San Francisco - Alison Bing [91]
FORT FUNSTON off Map
415-561-5505; Skyline Blvd; 6am-9pm
The grassy dunes of Fort Funston give you some idea what the Sunset looked like before it was paved over in the early 20th century. The fort is protected as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and it attracts butterflies and migrating birds. The park is a defunct military installation, and you can still see a WWII gun battery where 146-tonne guns point out to sea, and remains of Nike missile silos near where the parking lot is now.
Left to its own devices, the hardy non-native succulent known as ice plant has taken over in this windswept area, but the National Park Service is gradually replacing ice plants with native plants such as dune sagebrush, coastal buckwheat and sand verbena. One of the most thrilling aspects of the park is that hang gliders launch and land from there.
If you’re driving, bicycling or walking here, follow the Great Hwy south and turn right on Skyline Blvd; the entrance to the park is past Lake Merced, on the right-hand side.
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GOLDEN GATE PARK
When San Francisco first dreamed up its wild idea, even Frederick Law Olmstead, the celebrated architect of New York’s Central Park, was daunted by the prospect of transforming 1017 acres of dune into park. Instead, San Francisco’s green scheme fell to a young but surprisingly tenacious civil engineer William Hammond Hall, who steered the project to completion (for the full story, see the boxed text). Instead of hotels and casinos, Hammond Hall insisted on botanical gardens, the Japanese Tea Garden and boating on scenic Stow Lake.
The park does have its outlandish attractions, including carnivorous plants and outer-space orchids in the 1879 Conservatory of Flowers. But even in Hammond’s wildest dreams, he might not have imagined the park’s newest attractions: architect Renzo Piano’s 2008 landmark LEED-certified California Academy of Sciences houses Pierre the Penguin and 38,000 other weird and wonderful animals under a ‘living roof’ of California wildflowers, and Herzog & de Meuron’s sleek, copper-clad MH de Young Memorial Museum (right) is oxidizing green to blend into the park.
GOLDEN GATE PARK Map
415-831-2700; McLaren Lodge park headquarters cnr Fell & Stanyan Sts; admission free; 24hr; 5, 7, 21, 31, 33, 71, N
When San Franciscans refer to ‘the park,’ there’s only one that gets the definite article: Golden Gate Park. Everything San Franciscans hold dear is here: free spirits, free music, redwoods, Frisbee, protests, fine art, bonsai and buffalo. Check out the range of attractions listed below, or just follow your bliss from east to west.
On the northeast end of the park, you’ll find Dahlia Garden and the sheltered, contemplative valley of the AIDS Memorial Grove, while on the southeast side is a children’s playground (under renovation at the time of writing). On your way west towards 9th Ave, you’ll pass by a baseball diamond with pagan altars on the hill behind. As you near the Academy of Sciences, you’ll spot the entry to the Shakespeare Garden, featuring 150 plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s writings. Towards Martin Luther King Dr you’ll pass the Polo Fields, where the 1967 Human Be-In took place and free concerts are still held in summer. With a windbreaker and willpower you’ll reach the western edge of the park, where quixotic bison stampede in their paddock towards the upright Dutch and dilapidated Murphy windmills, with Ocean Beach beyond.
Sporty and not-so-sporty types will appreciate the range of outdoor activities available in the park: an archery range, baseball and softball diamonds, fly-casting pools, greens for lawn bowling, a horseshoe pitch, four soccer fields and 21 tennis courts. But the big draw here for athletes are the miles of trails for biking, jogging and horse-riding through the park’s natural splendors. To accommodate