San Francisco - Alison Bing [77]
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FEDERAL BUILDING Map
Mission & 7th Sts; 5, 6, 7, 14, 21, 31, 71, F, J, K, L, M, N; & Civic Center
The revolutionary green design of this new government office building by 2005 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Thomas Mayne means huge savings in energy consumption, not to mention taxpayer dollars. The ingenious layout eliminates internal political battles over corner offices, providing direct sunlight, natural ventilation and views for 90% of work stations. Detractors claim it looks like a too-tall fortress designed to remind plucky SF who’s really boss. Regardless, it’s a significant and much-needed addition to the otherwise bland, sometimes ugly, SoMa skyline.
VICTORIA MANALO DRAVES PARK Map
Folsom St, btwn 6th & 7th Sts; 12, 19, 27;
A welcome patch of green in a sea of concrete, this lovely 2-acre park is the perfect spot for a picnic in SoMa – little ones love the slide and jungle gym. Good landscaping, a community garden and interesting art – including laser-etched steel murals – give reason to linger. There’s also a public bathroom, one of few in the neighborhood.
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THE MISSION & POTRERO HILL
Drinking; Eating; Shopping; Sleeping
You never know who you’ll bump into next in the Mission, and the graveyard at Mission Dolores (below) is a historical case in point. Piled atop the mass graves of the Ohlone who built the first mission here in 1776 are the skeletons of Spanish Mexican priests and colonial overlords, alongside the bones of Italian, Scots Irish and Australian adventurers lured here not by God, but by gold. Within blocks of this historic spot, famous authors are busy helping teens with their homework at 826 Valencia, curators and developmentally disabled artists are mounting their next breakthrough gallery show at Creativity Explored and graffiti artists are touching up murals in Clarion Alley within full view of the Mission police station Click here.
San Franciscans love to show off the Mission as proof that ideals can actually work in practice, and are itching for you to ask the obvious: what kind of neighborhood is this, anyway? This is a trick question. Latinos, lesbians, foodies, ravers, career activists, chichi designers, punks, prostitutes and suits all play featured roles in the Mission’s ensemble act.
Further east, Potrero Hill has become a bedroom community for Google execs and Mission Bay biotech pioneers, with art and culinary schools springing up in warehouses downhill. Though Mission and Potrero change from one block and one day to the next, there is one noteworthy constant: even when the rest of the city is shivering in fog, locals will be squinting in the sunshine on front stoops here.
All this creative community flux wasn’t achieved overnight. When rich industrialists lost their mansions here in the 1906 quake, they abandoned the area to Irish and Italian immigrants. Central American and Mexican immigrants arrived from the 1920s through the 1970s, and Southeast Asians in the 1980s. Murals expressing outrage at US policy in Central America in Balmy Alley also took on women’s issues, especially with the arrival of lesbian activists and the Women’s Building in the 1970s, while streetwise graffiti artists like Barry McGee and Andrew Schoultz kept the neighborhood’s independent spirit alive as the Mission and Potrero broke out in a rash of dot-commers in the ’90s. Tech money still mingles uneasily with gang activity and Mission Dolores devotion with nightly bar antics, but like many Mission murals, it all makes chaotic, surreal sense – you just have to be here.
The Mission is a flat area bounded by hills