Russian Hill

Everyone knows Russian Hill for one block of Lombard Street — the switchback with the hydrangeas and the tour buses idling at the bottom. Fair enough, it's a fun ten seconds of driving. But that one block is maybe the least interesting thing about this neighborhood. The real character is a few streets over, where the hill drops off in ways cars can't follow and the city built stairs instead.

That's the part I'd point people toward: the Vallejo Street steps zig-zagging down toward Taylor, the garden stairways on Filbert and Greenwich between Hyde and Leavenworth, and Macondray Lane — a quiet, brick-and-wood mid-block walkway that Armistead Maupin used as the model for Barbary Lane in Tales of the City. None of it is signposted or trying to be a destination. It's just how you get around up there, and it happens to be beautiful.

At the top, Ina Coolbrith Park sits at Taylor and Vallejo, named for California's first poet laureate, with a bench tucked into the trees and a view out over North Beach to the Bay and the Bridge that most visitors never find because it's not on the postcard. That's the kind of spot that makes me understand why people don't leave Russian Hill once they land here.

Housing-wise, it's mostly vintage — prewar co-ops and apartment buildings from the 1920s and '30s, a fair number with the kind of detail (tile work, built-ins, arched doorways) you don't get in new construction, plus condo conversions in some of the larger buildings. Hyde Street is the main commercial spine, cable car line included, with the rest of daily life — cafes, a hardware store, a corner market — folded into the residential blocks rather than concentrated on one strip.

I haven't closed a deal on Russian Hill yet — I'll always tell you straight where my track record is and isn't — but I spend a lot of time up there for exactly the reasons above, and I know the housing stock and the ins and outs of the stairways well enough to be a useful guide. If Russian Hill is on your radar, I'd love to hear what you're picturing.