Whose bright idea was it to build a city on 48 hills? Can some historian please tell me who thought it would be a good thing for the citizenry to always be off balance? And you wonder why we drink. Might as well, where recovering from a near fall is a daily affirmation of beating the odds.
Was it the Miwoks or the Ramaytush Ohlone? Did the indigenous peoples convince the weary white folks that access to the lush coastside was worth the constant stumbling or did it seem like a heavenly oasis in the clouds after months of traversing the hot flatlands of Kansas, Nebraska, and Nevada?
We have the famous hills: Russian, Telegraph, and Nob. Then we have the lesser hills: Portrero, Rincon, Cathedral, Forest, Goat, and Turtle among them. Oh wait, we are San Franciscans; there are no lesser hills — here all hills are equal. We even have hills that aren’t hills: Mounts, Mounds, Heights, Ridges, Terraces, Vistas, a Grandview, a Bayview and one lone mountain cleverly named Lone Mountain. We have peaks, (Twin and Larsen,) various valleys, cuts, basins, hollows, and a gulch. Enough quick changes of elevation to guarantee a short life for manual transmissions. The 415 is where clutches go to die.
Those are all official place names. Unofficially, we have summits, rises, dips, piles, pitches, and precipices. Buttes, knolls, mesas, and inclines also abound. Not many promontories or protuberances. They were likely cut down when the settlers dug up their granola mines, creating our copious canyons, depressions, glens, notches, and troughs. Lot of hills, brother. We’re the birthplace of Hills Brothers, est. 1878.
We even have San Francisco hillbillies, but like everything else around here, they’re a little bit different: Teslas with gun racks. Watching John Wayne DVDs with the French captions on. Outdoor barbecues featuring a roasted heirloom sun-dried tomato basil reduction, otherwise known as barbecue sauce.
Anybody who has ever been tagged for not curbing their wheels knows the exasperation, “that’s not a hill,” but then you go back and sure enough, there’s a slope with dark intent. Having been confined to a wheelchair for any length of time will really bring it home. Nothing like trying to stop a runaway wheelchair with just your hands. Sleeves will be sacrificed “is there no three-foot-square section of this town that is flat?” There should be. Find a neighborhood in the Sunset or Richmond that is relatively level and declare the area not just disability compliant but downright disability friendly. Stores with extra wide aisles, public transportation with working lifts. Talk to some ADA activists. I’m sure there are plenty of upgrades imaginable. The city could chip in with required refurbishments. Call it Horizontalville or Prostrate Place. Planular?
