San Francisco Skate Spots by Terrain
City Guides ·
227 mapped spots in San Francisco, organised by the ground they sit on: the bay-fill flats, the Nob Hill grades, the Civic Center shelf and the avenues.
Sixty-two of the 227 spots we have mapped in San Francisco sit inside a rectangle running from Third Street to the water and from Brannan up to Pier 17, about 2.7 kilometres by 1.5. That rectangle is the flattest ground in the city, and it is not natural. Everything east of Montgomery Street is fill dumped into the bay from the 1850s onward. The rest of San Francisco does what the hills tell it to, and the spot map shows it.
Two other numbers worth holding onto: 212 of the 227 are street spots, and 6 are parks. San Francisco is a street city to an extent almost no other American city matches.
The made ground: SoMa, the Financial District and the waterfront
The waterfront cluster is tight enough to be absurd. Hubba Hideout and Embarcadero are 44 metres apart. Harry Bridges Plaza is another 60 metres on, and the Ferry Building 60 past that. Four entries inside 140 metres of pavement. Push north along the water and Pier 7 is 460 metres from the Ferry Building, then Pier 15 and Bay Blocks another 350, sitting 83 metres from each other.
Behind that runs the Rincon Hill grid: Spear, Beale, Main, First, Second. Rincon Center is 389 metres from Hubba Hideout, with 17 photos on file. Most of the surrounding entries are curbs, mannys and small sets logged with one or two photos each. That is what a flat, dense, office-block district produces: not destinations, but a hundred small pieces of ground in between.
The other genuinely flat ground in the dataset is not downtown at all. Four spots sit on Treasure Island, artificial ground built for the 1939 exposition: a street gap on California Avenue, a ditch on 4th, a bank on 8th and a manny on 13th. One or two photos apiece, and not worth the bus ride on their own.
California Street, and the point where the grid tilts
California Street is the cleanest place to watch the terrain change. At the bottom it is still flat: gap to ledge at 633, Cardiel Hubba at 675 just 62 metres up, and Black Rock within 130 metres of both. China Banks sits 300 metres off on Kearny, with 38 photos, the most-documented spot in this part of town.
Then it goes up. Mason Rail at 1001 California is only 302 metres from Cardiel Hubba on the map, but that is the Nob Hill grade: a couple of hundred feet of climb, which is why the cable car runs this street. Up top the spots pack in again: low to high at 1111 California, and 10 stairs rail and hubba on Taylor 101 metres away. Union Square is 523 metres downhill from Cardiel Hubba, and has 27 photos.
Greenwich, Vallejo and the Russian Hill street gaps
North Beach and Russian Hill produce a spot type the flats cannot: the street gap, where a cross street meets a graded block and leaves a lip. Three of them sit on the same stretch of Greenwich: bump at 438, Kramer Pl street gap at 513 a further 119 metres up, and Brant Alley street gap at 669, another 208 metres on with 12 photos. Round the corner on Stockton, 6 stairs hubba is 184 metres from Brant Alley. The whole set fits inside 330 metres.
A few blocks south, Vallejo Street Double Set has 22 photos. Keep going up the Vallejo grade and you reach Taylor st. fence, an entry logged only as hill bomb 144 metres from it, and a launcher on Mason 235 metres from the fence. Lombard Street is 573 metres north of the hill bomb entry.
The Civic Center shelf
Between Market and the Western Addition the land flattens into a shelf, and nineteen entries fall inside it. San Francisco Library anchors it, with a Ledge on Fulton 61 metres away, the Simon Bolivar Statue 89 metres past that, and United Nations Plaza 131 metres on again. Two blocks west sit the Opera House, the War Memorial Opera House 143 metres from it and the Conservatory of Music 261 metres beyond, plus Federal Banks, Federal Manuals and Fox Plaza.
Keep going west and the shelf carries a line of ledges up Gough: Orange Ledge and Blue Ledge about 75 metres apart, St Mary's Cathedral roughly 200 metres further with 15 photos, then Blood Banks, Fillmore ledges and Hayward Playground. None of it requires a hill.
The Mission floor and the base of Potrero Hill
The Mission is a flat valley floor between Twin Peaks and Potrero Hill, and it reads that way. 3up 3down on Mission Street has 42 photos; Soma West Skatepark is 272 metres away under the Central Freeway, and DLX 307 metres past that on Market. Further south sit Bart Wall and El Capitan, plus St Peter and Garfield rail, 266 metres apart on Alabama and Treat.
Where the flat meets the hill you get bumps. Harrison Bump and Alabama Bump both sit on that transition, as does Bernal Heights ledge, 399 metres from Alabama Bump at the foot of Bernal. Potrero Del Sol, one of the six parks, is 814 metres from Alabama Bump.
The best push in this part of the city runs along the flat western base of Potrero Hill: Parking lot ledges on Vermont, Element Science 260 metres on, Discord Inc 296 further, Jackson Playground 265 further with 12 photos, and Missouri x 18th 257 beyond that. A little over a kilometre, five spots, no climbing.
The avenues and the southwest flats
Twenty mapped spots sit west of 19th Avenue. Eight of those cluster around SF State at the southern end and one is out in the Presidio, which leaves eleven for the whole of the Sunset and the Richmond. That is almost certainly an undercount rather than an empty quarter. The avenues are sand under a grid, sloping gently to the ocean, and what is mapped there is almost all institutional: Abraham Lincoln High School with 50 photos, Sebastian C. Passanisi Stadium 218 metres away, Jefferson Elementary School with the 17th avenue run 150 metres off, and George Washington High School 234 metres from Presidio Middle School. Out at the coast, Balboa Rail has 18 photos and Fort Miley 67, 774 metres apart above Ocean Beach, with Beach Curbs on the Great Highway below.
Down at Lake Merced the land flattens out around SF State. 2 blocks and Huge gap share an address on Holloway and are logged 11 metres apart; American Language Institute is 148 metres away. Four hundred metres south on Font Boulevard sit Red curb, Dirt gap 44 metres from it and butter benches 125 metres on. Add Lowell High School, Fire Dpt Station 19 and Commodore Sloat Elementary School and you have most of a day in a corner of the city nobody writes about.
The southeast: Bayview and Hunters Point
The southeast runs on long shallow grades, wide streets and low traffic. Three entries cluster on Tompkins Avenue: The Flower Shop, a park, with Farmers Market 66 metres away and Alemany Farmer's Market 115. Paul Revere Elementary School, 25 photos, is 331 metres from the park. Half a kilometre east, Revere Avenue, Willie L Brown Middle School and Thurgood Marshall Academic High School sit roughly 300 metres apart in a line.
3rd and Army has 92 photos, behind only Hubba Hideout and Clipper on 100 each, and it sits out on the flat industrial ground by Islais Creek. Clipper is the opposite case: 1220 Noe, on one of the steeper grades in Noe Valley, 86 metres from the Auditorium entry. Revere Bump is 2.3 kilometres from Revere Avenue despite the shared name, so check the map rather than the label.
Six parks in a city of 227 spots
The park list is short enough to give in full: Potrero Del Sol, Soma West Skatepark, Stanyan Skatepark, The Flower Shop, a Skatepark on Progress Street next to Hilltop Park 98 metres away, and an entry logged as X-Games 1999, which has no photos and coordinates out in the bay off the Embarcadero. Treat that last one as a historical marker, not a destination.
Stanyan is the one worth a whole afternoon, because it does not sit alone. Kezar Stadium is 218 metres away with 19 photos, a bank curb 101 metres, and FTC San Francisco 478 metres up Haight. Six parks against 212 street spots is not a ratio you plan a trip around. Here the park is the thing you pass on the way to the street.