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Many of us have developed unusual pandemic hobbies. For Alexandra Kenin, it’s finding and climbing every public staircase in San Francisco. As of Monday morning, her tally was 837. But it might have changed by now. The number, like Kenin, just keeps climbing.

She invited me to ascend with her on a recent afternoon, and we picked three of San Francisco’s best hills: Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill and Forest Hill. Each one has numerous staircases and breathtaking views. Breathtaking in the literal and metaphorical sense.

“We’ve got a big day ahead of us,” she said enthusiastically.

Kenin spends much of her free time climbing staircases. The short, nondescript ones. The little-known, tucked-away ones. And the long, famous ones like the Greenwich Steps that amble up Telegraph Hill through lush, bohemian gardens to Coit Tower.

It’s hard not to cut our flawed city a whole lot of slack when you’re walking up the Greenwich Steps. Each pause to catch your breath finds glorious vistas of the bay, quirky art installations like a purple parking meter with no parking space, and beautiful flowers, birds and butterflies.

“Isn’t it incredible?” Kenin asked, her huffing and puffing far less labored than mine since she does this sort of thing all the time. “This is one of the best stairways in the entire city.”

She would know. While some San Franciscans have obsessed these past six strange months over baking sourdough bread or watching every show there is to watch on Netflix, Kenin has obsessed over staircases. She’s created a spreadsheet documenting each one she can find, rating them and posting photos.

She knows of 968 public staircases in San Francisco and has personally walked up 837 of them.

“There are staircases everywhere, really, when you’re looking,” she said. “I’ll go out to photograph one set of stairs and find five more. The project just won’t die.”

And that’s a good thing. San Francisco remains in a strange purgatory between open and closed, and there’s still not a whole lot to do here. We can’t go to live sporting events or concerts or movies. We can’t eat inside restaurants or go to friends’ houses for dinner or even drop our kids off at school. Sadly, we can’t even do that most quintessential of San Francisco activities: ride a cable car.

But the beautiful, weird, whimsical city is still there, and nothing’s stopping us from exploring it. Now is a great time with beautiful fall weather, relatively smoke-free skies and few tourists. Whether you’re peacefully strolling to savor the views or rage-climbing to cope with the country’s crushing frustrations, the stairways of San Francisco offer a great opportunity.

Online extra: To view Alexandra Kenin's map and list of San Francisco staircases, visit urbanhikersf.com/sfstairmap.

The 41-year-old Kenin lives in the Mission with her fiance and their toddler. She works part time for a marketing company and is the founder of Urban Hiker SF, a hiking tour company that helps residents and tourists explore the city. She’s written two books, “Urban Trails San Francisco” and “Urban Trails East Bay.” The company’s public tours are on hold due to the pandemic, but it’s offering private tours. And Kenin is exploring more than ever by herself.

“During the pandemic, I thought, ‘I need a new project. I’m going nuts,’” she said with a laugh.

She fell in love with the city’s staircases after her dad gave her a copy of the beloved tome “Stairway Walks in San Francisco” by Adah Bakalinsky, a book that was published in 1984 and has been revised nine times since then. She put all the staircases in that book into a spreadsheet and set out to find any the book had missed, including short, purely functional ones a guidebook wouldn’t include.

“They’re all so different,” Kenin said. “It’s such a fun way to navigate a neighborhood.”

We walked all over Telegraph Hill, which Kenin says has more than 30 stairways if you count the cement ones built into sidewalks as well as the famous ones like the Greenwich Steps and the Filbert Steps. On her rating system, those both get a 5 — the best score, known as the “Scheherazade category” for stirring the imagination and delighting the senses.

The short, nondescript staircases get a 1.

“It may be so boring that you’ll fall asleep on the first landing,” she warns in the rating system explanation.

Exploring the city on foot means finding little corners you’d never notice in a car. Like Jack Early Park, a tiny swath on the north side of Telegraph Hill named after a neighbor who spent 25 years turning the rocky slope into a garden escape with a viewing platform to take in the bay. According to Kenin, it’s a make-out spot of choice for San Francisco teenagers.

From there we wandered over to Russian Hill’s Montclair steps. The steps themselves are not particularly noteworthy, but where you wind up at the top certainly is: smack dab in the middle of the curvy part of Lombard Street. Then we walked down the famous, twisty road on different staircases.

“It’s bright and cheery and bloom-filled. Lombard Street is a sight to behold,” Kenin said, noting it’s even better with few tourists in their rental cars zipping down. “There are usually so many cars in your photos, but not now. It’s prime photo time.”

From there it was on to Macondray Lane. The stairs leading up to it only rate a 2 on Kenin’s scale, but they’re worth it to walk through the oh-so-San Francisco street at the top. The charming brick lane lined with trees feels like an artist’s retreat, and it was Armistead Maupin’s inspiration for Barbary Lane in “Tales of the City.”

We ended the day in Forest Hill, a far less touristy part of the city that even some locals will never visit. Kenin counts more than 20 public staircases there, six of which rate a score of 5. Bakalinsky called the grand Pacheco Stairway “by far the most elegant in all of San Francisco” with its huge urn of flowers at the base and its placement among forests and lawns.

The neighborhood itself is grand and stately, and some of its staircases lead to great views of nearby Sutro Tower.

Finally we were done. My health tracker said we walked 7.4 miles, took 16,744 steps and climbed 140 floors or nearly 3,000 stairs. I was tired but proud — of myself for making it without collapsing and of San Francisco. It’s a troubled city, yes. But it’s also beautiful and full of surprises just around the corner — or up the next staircase.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf

Heather Knight is a columnist working out of City Hall and covering everything from politics to homelessness to family flight and the quirks of living in one of the most fascinating cities in the world. She believes in holding politicians accountable for their decisions or, often, lack thereof - and telling the stories of real people and their struggles.

She co-hosts the Chronicle's TotalSF podcast and co-founded its #TotalSF program to celebrate the wonder and whimsy of San Francisco.