Potrero Hill is where San Francisco goes to find the sun. While the fog drowns the western avenues, the city's southeastern hill stays clear, and the reward at the top is the whole downtown skyline laid out to the north. This walk starts on the view and works downhill into Dogpatch, the old foundry-and-shipyard quarter at the water's edge.
Begin high, where 18th Street crosses Connecticut and the towers stand up across the flats. Walk the short village run of 18th — corner café, deli, bakery, the kind of main street where the counter staff know the regulars. Then drop through the streets of small wooden workers' cottages, some of the oldest housing in the city, plain by design and steep by geography.
Down on the flats is Dogpatch: brick warehouses turned into galleries and breweries, the Minnesota Street Project rooms free to wander, the taprooms strung along Third Street. Walk the side blocks where the ironworks still stand, repurposed but unmistakably industrial. Finish east at the bay, the working port's cranes to the south, and catch the T-Third straight back up Third.
