Hayes Valley is the neighbourhood a freeway used to ruin. The double-deck Central Freeway ramp ran right through here until the 1989 earthquake shook it loose; the city chose not to rebuild, and the blocks underneath turned into one of San Francisco's best small walks. This one is short on distance and long on before-and-after.
Start grand, on Van Ness, between the War Memorial Opera House — where the UN Charter was signed — and the glass drum of Davies Symphony Hall. The two buildings argue across the street about what a civic monument should look like. Then walk west into Hayes Street proper, where the boutiques and design shops and small cafés fill the low blocks; everything is deliberately modest in scale.
The hinge of the walk is Patricia's Green, the pocket park laid over the old freeway footprint, with a large sculpture at its centre that rotates year to year. Stand where Octavia Boulevard runs south and you can read the ghost of the demolished ramp in the open sky. Carry on to Laguna for the 21-Hayes — or, given the distance, just turn around and do it again.
