San Francisco - Alison Bing [88]
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ZEN CENTER Map
415-863-3136; www.sfzc.org; 300 Page St; 9:30am-12:30pm & 1:30-5pm Mon-Fri, 8:30am-noon Sat; 6, 7, 21, 22, 71
No, this isn’t a spa, but rather an active spiritual retreat since 1969 for the largest Buddhist community outside Asia. The graceful landmark building was designed by Julia Morgan, California’s first licensed female architect, who earned her reputation as a savvy cross-cultural architect with the Spanish-Greek Hearst Castle and the Chinatown YWCA (now the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum; Click here). Here Morgan has created a seamless Italianate-Japanese style without resorting to kitsch, providing plenty of interior light for illumination. The center is open to the public for visits, meditation (see website for meditation schedule) and workshops, and also offers overnight stays by prior arrangement for intensive meditation retreats.
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TRANSPORTATION: HAYES VALLEY
BART Civic Center BART is four blocks east of Hayes Valley.
Bus The number 21 heads from Downtown along Hayes St to Golden Gate Park, and the 49 runs up Van Ness Ave along the eastern edge of Hayes Valley. Market St buses 6, 7 and 71 stop along the south end of Hayes Valley, while bus 5 passes along the north side.
Streetcar The N and J lines stop at Van Ness station on Market St.
Parking Street parking is usually available, and there’s a public lot underneath the City Hall plaza.
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GOLDEN GATE PARK & THE AVENUES
Drinking; Eating; Shopping; Sleeping
All those Golden Gate Bridge postcards and talk of Downtown restaurants are part of a diabolical ploy by San Franciscans to direct your attention away from the western stretch of the city, which they’d prefer to keep to themselves. Golden Gate Park is the city’s glorious wild streak, with unexpected landscape features like pagan altars, bonsai forests, redwood groves and bison paddocks that make New York’s Central Park look entirely too staid and orderly. Free spirits have congregated here for decades over roller disco, mass protests, drumming circles, tai chi, lawn bowling and free concerts, including opera, bluegrass and rock. At the Sunset end is Ocean Beach, where surfers brave walls of water and ritual bonfires blaze in purpose-built pits.
If the park had decent espresso and burritos, locals might never leave. But in plain sight on opposite sides of the park are some of the city’s most reasonably priced, drool-inducing restaurants in the Richmond and Sunset. Anyone downwind of neighborhood eateries along Clement St, Geary Blvd, Balboa St and Irving St doesn’t need to be told to try these local haunts – the tantalizing smell of fresh cooking is all the direction needed. No one likes to talk much about places like Namu, San Tung, Dragonfly, Kabuto or Aziza, for fear of creating competition for coveted seats and inflating prices.
But it’s too late: the veil of secrecy is lifting over the fog belt. The park has drawn the attention of visitors with the spectacular new home for the California Academy of Sciences, built by legendary architect Renzo Piano (of Paris’ George Pompidou Center fame) and capped with a living roof of California wildflowers. Across the Music Concourse from the Academy of Sciences is another celebrated architectural landmark: the sleek MH de Young Memorial Museum, cleverly clad in oxidizing copper by Pritzker Prize–winning Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron.
Don’t believe locals who try to persuade you there’s nothing to see in the Richmond or the Sunset, either. The eclectic collection of the Legion of Honor (opposite), the bunny memorials at the Columbarium, the surf hangout near the sand dunes at the N Judah terminus, the ruins of Sutro Baths (opposite) and the spectacular views from the walk around Land’s End are all only-in-San-Francisco moments. The food markets in these neighborhoods could provide inspiration for a lifetime of meals, and distinctive souvenirs are to be had at Mollusk surf shop, Park Life, Wishbone, Kamei Restaurant Supply and a seemingly unlimited