It takes a village to prod city into action
They say all politics is local. And so are all cities worth their salt. They are villages, neighborhoods. I found that out just the other day by walking up my street in Bernal Heights.
There was a crew of San Francisco Department of Public Works carpenters working on rebuilding a big, wooden trellis and a planter around an old pepper tree in the mini park at Winfield and Esmeralda streets.
The little park is a neighborhood favorite — a steep, uphill city block with three flights of stairs surrounded by gardens and trees. No pavement, no cars. At the top is a place to sit and look back at the view of Noe Valley and Twin Peaks. There are benches and a picnic table, all shaded by the large pepper tree and trellis. Best of all was what local folks called “a kick-ass slide,” actually two side-by-side playground slides. In one of her books, Rebecca Solnit called the park “one of the 49 treasures of San Francisco.”
But time, termites and city inertia had taken its toll. Only two months ago, the city sent letters to everyone in the neighborhood. It said the trellis, the planter boxes and practically everything made of wood up there — essentially the heart of the little park — had deteriorated so much they were a danger to the public. They would be removed in a week. There were no plans to replace anything.
So it was a surprise to see the city crews hard at work. They were making the park as good as new, maybe better than new. “This is going to look really nice,” said Dave Llanas, a Department of Public Works carpenter.
It was a handful of neighbors — smart, determined, knowledgeable in the ways of the government labyrinth — who changed the city’s mind.
“We raised the right stink,” said Joan Carson, a onetime city planner, who is now an artist and woodworker. She and her husband, Wayne Harriman, live at the foot of the Esmeralda steps, at Prospect Street. For years they have watered and tended the plants on the steps; picked up trash, painted out graffiti. The city didn’t do it, so they did.
Carson and Harriman even put up a metal sculpture of a crow near the end of the slides. “The crow keeps an eye on the park for us,” Carson said.
They are not unusual. Other residents take care of city step streets and gardens near their homes. These people are not activists, exactly. They just care.
“So when we heard about the plan to tear down the trellis, we went to work,” Carson said. She and Nancy Windeshein, a friend and neighbor, rang doorbells and mobilized their forces. “It caught on, like wildfire,” Carson said.
They got Supervisor David Campos to put up $20,000 in city funds for repairs to the park. That wasn’t enough, so they made a few more calls, put gentle pressure here and there and next thing you know, a crew of city carpenters was on the job. The total came to about $50,000, a drop in the bucket in a city with a budget that is close to $9 billion.
“There is a lot of things going on in the city,” Carson said. “The problems with Dolores Park sucked out a lot of energy.” But she was determined the city would do the right thing by the Esmeralda park if officials could be persuaded.
Carson is there most every day, like a kind of volunteer project manager, watching, making suggestions. She works many days with Scott Barlow, the city’s chief carpenter. “She gets a lot of credit for this,” he said.
The project’s biggest triumph came Saturday, when more than three dozen neighbors showed up as part of District Nine community day to work on the park and the steps. The city lent tools, technical advice, even a free lunch.
This year’s Esmeralda project is a bit of a reprise of an old neighborhood tune on Bernal Heights. Back in 1978, a different group of neighbors got the city to build the park and put in landscaping in the first place.
Michael Nolan, who was an aspiring politician then, spearheaded the effort. The park was still an official city street, and money was tight. “There were a lot of obstacles,” Nolan said last week, “but it was a fun thing to do and I’m glad it turned out well.”
Carson said she hears a lot of people complaining about the city’s many problems: crime, the homeless, dirty streets. “But we forget all that when we are doing something and the sun is shining,” she said.
Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears every Sunday. E-mail: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carlnoltesf