The Alleys of San Francisco - Juri Street

Let's give the pet peeves a rest for a while. There are plenty more of them hanging out in the eaves, waiting for their turn to shine on stage, but they can stay there a little bit longer. Their time will come.

Something that I love about San Francisco, aside from the restaurants, weirdos, odd weather and architecture, is the number of tiny alleys and side streets. There must be hundreds of these little-known byways dotting the city, each one a secretive nook with private tales to tell that get overshadowed by the much-storied Valencias, Polks, Gearys and Markets.

San Francisco is second only to New York City in terms of its urban density, and that's what lends it so much of its charm. Stacked on top of each other are the homeless, the urban yuppies, the Mission hipsters and the migrant Latinos. It's noisy, boisterous, overwhelming and invigorating. By taking a turn down one of the narrow alleyways you're abruptly wrenched free of all of that overpopulated mess. Everything seems suddenly quieter. You can hear the plastic food wrapper buckle and bend as a fog-propelled breeze pushes it along the gutter. The voice of an angry mother as she chastises her infant son is borne aloft the scent of homemade enchiladas, lifted out of her kitchen window and left to waft into the tiny street. Much more of an opportunity presents itself to pause, look up, and watch the tendrils of fog twist and dissipate overhead. The big, depersonalised city slows down for a few moments, ceases to be an assault from every angle and miraculously becomes personal.

Take Juri Street for example. Located right around the corner from where The Great Organiser and I live, it's a pokey little path that rests right alongside the equally pokey Juri Commons.

It's small, quaint and a welcome oasis. I expect everyone on the street knows everyone else, and in my mind I can picture all the residents getting together on every third Sunday of the month for a Scrabble tournament, or something equally as dorky, while they sip cups of tea and discuss their improvement plans for their slice of San Francisco. Truth be told they're probably swapping sex partners, doing lines of coke every other night and filing restraining orders against one another, but I'm allowed my idealised fantasy. There's something reassuring about imagining that in this weird city there's a place or two where some measure of normalcy reigns. But that's a fantasy, isn't it?