Flashback Monday: 6 Favorite San Francisco Parks

Six Parks to Visit in San Francisco - Mighty Girl

In an effort to gather all my writing in one place, I’ve been posting articles that originally appeared elsewhere. This piece was originally published by the The Morning News in 2006. Thanks to Andrew Womack, for the edits. (Andy!)

There seems to be a park every few blocks in San Francisco, so people often favor the park closest to their apartments. We meet in parks all year to listen to music, to share food, to celebrate together. Friends of mine married atop Tank Hill near their Cole Valley apartment, and my own husband proposed at a nearby dog park with a hurricane fence and a sweeping view of the city lights. There are too many parks to list, and possibly to count, so these are a few of the standouts. I highly recommend coming to visit, so you can choose a favorite of your own.

Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park is a lot like New York’s Central Park, only larger, and you can walk on its paths at night with a reasonable hope of emerging alive. The lush, 1,017-acre expanse was coaxed from a desert of unstable sand dunes at the west end of the city. Two Dutch-style windmills once pumped water through the park, maintaining an electric-powered waterfall, several small lakes, and the running creeks connecting the lakes.

For a few years, I rose early Sunday mornings, laced my red Converse with leather glued to the bottoms, and rushed to meet the lindy-hop dancers who gather in the Music Concourse. People came from Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and as far as Sweden to dance together there in the park, while a tai chi group moved in slow motion nearby. Afterward, I would walk over to the five-acre Japanese Tea Garden to read over a cup of green tea and a plate of almond cookies.

Model-yacht enthusiasts head out to Spreckels Lake (near 36th Avenue), which was specially designed for mini-yachting. We go to watch the little boats when my niece and nephew are in town, or rent paddleboats on Stow Lake and take turns directing the kids to keep their hands out of the murky water. We gawk at the herd of bison whose ancestors have called the park home since 1892, and visit the recently restored Conservatory of Flowers to hunt for geckos on the panes of milky glass.

The park is a throughway for the annual Bay to Breakers race, attracting tens of thousands of drunken, costumed revelers pushing fully operational tiki bars up and down San Francisco’s hilly landscape. Golden Gate Park is the only place to relieve yourself on the route, which means that everyone stops to pee in the bushes together. Now that’s a San Francisco treat.

Ocean Beach
Ocean Beach is where Golden Gate Park meets the ocean. It’s also where everyone goes for bonfires, mostly in October and November.

After the holidays, San Franciscans are known to collect truckloads of withered Christmas trees to burn on the beach. (If you’ve never watched a Christmas tree burn, I highly recommend it. It takes about 15 chilling seconds for the entire tree to go up in a whoosh of flames, and the tinsel makes sparks!) Regular police patrols keep the fires moderate, so hide the flask when they stop by.

Next door is Baker Beach, where a few friends met in 1986 to burn an eight-foot-tall wooden man, the humble beginning of the unabashed Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

South Park
One of hundreds of small neighborhood parks scattered throughout San Francisco, South Park has a distinctly European flavor. It feels as though you should be able to visit a butcher, a baker, and a cheese shop simply by crisscrossing the grassy oval.

But the park’s denizens, with their heavy-framed glasses and silk-screened graphic T-shirts, betray SOMA’s actual economic engine. Tech geeks flock here to meet, eat lunch, and grab a quick espresso fix.

Around 1999, I worked at a web magazine a few blocks from South Park, and I would queue up for half an hour to buy lunch at Café Centro on the edge of the park. The area was awash in dot-commers attracted by the low rents and artistic potential of the newly renovated warehouse spaces.

A few years later, the pigeons were the only company. A local artist trucked in dozens of tumbleweeds and set them out on the grass. Those of us who’d somehow survived the bust could almost hear the harmonica on the wind.

But today, picnic tables are scarce as ever. Geeks are back in force, and everyone seems to know everyone else. That makes it hard to plot secret business plans on the back of a café napkin, but easy enough to get them funded.

Alamo Square
You may remember Alamo Square from its cameo in the opening sequence of the regrettable ’80s sitcom Full House. The family is picnicking in the park, in front of the Victorian houses known as the Painted Ladies.

Because of the Painted Ladies, Alamo Square is the park mostly likely to be seen by tourists and forgotten by San Franciscans. Buses stop at the top of the Hayes Street hill so passengers can snap a photo, and then everyone climbs back aboard—leaving the park blissfully crowd-free and ready for the locals.

Alta Plaza
I mention this park for one reason only—Pug Sunday, people. The first Sunday of each month, pug owners from all over the Bay Area gather here to unleash their pugs on hapless trees, fire hydrants, and picnic blankets.

Go to gaze upon the romping, wheezing mass, and listen to the baffled owners calling out, “Prudence?” “Winston?” “Reeeeehmington!”

Wait for the end, as the owners try to re-gather their pets. A few pugs will have shaken off their identifying bandanas and stretchy collars, making them indistinguishable from one another.

Dolores Park
When the sun is high, Dolores Hill is one of the most popular and stunning parks in the city. It boasts a panoramic view of downtown, and row upon row of achingly beautiful gay men working on their tans.

The Speedo Nation shares the park with a small population of homeless people who use Dolores as a sleeping and meeting place. You’ll also find Scrabble-playing Mission hipsters, Frisbee-tossing dog owners, and families taking advantage of the large playground and barbecue areas.

The park was a Jewish cemetery until 1894, when San Francisco outlawed burial inside the city limits. Most of the remains in the city’s graveyards were exhumed and moved to nearby Colma, where the dead now outnumber the living.

Dolores Park takes its name from the Mission San Francisco Dolores, which is up the street. On Independence Day and New Year’s Eve, I meet friends here to pass flasks and watch the fireworks, which are invariably obscured by fog.

How to Keep Kids Happy While You’re Away

When we decided to take Hank to Ireland last minute, reader Lianne Raymond sent me a touching note offering some tips for keeping kids content while you’re away — whether you’re traveling or just dropping them off at daycare. Her ideas mirror a lot of my own philosophies about parenting, so I thought I’d share. Thanks, Lianne.

1) Acknowledge the child’s feelings.

Empathize with them. “I know, it’s hard to be apart, isn’t it?” And normalize their feelings. “Everybody feels a little bit scared when they go to a new place.” Let their attachment to you be a place they can rest in love in the midst of their anxiety.

Don’t minimize the child’s feelings or ask them to change how they feel. “Can you be a brave big boy for mummy?” Don’t try to change their feelings and behavior.

2) If the child is going to school or childcare, let them see you interact with the teacher or the caregiver in a positive way.

Children are naturally wired to be wary of strangers — for good reason. They will, however, take cues from those they love as to who is worthy of their trust. If they see you interacting with the teacher with smiles, nods, laughter and even a hug, if possible, they will be able to feel safer with that person. Not that they will bond immediately, the relationship will still need to be developed, but this provides a good footing.

3) Give the child an object through which they can feel connected to you while you are apart.

A scarf that smells like your favourite perfume. A locket with a picture of you and them inside. Matching bracelets that you both wear — these can be a simple as a coloured string — hey it works for Kabbalah peeps! Imbue the object with some magic powers, “When you open the locket invisible magic dust will come out and you will be able to see Mummy in your head and mummy will be able to see you in her head, and it will be just like we are together.” “There is an invisible string connecting our two bracelets and when you tug on your bracelet it will travel along the invisible string until it gets to me.”

4) Focus on the return

Don’t talk details about the separation, but give details about the reunion. “Oh, it’s going to be so wonderful when I come to pick you up. I’m going to give you the biggest hug and smother you in kisses. I’m going to be so happy to see you!”

5) Don’t avoid the goodbye

It’s very common for parents to try to sneak out of the house or away from the school and avoid dealing with the feelings of separation altogether. While understandable, it is much better to focus on developing emotionally healthy separation rituals then to leave the child feeling abandoned.

All excellent advice. Thanks again, Lianne. And what about you? Do you have any special rituals that keep you connected when you’re away from the kids in your life?

The Commission Project

Paul Ferney has a studio downstairs from my office, and I pop in occasionally to chat and see what he’s been working on. Right now he’s working on The Commission Project, a series of 100 portraits commissioned by folks like you and me. They’re only $200 each, which is a steal — above is his painting of Hank from a photo taken by my friend Ryan Carver.

If you’d like a portrait of your kid, or your pet, or your backyard swing set, now’s the time to stake your claim. I have a feeling Paul’s schedule is filling up fast.

Fun Thing: Pacific Coast Air Museum

Ordinarily I wouldn’t recommend spending a day in a dusty field full of old machinery, but it’s kind of awesome when you have a three-year-old in tow. I think it’s the soundtrack.

Anyway, if you have a kid going through an airplane phase, the Pacific Coast Air Museum is a big hit. And afterward you can go wine tasting while your kid plays with a new toy airplane from the gift shop. High fives, team.

Pacific Coast Air Museum
2230 Becker Blvd.
Santa Rosa, CA 95403
707-575-7900

Wedding Advice

Getting married is like having a child, suddenly everyone wants to tell you what to do. I’m no exception. In fact, if you’re newly engaged, you may want to sit next to someone else at dinner, because I will not shut up about your wedding. It’s insufferable, I know, but I’m powerless to stop myself.

Anyway, here’s a little dose of unsolicited advice for those of you fortunate enough to live out of earshot:

Take a group photo. Nearly all the people you love are here, in one place. This isn’t likely to happen again until your funeral.

Be prepared. I had a kit on hand for minor emergencies. Having all my little fixes in one place made it easy for anyone to grab me a pair of scissors, some clear nail polish, a flask of bourbon. Here’s a bridal emergency kit list, but you’ll find a zillion of them online. Bridesmaids, if you’re extra helpful, telling the bride you’ll assemble this kit is a thoughtful gesture.

Let go of traditions that bug you. I’m a tall girl with an unfair advantage in the bouquet catching game. It often felt like an obligation to catch the bride’s bouquet before it fell on the floor when everyone else stepped out of the way. Of course then, you must grapple with the look of mild terror on the face of Boyfriend du Jour. So at our wedding, we called everyone onto the floor and announced that catching the bouquet meant prosperity beyond your wildest dreams.

The 6’8 Dutch guy caught it, and he’s currently my husband’s business partner. Fingers crossed, but I have heard a glowing crotch is auspicious.

Do something fun with your guest book. We had a friend take polaroids of guests, and it was such instant gratification to flip through it the next morning. Plus, we still look at it every once in a while.

Plan with a sense of humor. Sure weddings are solemn and import laden, but receptions can be fun — whatever that means to you. Worry a little less about whether something is appropriate and consider whether it will add to the celebration. Crazy straws at the bar? Candy cigarettes as wedding favors? Yes.

Consider consumables as attendant gifts. I got cool necklaces for my bridesmaids and the female attendants on Bryan’s side, but the groomsmen and ushers got port. Looking back on the now-outdated necklaces, I think the guys did better.

Choose your financial battles. Decide what’s important to you, spend your money there, and aim for festive with everything else.

For us, the bar was key, so we did it up. But Bryan used to work in catering, and both of us agreed that once the crowd gets over 100, you really have to pay through the nose for wedding food to be memorable. We decided to make the food fun and celebratory instead. In lieu of passed appetizers, we had a popcorn machine and a cotton candy machine out front. We brought in a BBQ truck for dinner so folks would have some solid food to offset the cocktails.

We were among the first couples to order cupcakes from Citizen Cake — before they upped the prices to reflect the trend — which also meant we didn’t need to rent cake plates and forks. Later in the evening, we had passed Krispy Kreme donuts as a snack. The food was casual for sure, but there was plenty of it, and the bar was a masterpiece.

So those were my big lessons from our wedding, but what are yours? I’m curious to hear pet peeves you have as a wedding guest, what you’ve loved about weddings you’ve been to, what you took away from your own wedding? Spill. I have an anniversary party to plan.

Winner of the Mighty Summit Necklace and Brooch

Congratulations to commenter number 533, Dawn, who just won a necklace from Feisty Elle and a brooch from Mama’s Little Babies with her comment:

“Dear crazy over extended younger self,

Stop and take a breath every once in a while. It is good for the soul. And for all that is good in this world stop being so hard on yourself. You are doing amazing things with your life and you will continue to and stop calling yourself fat!

Love, your older self who looks at pictures and wonders how I ever thought I was fat.”

Hooray for you, Dawn! Pretty stuff coming your way.

Wedding Guest Comfort

Whenever Bryan or I started freaking out about wedding planning, we would remind each other that it was just a big party. Our main thing was that we wanted everyone to have fun. Real fun, not “wedding fun.”

Here are a few of the things we did to make things a little more comfortable for guests:

-Instead of inviting all the out of town guests to the rehearsal dinner, we had cocktails with everyone the night before at our hotel. Everyone had an extra night to get to know one another, which made for more spectacular hookups the following night.

-In the church waiting area, we had two cork boards. One was pinned with rosemary boutonnieres(rosemary symbolizes friendship), and one pinned with hankies.

-We served cake (technically cupcakes) right before our first dance, and had sparklers on hand, so guests would have something to do while we took to the dance floor.

-We had a box of cheapo spa flipflops for when the heels got to be too much. I wore these half the night, and they facilitated much kid chasing.

-I can’t say enough about having comfort boxes in the bathroom. Seven years later, I’m still getting comments on ours, which had spray deodorant (so several people could use the same bottle), band aids for blisters, dental floss, toothpaste and single use tooth brushes, moisturizer, fashion tape, pads and tampons, safety pins, hair bands, bobby pins and barrettes, and combs (…and condoms).

-We let the crasher crash. He pretended he was French, we pretended we believed him. Be our guest, not-French-Guy!

-We situated our kids’ table between two adult tables, and seated parents at the surrounding tables with their backs to the kids. This made for easy intervention in the instance of fits, but some adult interaction when the kids were behaving. Excellent.

-We set up a web site with tips on how to enjoy the city.

-Two months after the wedding, we went through our photos and printed up the best one of each guest to send it as a holiday card. They were so much fun to put together, like a personalized wedding favor, and we still see our wedding photos pinned to friends’ fridges.

-We had a birthday cupcake waiting for my bridesmaid Trisha, who had put aside her own special day for ours. Trisha is awesome like that.

Mighty Closet: Our Wedding

Our photojournalist wedding photographer showed up at the hotel at 7 a.m. I was wearing a silk robe that I got at Thrift Town in Sacramento for $10. It’s still one of my favorite things.

I changed into one of those horrifying velour tracksuits that was very popular at the time, and one of our groomsmen remarked that I looked like a movie star trying to go incognito. Mostly I just wanted a zip-front something to wear all day so I could change out of it without ruining my hair and makeup. Also I might have wanted to practice a cheerleading routine or something. You never know.

(That kissable bundle is little Evan Frasier; I was his nanny briefly. He is 43 now.)

My dream wedding dress was Audrey Hepburn’s bridal dress from Funny Face:

I’ve mentioned before that I have clothing nightmares. We were on a tight budget when we were married, and I was accordingly horrified by the idea of spending $1,500 on a dress.

I was set on a short dress, which I thought would be easy to find, but absolutely no one wore them at the time. When I say no one, I mean I went to every bridal salon and department store in San Francisco, and found exactly one short, white dress, for $1700 dollars. It was not cute.

Three months before the wedding I still didn’t have a dress, and I was beginning to hyperventilate and have tooth-griding nightmares. For those of you who’ve never been married, lots of women order their dresses a year out, and many bridal salons look at you like you’re nuts if you expect less than a six-month turnaround.

Bryan finally had enough of my whimpering and rocking in the corner. He said, “We are going to the Gunne Sax outlet and buying something.” We ended up buying two dresses, one that would become the bodice for $80, and a size 14 tulle monstrosity for the skirt, which was about $100. I asked my dear friend Lisa (Hi, Lisa!) from Stitch Bitch if she could lop off the skirt and smush the two dresses together. She did it for less than $100, because she loves me. This is how we ended up spending less for my dress than we did for the bourbon at the wedding. Fact!

Lisa didn’t want the dress to be too heavy, so instead of using 300 layers of tulle, she put some horsehair ruffs under the sides of the skirt to make them stand out. This meant that the skirt was nice and poofy, but I could still use the restroom withoutout aid. Bonus.

I got a satin headband at Britex, and my mom-in-law sewed a circle of tulle to a metal hair comb the night before the wedding. I’d hoped for a cage veil, but this was in the hours before Etsy, and they were impossible to find. I thought about skipping the veil entirely, but when my girlfriends pinned my veil in my hair, it was the moment I realized I was really getting married.

I grew up with a gardenia bush in the backyard, so I had a gardenia in my hair and one for each of the bridesmaids. They wore them in their hair or pinned to their shirts as they chose.

Thanks to tequila and vigorous dancing, my hair flower fell out, and no one mentioned it because they didn’t know I had 14 more in the back. Word to the wise brides, extra hair flowers ladies.

I also wore red shoes, which was strange at the time. One of our guests mentioned that he particularly loved my shoes because his mother always said red shoes were for little girls and whores. I like to think I fall squarely in the latter camp:

Later, I pulled on a red sweater with a rhinestone brooch, because it gets cold on the docks in San Francisco. The sweater was a merino Bennton cardigan, and I still wear it.

Bryan’s suit was a striped Donna Karan cashmere blend on sale at Nordstrom Rack. His tie was Calvin Klien. My maiden name is Berry, so the boutonnieres were Eucalyptus leaves with unripe blackberries, all collected on the wedding site. We asked our groomsmen to wear black suits, and we got them matching ties.

My bridesmaids were from size 0 to size 14 and were 4’11” to 5’10” — we even had a pregnant attendant — so I had to find something that would be flattering for everyone. I chose white cotton wrap tops and red wool skirts from Foley’s, which I asked the bridesmaids to wear full length or have hemmed to the knee as they chose. My bridesmaids actually did wear the pieces again, and the whole outfit was $70. Separates!

Pro tip: When you’re getting married, it’s helpful to have girlfriends who are all knockouts. I love you, girls.

Old? A penny in my shoe. New? My dress. Borrowed? My lipstick. Blue? My engagement ring, which is a giant ’60s era cocktail Aquamarine. Oddly, I do not have a close up photo, but it is lovely.

For the rehearsal dinner I wore a red, heavily embroidered shift, of which I also cannot find a single photo. By the end of our wedding I was so through with red that I could barely look at a tube of lipstick without shuddering, but seven years later I’m coming back around.