San Francisco - Alison Bing [64]
Cable car The California St line terminates at Van Ness Ave, from where you can take a strenuous seven-block trek up to Fillmore St.
Parking Street parking, while limited, can usually be found on quieter residential streets. There’s a parking garage at Japan Center.
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ANTHONY MEIER FINE ARTS Map
415-351-1400; www.anthonymeierfinearts.com; 1969 California St; by appointment; 1, 2, 3, 4, 22
The toast of international art fairs, Anthony Meier specializes in abstract thinking from major museum artists and emerging talents, from Richard Tuttle’s shape-shifting abstract assemblages to lacy, ethereal collages made of transparent office tape by San Francisco’s own Rosana Castrillo Diaz.
IKENOBO IKEBANA SOCIETY Map
415-567-1011; Japan Center, 1625 Post St; 2, 3, 4, 22, 38
Even shoppers hell-bent on iron teapots and maneki neko (waving kitty) figurines stop and stare at the arrangements in the windows here. This is the oldest and largest society outside Japan for ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, and has the displays to prove it: a curly willow branch tickling a narcissus under its chin in an abstract jiyubana (freestyle) arrangement, and a traditional seven-part rikka landscape featuring pine and iris.
COTTAGE ROW Map
off Bush St btwn Webster & Fillmore Sts; 2, 3, 4, 22, 38
Take a detour to days of yore when San Francisco was a sleepy seaside fishing village, before houses got all uptight, upright and Victorian. Easygoing 19th-century California clapboard cottages hang back along a brick-paved pedestrian promenade and let plum trees and bonsai take center stage. The homes are private, but the mini-park is public and ideal for a sushi picnic.
KONKO TEMPLE Map
415-931-0453; www.konkofaith.org; 1909 Bush St; 8am-6pm Mon-Sat, to 3pm Sun; 2, 3, 4, 22
Inside the low-roofed, high-modernist temple, you’ll find a handsome blond-wood sanctuary with a lofty beamed ceiling, vintage photographs of Konko events dating back 70 years, and friendly Reverend Joanne Tolosa, who’ll greet you, answer any questions about the temple or its Shinto-based beliefs, and then leave you to your contemplation. On New Year’s Day, the temple invites visitors to jot down a remembrance, regret and wish on a slip of paper to affix to a tree, and receive a blessing with sacred rice wine.
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SAN FRANCISCO’S UNORTHODOX RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE
Geary Ave is San Francisco’s major east–west thoroughfare, and you’ll notice some of its most prominent churches along or near this artery. A US post office now stands on the Geary St location of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, which was leveled after the tragedy in Jonestown. In the neighborhood, these churches stand out of the landscape:
First Unitarian Church (Map; 415-776-4580; www.uusf.org; 1187 Franklin St; services 11am Sun; 38, 49) Low-down and rough around the edges aren’t usually meant as compliments, and they’re not usually applied to a church. But George Percy’s down-to-earth 1888 design for a cathedral in rough-hewn stone was considered appropriate by the progressive Universalists, whose current church committees include a pagan interest group and gay marriage advocacy. The 1970–74 annex built by Callister Payne & Rosse is a modernist eye-catcher that’s conceptually consistent with the older structure: a low, concrete-slab building that makes no secret of its construction. The design for the annex owes an obvious debt to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, as well as local Japanese influences appropriate to its location at the edge of Japantown.
Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption (Map; 415-567-2020; www.stmarycathedralsf.org; 1111 Gough St; admission free; 6:45am-12:10pm Mon-Fri, 6:45am-5:30pm Sat, 7:30am-1pm Sun; 38, 49) You might assume from afar that this 1971 concrete cathedral is a ship’s prow or witch’s hat. This behemoth started out as a modest proposal by a local architecture firm, but the archbishop read architectural