Telegraph Hill is steep enough that in several places the city gave up on streets entirely. What it built instead is a network of public stairways - wooden and concrete flights running between private gardens, under fig trees and past houses that have no vehicle access at all. They are municipal rights of way, they are free, they are open at any hour, and they are the single best thing to do in North Beach. Most visitors walk past the bottom of them on the way to somewhere else.
The stairways connect several other free things that are worth timing rather than stumbling into. Tell Karpo when you will be in North Beach and get the loop in the right order.
The Filbert Steps, which are the famous ones
The Filbert Steps run up the eastern face of Telegraph Hill from Sansome Street to Coit Tower, and they are the best-known and the most dramatic. The lower section is a steep concrete flight; the upper section becomes a wooden stairway threading between cottages and gardens that residents have planted and maintained for decades. Napier Lane, about halfway up, is a wooden plank walkway lined with small houses and is one of the last surviving streets of its kind in the city.
It is a genuine climb - several hundred steps - and it is worth doing upward rather than downward, because the reveal at the top is the point and because descending steep wet wooden stairs is unpleasant. Budget twenty minutes at a normal pace with stops. It is quieter early in the morning and in the late afternoon, and the gardens are at their best in spring.
The Greenwich Steps, which are the better ones
One block north, the Greenwich Steps climb the same face and are consistently less busy. They are greener, more enclosed, and in some ways more pleasant than the Filbert route, and they reach the same place. The standard move - and the one worth doing - is up one and down the other, which makes a loop of the whole eastern face and takes about forty-five minutes with stops.
Both stairways pass through the Grace Marchant Garden, a hillside garden created from a rubbish-strewn slope beginning in the late 1940s and maintained by volunteers ever since. It is private land with public access along the steps, so the etiquette is straightforward: stay on the stairway, keep your voice down, and do not photograph into windows. People live here and the gardens are their front gardens.
The parrots
The wild parrots of Telegraph Hill are real, they are not a tourist story, and they are one of the more surprising things in urban America. A flock of cherry-headed conures - escaped or released pets that established a breeding population - has lived on the hill for decades, and they are loud, fast and unmistakable. You will usually hear them before you see them.
They move around and they are not reliable at any particular hour, though mornings and late afternoons in the trees around the steps and near Coit Tower are the best odds. Do not feed them; it is discouraged for good reasons and there are signs about it. Watching them from the steps for ten minutes is free and is the sort of thing that makes a walk memorable.
Coit Tower, and what is free about it
The tower at the top of the hill was built in 1933 with money left to the city by Lillie Hitchcock Coit. Going up to the observation platform costs money and is genuinely worth it on a clear day, but two things there are free. The first is the view from Pioneer Park at the base, which covers the bay, the bridges and the eastern half of the city without buying a ticket.
The second is the murals in the ground-floor lobby, which are free to walk in and see and are the more interesting attraction. They were painted in 1934 under a New Deal programme by a large group of artists, they depict Californian life in a frankly political register, and they caused a considerable controversy at the time. Twenty minutes in that lobby is one of the best free things in San Francisco.
The flat half of the neighbourhood
Down off the hill, North Beach's free layer continues. Washington Square is the neighbourhood's front garden - a flat green with the church at one end, morning tai chi, dogs, and the best free seat in the district. It is the correct place to eat focaccia bought by the piece from a bakery, which is as close to a local ritual as this neighbourhood has.
City Lights bookshop on Columbus is free to browse and has been since 1953; its upstairs poetry room is a small piece of literary history you can simply walk into. Jack Kerouac Alley beside it, connecting Columbus to Grant, is painted with quotations and links North Beach directly to Chinatown - a fifty-metre walk between two entirely different neighbourhoods, which is a free experience in itself.
Practical notes
The stairways are public rights of way, open at all hours, with no gates and no charge - but they pass private gardens and homes, so stay on the steps and keep the noise down. Wear shoes with grip; the wooden sections are slippery when wet and San Francisco's fog counts as wet. Climb up rather than down. The Filbert and Greenwich Steps together make a loop of about forty-five minutes. Coit Tower's lobby murals are free; the lift to the top is not. There is essentially no parking at the top of the hill - walk up or take the 39 bus. Washington Square and City Lights are both free and both flat. And go early: the hill is quietest and the light is best before the middle of the day.
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Ask Karpo first
The stairways are free and always open, which makes the only real questions about weather, timing and what to combine them with. Ask Karpo whether the hill is clear this afternoon, what else nearby is free and open at that hour, and how to sequence the climb so you finish somewhere worth finishing.
