Sands Street runs north to south in Kennedy Town, connecting the newer reclaimed waterfront — the Kennedy Town New Praya — through the older Kennedy Town Praya and Catchick Street to Belcher's Street. That northern stretch is flat, utilitarian, built on land that was not there in Captain Sands's time. The interesting part of the street lies to the south.

At the southern end, the road meets Rock Hill Street at a right angle, forming a one-way lane. The pedestrian path on the east side continues steeply uphill, climbing through the Sai Wan Seven Terraces — Tai Pak Terrace, Hee Wong Terrace, Ching Lin Terrace, To Li Terrace, and others — connected by a wide, steep staircase. The climb is real. Kennedy Town sits at the foot of hillsides that rise sharply from the reclaimed shore, and the terraces that step up those slopes preserve a scale of urban life that the lower streets have mostly lost. Tenement buildings here retain what the sources describe as their "ancient style," sheltered from the noise of Belcher's Street below, perched above the harbour traffic.

The staircase on Sands Street is steep. After rain, it becomes slippery. For elderly residents and anyone carrying anything heavy, it has long been a source of inconvenience and the occasional accident.

For years, the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party pressed the government to install hillside escalator links and elevator systems — HEL, as the infrastructure is abbreviated. Progress was slow. In October 2007, the MTR Corporation's latest West Island Line proposal mentioned that the Corporation would fund an elevator on Rock Hill Street connecting to Sands Street, along with escalators on Sands Street itself.

An earlier episode illustrates how these decisions get made in Hong Kong: the MTR's West Island Line plan in 2005 had included two station exits on Sands Street for the Kennedy Town Station. By 2006, those exits had been quietly cancelled in the final design. The escalators and elevators that remained on the agenda were the non-MTR alternatives. On 28 December 2012, the Hillside Escalator Links and Elevator Systems on Sands Street were officially completed and opened. The climb became, for those who choose it, optional.

Kennedy Town has long served Hong Kong's film and television industry as a location stand-in for an older city. The streets here — Sands Street among them — retain something of the texture of mid-century Hong Kong that the denser commercial districts of Central and Mong Kok have largely replaced. ATV's television series *Chameleon* (變色龍) was filmed in and around Sands Street, using the tenement buildings and steep lanes as a backdrop.

The appeal is the specificity. The stone staircase, the hillside terraces, the old buildings untouched by the traffic noise of Belcher's Street — these are not generic Hong Kong but a particular neighbourhood at a particular altitude, where the city shows its older face. Restoration projects nearby have tried to preserve this quality while making the buildings functional again. The tension between preservation and renovation is not unique to Sands Street, but the street makes it visible in a compact stretch of hillside.