San Francisco: Roundabout 2025

October 10–11 2025, I walked, roughly, around San Francisco.

The Crosstown Trail people published The Roundabout, a walking guide to streets and trails around the edge of San Francisco. I saw it would take me through a new-ish housing development in Hunters Point that had been in the news a lot; and a swath of Sunnydale I didn't know. It would be an excuse to visit some parts of town I hadn't seen in years. So I went. I took some photos. I took some notes to keep in mind for next time.

I started each day in the northeast corner of the city around sunrise. I ended each day in the southwest corner of the city. This was nice in that I got some walking in before dawn, nice and cool. I walk the Embarcadero, the N.E. edge of the city plenty; if I missed some details this time because it was still dark, I could notice them next time.

One detail I goofed the first day: I "knew" how much time it takes a Muni bus to get from my neighborhood to the NE corner of the city, and planned accordingly. But there's not a lot of traffic before dawn; so the bus dropped me off well before sunrise. I haven't visited Crane Cove Park "plenty," just a handful of times; but I hit it when the sun was still rising. It's pretty well lit, but I wasn't spotting lots of new details this visit. Anyhow, the second day, I caught a later bus.

a path winds through a piece of art that looks something like the back of a huge picture frame with a rectangle cut out out of its center (allowing folks to walk through that frame)

In Hunters Point's new-ish The Shipyard housing development, I walked through, "The Frame", a big sculpture that frames the view. Good photographers have photographed this sculpture framing a view of the bay, Bay Bridge, etc. E.g., longtime SF Chronicle photographer Lea Suzuki took a nice picture. I'm not such a good photographer, but I captured the photo that nobody else will show you (that I've noticed so far): the back of the sculpture shows the back of a frame, incuding a string to hang it up.

Play structure reminiscent of a girder-ish trestlework crane thingy

The Shipyard has a pretty good view of that big Hunters Point crane (a.k.a. the Burrito Rail Gun); it's nice that this playground had a playstructure shaped similarly. (I also approve of the miniature Painted Ladies in the playground across the street from the Painted Ladies. Let San Francisco's children dream of being kaiju.)

view out and down to a kinda strange tract of land out
on the edge of the bay. It's very flat (landfill?). It looks
much of it is paved, but weeds are bursting up through gaps
in the pavement. There are lots of long low buildings; and one
isolated multistory building

A view of Hunters Point

A stretch of abandoned highway. There's a beach off to the left, which explains why the highway is partly covered with drifting sand; other bits have eroded away.

I had three days to complete this walk between stints of bad weather. My brilliant plan: Walk as far as I could the first two days, then "clean up" and finish on the third, probably a partial day. I'd walk as far as I could each day, then hop on a bus to head home. This was an OK overall plan, but I hadn't thought through the details. Specifically, on the first day, I ran out of steam while slogging through the loose sand of Fort Funston. It was only another km of walking to emerge from the sand… but that's a lot when you've run out of steam. In hindsight, I wish I'd paused at the Daly City BART station and thought really hard before I kept going; getting home from D.C. BART is easy; getting home from Sunset Dunes+Sloat is easy; but I ran out of steam in between, and had to slog a ways to get back to "hop on a bus home" territory.

(On the second day, I thought a while before taking on the leg of the journey from the Golden Gate Bridge to Sutro Baths, similarly sparse in easy-homeward-bus-rides; but I decided I could make it, and I did.)

Next day, I went counter-clockwise.

The first day, I went clockwise, as the Roundabout trail was presented. The second day, I again wanted to start in the east and work west, so I'd be near the ocean as the day warmed up; and so that I'd be out of the crawling-with-tourists area before the Fleet Week airshow started. So I walked this part of the trail in reverse. The instructions weren't always clear; there were some turns that were obvious going one way, but easy to overlook going the other. I overlooked some. But overall, I was famililar with everywhere I went on this day; when I occasionally wandered off-course, I always recovered quickly.

It was San Francisco Fleet Week, and the ARC Gloria was in town visiting from Colombia. Not shown: chain link surrounding the ship, presumably to slow down any ICE agents trying to deport invited foreign guests.

in the foreground, walking path by the bay with walkers and
joggers. In the background, the Golden Gate Bridge

It was a clear day. This was bad news for me, trying to keep cool out of the sun. Still, it was rare to get a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge not obscured by fog.

in the foreground: a trail winds through rocky cliffs, dotted with shrubs. Beyond, a blue bay. Beyond that, the marin headlands, mostly brown but dotted with green

The Roundabout trail insisted on descending and ascending along the Batteries to Bluffs trail. I usually shortcut past that. The views are inarguably a little more interesting at the different heights on the B2B, but it never seems to be worth the leg strain (all those steps!). But I interpreted the Roundabout as a double dare, and endured the steps this time.

in the foreground, a split wooden block papered over with interpretive text. In the background, a hedge-covered hillside

Then the Roundabout sent me down the Baker Beach Sand Ladder, another bit of tricky terrain that I avoid unless dared. Ugh. At the top, I found this Presidio Field Note which encouraged me to think about the origin of the sand, ground down from rocks. I was a little unsettled; I'd just been reading in Jenny Odell's Saving Time in which she considers a different scale/standard/measure/interpretation of time by considering some not-quite-pebbles-but-not-quite-sand grains on a beach a few towns to the south of where I stood.

In the foreground, a bush covered with yellow-white webby stuff, something like dandelion puffs. in the background, the ocean and a big guano-spattered rock

When I emerged from Land's End near Sutro Baths, these shrubs were parachuting lots of seeds on bits of dandelion-like fluff. It was all very impressive except when they stuck to my tongue and then I remembered that nature is terrible.

At Sutro Castle, the Roundabout trail, not content with sending me down the Baker Beach San Ladder, sent me down the sandy steps to Balboa Ave. Many times, I'd waited for a bus at the Balboa/La Playa stop, contemplating those steps, glad I was too sensible to walk up them. But today, "dared" by the Roundabout Trail, I finally walked them.

Along the way, I spotted some raptorish bird, more sensible, taking it easy in the shade of a tree.

At Sunset Dunes park, a new experience: I walked the old path. Before Sunset Dunes was dedicated to walkers and bicyclists, they all had to share one not-so-wide path. In those bad old days, you could only give the ocean a third of your attention; you had to reserve a third for those folks doddering along slower than you and another third for those folks recklessly passing you. Today, I walked this path and it wasn't crowded. That was novel and good.

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