Spiral Golden Town
I've always loved the pedestrian stairways in SF. They are hidden, magic portals between neighborhoods. Forbidden to automobiles, they are celebrations of a human-scale urbanism that once flourished in the United States but is now all but gone.
Today, I did a walk around the neighborhood that runs over several of them. I took some pictures and just dumped a bunch of images up here. I'm now working on putting together a mashup (I think? I still don't know what that means exactly) using Google maps to show where they are. Maybe someday I'll map them all out.
I would LOVE to see a map like that. There is a book about the stairs... It's called "stairway walks in San Francisco"
You should check out platial.com.
They're trying to make human-scale maps.
PS You are cute.
Friend just moved to Corbett, and her doorway is on a stairway, between Market & Corbett. The people who live on it delude themselves into thinking it's private, but by all means it seems public. The best part about it is the straight shot view it has, the entire way.