19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well researched and nicely done, but can be a little dry, March 20, 2008
This review is from: Historic Walks in San Francisco: 18 Trails Through the City's Past (Paperback)
If Adah Bakalinsky's
Stairway Walks in San Francisco (see my review) is like touring the city with your eccentric, but lovable aunt, Rand's book is like a walk with her history professor husband.
Rand's book is very well organized and presented. He provides maps and directions, like Adah, but adds in trip length and degree of difficulty, which are welcome information omitted from Adah's Stairway Walks.
There is little of Adah's whimsy here: it is replaced with exhaustive research on the area for each walk and its architecture. This results in a very different walking experience.
The first major difference is that many of these Historic Walks are on flatter ground, meaning they both cover different ground from Stairway Walks and are more accessible to people who have trouble with all of the climbing inherent in Adah's routes.
The second major difference is that, given his focus on history and architecture, not sweeping views, Rand's walks are not as diminished by bad weather as Adah's are.
The last difference is the sheer amount of history. The walks in this book always take me much longer than I think they will because I spend so much time standing around reading. Sometimes this is good, e.g. the Castro walk's extensive information about how Harvey Milk helped shape the area, but sometimes, like when there is an extensive discussion of old maps and how hard it is to trace exactly when a particular nondescript house was converted from a nondescript barn, you just want him to get on with it.
I like this book as a contrast and follow on to Adah's Stairway Walks book but, unless you are a history buff, I'd do Adah's first.
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Provides 18 self-guided walks, January 7, 2002
This review is from: Historic Walks in San Francisco: 18 Trails Through the City's Past (Paperback)
Rand Richards' Historic Walks In San Francisco provides 18 self-guided walks and requires only access to San Francisco streets in order to prove inviting. Pair stories about the suites and buildings and the colorful characters which surround them with anecdotes of San Francisco history and you have a superb travel book which does double duty as both a destination guide and as an excellent San Francisco survey.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun Stories and Neat Walks, August 22, 2006
This review is from: Historic Walks in San Francisco: 18 Trails Through the City's Past (Paperback)
This book provides 18 mapped walks through different neighborhoods in San Francisco, focusing on the history of the city, each walk taking about one to two hours, each one accompanied by detailed stories keyed to specific buildings or sites. For instance, the walk through Chinatown takes you to some of the tiny alleyways that used to be entrances to the innumerable bordellos in the region before the 1906 earthquake, along with the still functioning "Tin How" temple up three flights of stairs. This book is not to be confused with a guide to places to eat and so on. Obviously it's only going to be useful to those who are willing and able to spend many hours discovering the city. But if you're interested in seeing and learning about the historical background to this great city, it's hard to imagine how this book could be beat.
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