A friend of mine lives on this little alley, and after I took this picture I started to think about how many alleys there are in San Francisco. I too live on a one block long alley, that is off of another one block long alley. I am not quite sure why San Francisco is chock-a-block full of them, but they are fun to explore.
It is a practice of San Francisco to rename alley’s for famous people. These include: Isadora Duncan (she was born a block away), Dashell Hammett (He lived at #20 in the 1920’s) , Jack Kerouac (his bar and reading haunts – Vesuvio’s and City Lights occupy this alley), Lech Walesa (the only foreign Nobel Peace Prize winner with a street in San Francisco), William Saroyan, Kenneth Rextroth (both lived off and on in North Beach near their namesake alleys) and Alexander Leidesdorff (an extremely important and successful black man in San Francisco in the 1850’s). I am sure there are others, and forgive me if I left off one of your favorites. Most of these are short, unexciting alleys that are mainly used to put garbage out on pickup day, or for sleeping by the less fortunate.
Some are art havens – these include: Balmy Alley and Clarion.
Some have developed into food havens such as Belden Place with its myriad of wonderful restaurants and Ross Alley with the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, that makes cookies as you watch through the open door.
The New York Times even did a fun article on the alleys of San Francisco, still fairly accurate though a little dated.
If you are interested in how the streets got their names, I love a book in my library by Louis K Loewenstein. Streets of San Francisco: The Origins of Street and Place Names
Hey! This looks familiar. Joice may be my favorite alley in SF. It ends with a flight of steps down to Pine.