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San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- General
- San Francisco Chronicle
This is San Francisco's widest sidewalk — by a lot
In a far corner of the sleepy Outer Richmond neighborhood in San Francisco, just blocks away from Lands End, a city oddity emerges — a 37-foot wide sidewalk. The stretch of pavement on Point Lobos Avenue is the widest in the city, nearly three times the size of the average residential sidewalk, according to a Chronicle analysis of sidewalk data from the city. That data has some limitations: Entire neighborhoods like Mission Bay and the Presidio weren't counted, and many street segments in the eastern half of the city are missing. Still, the Point Lobos Avenue sidewalk stands out even in a neighborhood with relatively wide sidewalks overall — it's large enough to easily walk five people abreast and still have room for passersby walking the other way. The residential buildings along the blocks, many of them built in the 1920s, offer plenty of room for cars to park in their driveways and still not come even close to encroaching on pedestrian space. It's almost large enough to park a standard size Muni bus. So how did that extraordinarily wide sidewalk come to be? It wasn't a masterplanned design choice or an experiment to increase pedestrian space. Instead, said Woody LaBounty, the president and CEO of SF Heritage, it was simply 'a quirk of maps.' In the early 1860s, long before the Richmond District as we know it came to be, Point Lobos Avenue, which began at what is now the intersection of Geary Boulevard and Presidio Avenue and ran towards the beach, was a privately owned toll road. It was a thoroughfare for people living in the then-developed eastern parts of the city to get to the beach, where they'd visit the Cliff House, said LaBounty, who is also the co-founder of history nonprofit the Western Neighborhoods Project. The road largely tracked in a straight line on what is now Geary, before veering northward at the tail end in order to avoid a hill, he said. When it was completed, Point Lobos Avenue was 110 feet wide, designed for horse-drawn carriages and omnibuses, according to the National Park Service, and a favorite racing road for horse drivers. But it was after that that the city was granted all the land on the west side of the Peninsula as part of the Outside Lands Agreement in 1866. With that, the city planned the grid system of streets over the sand dunes of the west side and got to developing. But the existing Point Lobos Avenue complicated that plan: Because the road ticked northward at the end, it didn't fit neatly into the grid, instead slicing through the neat rectangular lots, LaBounty explained. When property owners started developing those lots, they could only build up to their property lines, which were set far back due to the width of what was once the diagonal portion of the toll road. So, instead of leaving a 110 foot wide thoroughfare in the middle of a city block, the city just filled in the difference with sidewalks, LaBounty explained. Today, as people amble down Point Lobos Ave towards the beach, it's not hard to imagine a time when horse-drawn carriages ruled the road in the somewhat haphazard patchwork of shapes that make up the almost absurdly wide walkway. Though it's the widest residential sidewalk, Point Lobos Ave is not the only place in the city to take a very expansive stroll. Several other sidewalks throughout the city are 30 feet wide, and even more are at least 25 feet. On the other end of the spectrum, some residential sidewalks are as narrow as 3 or 4 feet wide, according to city data.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Yahoo
Wade in the waters: Readers send in their photos of rivers
Rivers are the subjects of the latest Readers Photo Challenge. Rivers can be great photographic subjects. You can use them as a compositional element to draw the viewers eyes into the scene. A slow moving river can reflect the landscape around it. And rivers can be habitats for animals, which makes them great for wildlife photography. Not many people decided to dip their toes into the waters for this task, but those who decided to get their feet wet sent in some great images. Five readers sent in 11 photos. Here are the top picks. Tom LaBounty of Stockton gets first place with his photo of the Washington Monument near the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. You might say that the basin is more of a lagoon than a river but it is connected to the Potomac River to the north and the Anacostia River via the Washington Channel to the south. Using an Olympus Olympus OM-1 Mk II 3/4ths DSLR camera, LaBounty framed the monument with a blossoming cherry tree in the foreground. A row of flowering trees and the waters of the basin complete the framing at the bottom. The obelisk-shape of the monument stands at the center of the frame, resolute against an amorphously cloudy sky. Mary Nakamura of Stockton went to great heights to get her river photo, literally. While a trip with friends she crossed the Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge near Cañon City, Colorado. With her Apple iPhone 16 she photographed the Arkansas River, which was a dizzying 959 feet below her own feet. The distance made the river, the country's sixth longest, look like a small stream. The eroded and weathered walls of the craggy canyon provided a wonderful texture to the entire scene. Joseph Hey of Stockton photographed a sunrise on the San Joaquin River from Twitchell Island near Rio Vista. With a Samsung Galaxy S24 smartphone he photographed the rising sun and its orange glow breaking just over the horizon. A levee snakes its way into the frame at the middle of the frame. To the right flows the mighty San Joaquin. To the right, tule fog fills the low-lying island. As you visually make your way upwards into the frame, the warm glow of the sunrise gradually gives way to blue sky with morning clouds and contrails criss-crossing the heavens. Peter Corsun of Stockton shot during the opposite time of day. With an Apple iPhone 11 he photographed the setting sun as it sinks low near the horizon at Buckley Cove in Stockton. The sun's warm color is fills a portion of the sky and is reflected in the waters of the Stockton deep water channel. For first LaBounty receives a 16 x 20 print from UlmerPhoto and a gift card to a local restaurant. Second goes to Nakamura with an 11x 14 print and Hey gets an 8x10 print for third place. All of the entries can be seen in an online gallery at A new challenge will be issued on Apr. 15. This article originally appeared on The Record: Wade in the waters: Readers send in their photos of rivers
