The Mission (West of Mission Street)

18th And Valencia
(Looking East)

Hi everyone, we're in the Mission district now!  Its main drag is Mission Street.  I'm going to simulate a walk westward, from Misson Street to Church street and Dolores Park.  Dolores Park is a huge 2-square block area of greenery along Church street, which is the boundary between the Mission and the Castro.  Mostly, we will walk along 18th street.  This will give you a cross-section of this area.  We are now one block west of Mission Street, at 18th and Valencia, looking back towards Mission Street.  (Don't be fooled by the nearby alley, that's not Mission - Mission is beyond the big truck with the orange paint on the back.)  Anyway, the colorful paint jobs on the houses look pretty, but it's only half the story.  This area is modest-income, sometimes very modest-income.  The feel of these blocks near Mission Street is, if you can picture this combination, is of "family / modest inner city".  As it turns out, when I was a young kid and my mom brought my sister to the United States, and we were totally new immigrants many years ago, the second apartment we lived on that very block you see here.  The pink apartment house next to the big truck, actually.
 

18th and Valencia Streets
(Looking South)

Standing at the same spot, we turn to the right and we look down Valencia street.  Valencia street is kind of a secondary main drag, with much less foot traffic than Mission Street.  No, your eyes are not fooling you, those trucks are actually parked in the middle of the street.  Parking is so tough in this area that it's customary for people to use the turning lanes to park.  I have only seen this on Valencia street.  The blocks around Mission street are actually also rich with culture and with good places to go.  Near 17th and Valencia I recommend the great crepe place Ti Couz, for the best Viet Namese in the city you could go to The Slanted Door which I believe (don't quote me on this) was visited by President Clinton.  And, of course, you can't get better Mexican food anywhere else, right at 17th and Valencia you could go to El Toro, around the corner from it is El Faro.  There are also some good Salvadoran restaurants where you could get a very good, if unfortunately named pupusa, a tortilla thinly stuffed with cheese or pork.  On Valencia near 24th is the very cool sex toy shop Good Vibrations, and so on. 
 

18th between Valencia and Guerrero (At Linda alley)
(Looking SouthWest)

We now turn our back on Mission street.  We are facing west, walking towards the Castro area the next neighborhood over.  This is the Women's Building, a wonderful organization that (quoting their web site) "is the only place in San Francisco that offers both the physical and emotional space for women, regardless of age, sexuality, race, or class, to build their own community".  They offer a child care center, host a community resource room, they nurture other pro-women organizations, etc.
 

Linda Street (between Valencia and Guerrero) near 18th
(Looking South)

We cross the street and peek down the alley next to the Women's Building.  I like the cozy feel of this little street, with its oddball crook in the middle.  Little by little, you will begin to notice that in very subtle ways the neighborhood gets a little bit higher income.  I really feel as if I have to fight the prettiness of the buildings to tell you that this is still a modest area, with a mild case of the typical inner city stuff.  Basically, the further from Mission street we go, the less this is a factor.
 

0n 18th Street between Valencia and Guerrero
(Looking West)

This is such a rich picture!  There's a lot to tell.  We are now directly across the street from the Women's building, and you begin to see other neighborhoods and other landmarks.  We are coming up on Guerrero street.  Way down at the far right, you see some trees - that's Dolores park, which lies along Church street.  Church street is the widely-acknowledged boundary between the Mission and the Castro neighborhoods.  In the lower part of the hills you see part of the Castro already, and beyond that the famous tourist vista point known as Twin Peaks, and beyond that you see the gigantic Sutro tower atop Mount Sutro.  As I mention elsewhere, the Western half of the city, the half beyond Twin Peaks, gets more fog than the sunny Mission, and you can really see that here.  When I lived here as a poor immigrant little kid, the feeling was one of looking up at the nice neighborhoods way up there in the cool climes, and wishing I lived there.  Just to give you a fuller feel for the neighborhood, let's go walk to that big apartment building at the near corner, turn around, and look back at where we are standing now.
 

18th and Guerrero Streets
(Looking East)

We are now standing under the big apartment building, looking back at the spot from which we took the previous picture, and also looking Eastward in the direction we came from.  That Danish Cookie place has been there forever.  I don't know if you can tell, but the feel of this block is a tiny bit more residential, less commercial, less foot-trafficky.  Since we are looking up 18th street, let us now turn completely around from 18th and look down the cross street, Guerrero street, in the next picture.
 

Guerrero Street (I'm on 18th, looking towards 19th)
(Looking South)

My hope here is that you're starting to get a feel for how things are changing as we leave Mission street and approach Dolores Park.  In contrast with when we looked down Valencia street four pictures ago, Guerrero street is much more non-commercial, residential, the apartment buildings are a bit more modern.  That's why I chose to simulate a walk down 18th street - to show you the gradual change from the Mission towards the Castro.
 

18th and Guerrero Streets
(Looking West)

Still standing in the same spot, we turn around once again and face the direction we are walking, towards the west.  The lovely brick building at right has, I think, a coffee shop on the first floor.  Further down, the beautiful Spanish tower is actually the campanille for Mission High School, which is directly across from Dolores Park.  And if you look way back, there again you see the Castro neighborhoods resting on the foothills of Twin Peaks.  Let us cross Guerrero street, go down almost to Dolores street, and see what we see . . .
 

18th between Guerrero and Dolores (Near Oakwood Alley)
(Looking West)

I love this picture because it gives you a feeling of the crowded, well-used street, a much closer view of the houses and a clearer view of Twin Peaks.  That little alley behind the white SUV is Oakwood street, between Guerrero and Dolores.  Dolores is a beauuutiful street, a four-lane street with a wide expanse of grass down the middle, an expanse which is thick with three-storey-tall palm trees.  I didn't realize that I didn't really get a good shot of Dolores street, sorry about that, but it's there just beyond that yellowish building at the corner.  Also, it is very deceptive but that huge three-legged tower is not standing atop Twin Peaks.  It is standing atop Mount Sutro, which is the next hill over.  Let us walk to the yellowish building, turn left (Southwards), and walk half a block along Dolores street.
 

Cumberland alley (Between 18th and 19th) and Dolores
(Looking East)

We are now standing on Dolores street, around the corner from the previous picture, looking back Eastward, at the direction we came from.  This is little Cumberland street, which sits between 18th and 19th street.  We are standing with our backs to Dolores Park.  This picture looks a bit lower quality because I actually took it several years ago, with my older-model, first-generation, Mavica digital camera.  I just wanted to give you a feel for another street other than 18th.  This is also very good because it really illustrates how different it is in some ways different from 18th, and therefore how difficult it is to try to capture all the little subtleties of a neighborhood in just a few pictures, I hope I have managed to capture a representative slice.  Let us keep walking South to 19th street, and take a right into Dolores Park for a little bit.
 

Dolores Park near 19th and Dolores
(Looking East)

Here we are up at the top of Dolores Park, looking down 19th street.  Mission street is way back there, almost at the end of 19th, three long blocks and a world away.  The gentle reader will recall that we actually walked from Mission along 18th street, but that's alright - this gives you a feel for where we came from, the route that we have covered.  At the edge of the park, that's lovely Dolores street running left to right, at the bottom of this grassy hill beyond the cop car.  The big palm tree might give you an idea of what it's like to see hundreds of them lined up along the center of Dolores street.  Beyond Mission street, the nearby hills are part of the Potrero Hill neighborhood.  Way beyond that is the San Francisco bay, and then the cities of Oakland and Berkeley.  To the left of this picture is downtown San Francisco.  Let us walk about a block's distance to our right, and look back upon Dolores Park and downtown. 
 

Dolores Park near Church and 20th streets
(Looking NorthEast)

Ahhh, here we are near one of the corners of Dolores Park.  At the center you see the big palm tree from the previous picture.  This is a zoomed-in view, so the park is actually bigger than it seems here.  Right behind the palm tree, if you've been following along, you'll have figured out that is the corner of 18th and Dolores streets.  To the left is the campanille for Mission High school again.  Between the campanille and the palm tree, way back in the city you see a grey & black Congress-looking dome, that's City Hall.  Behind City Hall is the big black Federal Building.  At the right of the picture, the white pyramid is our famous 60-storey Transamerica Building, and next to it is the huge Bank of America building.  B of A was started by a man named Giannini during the California gold rush of 1849 (Forty-niners, anyone?).  Rather than creating a bank to serve only the landed gentry, Giannini started a bank for common people, an unheard concept back then, gave out tiny loans to families, and prospered from the deposits of regular people and lucky gold miners.  And now, 150 years later, his huge building is a financial center for the world.  We have covered a lot of interesting ground, and I wouldn't blame anyone for sitting down on the grass and contemplating all there is to see.  As sunset falls across the city, we will leave that gentleman to his thoughts and his view.