Bayview - Hunters Point

First, it's Hunters without an apostrophe.

Bayview and Hunters Point are at the southeastern corner of San Francisco.  Hunters Point is a broad peninsula surrounded by the India and South Basins.  Actually, the name is also used for a second square peninsula south of South Basin that narrows to Candlestick Point.  Candlestick, or for the present, 3 Com Park, where the 49ers play, is the main neighborhood attraction for most Bay Area residents. 

I know surprisingly little about this neighborhood, and have little to show in photographs.  The failing is mine.  The neighborhoods are predominantly black, although like everywhere in San Francisco, one sees Asian, Pacific Islander, Latino and European faces.   It does not help that tourist guide books dispense advice like:

Hunter's [sic] Point is the most unsafe district in San Francisco -- crime is rampant here, so if it's an area you want to survey, be very cautious.

(It might be helpful to know that the same guide book describes Potrero Hill as south of the Mission district.) 

Not a few black youngsters from around the City have been schooled by their parents to be cautious when they venture outside the security of their neighborhood as well.  

One thing that distinguishes San Francisco from other cities is that the price of the living accomodation does not necessarily determine the view.  Here are some views that Bayview residents see.  These were taken during July, a lovely month to watch other people's fog and gloom, a feature that is said to make San Fransisco's population self-limiting. The joys are shared with Potrero Hill to the north in the left center of picture.  The fog horn "chorus" was going at full volume when I took this picture.

Summer in the City: a natural method for limiting San Francisco's population.
This is the lunchtime fog after burnoff.  The real stuff arrives in the late aternoon.

The pictures were taken from the corner of Hudson Avenue and Ardath Court, neighborhood streets near Hilltop Park, at the north end of Bayview.

Bayview's houses such as the yellow house on the corner, are a few years younger, about a decade, than the majority of post-1906 houses in San Francisco.  This block on Palou Avenue is typical.  Other blocks are older.  Its streets are hilly and like most southern neighborhoods in the City depart from the right-angle grid pattern of the original American settlement.. 

Francisco Palou (1722 - 1789 or 1790) accompanied Lt. Gabriel Moraga to San Francisco Bay where he celebrated the first mass in the area and built the first of several buildings that served as temporary missions before the present site at Mission Dolores was dedicated.  He succeeded Junipero Serra as president of the Alta California missions.

Every San Francisco neighborhood has its prominent parish church.  This one is the All Hallows Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes on Oakdale Avenue in Bayview.

 This view of Silver Avenue looking east toward Bernal Heights faces the opposite direction from the opening shot looking toward the Hunters Point docks.