Kuns is part educator, part entrepreneur, part salesman, and part touch artist, and he lives his life as he pleases. He is a tall, skinny man with unruly gray hair and a Vandyke beard. He just turned 80. “An octogenarian,” he says with a wry smile.

Like many San Franciscans, he grew up elsewhere – in his case on a farm in northern Ohio. He was visually impaired as a child, mostly blind, but learned self-reliance. He was one of four children and the only one with vision problems. “My dad said, ‘I don’t know what you can do, but why don’t you try? So he did. “I did the farm work. I took the coal out of the cellar. I milked cows when I was 7 years old. I fed the chickens. Everyone in the family had to help out on the farm, so I helped.

School was a problem, so Kuns went to an Ohio school for the blind. But he was uncomfortable. “As a blind kid in Ohio, I saw my future as one of those blind salesmen in the lobby of a dusty county courthouse,” he said. He made a small face.

A little bit of luck. His family moved west, lived in Southern California, and enrolled Jerry at the California School for the Blind in Berkeley. He had a sense of independent adventure and went to visit friends in San Francisco one day, riding the old Key System train over the Bay Bridge and a Muni bus to the Excelsior neighborhood. But on the way back, he made a mistake, got off the bus at the wrong stop and missed the last train to Berkeley.

He was 14, a blind child lost in San Francisco in the middle of the night. It looks like the plot of a movie. “Yeah,” Kuns said. “It did. So I wandered, mostly by touch, through Market Street, up Grant Avenue, into Chinatown, near Broadway, into North Beach by places where there was music. It was Stan Kenton playing. Stan Kenton himself. I knew his music and had wandered around that scene in San Francisco. It was 1956 and I knew that was where I wanted to be. He walked to Washington Square , hoping to sleep on a pew, when a nice couple from San Francisco took her in. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.

Kuns grew up visiting the city, staying there when he could. As you can see, he’s not shy, and he hung around North Beach in cafes and bars during one of those golden ages the town has from time to time: “I knew Kerouac, and Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti,” he said. “I’ve been to Jazz Workshop and Enrico’s, Committee Comedy Club, Fior d’Italia, all those places,” he said.

He got to know the city. More importantly, he got to know the vibe of the city. “Not that I can see it,” he said. “I have felt it.”

He made friends. He liked to walk, but he also took up running – mostly 5k runs. Also some sailing and skiing, mainly cross-country skiing. “I had to learn how to fall properly,” he said.

He uses public transport a lot in the city. “I listen when they announce the stops, but I know the routes the buses take, and in the trolleybus I can tell where we are by the noise the electric buses make on the overhead switches.”

Sometimes he takes guests by cable car. “I always ride on the running board, outside,” he said. “Once I participated in the cable car bell contest,” he said. “I did pretty well too, but I finished second. The other guy had a top hat or something.

A History of San Francisco. More importantly, Kuns did other things. He had several careers, as a rehabilitation counselor, employment development specialist, vice president of sales for a company that made computer products that the blind and visually impaired could use. He also taught. He showed a device that uses Braille to connect to the Internet. He participated in what is called assistive technology for the blind. He is an advocate for Braille and people who cannot see. His latest project: performing the Smuin Ballet for the blind.

He was visually impaired in a vaguely shaped shadow world until 1978, when he became completely blind. He uses his other senses – hearing, smell, touch and memory – as compensation. He remembers the smell of one particular restaurant in North Beach – “the US Cafe, remember that?” – or the smell of the ocean breeze, the change of wind that brings the afternoon fog. The taste of a very good martini. “Louie the bartender at John’s Grill made the best Martinis. He had a kind of foreign accent that I could never understand.

Kuns has tactile maps to get an idea of ​​how the city is laid out. “I love maps,” he said. He pulled out one, a three-dimensional map of San Francisco, held it in his hand. He has long, slender fingers, like a pianist. “Here is Eureka Valley,” he said as he touched the map, “Here is Noe Valley with the hill in between,” he said. “And here we are. Right?”

His home is full of tactile art, some of which he created himself. One of his favorites is a wall hanging depicting hands and circles in the shape of wires. Another is a portrait of himself, holding a wooden sculpture. He asked Naomi Rosenberg, an artist who makes tactile maps and graphics at the Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco, to produce it so he could feel the image, in fact see himself.

He has a bespoke garden at the back of the house with gently curving gravel paths with plants he can touch and smell.

His house is an older place, a survivor built in 1896 as a stable. He rebuilt it with his wife, Theresa Postello, a teacher he met at a dinner party hosted by his friends Carol and Mark Agnello. They had been together for 27 years; she died five years ago.

He often speaks of it with sadness. He also regrets the changes that have taken place in the city. It’s different, he says, it’s not as open and friendly as before. But he is not a sad man. He smiles easily. “I’d like to take a walk with you,” he said. “I’ll show you the neighborhood.”

Carl Nolte’s column appears in the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]