San Francisco - Alison Bing [89]
It’s difficult to begrudge this area its well-deserved attention, because great pains were taken to bring it to life. Mayor Frank McCoppin’s wild idea for a park was ahead of its time in 1866, when western sand dunes seemed utterly uninteresting compared to the gold and silver mines in the mountains to the east. Tenacious William Hammond Hall took on the project, and saw San Francisco’s beloved park through to fruition. Modest tract homes soon sprang up nearby, and transplanted immigrant communities thrived alongside the park’s botanical transplants.
Bordered by the green parkland of the Presidio to the north and a freeway tangle to the south, the long blocks of the Richmond and Sunset Districts stretch right to the ocean. Splitting the Richmond and the Sunset cleanly is the near perfect rectangle of Golden Gate Park. The park bumps up against the Haight in the east and runs west to Ocean Beach.
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top picks
GOLDEN GATE PARK & THE AVENUES
Golden Gate Park
MH de Young Memorial Museum
California Academy of Sciences
Legion of Honor (opposite)
San Francisco Botanical Garden & Strybing Arboretum
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THE RICHMOND
Populist millionaire and future mayor of San Francisco Adolph Sutro was determined to make the city’s western beaches accessible to all San Franciscans. He built a railway in the 1890s that for just a nickel transported hardworking locals away from their cramped Downtown tenements, through the future Richmond District, to the wide-open stretch of Ocean Beach. At the beach, Sutro was struck with an idea for an elaborate swimming and entertainment complex that wouldn’t be private like the exclusive gentlemen’s clubs of ‘Snob Hill,’ but open to the public for a modest fee. The Sutro Baths and Cliff House would be built and rebuilt after fires and disuse, and today all that is left of Sutro’s democratic notion of leisure is an overpriced restaurant and a splendid ruin. But the Richmond District retains Sutro’s original populist sensibility, as a seaside neighborhood that is accessible to all, for the price of a public transit ticket.
COASTAL TRAIL Map
sunrise-sunset; 28, N
Suit up and hit your stride on the 9-mile Coastal Trail, starting at Fort Funston and wrapping around the Presidio paralleling Lincoln Blvd to end at Fort Mason. The 4 miles of sandy Ocean Beach will definitely work those calves and numb your toes – yep, the water’s about that cold year-round. Casual strollers will prefer to pick up the trail near Sutro Baths, head around Land’s End for a peek at Golden Gate Bridge, and then duck into the Legion of Honor (below) at Lincoln Park.
LEGION OF HONOR Map
415-750-3600; www.famsf.org/legion/index.asp; Lincoln Park; adult/child under 12yr/teen/senior $10/free/6/7, $2 discount with Muni transfer, 1st Tue of month free; 9:30am-5:15pm Tue-Sun; 1, 2, 18, 38;
Never doubt the unwavering resolve of a nude model. The Legion was a gift to San Francisco from Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, a sculptor’s model who married well and decided to create a fitting artistic tribute to Californians killed in France in WWI. Today, the Legion still ‘honors the dead while serving the living’ with blockbuster exhibitions, mixing crowd-pleasing shows of Egyptian art and Fabergé eggs with Max Klinger’s obscure, macabre 19th-century Waking Dream etchings.
The collection spans medieval to 20th-century European art, including many works by the Impressionists and the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, one of the premier collections of works on paper in the US. In honor of ‘Big Alma’s’ early career, the museum also has a sizable collection of sculpture by Auguste Rodin and Henry Moore.
LINCOLN PARK Map
415-221-9911; Clement St; admission free; sunrise-sunset; 1, 2, 18, 38
John McLaren took time out from his day job as Golden Gate Park’s superintendent for 56 years to establish lovely Lincoln Park. A well-tended walking path covers a surprisingly rugged, bucolic stretch of coast from the Cliff House to the Legion