FUR COATS ON NOB HILL

There are lovely houses on Jackson Street between Hyde and Larkin.
I noticed this again late one night as I was heading home. Old-style, modest apartment buildings - two or three floors, two apartments to the floor. One imagines spacious for a couple, or a little tight for a young family. That block is not as populated as nearby streets, given both the buildings, and a school located in the middle.


The intersection of Hyde and Jackson looks charming in the middle of the night. I had almost forgotten that.


Several months ago the bookseller and I were crossing the hill when ahead of us we noticed two huge furry raccoons at the intersection of Pacific and Hyde. They crossed with the green light, and we could see them very calmly and methodically checking each doorway all the way up Hyde Street, alternating hopscotch-like from house to house. The pair had a system, and were in no hurry. I think they paused for the light at Hyde and Jackson, but I'm not entirely sure.
They acted just like an old couple at peace in each other's company.
It would have been cute if they had been smaller. At their size, they owned the street.

The neighborhood is bounded on the west by Van Ness Avenue, on the south by the demilitarized zone (the five block wide stretch between California and Geary Streets), on the north by Vallejo, and on the east by Chinatown. Some parts are heavily Chinese - especially "le Rue de Toishan" (Pacific Avenue) and Hyde and Larkin Streets - whereas the top of Nob Hill is mostly wasp.
Downslope areas are more ethnically diverse - Chinese-Americans, white immigrants from the palest Midwest, Mexicans, Middle-Easterners, a few subcontinentals ...........
And raccoons.

It used to be more whitey-white, as attested by the six or seven churches within a few blocks of my apartment. Three of them are now Chinese, one of the others is abandoned, the remaining two have congregations from outside the area (or their members are too darn lazy to walk a few blocks). In the past, such a wealth of churches attracted 'white' families - a good solid neighborhood in which to raise children.
Now, I suspect, precisely that attracts the raccoons. It's still a good solid neighborhood in which to raise children.
Furry children.

Nob Hill, from Stockton Street to Polk, probably has the savviest bunch of raccoons in the Bay Area. Big, succesful, and self-confident.
Raccoons with a bourgeois attitude, civilized fellow residents of the neighborhood.
To the best of my knowledge, none of them has EVER been arrested for disturbing the peace.