Down the Kansas Street steps
It’s funny — and kind of a shame — how seeing a «dead end» sign will discourage me from using a street even when I’m on foot. I say it’s a shame because here in San Francisco there are so many hills too steep for automobiles where there are nevertheless steps to allow pedestrian access. The result is that I’ve lived in Potrero Hill now for almost five years (on the Hill for half that and in Dogpatch for the other half) and never until just now walked the steps on the South slope of Kansas Street.
I needed to take a trip to the pharmacy at San Francisco General to have a prescription filled, so I took the walk and decided that it was high time for me to find out whether there were stairs down the hill past the dead-end sign on Kansas Street. It was a detour of no more than a block and I’ve made the walk over to SF General enough times that I couldn’t count, but I’d never ventured that one block farther to see what’s there.
As I walked down the block past the dead-end sign I saw two walkers coming back my direction. One was walking by herself and the other with a dog. The dogwalker crossed the street to have the sidewalk to herself. By the time I approached the solitary walker I could see a fence and a rather certain end to the road. I asked, «there are stairs at the end, right?» and she smiled and affirmed that the dead end was not a dead end for those of us on foot.
It turns out that the stairs on Kansas Street are not stairs so much as a trail paved with with flagstones. There’s not much in the way of handrails and it meanders down the side of the hill in switchbacks, finally emptying out into what looks like someone’s driveway except for the street signs. For my effort I was treated to a view over the Mission when I could see out through the lush greenery. As I approached the bottom I was greeted by three enormous eucalyptus trunks which, along with the steep hill behind me provided a natural shade canopy.
At the bottom of the steps I found the familiar intersection of Kansas and 22nd Streets, where Vermont Street empties out and where the footbridge would take me across the already-congested 101 Freeway to my destination. There I would have to wait in line an hour and a half to get my prescriptions. The unpleasant experience of waiting in line at SF General will be all but forgotten in a day or two, but the short diversion from the concrete and asphalt, the brief oasis where the automobile dare not venture, that will be with me forever as one of the hidden corners that makes this City seem, sometimes, like a civilized place rather than a wild jungle of machines, litter and crime.
I’m not unmindful of the irony that finding a spot that reveals what was here before civilization is what lends that air of civility to the place. Lewis Mumford’s words come to mind:
Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.
