The Eureka Valley/Castro neighborhood was a quintessential ‘streetcar suburb’ a century ago, and it still is today. On the sunnier side of the Twin Peaks divide, and with a straight-shot, ten-minute transit connection to downtown jobs (when the trains show up, that is), the neighborhood thrived on the development of city infrastructure. The 1918 Twin Peaks Tunnel added a new underground stop, Eureka Station, which is still there, barely visible to passengers on inbound trains just before they enter the 1980s Muni Metro Station.
In the 1990s surface trains were restored with the inauguration of the F Market, which connects Castro to, perhaps somewhat improbably, Fishermans’ Wharf. The idea seems to have been to pull tourism and tourism dollars down from the northern waterfront into the central city districts.
Stopping at almost every intersection, the F is an arduous way to get to work, but on the weekends it’s a bit of a treat to jump on a historic streetcar and watch San Francisco life go by.
