my breath, I saw that the sign read: “This is not a cable car stop.”
My feet hurt, my knees ached.
I buttonholed a man walking past with a bag of groceries and asked him to point out the nearest cable car stop. He mumbled something in Chinese and shrugged. A man and woman dressed like movie cowboys pointed to another sign halfway down the block. Stand there, they advised, and when the cable car approaches, dash into the street and jump on, even if there’s apparently no room.
“Of course, you could fall off,” one cowboy called as he boarded a bus. “Be careful.”
The cable car came sliding down the street, full. I stepped off the curb, but - with people hanging off its sides - it didn’t even pause.
I spied a cab in the distance and, putting my cable car pass to good use, used it to flag down the taxi.
No one seems to be able to agree on how many hills San Francisco actually has; the number ranges between 42 and 47.
According to the city’s Bureau of Engineering, here are the 10 steepest of San Francisco’s hills, along with the angle of incline:
1. and 2. Filbert Street between Leavenworth and Hyde streets; 22nd Street between Church and Vicksburg streets, both 31.5 percent gradient.
3. Jones Street between Union and Filbert streets, 29 percent.
4. Duboce Street between Buena Vista and Alpine streets, 27.9 percent.
5. and 6. Jones between Green and Union streets; Webster Street between Vallejo and Broadway, both 26 percent.
7. and 8. Duboce between Divisadero and Alpine streets; Duboce between Castro and Divisadero, both 25 percent.
9. Jones between Pine and California streets, 24.8 percent.
10. Fillmore Street between Vallejo and Broadway, 24 percent.
The 1000 block of Lombard Street, known as the crookedest street in the world with its eight switchbacks, has only an 18 percent incline. But the slope and the switchbacks make it a thrill to ride down.
(One tour bus driver who tried to navigate it a couple of years ago got his 47-foot-long coach caught in the first turn; it took a crew three days to cut the bus in two and remove the two halves with a crane.)
You can tell the neighborhoods that are original, pre-gold rush San Francisco by the elevation, some say: If it’s hilly, it’s the way Mother Nature made it.
“If you see anything that’s flat for more than 10 blocks” - such as the financial district, the area south of Market, near Fisherman’s Wharf and part of North Beach - “you know it has to be landfill,” said Sereno, our guide and a San Francisco native.
Those flat areas were once part of San Francisco Bay, he said. Some spots were filled after optimistic sailors abandoned their ships to hunt for gold in 1849; the ships were sunk where they lay at anchor, dirt was hauled to fill in the cracks and structures were built on top of the whole thing, Sereno said. More of the bay was filled in after the 1906 earthquake and fire, when progressive city residents shoveled the rubble into the bay and built a new city atop the debris.
Many people, like me, simply give up climbing hills or trying to jump on a packed cable car, and grab a cab to get up those never-ending hills.
One familiar saying tells the real up-and-down of the town: When you get tired of walking around in San Francisco, you can always lean against it.
For more information, contact the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau at (415) 391-2000.