San Francisco - Alison Bing [61]
Parking Street parking can be found by diligently circulating and then pouncing on the first available spot. There’s a public lot on Taylor St, opposite the Huntington Hotel.
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Don’t try anything funny. The recent clampdown on renegade skaters means that the Lombard St thrills featured in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video game will remain strictly virtual, at least until the cops get slack. Until 2008, every Easter Sunday for seven years adults had arrived at the crest of Lombard St toting plastic toy tricycles for the annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel Race. But after vehement complaints from kill-joy residents, the art-prankster organizers moved their toy-joyride to – where else? – Vermont St. Check www.jonbrumit.com/byobw.html for the latest.
INA COOLBRITH PARK Map
Vallejo St; Powell-Mason
On the San Francisco literary scene, all roads eventually lead to Ina Coolbrith, California’s first poet laureate; colleague of Mark Twain and Ansel Adams; mentor of Jack London, Isadora Duncan, George Sterling and Charlotte Perkins Gilman; and lapsed Mormon (she kept secret from her bohemian posse that her uncle was Mormon prophet Joseph Smith). The tiny park is a fitting honor, long on romance and exclamation-inspiring vistas. Climb past gardens, decks and flower-framed apartment buildings and, as the fog blows in, listen for the whooshing wind in the treetops.
JACK KEROUAC’S LOVE SHACK Map
29 Russell St; 19, 41, 45, 47, 49, 76; Powell-Hyde
This modest house on a quiet alley was the source of major literature and major drama from 1951 to 1952, when Jack Kerouac shacked up with Neal and Carolyn Cassady and their baby daughter to pound out his 120ft-long scroll draft of On the Road. Jack and Carolyn became lovers at her husband Neal’s suggestion, but Carolyn frequently kicked them both out – though Neal was allowed to move back for the birth of their son John Allen Cassady (named for Jack, and Allen Ginsberg).
GRACE CATHEDRAL Map
415-749-6300; www.gracecathedral.org; 1100 California St; except for services, suggested donation for adult/child $3/2; 7am-6pm Mon-Fri, 8am-6pm Sat, 8am-7pm Sun, services 8:30am & 11am (with choir) Sun; 1, 27; California
This Episcopal church has been rebuilt three times since the Gold Rush, and the current French-inspired, reinforced concrete cathedral took 40 years to complete.
But Grace keeps pace with the times. Its commitment to pressing social issues is embodied in its AIDS Memorial Chapel, which has a bronze altarpiece by artist-activist Keith Haring. Here his signature figures are angels taking flight – especially powerful imagery as this was his last work before death by AIDS in 1990.
Grace’s spectacular stained-glass windows include a series dedicated to human endeavor, including one of Albert Einstein uplifted in a swirl of nuclear particles. Day and night you’ll notice people absorbed in thought while walking the outdoor, inlaid stone labyrinth, meant to guide restless souls through three spiritual stages: releasing, receiving and returning. Check the website for events at the indoor labyrinth, which include meditation services and yoga.
MACONDRAY LANE Map
btwn Taylor & Leavenworth Sts; 41, 45; Powell-Mason
This scenic route down from Ina Coolbrith Park via a steep stairway and gravity-defying wooden cottages is so charming that it looks like something out of a novel. And so it is: Armistead Maupin used this as the model for Barbary Lane in his Tales of the City series.
MASONIC AUDITORIUM Map
415-776-4702; www.masonicauditorium.com; 1111 California St; 10am-3pm Mon-Fri; 1; California
Conspiracy theorists, jazz aficionados and anyone exploring immigrant roots should know about Masonic Auditorium. Built as a temple to freemasonry in 1958, the building regularly hosts top jazz acts, such as Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. And every other Tuesday morning it hosts mass US-citizenship swearing-in ceremonies.
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