Russian Hill is the one everyone photographs and almost nobody walks past the famous block. The crooked stretch of Lombard is real and worth it — but the hill behind it is a maze of stair-streets and hidden lanes that the cars can't reach, and that's the actual walk.
Start at the top of Lombard's eight hairpins, laid out in the 1920s because the grade beat the motorcar. Take the brick path down on foot, Coit Tower framed dead ahead, then climb back up and west to the summit, where the streets simply turn into stairways. Drop into Ina Coolbrith Park, terraced down toward the bay and named for the state's first poet laureate, then find Macondray Lane — a plank walkway off a stairway, cottages and gardens, no road. It's the Barbary Lane of Tales of the City, and people live there, so walk it gently.
End on the Vallejo steps, Willis Polk's 1914 balustraded descent toward North Beach, the city opening between the railings. Land on Columbus, coffee a block on, and the Powell-Mason car waiting to haul you back up.
