Walk About Martinez -- A Walk in the City

Today we leave our local trails and head for the hills of San Francisco with the help of a Wilderness Press guide book, Stairway Walks in San Francisco. 

You can’t go wrong just heading out and charging up and down Telegraph Hill on Kearney, Filbert, Greenwich, Montgomery and Vallejo Streets, in and out of stunning views of the Bay and Coit Tower, but with a little help from this book, you get a real dose of history as well.  Written by Adah Bakalinsky, Stairway Walks in San Francisco, details twenty-nine walks in the City all focused on its wonderful hills and views. 

Last week five of us attempted the first walk in the book which begins at First and Market and winds in and out of the Financial District, through North Beach and up Telegraph Hill by way of every stair-street and garden path along the way.  The route snakes in and out of what was "the Bay" back in 1849, crossing and recrossing the historic beach line.   The Transamerica Pyramid straddles the shoreline, half on solid ground and half on bay fill.  It’s got cement pilings going down fifty feet to compensate for this. 

We all hopped on Bart at the North Concord/Martinez Station, determined to hike from Market Street up and over Telegraph Hill, a distance of only a few miles at most.  Tour book in hand, camera over shoulder, we were surprised by how much fun it was to be real bonafide tourists in our own bonafide world class city.  October in San Francisco meant sunny warm weather, so different from the foggy summers, and sun hats and sun glasses were de rigueur.

Our walk began up Battery from Market Street, past the Mechanics Monument, a large bronze work of sculptor, Douglas Tilden, the “Michelangelo of the West” commissioned in 1894, to commemorate his father who had founded the Union Iron Works.  It continued past Art Deco and Beaux Arts buildings in which the Bank of California began -- now the Union Bank -- and another where the Bank of Italy started -- now the Bank of America.  The monumentalism of the buildings made clear the power of San Francisco back when it was funded by the Gold Rush and later Comstock Silver Mines.  We had one of the smallest and richest cities in the world back then.  No wonder it is the Capital City of the West to this day with just a measly population of 800,000 or so.

There is a fascinating Gold Rush museum in the Bank of California, with more gold bars and nuggets than I’ve ever seen before.  One case preserves Bank of Martinez checks written to and from our own John Muir.  In another case are the dueling pistols of United States Senator, David C. Broderick of California and ex-Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, David S. Terry.  Friends and political allies in the Democratic Party, they parted ways over the issue of slavery and on September 13, 1859, fought a duel in a ravine near Lake Merced, southwest of town.   Broderick was mortally wounded and later exclaimed, "They have killed me because I was opposed to slavery and a corrupt administration.”   This is just outside San Francisco State University now.  Duels at my old Alma Mater! 

Our tour book was proving to be a little gem, and we realized we weren’t going to be able to just charge up the hill as I do when on trail in the woods.  We needed to stop at every corner and historical plaque, read them and all express our combined delight at the next bit of history underfoot.  We wound our way through alleyways in the shadow of the Pyramid that are made up of the largest collection of pre 1906 earthquake buildings in the City, and past streets named for the square riggers that were left abandoned and beached right there when their crews jumped ship and headed for the Gold Rush.  The first Jewish Synagogue was in a building no longer standing but its successor commemorated the history by adding large wrought iron Jewish Stars on the landings of its fire escapes.  

At Hotaling Street, named for a distillery and saloon that survived the 1906 earthquake and fire, the famous two-line verse is quoted in bronze: “If as they say God spanked the town for being over frisky / Why did he burn the churches down and save Hotaling’s whiskey?”  Not far away is the actual Barbary Coast, a section of Pacific Street near Sansome, where the Hounds and Ducks, two criminal hate gangs bent on wreaking havoc on Hispanics and other non whites, were finally wiped out by the vigilantes of 1851.    

The old brick structures and false fronts made us realize why so many travel writers describe San Francisco as reminding them of a European City.  It was charming, exciting, and beautiful, and none of us, had ever set foot in any of the buildings and galleries that lined our way.  Original Audubon’s, Japanesque prints, and history at every turn.  I was with a bunch of Nerds!  Geeks, who were just as excited as I was to walk the Financial District in a new way. 

When we hit our first hill, up Kearney from Broadway, we knew we weren’t going to be able to finish the whole walk in the four hours we had allotted.  We were beginning the most beautiful part of the trail, in and out of gardens and cul-de-sacs I’d never seen before, but so lush in tropical foliage, I’ll never again take someone up Telegraph Hill without detouring into them.  

Long ago, when San Francisco was laid out, the grid map ignored the impossibility of ever putting real roads on many of the steep “streets.”  Little houses were allowed to be built on the edges -- usually by the poorer workers -- of these “city streets,” that simply ended in cliffs where air-born stairways were built 150 years ago to access the hillside shanty town.  It must have resembled the poor, mountain communities in the hills behind Rio de Janeiro today.  

What we have now on Montgomery, Calhoun and most notably and beautifully, on Filbert Streets, are homes and flats bordering gardens and public walks that may be some of the most charming civic gardens in the world.  Don’t let the little fences deter you, it’s all public property, at least to the width of a city street.  The views of the Bay are breathtaking through forests of ginger, princess and trumpet blossoms.  Huge bananas and tree ferns grace the gardens, which are over canopied with Monterey Pines and palms of every kind.  And topping it all is Coit Tower, an elegant monument to a country that pulled together during the Great Depression to employ thousands of artists and craftsmen in the creation of civic monuments that now define places and cities across the nation.  The Beach House along the Great Highway, Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, Mount Rushmore, Coit Tower, and hundreds more, pulled this country back on track.  To me it’s all part of our country at its finest, most moving, pulling together to pull everyone out of a bad time.  

Filbert Street was only the mid point in our tour, but we had to rush back to Bart due to time constraints.  We all vowed to come back and complete this walk, which finishes with China Town and back to Market Street, and then take on the second walk in our little stairway street guide book.  We couldn’t get enough of a city we’ve all loved for years and which we obviously knew so little of.   During our usual wet and wooly winters, the stairs and boardwalks of San Francisco should provide an alternative to my usual storm hikes on Mount Diablo, keeping us active, outside and out of the mud.  This hike wasn’t just a workout, it was San Francisco History 1A, told by a wonderful little book, and all we had to do was walk.

“No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening - still all is Beauty!”     John Muir