A Review of The Crookedest Street, Lombard Street, San Francisco

The crookedest street in the world and also, perhaps, the most beautiful is considered to be Lombard Street, San Francisco. Its location can be found  in the Californian city mentioned above in a neighborhood named Russian Hill. The place is where hundreds of  tourists are concentrated almost all year round, therefore visiting it is included in all tourist routes the city has.

In fact, Lombard Street in San Francisco is one of many similar streets the city has. However, it has a small area on a hill named Russian Hill where it is descending from West to East under a slope of 27%. But not even the angle of incline attracts tourists to this area, the fact is that it is unrealistic curved. A small stretch of road 400 m length contains eight hairpin bends, which is why it is impossible to pass through it by car with a high speed, and even the law prohibits driving faster than 8 km/h there. All these factors make the street one of those the traffic of which is worst.

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Nevertheless, as it has been mentioned, thanks to its "curvature", the Street is called the crookedest street in the world, but let's get back to the time when it was founded and find out its origin. It all started with a significant increase of cars in the 1920s of XX century. The people who lived there were wanting to drive on it but they were not able to do it, as the steep incline of it was 27%. Also, because of it the number of people wanting to rent a house there was becoming smaller with each passing day. It, in turn, negatively affected the value of houses there. When these problems were discovered the salvation was immediate (it was decided to reduce the slope to 16%).

With the decrease in the angle, it was also adopted to restrict the speed of movement to 5 mph (8 km/h). Also, there it is allowed to move in one direction only, i.e. downward, while parking is prohibited, as the street is very narrow, and if someone wants to park there, he/she will be subjected to a substantial penalty.

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Additionally, Lombard Street, San Francisco is very beautiful, it is all paved with red bricks and on its both sides there are planted trees, flowerbeds, and shrubs, all of which are neatly trimmed. Thanks to such plantings Lombard Street in San Francisco is extremely beautiful especially in spring and summer when many flowers bloom.

In 2009, in honor of the 60th anniversary of a popular children's board game named CandyLand, the street was transformed into one big colorful playing field, which, in turn, very well emphasized its singularity. Now due to the fact that it becomes more and more popular all over the world with each passing day, it is visited by lots of tourists.

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Lombard Street, San Francisco, address: Lombard St, San Francisco, CA 94133, USA