Bernal Heights Offers Serious Views, and a Treasure Trove of Paths to Explore

Originally published in The Frisc on June 26, 2020

Bernal Heights often hides in plain sight.

Bounded by freeways to the east and south and by major thoroughfares to the west and north, thousands of San Franciscans in transit see it everyday. It’s close to being San Francisco’s highest hill. But from certain angles, like the approach from the north, the grassy peak crowned with a radio tower juts above the city like an island emerging from a lake.

As happens every so often in city history, Bernal has once again been top of mind in San Francisco. The Bernal Boulder, a large rock set in front of a view to the north, has long been a canvas for its creative-minded community, often emblazoned with season’s greetings or Halloween ghosts, or dressed up like fruit or the poop emoji.

The rock has also received an occasional political makeover, as with the Bernie vs. Hillary debate in 2016. In recent weeks, however, it has gained international attention, as so many San Francisco controversies do.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the national protests against systemic racism and police brutality, San Francisco artist and graphic designer Kseniya Makarovapainted the rock with Black Lives Matter messages several times, only to see it painted over each time. The first few erasures were by an anonymous critic in the middle of the night; the final time was a city cleaning crew summoned by a complaint.

After pushback, the Department of Public Works reversed course, saying it was against their policy to disturb public art. (A citizen’s investigation found that the anonymous critic was a hoodied middle-aged white woman who reportedly wanted the rock to be painted with something nonpolitical, like pizza.)

As of this writing, the Black Lives Matter message is back on the boulder and well worth a visit. The rest of the neighborhood, with its panoramic views, ample open space, winding streets and paths, and tiny green spaces, is worth exploration too, made all the richer by unpacking layers of Bernal Heights history.

The way up

If you want to start your outing with a visit to the Bernal Boulder, a drive or bike ride up Folsom Street to the Bernal Heights Park parking lot provides the fastest access. But Bernal is best on foot. Walkers — or if you prefer, hikers, given the steep slopes, stairways, and a surprising number of dirt trails — will find a litany of options.

On three sides, sloping up from Mission, Cortland, and Cesar Chavez Streets, Bernal Heights holds the city grid for a while with narrow tree-lined streets and colorful homes, before twisting whimsically, providing pocket parks and crooked streets to explore, and finally giving way to the treeless grassy slopes of the hilltop park.

It’s catnip to the urban explorer. Every corner you turn promises something charming, eccentric, or unexpected, the physical embodiment of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book; if you hit a dead end, you can always turn back a page and find something new.

What might be paved alleys in other parts of the city have been preserved as dirt paths, some nurtured as microgardens, like one part of tiny Mayflower Street, and some with the feel of a quick forest ramble, like a block of Chapman Street on the south side.

Diana Amodia was walking her dog Lhasa and stopped to help with directions. She moved to Bernal 20 years ago, and even then “it was more rural,” she said. Behind her, in an empty lot with the feel of an orchard, workers were preparing the space for the construction of new homes.

The 360-degree vistas rival any of the city’s most iconic, but Bernal neighbors love looking inward too. Being a contained unit creates tight bonds, as a recent New York Times story illustrated, and adds extra emphasis on the importance of shared spaces.

Hidden off Winfield Street on the west side, the Esmeralda Corridor is one such place. Centered around a block-long double slide — closed for now, unfortunately, due to COVID concerns — the steep stairway is a diverse urban garden which has become a space for play, exercise, and escape. Children climb the tree at the top while runners sweat up and down the steps that cut through the pastel purple bushes. It reminds anyone that you can’t be too old to sit in a sand pit and soak up the warm glow of the afternoon sun. (Even for adults, the slide is tempting.)

Reach the rock

Climb high enough, and you reach the end of the houses. A semi-ring road formed by Folsom and Bernal Heights Boulevard creates the border between the residential present and the bare rocky hilltop, a link to the city’s rural past (if you pay no mind to the compound housing the radio tower).

It’s along this road where the Bernal Boulder keeps watch on the city below, almost as a reminder that the city’s open spaces that bring us closer to nature do not shield us from the reality of our human history. It’s a perfect spot to contemplate the city and our current national reckoning. The rock is covered in a thick coat of black paint and adorned with Black Lives Matter imagery and messages, both memorial and call to action.

On one face, in orange, is “Sean Monterrosa — 6/5/20 — killed by Vallejo P.D.” The opposite face reads “invest in black lives.” (The California attorney general just declined to investigate the police shooting of Monterrosa.)

Near here, Bernal Heights native Alex Nieto was killed by San Francisco police officers in 2014; for Nieto and for many others, the rock hardly stands alone. Nearby, people have painted dozens of other stones in solidarity. Bring your own to add to the collection.

Once you’re ready to resume your hike, you can head uphill via a sloping road that starts at the parking lot. Or for a brisker jaunt, find the stairway farther east where Folsom meets Bernal Heights Boulevard, and before ascending stop to admire the pocket garden across the street.

Some of the landscape is under renovation for revegetation, trail upgrades, and erosion control. But it still can feel like another world, with plenty of room to roam: about 35 acres crisscrossed by footpaths among the waving grasses and graced with stunning views. The Pacific winds can be deafening, and the rocky outcroppings sway with patches of vibrant orange California poppies and other wildflowers and buzz with pollinating bees. Raptors hunt rodents in the grass by following their urine trails. Birdwatchers should fare well, and with more luck perhaps you’ll spot reptiles and amphibians.

There’s also a chance you’ll see coyotes, which now thrive across the city in a shifting patchwork of territories.

Not all the animal life is wild. Part of the park allows dogs off-leash, with most of the activity in the old quarry and the road leading to the summit.

From quarry to dot-com

Throughout its history, a mix of entrepreneurs, refugees, and activists have called Bernal Heights home, leaving their mark through waves of migration and neighborhood changes.

In 1876, a mischievous group of con artists sparked a mini gold rush by painting quartz rocks in the area to resemble the precious metal. San Francisco-based blogger Evelyn Rose writes that reports of a “gold-bearing ledge” surfaced in the Daily Alta California, and with memories of the California Gold Rush some 20 years earlier still fresh, San Franciscans from the “very aged to the beardless youth” clambered up the slopes while the neighborhood below held its breath in a “state of excitement.”

Nearly 80 years later, the construction of Highway 101 through San Francisco used filler from the neighborhood quarry; exposed red rock faces abound. Even today, the hilltop can feel more like Mars than a city park. The same solid rock that went into the freeway project had helped stabilize the area during the 1906 earthquake and put Bernal on the map in the first place. The first big wave of settlers were San Franciscans seeking refuge from the destroyed city.

World War II saw yet another wave of settlement, this time African Americans from the south seeking work at the Hunters Point shipyards. After the war, Asian-Americans and Asian immigrants also called the area home.

Post-war, Bernal developed a healthy population of activists, primarily born from the high proportion of union membership in the neighborhood. Continuing to track with social changes across America, the vibrant Bay Area counterculture and influential anti-war movement called Bernal home. There were enough housing collectives founded throughout the 1960s and 70s to give the neighborhood the nickname “Red Hill.”

Bernal gradually began to gentrify. Racist zoning laws that restricted development in wide swaths of the city made it — and other neighborhoods where charming houses remained standing and ready for makeovers — that much more desirable. Then came the rise of the tech industry. Bernal, with its proximity to the freeways heading south to Silicon Valley, could hide no longer. In 2014, a real estate company tabbed it the hottest neighborhood in the US, in part because of its “small town feel” that’s “separated from the craziness of the city.”

Throughout my trek, I kept thinking back to the rock. It’s almost as if the Bernal Boulder, like a metal or gem forged underground, is a compression of all our city history. Even in my hometown, through exploration I can find something new to me. Perspective is the most valuable payment I can get from tuning in to new spaces; what have I not considered before that I need to consider now, and who have I forgotten that I must remember?

I can’t argue that an afternoon will answer these huge questions, but getting out is the first step. Thanks in part to Kseniya Makarova and her persistent painting, Bernal Heights and its history is a great place right now to take that step, and many more.

How to get there

Bernal Heights is accessible in many ways. Muni schedules are limited and subject to change during the pandemic, but currently the 14-Mission and the 24-Divisadero make stops on the west and south sides of the neighborhood. If you’re in the Mission district, you can walk or bike south on Shotwell, now a slow street, then cross Cesar Chavez, jog one block east to Folsom, and head uphill.

After you’ve explored, there’s no better way to celebrate the neighborhood than paying respects (and a few bucks) at Mitchell’s Ice Cream, a Mission-Bernal tradition a few blocks west of the Esmeralda stairs.

Photo courtesy of the author