New Book: "Secret" Public Stairs of the East Bay

Charles Fleming can be merciless. In his new book, Secret Stairs East Bay, he thinks nothing of having his readers descend a slope on one set of stairs, then immediately head back up on another. And we’re talking 88 steps down and 87 steps up.

Nor does he hesitate to send hikers up a staircase and then, after a roundabout albeit scenic route, up the same staircase again — or at least part of the way up.

He does, at least, warn you ahead of time by providing a stair count —and accurate predictions of how long each hike will take, whether it’s graded difficulty "2,' for relatively easy, on up to "5," for a real heart thumper.

And all in a quest for … what? Health and stamina? Views of San Francisco Bay? A peculiar sense of discovery?

All of the above, of course.

Fleming, a Los Angeles writer, began walking the urban stairways and other urban paths in that city to relieve an aching back that hadn’t gotten better after two surgeries. His first walking guide, Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles, got folks in that purportedly pedestrian-unfriendly place to take to the urban hills.

“Since my book came out,” he said in a recent phone interview, “there have been more walking groups organized in Los Angeles around the Secret Stairs book.”

In Los Angeles, he said, many people first learned of the city’s network of urban paths from the book. “Person after person after person has said to me, ‘I’ve lived here 30 years and I never knew.’ ”

Secret Stairs East Bay (paperback, Santa Monica Press, $16.95) “is a better book," Fleming said. "It was my second. I was better at designing walks and getting the kinks out.”

Fleming will discuss the book 7:30 p.m. Aug. 5 at Pegasus Books on Solano Avenue in Berkeley. The next morning he will lead a free, 2.5-mile walk with a 3.5 rating in the Claremont Uplands neighborhood of Berkeley. The group meets at 10 a.m. at Star Grocery.

In our corner of the East Bay, trails have been gaining newfound attention, with efforts by community groups under way both in and El Cerrito to restore existing trails and build trails on public right-of-ways that were intended for trails.

Fleming says his book plays to “a new consciousness about urban walking, a new interest in urban things, in old restaurants, old neighborhoods.”

Secret Stairs focuses largely on Berkeley and Oakland but also includes Albany, Kensington and El Cerrito, where his hike takes walkers through much of the city’s southern and central hills.

The El Cerrito hike, rated a rigorous 4.5, descends from Arlington Boulevard, the spine of the El Cerrito Hills, taking folks onto a truly secret hidden pathway — one that looks exactly like a private driveway but is in fact a public path, from Bay Tree Lane to Contra Costa Drive.

Fleming’s route includes a lovely, grassy trail — not stairs at all — that descends from King Drive to Shevlin Drive.

Fleming does, however, guarantee that none of his routes will take you far from stairs. “That’s the gimmick indeed,” he said. “All of them include public staircases. Some of them contain many staircases.”

Fleming, while exclaiming often about “big views” of the Bay, is good at pointing to details as well, historical, architectural, and sometimes natural. He talks about “Las Mimosas,” a castle-like home along the El Cerrito route that, he points out, is “scheduled for the wrecking ball.”

The Albany Hill hike, one of the shorter tours in the book at 45 minutes, ascends Albany Hill to the "rather martial-looking cross," just down from the hill's crest, and descends on Castro Steps. "Perfect for a sunset stroll," Fleming notes.

The Kensington hike, 1.8 miles and an hour, "lacks something in architectural and arboreal delights," Fleming writes, suprisingly enough, given how charming and tree-filled much of this unincoroprated community is. In fact, many of the houses along the route are real charmers, especially if you diverge just a bit from the paths.

Some of Fleming's hikes take seemingly odd turns. In one of several around the Claremont Hotel, Fleming leads his readers into the lobby to admire the hotel’s “baby grand player piano.” And he often starts and ends his tours with recommendations about where to dine or enjoy a drink.

It’s local information like this throughout the book that repays hikers for using it, even if they already know, or think they know, the particular route.

Who knew, for example, that the striking statue of a saber-tooth tiger on the Cal campus was sculpted by Trader Vic Bergeron himself?

Fleming credits the help he received from many organizations and individuals in the Bay Area, including Berkeley Path Wanderers; Bryce Nesbitt, who is heading up Kensington’s efforts to improve and revive its trail system; and El Cerrito Trail Trekkers, which is doing the same in its city.

“All kinds of people were telling me stuff I might have missed and not have known otherwise,” he said.

And although Fleming walked every step of every walk himself, notebook in hand, he also recruited “a whole army of volunteers” who helped test the walks.

“For the Los Angeles book,” he said, “I did almost all of it by myself. In Los Angeles, I was stumbling into it. I was reluctant to ask people to join me in this.”

In the East Bay, Fleming found a walking culture that left Los Angeles miles behind. Several cities throughout the Bay have active paths groups, many maps to trails are available, and several books have already treated the subject, including Stephen Altschuler’s Hidden Walks in the Bay Area from 1990 and Hidden Walks in the East Bay and Marin from 2001.

Fleming says, at least when he’s talking to Northern Californians, he prefers the trails here to those in Southern California.

“The air is cleaner and the trees are bigger, and the architecture tends to be, how shall I say it, the architecture is more undisturbed,” he said. “The houses built in the '20s and earlier, many of them are in their original condition today. Their neighborhoods haven’t changed the way they have in Los Angeles.”

“And, look at the Bay. We don’t have that in Los Angeles.”

Does Fleming have a favorite East Bay hike?

In fact he does. It’s Codornices Park, graded 4.5 and with 1,230 steps, many of them on the awesome Tamalpais Path.

“It was just so different than what I was accustomed to at home. It’s so green, so redwoody and so oaky. The views of the Bay were so stunning.”

Dave Weinstein is chairman of El Cerrito Trail Trekkers.