Cathryn “Cat” Blum: Building Community on Potrero Hill

Cat Blum has long led the movement to transform the 22nd and Carolina streets intersection into a community gathering space. Blum has lived next to the median for the last twenty-nine years, experiencing the neighborhood’s evolution from a place dominated by Irish immigrants, living alongside Russians, Slovenians, and Serbians, to today’s higher-income population. 

Blum didn’t land on Carolina Street by accident. Originally from Colorado, she studied Visual Arts at Scripps College in Southern California. She fell in love with San Francisco during a family vacation during a school break, and vowed to one day return and have her very own bay window. 

It took her just two years to move back, starting a career in film and photography production amongst San Francisco’s hilly streets. She graduated from Production Assistant to Location Scout, finding recording locations and managing complicated logistics.

It turns out that the intersection of 22nd and Carolina streets is a great place for filming. Poised at the top of Potrero Hill, the elevation offers a stunning view of Downtown skyscrapers to the north and sweeping sights of the neighborhoods at the base of Twin Peaks to the west. The unusual confluence of streets also makes for an extra wide intersection, offering the additional space needed for a film company’s entourage.

In 1984, Blum coordinated an iconic commercial for Pioneer Electronics France at this very spot; sending a modified grand piano majestically hurtling down 22nd Street, a production for which she won a Lion D’Or award at the Cannes Festival International du Film Publicitaire.

When she saw a house for sale on the same street a dozen years later, it felt like fate; there was even a bay window.

Managing film shoots requires meticulous organization, a good visual memory, and the ability to talk with anyone. These same traits gave her confidence that she could advocate for the unkempt median outside her home. From the time she moved onto the block, she saw the green space’s potential to become a gathering spot.

“This is the reason for developing the Green Space,” Blum said, as she greeted a passerby at the intersection. “So that you can meet your neighbors and build community.”

Another neighbor drives by with a lowered window, calling out a proposal for monthly wine nights on the green. Bright pink decorations flutter from nearby bushes, cheerful remnants of a well-attended block party two weeks prior.

The area surrounding the Carolina Green Space is called “Skyline Terrace,” aptly named for its views. With the now defunct San Francisco Park Alliance serving as fiscal sponsor, in 2020 the Space was awarded a $132,000 municipal Community Challenge Grant, with 35 percent matched by private donations, paying for comprehensive greening two years later. Cat envisions a second community space, Sunset Terrace, at the median’s opposite end, with fiscal sponsorship by Greening Projects.

Blum is inspired by the “new kids on the block”, the fresh generation of children who call Potrero Hill, specifically Carolina Street, home. She hopes that by collectively creating spaces for the community to come together it’ll engender a welcoming environment where these newest neighbors feel a sense of belonging.

If you carefully brush away the dirt at the steps that lead from the Skyline Terrace downhill, towards 23rd Street, hidden inscriptions reveal signatures of neighborhood youth from when the concrete was poured in 1967. Now well into their seventies, those who remain are part of the older generation of Hill residents; a glimpse into the future for the newest kids on the block, one volunteer day and block party at a time.