What makes each city’s architectural character unique? It is a combination of its skyline of iconic buildings, topography, water bodies, street layouts, weather, and all the other things you gradually get used to living around. In my opinion, San Francisco has the most distinctive character of any major American city. The natural hills that were built over by real estate developers created the famously crazy street slopes, while the different bodies of water shape the city’s layout and its microclimates. Its one-of-a-kind residential architecture, influenced by Spanish colonial rule and regular earthquakes; the historic trams built during the gold rush; the persistent fog; and the permanently cold weather all come together to make the city what it is today. Eventually, you get used to the unusual things: the many hills creating their own neighborhoods, the cars parked at specific angles on steeper slopes (very strictly reinforced, mind you!), and the sidewalks that turn a corner and suddenly turn into stairs. Things that seem bizarre when you first arrive slowly become a completely normal part of navigating the city on foot or by public transit.
Movies and TV shows have been depicting San Francisco’s hills in an abstract way for years, but living there teaches you to read them in detail. You learn which hills are easier to climb, where you should take the bus instead of walking uphill, and where the small tunnel in the middle of the city will change the weather drastically on the other side. A sunny and warm Financial District can mean a foggy, cold Outer Sunset, and an insanely windy Crissy Field beach, so you eventually learn to dress in layers and hope your weather calculations were right. You start recognizing the quiet neighborhoods tucked away from the busier parts of the city, the feeling of sitting in a valley with hills rising around you, the Pacific Ocean appearing unexpectedly between the rooftops of the Sunset District, and now-familiar landmarks on the horizon. Trust me, you can see the Golden Gate Bridge towers from anywhere! San Francisco is, in many ways, many different cities occupying the same small piece of a peninsula, and eventually you learn to move between them and love the city for what it is.
Leave a comment