San Francisco is a collection of urban villages. It's what you'd get in Butte County if you  put Chico, Oroville, Durham, Paradise, Biggs and Gridley , Dayton and other communities  side by side,eliminated whatever suburbs are around them, took away most of the  yard space and scrunched the houses so that they became three- and four-story structures.

The City, of course, has a main downtown, but its urban fabric is  woven out of dozens of smaller communities. Every 20 blocks you're in a different district, each with its own name. There seem to be no unnamed neighborhoods in San Francisco. Chico has a few such areas - Chapmantown, the avenues, Barber, but I wish it had more. I've already half-jokingly suggested NoPa for an area east of Mangrove Avenue and north of Bidwell Park and SoDo  for the area between downtown and The Junction.

A couple of months ago I took a trip to San Francisco and strolled through three neighborhoods: Glen Park, Bernal Heights and Excelsior. They each have their own center and other qualities that distinguish them from each other.  At the same time,  you always know you're in San Francisco. There's no other place quite like it in California. It's densely built, has little pockets of open space, offers lots of public transportation, preserves main streets in miniature rather than turning them into strip malls and boasts a rich ethnic mix of people. One of its common physical features is that the upper stories of buildings invariably  have bay windows.
 
In terms of size, Glen Park is probably the Biggs of San Francisco. Its center, shown at the top of this post, is four or five blocks of intersecting streets that beckon strollers leaving the nearby BART Station. My first order of business was to get something to eat and have a caffeine fix, so I picked  a place that was close at hand, a small bustling coffee shop (as opposed to coffeehouse) where some people were obliged to share tables with  strangers, except at this place there seemed to be no strangers.  Everybody sort of knew each other. This was clearly a place for locals. The waiter who served me had a smile so broad and beaming that it felt like sunshine.

I was pleasantly surprised by the congenial atmosphere. San Francisco is one of those places where human warmth is in competition with the coolness factor. Totally cool places like San Francisco  usually aren't that friendly. Fortunately, Chico isn't overwhelmed by its coolness factor. People here are open, engaging and down-to- earth. In San Francisco, people are more aloof, more wary, more self-absorbed, more conscious of who is cooler than whom. So it was nice to have a warming experience in Glen Park.

To be a flaneur (a sentient ambler through urban space)  in San Francisco you need stamina and strong legs. San Francisco has been laid out in a series of interlocking grids that have no bearing on the topography. As a result, you are walking up and down hills - up and down, up and down. I have made a commitment to get  my desire to explore San Francisco on foot out of my system by the time I'm 60. That gives me two more years.  I don't know how long it will be before hills become too much for me.

After I finished eating, I climbed my first hill, to see the residential part of Glen Park.  There are a lot of houses in this neighborhood, rather than apartments, but they are tightly packed together. I hate seeing this in new suburban developments, mainly because the houses are way too big for their lots. But the tall, narrow profile of San Francisco houses seems better suited to higher densities.

To get from Glen Park to Bernal Heights, my next neighborhood, I had to go down a hill , cross car-jammed  San Jose Avenue  and climb another hill. Cortland Avenue is the main street of Bernal Heights, which in terms of size is perhaps the Gridley of San Francisco. I'd read that it was one of those areas that  in recent times has  been discovered by affluent people and is being revitalized. It looked prosperous, tidy and well-maintained.

 Cortland was thronged with people, especially since this was an uncharacteristically hot day. The neighborhood library was in the throes of being refurbished.

I then went down a hill, climbed to the crest of another hill to take a walk around  circular-shaped Holly Park, descended the hill through St. Mary's Playground, which had shiny, brand new children's playground equipment.

 It seems that by default the tops of the hills that were too steep to be graded and incorporated into the street grid became parks.

Then I took a footbridge across Interstate 280. San Francisco is  famous for  its freeway revolt of 45 years ago, but the grassroots action didn't stop this juggernaut from cutting an east to west swath through the  south part of the city. For most people who drive through San Francisco from the Peninsula and Silicon Valley, this is their only contact with Glen Park, Bernal Heights and the Excelsior, which means they experience these places as a blur.

The Excelsior district lies south of the freeway. It's one of those neighborhoods that has yet to be revitalized. The paint on the houses is peeling, there are bars on the doors and windows, the small yard areas are overgrown with weeds and the streets and sidewalks are full of litter. It isn't a slum, but at this point in its life it's not one of San Francisco's most charming districts.

With a minimum of hill climbing, I made my way to Mission Avenue, which is Excelsior's main drag. In terms of size, this neighborhood is perhaps the Oroville of Butte County . Many of the businesses along Mission are bars and liquor stores. This photo shows there are other types of businesses as well. The street was peopled mainly by seniors, some of them nattily dressed. I didn't see any beggars.

I then crossed another section of the Interstate 280, made my way back to the Glen Park BART station and headed off  to the parts of San Francisco that  are more familiar to tourists. I've reached the point where I  know many parts of San Francisco so well that I have to seek out  unfamiliar neighborhoods to experience a little novelty.  Because I'm a  lover of cityscapes, I'm easy to please. I don't need to spend money on expensive amusements or restaurants. Just  strolling through the neighborhoods is entertainment enough for me.