Customer Reviews

City Walks: San Francisco: 50 Adventures on Foot

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was born and raised in San Francisco and I am delighted and impressed with my recent purchase of the City Walk series for SF, however there is one major drawback. There is no way to judge the length of the walk. Not only is there no mention of distance, but the maps of the walks are not consistently to scale. Meaning the maps simply show the rout as it will fit on the card so an inch can be a block or a quarter of a mile and this is NOT indicated on the card.

In addition, the walks vary greatly in distance, some only a few blocks and some over 4 miles. This can be misleading if you were to try one walk and then another with out knowing and not preparing for a much longer walk. Also, I wanted to use the walks to "spice up" my exercise routine, it would be great to know how many miles to track my progress.

If you are planning on using this as a tourist guide as a new visitor there is some great information, including parking and bus information to the walks. However, just keep in mind the distance is in no way indicated on the map or under the difficulty rating. For example, two walks are rated "steep" one includes a steep street about a block long, another is a few miles trek up a very steep mountain.

If I was not familiar with the area I would never have known this until I set out for a walk and perhaps found it too long to manage. I only know the distance differences because I know the streets and trails referred to in this "book" (which is really a set of 50 cards with a map on one side and descriptions of the walks on the other.)

Pros:

- Good representation of SF culture and beauty
- Detailed points of interest information
- interestingly organized walks
- bus and parking information to and from walks
- easy to read maps
- information on steepness/ difficulty of walk


Cons:

- does not provide information on distance of walk
- walks vary greatly in length
- maps not drawn to scale to reflect length of walk

Though there is no scale bar on the maps themselves, these decks come with an info card that explains that these maps ARE drawn to scale. Most cards are drawn at a scale where one inch equals a 1000 feet, and a few marked with white borders have scales where one inch equals 2600 feet.

This info is easy to miss if you don't read the explanatory card, but these maps are definitely easy to use once you have. Plus they are cute.

My 2 favorite American cities are NYC and San Francisco. I used to spend a lot of time doing projects in California and spent every free hour in the City by the Bay. Since I have the NYC cards and love them, I figured I would buy these and have them for my next trip. A friend borrowed my set for a recent trip and told me that he followed several cards and found them a great travelling companion. In fact, he said he followed a card to the "best view in the City." Can't get much better than that.

I was disappointed with this product. The format is convenient, but the walks they recommend aren't real intersting. Most of the walks are very short (usually only a few blocks) and are mostly in the touristy edges of the city. I much prefer "Stairway Walks in San Francisco" which has longer walks (a few miles each) and focuses more on the more diverse interior of the city.

I compare this to my two favorite books of San Francisco walking tours: Stairway Walks in San Francisco by Adah Bakalinsky and Historic Walks in San Francisco: 18 Trails Through the City's Past by Rand Richards (see my reviews of both). If Adah is your eccentric walking Aunt and Rand is her history professor, tour guide husband, this deck of 'walk cards' is their slacker nephew.

These cards are the slacker nephew saying "Dude, you should just go to the Ferry Building and then walk up the Embarcadero. They've got cool stuff at the Ferry Building" without the extensive directions and commentary you'd get from either of the other books.

Of course I exaggerate, but here each 'walk' is printed on a card about four inches by 5 inches. One side is a map with your route; the other is brief highlights of history, places to stop, and so on.

Each walk is explained in much less detail, but that's actually the strength here. The walks are shorter and quicker and the walk cards are easy to carry in a pocket or purse. This is probably a better resource for someone brand new to San Francisco or a casual tourist than it is for a resident or even a tourist who wants to get to know San Francisco by walking around.

With this deck it is easy to look for quick walks near your new home, new office, or hotel or tourist spot you are going to anyway. It should also appeal to people who find the structure and information in other two books to be overkill.

These are OK cards for someone who wants a tour of a neighborhood to get a general feeling of what it's like and isn't as concerned about the details. I would've missed some interesting spots that I've seen on San Francisco City Guide tours if I only relied on these cards.

If you're looking for something a little more in-depth, then you may want to pick up one of the other books that some of the other reviewers have suggested. Either that or take some tours with the San Francisco City Guides (free tours through SF public library). The City Guides tour creators are required to do thorough research before creating a tour, and the guides are thoroughly trained on the history, architecture and sights of a neighborhood. You'll get a lot more out of those tours than from these cards.

Having said all that, these aren't bad for the casual tourist or new resident of the city. Just don't believe everything you read on the cards. In reading over the first 15 cards I noticed two "facts" that were wrong.

The cards claimed that Coit Tower was made as a tribute to firemen. Though Lillie Hitchcock Coit had a fireman thing, Coit Tower was built after she died. Money was given to the city upon her death for beautification and the city decided what to do with it. Coit did get a statue of firemen put in down the hill in Washington Square Park, but that's not the same place as Coit Tower.

Another card claimed that Grace Cathedral was built in 1910, when in actuality the Grace Cathedral that currently exists was started in 1928 and finished in 1964.

The routes on the cards are decent, but some of the routes leave out hidden gems that I think are more interesting than some of the things that were included. That and the fact problems make me think that these cards were put together by someone who had a moderate knowledge of San Francisco, but that isn't as much of an expert as some other authors out there.

The tips for places to eat and rest along the way seemed nice and the author seemed to know more about the shopping and commercial establishments than the history and architecture.

Don't get me wrong, these are handy cards with some good, if sometimes superficial, information for someone who is relatively unfamiliar with the city. They just don't measure up very well as a great resource for anyone who is already somewhat familiar with the neighborhoods of San Francisco.

That walk you show online is virtually impossible for any but the most
physically fit walkers - and, like others in the book you don't end up where you started.
On the other hand,virtually all of Adah Bakalinsky's walks in her book, "Stairways of San Francisco" bring the walker, via most interesting routes, back to the point of the walk's origin. Great to have your car or bicycle right there after the walk. The stories of the stairways and the neighborhoods are fascinating. Good walks and a good read.

I love these cards. I bought this set as a replacement for my original set, which got lost or stolen somewhere. The best thing about them is that you can go through and take out only the cards that cover the sections of town where you are going to be, and just tuck them in your back pocket. As you walk through on the path that the card shows, you can discreetly take one out and consult it, without drawing out a big map that shouts "Lost tourist". It also allows you to walk around and find some truly fantastic places, in the galaxy of cool places that make up San Francisco, without having to be bound down to a formal tour. This also helps you to avoid looking like a lost tourist.
Many tour books, and especially group tours, bring you to the typical, iconic places that everyone knows about. You get Chinatown, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Fisherman's Wharf no matter what tour or guide you go with. Well, all those kinds of sites are in this collection too, but there are also dozens of little places that you would never see on other tours. It's a neat way of learning your way around San Francisco.
Anyway, I love these cards, and they are well worth the investment.

The City Walks: San Francisco: 50 Adventures on Foot is more about stores in the area than interesting landmarks.

It is not a book, but 50 cards of each location. Not very informative, I would not buy another location in this series.

This nifty box of 50 walking tours printed on cards takes the drudgery of using a big flat paper map & gives you info about the individual tour & suggests stops along the way.