BART outage Twin Peaks ride

This morning BART, or Bay Area Rapid Transit, had some sort of glitch that shut it down system wide. Rather than rent a car or put my life in the hands of a lead-footed LYFT driver just to get to work, I decided to just work from home. Fridays are mostly computer work for me anyway.

It was too nice of a morning just to go straight home though, so I decided to extend my commute by going up Twin Peaks. Regular readers of the newsletter are probably sick of hearing about Twin Peaks by now. I ride it often because I can sorta loop it into my way home and it's the perfect route for when you want to sweat a little, but there's other stuff you gotta do. It's a great ride for when you can't blow a whole day goofing off on a bike, basically.

My favorite way up Twin Peaks from the east side of the city is up Corbett. I've had some requests for suggestions on city rides from people planning to visit San Francisco, so I'll give directions here. Please don't ask for a strava or map-my-ride file; that's beyond my technical abilities.

 You can link up with Corbett by biking straight up Market, and taking the slight right onto 17th at Market and Castro. From there, take the left onto Corbett, right before 17th gets really steep.

This is shot from Corbett, overlooking Market. You can ride straight up Market all the way to Twin Peaks, but it's too busy with fast-moving traffic to be enjoyable.

My 64cm Clem has smooth tires and an Onyx rear hub, so even when I'm coasting it's completely quiet. The tires are puffy and underinflated, the cut out saddle has a lot of give, and the long wheelbase dampens any bumps in the road so the whole bike feels nicely soft. 

There are a lot of cute houses on Corbett as scenery. I don't know much about architecture, but I know I'm a sucker for glass bricks. This house is, I think, built in the Streamline Moderne style—sort of a less frilly, and less expensive art deco.

I call this one the Danzig house.

Getting up there now.

Corbett dead-ends into Portola, at which point you take a right, and then another right onto Twin Peaks Blvd, pictured here. This is colloquially known as going up the backside of Twin Peaks. The frontside is nice too, it's just a lot steeper.

Made it! This area is blocked off by jersey barriers and is closed to car traffic. I think they plan to make it a park eventually, but I'll be happy with anything as long as it's closed to cars. 

In the early pandemic days, the entirety of Twin Peaks was closed to car traffic, and for a while it was the spot du jour for socializing outside. When it was warm out, it felt like a big block party. They eventually opened up the backside and the main lookout area to car traffic, but they let us keep this zone and the frontside. With the drivers came the trash, the noise pollution, and, judging from the crumpled guardrails and tire treads on the hillside, the wrecks, but whatever, it's still nice.

If you've got a bike with tires over 38mm, the most fun way to descend is through Sutro Open space, a little bit north and west of Twin peaks. To get there, I usually pass right underneath Sutro Tower, shown above.

Apparently everybody hated it when it went up, but now I think it's mostly liked. When I first moved to San Francisco and would get turned around all the time, Sutro Tower was a handy visual guide for getting my bearings.

Sutro is 61 acres of open space filled with switchback-y singletrack. It's challenging, but perfectly doable, even on a bike with 56cm chainstays, swept back bars and bar end shifters.

Friend Adam and I rode this same route the night before and he took this picture of me. These are the types of trails I really like, where the nature is beat back just enough that you can ride through it. I like it when it feels almost untended. Foliage tunnels, that's what I'm after.

There's another open space near Sutro called Bedpan (The neighboring hospital nearby used to dump their old stuff in there, hence the name), but the trails there are berm'd and smoothed out. They're more clearly made for "mountain biking" and that takes some of the fun out of it for me. I ride both, but I prefer Sutro.

I drank the rest of my coffee here and then my phone died. I wanted to take pictures of this house on my way out, but the linked pictures are better anyway. Time to go to work!