San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
10 FAVORITES IN THE PARK
From Hardly Strictly to roller skating to museums, our love knows no bounds
Golden Gate Park was founded 150 years ago, but it was defined in 1906.
After the April 18 earthquake and fire ravaged San Francisco, tens of thousands of residents fled to the park for refuge.
Three days later, The Chronicle described the scene in the newspaper for the first time, and it was a moving account. The rest of the paper described unfathomable damage, looters being shot on sight and city leaders who had little control of the situation. But in the park, refugees of all demographics — from a Chinese man making eggs for his neighbors to a doctor setting up a temporary practice in a tent — were bonding as San Franciscans.
“Nowhere can the full extent of the calamity make itself better felt than at Golden Gate Park, nor can the universal character of the disaster be better understood,” The Chronicle reported. “Everywhere was a lack of depression. The spirit of courage and grit to fight the thing out was everywhere, from the Chinese with the skillet up through all the intermediary classes to the patricians with five automobiles.”
The city has been redefined many times over since that tragic moment. But the spirit of Golden Gate Park, and what it represents, has been a constant.
The park has continued to welcome the outcast, and be a place where the city’s diverse population can meet as one. Culture, science, sport and social movements thrive in the park, and its traditions, especially the ones that are organic and free of corporate influence, have become some of San Francisco’s greatest stories.
Here are 10 of them. Ten times in the last 150 years that San Francisco citizens have created something wonderful, whimsical or good for the soul in Golden Gate Park, that can still be enjoyed today.
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass (2001)
“If you’re really terrible at something, you always admire those who can do it well. … This may sound maudlin, but this city, this state, this country has given everything to our family.”
Those were the words of financier Warren Hellman in 2002, when his Hardly Strictly festival was in just its second year, with 12,000 fans coming to three stages around Speedway Meadow. The free festival has grown into a behemoth, with a reported 750,000plus arriving over three days in recent years.
Hellman’s family history dates back
to the 1800s, and his banker ancestors were instrumental in the rebuild of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fires. Warren Hellman died of leukemia in 2011, but the Hellman Foundation has continued to fund the festival since. It remains free.
The festival is a great gift, and a beacon for future philanthropists, as a way to take personal passions and
generosity and alter the culture of a community for the better.
SF City FC (2001)
When the city announced its coronavirus ban on gatherings of more than 1,000, there was at least one sports club that continued to have options.
SF City FC attendance may number
in the hundreds, but they’ve been a mighty story in Golden Gate Park since the soccer club was founded in 2001. Playing at Kezar Stadium for most of that time at familyfriendly prices, SF City is owned by its fans, who design the merchandise, manage the club and cheer with the energy of a much larger crowd.
(The Northsiders, the club’s most loyal fans, chant throughout the game and have been known to ignite a smoke bomb or two …)
The next season begins in May. And with a little more word of mouth, the crowds will only grow.
National AIDS Memorial Grove (1991)
In 1991, a volunteer group took over a neglected plot of land and turned it into the National AIDS Memorial Grove, the world’s first living memorial to those who died of AIDS.
“It’s been difficult to believe in God,” said David Linger, who lost a lover to AIDS in the 1980s. “I’d much rather believe in trees.”
Fifteen acres of overgrown hillside were cleared, and gardens with tasteful landscaping flourished. But the greatest gift was the restoration of the titan redwood and cypress trees, which were neglected and dropping