I was walking along William today and a man sitting on his porch was blasting what sounded an awful lot like Billie Holiday out one of the front windows of his house.

Ah, summer.

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

The stairway walks are fabulous, but they totally kick your ass …

Things I’ll miss, #6

Stairway walks. San Francisco has more than 350 stairways, some of them obvious landmarks like the Lyon Steps, some of them completely hidden discoveries, like the series of stairs that winds through the neighborhoods above Castro and 17th Street, or the amazing convoluted stairway walk through the parkland at the edge of Glen Canyon Park that starts at Portola Drive and ends by dropping you out into Glen Park. You feel like you’re in an entirely separate landscape, bucolic and almost completely divorced from the general tumult of the urban cage that San Francisco can be.

I discovered these walks through my friend Steve C., who had a well-worn copy of Adah Bakalinsky’s Stairway Walks in San Francisco when he lived here. We both took the walks, individually and separately, and for me, the walks were a great form of exercise, a great way to do some weekend socializing, a kind of permissible semi-voyeurism (some of the stairs wend through some semi-private nooks of the city that most people wouldn’t bother searching out), and, of course, a great way to see the City.

One big regret I have is that I never took the long city-wide walk that Bakalinsky outlined. Another is that I didn’t do all of the walks.

—Posted by Frank at 21:37:09 | 2-Aug-03

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

Mitchell’s is pretty fabulous and we haven’t really found anything to equal it around AA, as of yet. Anyone have suggestions?

Things I’ll miss, #5

Mitchell’s Ice Cream. I had tasted Mitchell’s but today was the first time I’d actually been to the store, a cramped hole in the wall on a non-descript block on the edge of Noe Valley and Bernal Heights. Waiting in line was not my favorite thing: it had been a hot August day, and people were crowding around the door impatiently waiting to get their ice cream fix (and boy, do people get persnickety and weird about ice cream). Fortunately, the place has a strictly enforced take-a-number system that makes the line less of a nightmare; all you do is pick your number and wait (and wait, and wait). And the help behind the counter are polite, patient, and speedy, not surly and nasty like a lot of San Francisco service workers. And of course, there’s the payoff: possibly the best ice cream you’ll ever eat.

—Posted by Frank at 21:19:15 | 2-Aug-03

[It’s aSquared’s First Birthday … we’re celebrating by looking back at events from a year ago … skip these retro posts if you’re not into sentimentality.]

Oh yeah, I remember views. Unlike here in pancake country …

Things I’ll miss, #4

The views. There are spectacular views in San Francisco that you won’t see anywhere else in the world. This is true of many places, of course; but those places aren’t San Francisco, with its unique combination of maze-like neighborhoods, its myriad (actually, 42, if you’re counting) hills, and its unparalleled landmarks.

—Posted by Frank at 21:07:33 | 02-Aug-03