Golden Gate Park: San Francisco's urban oasis
If you took in everything that Golden Gate Park has to offer—all the museums, gardens, lakes, groves, meadows, statues and windmills, and even tried your hand at horseshoes and archery at those venues—you’d be one exhausted puppy when it was over. It would take you a few days, too. The variety of things to see and do in this glistening emerald of an urban park is one reason why it’s the third-most visited city park in America.
Longer, narrower and slightly larger than Central Park, Golden Gate Park slices through half the length of San Francisco, from often-foggy Ocean Beach to the usually sunny Panhandle strip of greenery in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. The microclimates of the park, where the temperature can shift 15 degrees during a 30-minute walk, are as diverse as the park’s sights.
Most of these sights are found in the park’s eastern half. The de Young Museum and California Academy of Sciences, which reopened in 2005 and 2008 after massive rebuilds, are close neighbors. Adjoining these world-class museums are the Japanese Tea Garden and sprawling Strybing Arboretum (with 100,000 plants), two impressive islands of flora within a park that itself is an arboretum of sorts. A short walk leads you to another botanist’s paradise, the domed and glass-paned Conservatory of Flowers, where a steamy climate is simulated inside to supports its rainbow of tropical flowers.
There’s plenty more to experience in the park’s eastern half within easy walking distance of the museums, and it’s all on level and gently rolling paved and dirt paths. (The exception is Strawberry Hill above Stow Lake, a hearty climb rewarded by the park’s best view of the city.) On any given weekend, you can watch or play tennis, handball, horseshoes or baseball—all free of charge. Or you can watch the roller skaters doing tricks at 6th Avenue, your kids riding the 1912 carousel at America’s oldest public playground, or the families circling donut-shaped Stow Lake in paddleboats.
The park’s western half is wilder and hillier, but there’s still much to do besides hike, bike or run its paths. Eight of the park’s 10 lakes are found here, not counting the fly casting pools, plus a softball diamond, the two-thirds-mile-perimeter Polo Field, horse stables, a nine-hole golf course, bison paddock, soccer fields, and at the beach, two windmills.
Tired just thinking about it? Then kick back with a microbrew at the historic Beach Chalet, the park’s only restaurant, and drink in the ocean view. Or maybe you’ll stumble on a free performance in the park. This long tradition, predating even the legendary Sixties concerts of the Dead and Janis Joplin, currently includes free Shakespeare, political theater, opera and comedy—and the biggest one of all, the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (Oct. 1-3, 2010), where crowd estimates range as high as 800,000, the population of San Francisco itself. That’s the beauty of this park: one day you can be part of a horde of humanity and the next day you can wander through a grove of redwoods in complete solitude.
- by Bob Cooper, San Francisco Reporter for HelloMetro
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Bob CooperBob Cooper is a full-time freelance writer (www.bob-cooper.com) who writes about travel, outdoor sports and health. He is a monthly contributor to Runner's World and has written recent articles for other national magazines such as Continental, Ladies' Home Journal and Inc.
