PortolaGardener

The Portola is a blue collar neighborhood on The City's southeast side. It is mostly residential with a busy commercial corridor, San Bruno Avenue. The Portola has two large parks, Palega Rec Center at Portola Park between Silliman and Wayland, Hamilton and Somerset and McLaren Park which has more than 300 acres of recreational space and spans from Burrows Street to Mansell. It has many hilly areas with great views of the bay and downtown. San Bruno Avenue has its challenges. There are a lot of restaurants with fairly good food at good prices, but there are few comfortable enough to sit and enjoy a meal as you would in other areas of The City. Portola Four Barrel, a trendy coffee shop, is slated to open in November of 2012 on Burrows Street at San Bruno Avenue which may help change attitudes about the area and ultimately the choices available. A Fresh and Easy grocery store opened in February 2012 at Silver Avenue and Goettingen and filled a need for a one stop shopping experience that was missing for more than three years. The neighborhood has a friendly feel with an active community working to improve the quality of life. The Portola Neighborhood Association is working to clean and green San Bruno Avenue, the Goettingen Neighbors Group maintains a community garden on Dwight and Goettingen and Help McLaren Park is working to make McLaren Park more beautiful and welcoming. A yearly garden tour takes place the last Saturday in September and benefits a scholarship fund at City College of San Francisco and work projects for students in the Portola. The elementary schools, private and public, are inviting and have fairly good ratings. The middle school and high school have their challenges. The neighborhood is among the most diverse in San Francisco with a high level of home ownership.

Colby Street runs north and south from Sweeny to Mansell. It is dissected by the University Mound Reservoirs so it forms short, calm residential areas. The street is hilly with views of the bay and downtown San Francisco. The homes on Colby have fairly good sized yards and being on the southeastern slope, sunny.