Carl St, Haight-Ashbury

Imagine living in Cole Valley. Never heard of this SF enclave? Okay, imagine having Golden Gate Park as your backyard? I love the newly opened Botanical Gardens. Without even going in, the kids and I enjoy playing on the hillside shrubbery clock outside the greenhouse and studying the names of the Dahlias outside. Some of my former students shared an apartment after graduating from MVHS in the south bay. It was off Parnassus and Belvedere. Most people associate or even lump Cole Valley in with Haight Ashbury. While Cole Valley doesn't seem have much to distinguish it, it's a nice little pocket of a neighborhood within short strolls of Buena Vista park, the Haight, and Golden Gate Park. My former students said they "frequently" studied on a picnic blanket in park. Last time I visited them, they made me pay for every essay I ever made them write by draging me up the 600 or so feet of Tank Hill. There's a water tank there and lots of eucalyptus leaves (nice herbal smell). If I were to to move my family (I have a 2 and a 4 year old), Cole Valley would be near the top of my list. October is great month in this slice of the city, with the street festival and then the Halloween parade (for kids....everyone is sufficiently attired and sober, unless you count a gaggle of kindergarteners in Buzz Lightyear costumes, high on sugar, screaming "To Infinity and Beyond!". For a date night, my husband and I drop the kids off at our mannies' house near the panhandle and endure the painful wait at Grandeho's Kamekyo (on Cole between Carl and Parnassus) for some of the freshest and most inventive sushi we've had.