Categories: Local & Entertainment; Travel & Events

Park your ass at a San Francisco park

By Juliette
updated 3 months ago

Parks are so vastly underrated. In our busy lives, we're always on the subway, in the office, in a cab, on a bus. We never take time to just chill in nature. And it's hard to get away to Big Sur or Lake Tahoe on the weekends. What do you do when you need a nature fix but you're stuck in the big bad city?

Go to a park. There are so many beautiful parks in SF. Parks are for everyone. Children play in parks. Dogs poo in parks. People picnic in parks. I booze in parks. Homeless people sleep in parks. There is no more egalitarian or democratic place in all of San Francisco than a public park, so support the following parks with your attendance on a sunny day.

Dolores Park

Dolores Park should be renamed “Club Dolores” because on the weekends, this patch of grass turns into a veritable daytime nightclub. From punk kids to the Burning Man crew to the Mission hipsters to preps from Russian Hill to the boys’n’girls of the Castro, literally everyone comes out to play in Dolores on a nice weekend day in SF. Once, I saw a some trannies at the park, chilling in a kiddie pool fully dressed in drag gear. Genius.

On the weekends, DJs set up their turntables, the popsicle carts go around, people sell gange treats (in all different flavors, from chocolate to espresso to coconut), and crowds of San Franciscans descend onto the park with paper bags full of 40s and pita chips, ready for fun in the sun. Check out Craigslist’s ‘Missed Connections’ keyword Dolores Park the day after a warm spell comes through SF. Why do people pay covers to go to a club, when you can meet Mister or Missus Right-Now at Dolores Park, for free? Offer he/she who catches your eye an ice cold Sparks at the park and dodge the sparks that ensue.

Golden Gate Park

Golden Gate Park, otherwise known as the hippie headequarters of America, is San Francisco’s greenest and largest park. It’s so big that it’s actually difficult to take it all in. This is a park you have to visit a little bit at a time, over a period of time, to fully see. It consists of 1017 acres of public ground, which puts it at 174 acres bigger than Central Park. It’s the third most visited park in all of America!

Obviously, because GGP is so big, it’s not just merely a park. In it, are the famous Japanese Tea Gardens, a 5 acre plot of land designed as a Japanese Tea Garden that is hugely popular. The Music Concourse area contains a stage and an underground 800 car garage, in addition to bike lands and pedestrian walkways. Here, you can see a lot of outdoor shows in the summer. The De Young Museum is housed in the park, as is the Academy of Arts and Sciences, the San Francisco Botanical Garden, the AIDS Memorial Grove, Stow Lake, Spreckels Lake, the Conservatory of Flowers, Kezar Stadium (the one-time home of the San Francisco 49ers), and the JFK Memorial Drive. Wow—a lot for just one park, eh?

Marina Green

The beautiful Marina Green gives me mixed feelings. I love how beautiful it is in the Marina – the humongous mansions with their gorgeous bay windows and immaculate furnishings are jealousy inducing for sure – and I love that this park is close to the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts. I just hate how often it’s filled with Marina douchebags who flock to the park with football in tow, wearing double-collar-popped pastel polos that, let’s be honest, haven’t been in since like the late 1990s/early 2000s. I also hate any sort of yacht club – it’s an intense phobia of mine for various reasons, notwithstanding the biggest reason being that people who belong to yacht clubs are gigantic douches – and the St. Francis Yacht Club AND the Golden Gate Yacht Club infecting the Marina Green like rival strains of some antibiotic resistant bacteria.

That said, the Marina Green is beautiful. It’s absolutely stunning, right off the water, everyone loves it, it’s super close to the bridge, and I’m just being judgmental because people who live South of Market have a Montegue/Capulet type prejudice against people who live North of Market, and vice versa. It’s stupid because I have friends who live in the Marina whom I love, and these beloved friends know I can’t step foot in the 94123 area code without complaining incoherently about a lifestyle that is, by all objective accounts, ten thousand times more desirable than my own.

Buena Vista Park

The oldest official park in San Francisco, Buena Vista Park is on a steep hill that rises 575 feet and covers 37 acres. The low part of the park borders the Haight. The views from the park, because of the hill, are absolutely breathtaking, and on a clear day you can see all the way to the water. Also, if you are looking to get cruised, come here at night – this park has lots of pathways and dark foliage so it’s been a primetime nighttime cruising ground for gay men (my roommates are gay and I hear stories). I’m 100% for cruising grounds – we live in the new millennium and this is San Francisco, after all!

Alta Plaza

I have a soft spot in my heart for Alta. It reminds me of a European park, because it’s less grassy and more paved, like a town square. It sits on top of a hill, and comprises of six city blocks at the top of Pacific Heights, overlooking the Marina and Cow Hollow, the Presidio, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz. It’s got hard surface tennis course and terraced lawns, which make it less of a nature getaway and more of an urban recreation area. Close to the boutique shopping of Pac Heights, Alta is a great place to stop for a quick rest.

Another reason I like Alta is because I don’t feel there are enough paved parks in San Francisco. I love grassy parks as much as anyone, but I also like the aesthetic of a park with paved walkways where you can sit on a bench without worrying about grass stains or of getting your butt all damp from the dew or sprinkler system. I also like the quietness of the Pac Heights area. With the exception of the Fillmore boutiques, Pac Heights is very residential and nicely gentrified – which makes me not want to live there but like going there to visit.

Alamo Square

Ahhhh cue Full House theme song NOW. This park is famous amongst popular culture enthusiasts for giving everyone the grand old view of the Full House houses, otherwise known as the Painted Ladies. For this reason, Alamo is popular amongst tourists. But do not let the tourists scare you off – this park is gorgeous and set on a huge hill that gives you a panoramic view of San Francisco. It’s also a quiet park, where you can bogart a bench all to yourself while you read the new Alice Munro. This park is also great if you have a dog, because it comes with it’s very own dog park! There are also tennis courts here, free for the public – an added bonus.

Just a few blocks away from the fun of Divisadero Street, come to Alamo before dinner at Nopa, a famous San Francisco eatery recently spotlighted in the New York Times.

Duboce Park

This tiny, picturesque park is a reader’s dream. It’s small and never gets too intense, but it’s in a beautiful part of the city, between the Duboce triangle and the Lower Haight. The park is less than a block wide from North to South, but it’s hugely popular amongst dog walkers because off the leash play is permitted here. It’s also right off the N-Judah train, which makes it accessible. For those who hate dogs, there’s an area of the park where dogs are not allowed to go, which makes it a safe patch of grass – no poo! Along Scott Street is a park labyrinth, which is intended for meditation and relaxation. Nice. Along the west end of the park is the Harvey Milk Recreational Arts Buliding. Duboce Park is a beautiful little park that’s close to several neighborhoods and it’s a perfect dream for a dreamy reader.

Washington Square

Washington Square Park is small (okay tiny), but it’s in the heart of North Beach and you should come here to chill for a second in between stuffing your face full of delicious North Beach brunch goodies. I come here because it’s close to Mama’s, which dishes up some of the best brunch in San Francisco. The last time I was here, so was Carlos Santana, who lives nearby (purportedly).

Next to the park is the famous St. Peter and Paul Church. The Church is located on 666 Filbert Street. Haha! This is where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio got married. It’s also in the movie Dirty Harry. Washington Square is a San Francisco treat!

Panhandle

The Panhandle is the weirdest shaped park of all time, being a mile long and only one block wide. It’s really popular though – people jog around it all the time and it seems popular amongst the active crew – lots of frisbee, bocce ball, croquet, and the like. It borders Golden Gate Park but it’s more accessible and less intimidating. The only downside is that it’s sometimes hard to get a cab outta here – and the public transportation in this park of SF is really unreliable.

The plus is that the Panhandle has basketball courts, a bike lane, a playground, and public restrooms, which is good for such a small space. It’s also beautiful and flanked by lots of pretty Victorian houses and old trees. The area that sits around the Panhandle is called NoPa, or simply North Panhandle. It’s part of the Western Addition. I would not suggest coming here to read a quiet book though – considering it is flanked by two roads where cars zip by at all hours.

Bernal Hill Park

Before it became a park, Bernal Hill was a cattle ranch! You can see why it was created as one, as this grassy hill is picturesque and has a pleasant microclimate of its own. Bernal Hill Park is a veritable urban ecosystem that contains raccoons, opossums, a variety of raptors, skunks, and coyotes. It sits above the gorgeous Bernal Heights area, and lies south of the Mission. It’s got a microwave tower on its hill which is kind of weird looking and Rosemary’s Babyish but it’s a beautiful park and sits so high about San Francisco you can see all the way to the sea. Bernal Hill Blvd runs along the hill and it’s a mile of uphill running that is popular amongst joggers. The park itself is hilly and rugged. Dogs are allowed off-the-leash at Bernal Hill, so there are always cute little doggies roaming around like grazing cattle.

Ocean Beach

I love Ocean Beach. I love the sparseness of the name, ‘Ocean Beach,’ how clinical and definite and definitional it is. I love the coldness of Ocean Beach, how the water is so temptingly beautiful but so cold, as the Pacific Ocean always is. It’s a long spare beach with few frills or affectations. There are no palm trees here, just some scraggly California grass and the long brown stretch of sand that goes from cliff to cliff. I love how the beach is almost always enveloped in fog. I love watching the surfers. I love late night beach bonfires. I love the Cliff House and the ruins of the Sutro Baths. I love the strong wind that comes from the sea and how, even though it takes forever to get to on the N, I always want to be there. I love the way the air smells cold and damp. I love the blueness of everything here. I love how it feels like Ocean Beach has been the same since the beginning of time, and how it will still look like Ocean Beach for thousands of years.