| Lombard Street | |
|---|---|
Lombard Street seen from Coit Tower |
|
| Maintained by: | SF DPW |
| West end: | Presidio Boulevard |
| Major junctions: |
US 101 |
| East end: | The Embarcadero |
Lombard Street is an east–west street in San Francisco, California. It is famous for having a steep, one-block section that consists of eight tight hairpin turns.
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Lombard Street begins at Presidio Boulevard inside The Presidio and runs east through the Cow Hollow neighborhood. For 12 blocks between Broderick Street and Van Ness Avenue, it is a principal arterial road that is co-signed as U.S. Route 101. Lombard Street then continues through the Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill neighborhoods, breaks off at a point becoming Telegraph Hill Boulevard. That leads to Pioneer Park and Coit Tower. Lombard Street starts again at Winthrop Street and finally terminates at The Embarcadero as a collector road.[2]
Lombard Street is best known for the one-way section on Russian Hill between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets, in which the roadway has eight sharp turns (or switchbacks) that have earned the street the distinction of being the crookedest [most winding] street in the world (though this title is contested - see "See Also" links). The switchback's design, first suggested by property owner Carl Henry and instituted in 1922,[3] was born out of necessity in order to reduce the hill's natural 27% grade,[1] which was too steep for most vehicles to climb. It is also a serious hazard to pedestrians, who are accustomed to a more reasonable sixteen-degree incline. The crooked section of the street, which is about 1/4 mile (400 m) long, is reserved for one-way traffic traveling east (downhill) and is paved with red bricks. The speed limit in this section is 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h).
In 1999, a Crooked Street Task Force was created to try to solve traffic problems in the neighborhoods around the winding section of Lombard Street. In 2001, the Task Force decided that it would not be legal to permanently close the block to vehicular traffic. Instead, the Task Force decided to institute a summer parking ban in the area, to bar eastbound traffic on major holidays, and to increase fines for parking in the area. The Task Force also proposed the idea of using minibuses to ferry sightseers to the famous block, although residents debated the efficiency of such a solution, since one of the attractions of touring the area is driving along the twisting section of the street.
The Powell-Hyde cable car line stops at the top of this block.
Famous past residents of Lombard Street include Rowena Meeks Abdy, an early California painter who worked in the style of Impressionism.
In his film Vertigo (1958), Alfred Hitchcock chose to make 900 Lombard Street the home of John "Scottie" Ferguson.
The street, and the difficulty of driving it, is parodied in the Bill Cosby sketch "Driving in San Francisco" on the album Why Is There Air? (recorded in Las Vegas):
It was also included in the comic car chase scene in Peter Bogdanovich's film What's Up, Doc? (1972) starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal.
The street is included in a car chase sequence in Clint Eastwood's crime drama Magnum Force (1973) starring Clint Eastwood, Hal Holbrook, and David Soul.
In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk and the Garbage Strike," there is a scene where Adrian Monk goes to the Mayor's office during a citywide sanitation union strike. He suggests his idea of evacuating the whole city, burning it down, then burning the ashes, and rebuilding the city, saying "Think of it, we rebuild San Francisco ...from scratch. Start fresh, everything clean. Everything brand new. Gonna have that new city smell. Fresh off the lot, we can even straighten out Lombard Street while we’re at it." In the tie-in novel Mr. Monk and the Blue Flu, when Monk and Natalie Teeger visit the Mayor's office during a major police strike, Monk brings up his request to straighten Lombard Street again. By coincidence, Monk is a man of order and cleanliness, so the crookedest portion of Lombard is a violation of his standards.
In American Dad, Steve mentions Lombard Street and even shows a picture of it.
The street features in multiple video games, including the 2000 video game Midtown Madness 2, and the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as Windy Windy Windy Windy street.
In 2010, the street was briefly featured in an episode of MythBusters. The MythBusters "delivery crew" encountered problems during an experiment when their step van could not complete the tight turns on Lombard Street, culminating with the delivery truck stalling and holding up traffic at the bottom of the hill.
In 1994, the MTV reality show ″The Real World: San Francisco" was filmed at 949 Lombard Street.
The game San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing shows Lombard Street as a shortcut on the circuit 3.
In the game Driver: San Francisco, there is an Achievement/Trophy for driving down Lombard Street at at least 20 miles per hour without hitting any obstacles.
The entire route is in San Francisco.
| Postmile [4][5][6] |
Destinations | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Presidio Boulevard | ||
| US 101 north (Richardson Avenue) – Golden Gate Bridge | West end of US 101 overlap | |
| US 101 south (Van Ness Avenue) – San Francisco Civic Center, San Jose | East end of US 101 overlap | |
| Gap in route | ||
| The Embarcadero | Former SR 480 | |
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