Crosstown Roundabout (sections 1&2)

Below is a partial section of a front page Chronicle article that captures our next walk. I may modify the walk to shorten the overall distance. And no we are not doing the full route :). Im breaking it down into several separate walks.

“This exists in San Francisco?”

I said those words at least 25 times recently while biking the Roundabout, a new 38-mile journey around the perimeter of the city by the makers of the Crosstown Trail. The route, which starts and ends at the Ferry Building, is filled with history lessons, landmarks and the city’s stunning parks.

But the true magic of the super-trail is the transportive beauty of encountering something new. Lived in San Francisco all your life? Think you’ve seen it all? There are guaranteed moments of awe and discovery, standing in a delightful working-class neighborhood or an isolated park, asking yourself why you didn’t think to come this way sooner.

I passed lucky stone lions, a surprise dahlia garden and a reassuring number of public restrooms. I found approximately 100 great new places to get a sandwich. (And picked the right one; thanks, Aroma Buena Cafe in Little Hollywood!)

Section 1: Ferry Building to Heron’s Head Park

Start your Roundabout journey along San Francisco’s eastern waterfront at the Ferry Building, once the world’s second busiest transit hub (behind only London’s Charing Cross Station), and still a transit powerhouse (and foodie mecca). Carry south past old piers and colorful dives, through the still-emerging Mission Bay neighborhood, where the cheers of fans at the Giants’ ballpark and Warriors’ arena now ring louder than noise from offloading ships. Waterfront rehab continues at Bayfront Park (look for repurposed old Bay Bridge structural members outside the Warriors’ Chase Center), Crane Cove Park and Pier 70, where recreation and access to nature have replaced industry, a repeated theme on the eastern waterfront and throughout the Roundabout.

Section 2: Heron’s Head Park to Visitation Valley Greenway

Once a dump and landfill project for a never-built Pier 98, Heron’s Head Park now provides wetland and mudflats for the birds many come here to see; arrive by foot from the Ferry Building, or take the 44 O’Shaughnessy or 19 Polk Muni bus. See more transformation of wasteland to wonderful at India Basin Waterfront Park, where an 1870’s Victorian shipwright’s cottage, once a modest home to a wooden shipbuilder and family, is now reborn as a welcoming community center and mini museum. Stop for lunch at “The Food Pavilion”, the adjacent incubator kitchen for emerging chefs and host to community cooking classes, or try the charming Cafe Alma, where amazing origami mosaics from Lilli Lanier, Ruth Asawa’s granddaughter, have recently been featured on the walls. Amazing transformations continue at Hunters Point, where hundreds of housing units have been built and hilltop parks dot the route in this long neglected but now rising former shipyard, with many more homes to come. Candlestick Point State Recreation Area (familiar as the Crosstown Trail starting point) and “Little Hollywood” finish this section.