Love Letters to Lower Haight

posted May 06, 2009 8:45AM

There’s Upper Playground and Uva Enoteca, legendary Toronado and the sausage shack next door, Rosamunde. For a small neighborhood, the Lower Haight has character to spare, but none of the annoying tourists walking around wondering where the Grateful Dead once lived. .

Share what you adore about where you live. Submit a “love letter” to Lower Haight below for a chance to be published in the Neighborhoods section of an upcoming issue.

Read love letters to other neighborhoods >

Got something to say? Log in or register to post a comment.

luyisipp posted 07:23 AM Aug. 5th

links of london charms

submit102 posted 10:57 PM Jul. 21st

As a first time home buyer/ urban pioneer i was taking a friend on a walking tour of my new hood. Exclaiming the joy of hitting the streets in whatever, even a bathrobe and curlers, we turned our heads and there at the Whole Foods corner market counter was a guy in fuzzy robe, slippers & pink curlers. It was love at first sight, the neighborhood i mean. Not that the Lower Haight is easy, it's edgy and always playing hard to get. Politicians fight over our boundaries. I live in Mikarimi's district five and across the street is Dufty's district 8. Steiner street is the edge between Northern Station & Park police stations. All the neighborhood associations claim us as theirs. We're part of the Duboce Triangle panhandle, Hayes Valley, Mint Hill, Western Addition, NOPA and LOHA. What's not to love? From crack to croissant all in one block. Ice cream, a gazillion hair salons, local designers, local characters, one to four star dining and somehow the only chain establishment, Walgreens. This is the only place in San Francisco i have lived where the corner bar/ cafe really is a "Cheers". Your next door neighbor is in your business, just like a small mid-west town. Mr Jones will call me if i haven't picked up the paper in my yard. What, you sick or something? Vallie & Zula are out every morning picking up trash from the previous night's bridge & tunnel crowd. My entire block gets up early every SF marathon to cheer on neighbor Marion, complete with a DJ, water hoses & snacks. Oh and there's like six muni lines that intersect in our heart. Like the Bay Bridge, we should make it free to leave, and charge admission to enter. xoxoxoxo Lynn

lynnfriedman posted 12:30 AM Jun. 13th

Dear Lower Haight, My love for you is unwavering. A year ago I moved to your neighborhood and you went out of the way to welcome me. While I wandered down your gum-spotted sidewalks you showed me the most amazing places—Axum, where I tried Ethiopian food for the first time, NocNoc, my favorite bar you have, and Bean There, the perfect café around the corner that serves the best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted. You seem to know what I like before I’ve liked it and guide me in the direction of new experiences. You’ve truly broadened my horizons. You also introduced me to the most wonderful people who treated me like family and accepted me into their lives. Really, no other neighborhood can match you in the quality of people who calls it their home. But from the beginning, the connection we shared was obvious. There was something in the way you and I mixed together that was unlike any other place I’d ever lived. I found myself longing to be with you, homesick for your sun-filled, breezy afternoons and the late nights we’d spend sipping down stiff cocktails and devouring scrumptious slices of pizza at Mythic. I couldn’t ask for a better location. You are within walking distance to most things my heart desires and you more than satisfy my public transportation needs. We have found genuine, unconditional love in each other. Lower Haight, I could never hate you. The only thing I hate are those who hate you. Love, Julie

Julie Mc posted 05:00 PM Jun. 12th

Dear Lower Haight, I love you in the late afternoon: the hour between the bustle of returning from work and dinner. The iridescent sunlight breaks into different sized ribbons as it passes through your trees. It spotlights the front stoops of your Edwardian houses where liberal banter exchanges over cheap wine, Tecate, and American Spirits. As people shuffle to dinner, I smell your organic perfume swirling with traces of hidden barbeques as it winds through the Wiggle. As the wind sweeps night onto you, you are Jack at the Oak Fair corner store. You round up my change and genuinely care how my day is. Later, you are D-structure and Upper Playground when you offer me endemic art and drinks with people you think I should get to know. You only sleep for a few hours at night. I love you in the morning. You open your blithe heart to the familiar feet that stomped all over you the night before. You smell of clean wet pavement and chai. Cafés beckon the Lower Haightians like Sirens with their comely atmosphere and droll fodder. At 8 a.m., you are the bird woman in a puffy worn overcoat waiting at the thinnest tree on Oak and Pierce. You serve your customers breadcrumbs out of your old black purse. They hobble into the small square of dirt surrounded by the ocean of pavement thankful for your nurturing meal. You surf, you hike, you drink, you have a dog, you have a garage sale, you carry a canvas bag, you vote, you clean, you smoke, you eat, you cook, you tag, you create, you hurt, you breathe, you love. You are gentler than your sister Mission, kinder than your uncle Tenderloin, less cliche than your brother Upper Haight, and younger than your neighbor Castro. I love you.

khnhusted posted 10:19 PM Jun. 11th

Dear Lower Haight, a quirky love letter before our next date. Lower Haight where the people aren't fake on the corner you can watch Doolittle create or at 4am hear another car window break (mine 4 times). On Wednesday nights it's RNM for a fried chicken plate then next door to Molotovs for a PBR... or eight. For some, the Toronado might intimidate, but the trick is when ordering be sure not to hesitate! On a beautiful sunny afternoon in the Lower Haight you can stroll to the Vapor room and smoke a joint for your own sake. Got an hour to spare? Wait in line for a french toast orgy at a spot known as Kate's. Next it's off to Duboce park with Pixie to meet Brinks for a play date. Other hoods might imitate but nowhere else can you find a stoop party as late. Here in the Lower Haight, there's no hurry to pro-create. We are moving at our own unique rate a bunch of free spirits mapping out our own fate. The good the bad, what's next we await. Thank you Thank you Thank you Lower Haight! when it comes to neighborhoods, you're my soul's mate.

sassyashleysf posted 09:25 AM Jun. 9th

When I moved into the LH 10 years ago, my next store neighbor told me if I couldn't stand the heat (i.e., the drug dealing), I should get out of the kitchen (i.e., the 'hood). Police privately called it a containment zone. At one point not in the too distant past we had 4 homicides in the space of a few months and distrust and keep to yourself were the ways of the neighbors. Fast forward to the LH today. (To name a few stores that haven't been named in other posts) Inhale your pot legally at Vapor Room, head over to Doe for some beautiful clothes, then cross the street to Xapno, the flower and plant store, have a prix fixe (or prefix, as they spell it in NYC) $19.95 3-course meal at Le Bistro, head over for an organic ice cream at Three Twins, and then, after dancing with the gay boys at Underground SF, have a 2 am bagel at Rolands Bakery (coming next week). Oh, and even better, neighbors are beginning to say hi to each other.

SF Green Mama posted 03:02 PM Jun. 8th

To The Lower Haight: They say that editors hate love stories, but this is not a love story. It may be possible to get all Romeo and Juliet about a place like Bernal Heights or Noe Valley, but the Lower Haight is not a neighborhood where love comes unadulterated. Someone might take someone’s life, but the star-crossed lovers better stay inside. Which is not to say there’s no romance here. There’s no place like Haight Street for the picturesquely gritty. Something about the ever changing posters on the corner of Haight and Pierce that never remain pristine for more than a day, or the windows of that underground record store that barely rise above the sidewalk, or the way the owner of the Lebanese grocery store, looks up from Skype to nod gravely to you as you pass, that can’t help but make a person feel that there is pleasant mystery afoot. Further down the block the placement of a chic Italian wine bar, next to a punk tavern may seem to be the equivalent of sitting Mickey Roarke next to Miley Cyrus at a dogfight. But looks can be deceiving in the Haight, and patrons will find that whether they’re at Molotov’s nursing a PBR or at Uva Enoteca swirling a glass of Tuscan red, their server will be equally able and wearing a sleeve of ink. The mornings are the best here. Walking down the block headed for the bus-stop, the sun rises up in front of you, it sets the street on fire, it’s gonna be a warm one today, and there’s something sweet in the air, coffee, and Katz’s bagels, and the 6 is pulling in on-time. A beautiful girl runs lightly down the street in an orange ball-gown, terribly late to a party downtown, the click of her heels punctuates the metallic clatter as the grates that cover the storefronts snap open one more time. Around here, it’s not love and hate, but love and Haight.

ramonaemerson posted 05:22 PM May. 31st

Dear Lower Haight, I'm not going to lie, we both know know that it's been rough lately. I've been going through cycles of hating you and not being able to get enough of you. After living in the Lower Haight for two years, I thought we were cool. But in one month, both my car and apartment were broken into. I do know you're trying to do better as of late. There's that new ice cream shop and the guys at O'Looney's don't automatically give me a bag anymore. What would my weekends be like without Metro Burger and Toronados? Not as delicious, that's for sure. And even though you have more hair salons than I have hair left to cut, I hope we can keep hanging out. Summer is approaching, and my favorite times in San Francisco are those three sweltering days we get, when even my house is too hot and I'm force out to the porch. When I get to sit and listen to you, LH, go on and on, never a moment of silence, and never a bit of dullness.

makedoandmend posted 10:22 AM May. 29th

Dear Lower Haight, You were my first introduction to this city, a warm welcome from an apartment at Haight and Fillmore after a long flight, a neighborhood I would one day call home. I love seeing the sun rise over my two favorite houses on Page as I walk to work, the fragrant trees one of my very favorite scents ever. I love your gritty grunge mixed in with the beautiful Victorians. I loved walking down Haight during the filming of "Milk" when the street was all lit up. I love walking down Fillmore in the early morning and sipping a mocha at Cafe du Soleil. I love your 80 hair salons in 5 blocks (ok I exaggerate but not much!). I love eating at Kate's on a weekday morning. I love you, my home, my Haight.

lovehaight posted 09:37 PM May. 27th