San Francisco - Alison Bing [60]
The downhill slide of Russian and Nob Hills known as Polk Gulch made no secret of its male-bonding rituals, and by the 1960s it had become gay San Francisco’s main drag (in more ways than one). Since then upper Polk St has almost detached itself from its out-and-proud history, with swanky restaurants and boutiques, but lower Polk, Hyde and Larkin Sts still have gay bars, hustlers, funky vintage shops, low-cost housing and grit. Polk Gulch makes for an adventurous bar crawl.
* * *
* * *
top picks
RUSSIAN & NOB HILLS
Sterling Park (below)
Grace Cathedral
Diego Rivera Gallery
Cable Car Museum
* * *
Return to beginning of chapter
STERLING PARK Map
www.rhn.org/pointofinterestparks.html; Greenwich & Hyde Sts; 19, 41, 45, 47, 49, 76; Powell-Hyde;
‘Homeward into the sunset/Still unwearied we go,/Till the northern hills are misty/With the amber of afterglow.’ Poet George Sterling’s ‘City by the Sea’ is almost maudlin – that is, until you watch the sunset over the Golden Gate from the hilltop park named in his honor.
Sterling was a great romancer of all San Francisco had to offer, including nature, idealism, free love and occasionally opium, and was frequently broke. But as the toast of the secretive, elite Bohemian Club, San Francisco’s high society indulged the poet in all his eccentricities, including carrying a lethal dose of cyanide as a reminder of life’s transience. Broken by his ex-wife’s suicide and the loss of his best friend, novelist Jack London, the ‘King of Bohemia’ apparently took this bitter dose in 1926 inside his apartment in the club. Within two years his influential friends had this park – with zigzagging paths and stirring, Sterling views – named after him.
If you’re not left breathless by these hilltop views, play tennis on the adjacent public court named after San Francisco’s Alice Marble, the 1930s tennis champ who recovered from tuberculosis to win Wimbledon and serve as a US secret agent among the Nazis during WWII. Sure puts a little post-tennis panting into perspective, doesn’t it?
DIEGO RIVERA GALLERY Map
415-771-7020; www.sfai.edu; 800 Chestnut St; admission free; 9am-7:30pm; 30; Powell-Mason
No, you’re not seeing double: Diego Rivera’s 1931 The Making of a Fresco Showing a Building of a City is a trompe l’oeil fresco within a fresco, showing the artist himself as he pauses to admire his work, as well as the work in progress that is San Francisco.
The fresco takes up an entire wall in the Diego Rivera Gallery at the San Francisco Art Institute, on your left through the entryway courtyard. For a memorable 3-D San Francisco vista, head down the corridor to the terrace cafe for espresso and panoramic bay views.
LOMBARD STREET Map
1000 block btwn Hyde & Leavenworth Sts; Powell-Hyde;
You’ve seen its eight switchbacks in a thousand photographs. The tourist board has dubbed this ‘the world’s crookedest street,’ which is factually incorrect. Vermont St in Potrero Hill deserves this street cred, but Lombard is (much) more scenic, with its red-brick pavement and lovingly tended flowerbeds. It wasn’t always so bent; before the automobile it lunged straight down the hill.
* * *
TRANSPORTATION: RUSSIAN & NOB HILLS
Bus Bus 45 runs along Union St in Russian Hill. Bus 1 runs along Clay and Sacramento Sts in Nob Hill. Polk Gulch is accessible via bus 19, and is one block from Van Ness Ave buses 47 and 49.
Cable car The Powell-Hyde St line skirts the downtown side of Nob Hill, then doglegs to Hyde St, which takes it up Russian Hill. The Powell-Mason St line traces the Downtown