San Francisco can be and often is broken down into contingent parts based on ethnic groups.  Chinatown.  Japantown.  North Beach, which is like little Italy.  Broadway, which my friend Kevin told me is dedicated to, well, broads.  The Tenderloin is a section of the city which is where the butchers live.  Or maybe the cattle ranches.   Jen won’t take us there ever since she and Charles got chased by unsavory types, probably butchers, a few years ago.

Another way in which I believe the city can be more accurately segmented is by altitude.  Some people who have been here before may be familiar with the bayside attractions.  These are basically at sea level (though our bike ride yesterday required one major hill to get us up into the Presidio), as are several city blocks that seem largely to be devoted to high rise buildings.

Cycling the flat lands near the Bay. (No we didn’t go across the bridge.)

After that the city itself begins to rise.  And rise and rise.  There are several rings of rising. Chinatown is on one side of the city a ring or two off the bottom level.  Several neighborhood names hint at their altitude: Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill.  Our apartment is in Nob Hill.  We are very near the top of the city.

Driving up here from the airport on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, I noted the climb.  You go up a hill, it flattens out a major intersection, then it climbs again.  This, of course, is what made San Francisco prime setting for 70s movies that involved car chases; or perhaps there was a rule that if you set a movie in San Francisco, there had to be a car chase written into the script.  Because who can deny the extreme please of watching an Impala catch air at the top of a hill and bottom out mightily at the next intersection.  And then, repeat the process because like I said this city is ring after ring of upward mobility.

I mean that upward mobility part. In the taxi to our apartment I noticeed of the climb, but it really caught my attention at the very last section of hill, where the grade increased significantly.  It was hard to believe it was even a road anymore and not an elevator shaft.  For this final block, the cars were parked nose-in.  It would have been too much for the emergency brake to withstand, parking parallel to the street on this block.  I didn’t notice it during that first drive, but Jen says that there isn’t just a sidewalk on that part of Taylor Street.  It’s a stairway.

That kind of barrier definitely keeps the riff-raff out.  At least it prevents the riff-raff with lung problems from making it up here, and those are among the worst kind of riff-raff.   To be clear, there are lots of coughing masses down by Fisherman’s Wharf, but up here near the top the living is good. Take a right out of our door and walk uphill half a block..  This will take you to Jones Street.  There doesn’t seem to be anything higher than that.  And it is perfectly clear of riff-raff.

We sit up here in our apartment like Roman emperors looking down from our sanctuary among the seven hills.  I’m not even the first one to make this connection.  Lanie noted today that the terrain reminded her of the Palatine Hills (yes, the utterance of one freakishly well-travelled seen year old).

Happily walking downhill

And while being loftily imperial is a positive for us overall, I can’t say that I mind the riff-raff as much as some people.  This is a city of very interesting people.  Where San Franciscan altitude really makes an impact is in the area of logistics.  Each morning so far we have happily trotted outwards and downwards toward the touristy parts. It’s a breeze covering the mile or two down to the Ferry Terminal or Alcatraz embarkation port.  On day one as we were descending through Chinatown, I was thinking that it wasn’t going to be fun herding the kids back up to Pleasant Street later in the day.

Enter the cable car, often thought to be an outdated form of transportation kept around for nostalgia’s sake.  Truth is, cable cars climb like Zoe’s friend Shannon, which is to say they climb incredibly well.  Without cable cars, San Franciscans would be skinnier than they already are, except their thighs would be bulging.    Other tourists may ride them from one end of the line to the other.  We – are we really tourists if we’re this clever? –  hop off at the highest elevation possible, and I can survive without having to coat my quadriceps with IcyHot to address my sore muscles.  Cable cars are very useful things here, and it’s all because of the hills.  They are a luxury even the Roman Emperors lacked.

Happily riding the cable car uphill.

Today’s cable car actually got stuck on the last steep grade up the far side of Taylor Street (which is not steep enough to require a sidewalk staircase, but it’s pretty steep).  Even trusty cable cars have trouble climbing sometimes.  It may have been that the car was overloaded with people, but probably it was because of the enormous amount of sourdough bread we were carrying (the reason for this is a somewhat long story).  Everyone was asked to get off and walk up to the next corner.  We were close to the top, so we just walked the extra block up to Jones Street, pleased with our quick mastery of San Francisco public transportation.   From Jones Street, everything is downhill, including our apartment. We’ll rest up tonight – and likely eat some bread – then head off tomorrow downhill towards another day of adventure.

Make way for the emperors.