San Francisco Has Needed This for a Long Time: a 'Hill Mapper'

There's much to love about San Francisco – great food, gorgeous parks, tolerant people – and much to despise, like the infernal rents and the way nobody seems to pick up dog poop. Perhaps highest on the hate list for many locals, however, are the number of hills, awful, ridiculously steep mini-mountains that can turn a novice's legs into wiggly spaghetti.

Everybody has their own approaches to dealing with the seven major hills and 40-or-so demi-humps that protrude from the city's 7-by-7 mile plat. Some tough it out and subsequently grow calve muscles the size of cantaloupes. Others go great lengths to dodge them, doubling their travel time and looking from above like aimless, addled ants. The more extreme hill-loathers will only rent homes in flat neighborhoods or, as is the case with somebody I know, have a friend physically push them up inclines with a gentle hand on the back.