golden gate park: views from the thicket

the bicycle girl: lights, bells and whistles

Posted on February 4, 2011 by fromthethicket

(from Picture Collection, The Branch Libraries, NYPL; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

This illustration shows the bicycle path from Prospect Park, Brooklyn, to Coney Island in 1896. Bicycling had become such a popular sport nationwide by the end of the century that cities were hard pressed to control the traffic. Many municipalities passed ordinances regulating bicycle speed, requiring lights at night and horns or bells for safety. In Golden Gate Park bicycles were barred from certain roads in 1886. Some special paths were built for bicyclists, but they protested that they should be allowed the same freedoms on the roads that were extended to riders of horses and carriages. (Raymond Clary, The Making of Golden Gate Park: The Early Years, 1865-1906 p.74-76) I never cease to wonder at how much has changed in our great urban parks since their inception, yet how much remains the same!

The following poem, published in the San Francisco Examiner on Dec. 8, 1895, gives a sense of what women bicyclists were up against in the nineteenth century.

The Bicycle Girl

The Bicycle Girl, oh, the Bicycle Girl

With a spinnaker skirt and a sleeve like a furl;

Such a freak on the wheel, such a sight on the tire

I am certain I never will love or admire.

Her leggings are brown and her hat is the same,

“I say there, old man, can you tell me the name?”

But this is absurd, for I never will like

A girl who goes whizzing about on a bike.

The Bicycle Girl, oh the Bicycle Girl,

She wears on her forehead a dream of a curl

And the sound of her bell and the hum of her wheel

Is enough to make any man’s cranium reel.

The Bicycle Girl, oh the Bicycle Girl,

She has lips like a ruby in settings of pearl;

And why did she smile as she lightly spun by?

Does she think I could love her? No, never, not I.

It’s foolish, I know, though I never have tried,

Confound it, I really believe I could ride.

For the Bicycle Girl, oh, the Bicycle Girl

She has tangled my heart in her mystical whirl.

Posted in arts, recreation | 1 Comment

a spicy spin through the park?

Posted on February 1, 2011 by fromthethicket

In My Park Book, published in 1898, Annie Nathan Meyer gleefully recorded the joys of spinning through Central Park, New York on her bicycle in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Among the pioneers of women’s cycling, she learned to ride in Central Park, deriving great satisfaction from “the spice and freedom [of] doing something in the face of society’s frown.” Having “invented a perfectly satisfactory wheeling costume, made over from a discarded skirt,” she enjoyed on long spins through the park with her husband, prominent New York physician Alfred Meyer. They often chose to ride in the early morning hours “before the advent of the watering cart” and “the parade,” i.e. the throngs of well-dressed folk strolling along the park’s paths later in the day, some of whom viewed bicycling as an unladylike pursuit.

Annie Meyer’s little book celebrating Central Park is one of my inspirations for starting this blog on Golden Gate Park. She wrote so movingly about being in the park at that time, seeing deer “gravely meditating but a step from the cobblestones of the avenue . . . the whir of the partridge burst[ing] from the ground . . sunlight filtering through the quivering birches . . . the odor of the moist, warm earth.”

In the chapter on cycling in the park, she recounts how the first women cyclers felt obliged to ride skillfully, “for a woman to have been seen wobbling helplessly about, or trying to run up a score of broken lamp-posts, would scarcely have conduced to popularize the sport for her sex.” But, for her, “a Nature-lover who has always sat at her feet — the wheel is merely a delightful means of getting there” . . . unlike some of her friends, who “have an entirely different theory of wheeling (incidentally they have a different theory of life in general). To them the wheel is an end in itself; its charm lies solely in swift riding.”

Whatever the motivation, women took up bicycling in large numbers, until it became unremarkable to see them riding. But the following picture, from the San Francisco Public Library historical photograph collection, is from 1933 and presents a puzzle. It carries the following inscription on the back:

“A tremendous revival of bicycle riding by men and women of all ages has San Francisco traffic police somewhat non-plussed. Much of the riding is in picturesque Golden Gate Park, and the job of keeping cyclists off equestrian paths, out of the way of automobiles and on the right side of the bicycle path, is more trouble than restoring 10 kids, lost at the playgrounds to their parents. Miss Sally Emerson and Miss Jean Williams insist upon knowing why Park Policeman Arthur Dolan arrested them–and he is hard put to explain the wording of the ancient ordinance.”

Hmmmm?

Golden Gate Park, 1933: "Miss Sally Emerson and Miss Jean Williams question Park Policeman Arthur Dolan as to why he arrested them"

Posted in history, people, recreation | 3 Comments

environmental history of golden gate park?

Posted on January 31, 2011 by fromthethicket

golden gate park - sand dunes - n.d. (sfpl historical photograph collection)

What is “environmental history?” The working definition is: “a branch of scholarship that focuses on studying the interaction between human culture and the environment over time.” By that measure, an environmental history of Golden Gate Park would logically start in 1870 at the inception of the park (which is definitely a product of human culture!) and explore environmental changes associated with the park over the past 140 years. Since, by 1870 the San Francisco peninsula had already witnessed considerable environmental change due to human presence, a truly thorough environmental history of the park (as a site) might begin with an analysis of what the area was like before the arrival of humans, or at least before the arrival of settlers of European descent. But the fact is, the history of the park proper has really only unfolded since 1870. And the park and the city of San Francisco have grown together. Which is why most historians have focused on the cultural aspects of the park’s history, i.e. on the people who have shaped it, on the park as a work of art, a cultural phenomenon, in the context of city politics, etc.

Yet framing the history of the park in terms of environmental history raises so many interesting questions that have not been addressed! Starting with the most basic: how have soil, water and air quality changed in and around the park? How have the topography and the hydrological patterns changed and what are the environmental consequences of those changes? How has the the composition of wildlife changed (both in the park itself and in the surrounding environment)? When did certain populations start to decline in and around the park (quail?) and what environmental changes precipitated those declines? Have new species appeared and thrived? When did the first english and cape ivy appear in the park and what were the major factors that contributed to their flourishing? When did the first signs of aging appear in the park’s urban forest (did those cypresses, pines and eucalyptus thrive normally, planted on sand dunes with only a thin layer of topsoil)?

It would be fascinating to chart the environmental history of Golden Gate Park over its first 150 years. Wouldn’t it be eye-opening to see a GIS map of the park over that time, with layers for topography, soils, water, vegetation, wildlife and cultural changes in and around the park . . . a visual inventory of environmental change over the past 150 years?! What important insights might be gained from such a history, lessons that could help us in planning for the park’s future in an era when we are increasingly concerned about environmental impacts!

But what a challenging project; so much of this history has been lost! What this exercise really shows is that we could be developing a baseline environmental inventory of the park right now, at this point in its environmental history, so we at least have the environmental picture of it today. Then we could base future planning on sound environmental data.

Posted in history | 5 Comments

a grizzly story: bear pit long gone!

Posted on January 26, 2011 by fromthethicket

This bear pit was formerly located at the west end of what is now the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. It’s one of the more colorful “lost” sites in the park; one that lives on in civic memory though I imagine few San Franciscans would want to see it resurrected. The pit originally housed a famous Grizzly Bear named Monarch, who was the model for the bear on the California state flag. According to Raymond Clary, who wrote about Monarch in The Making of Golden Gate Park: The Early Years, 1865-1906, the great bear was captured in the wilds of the Ojai Valley in Ventura County by a hunting party sent by William Randolph Hearst.

The story of Monarch’s capture is grizzly indeed! In May of 1889 Hearst commissioned an expedition to obtain a live bear for the menagerie planned for the park. It took six months of camping in the mountains, building and baiting traps, before the hunters succeeded in capturing a very large bear. But it was no easy task to extricate him from the trap and get him back to San Francisco! After letting the bear sit in the trap for two days (to calm him down?!), the captors tried making a noose from chains, but the bear’s strength was so great that four men holding the chains were unable to hang on. Finally, “after hours of struggle,” they managed to secure all four limbs and lash the bear to a roughly constructed sled so he could be hauled down the mountain, where a strong cage was made to transfer the bear by wagon and railroad boxcar to San Francisco.

The bear didn’t actually take up residence in the park until 1894, when he was exhibited at the Midwinter Fair. When the fair closed, a permanent iron cage was constructed, with bent bars over the top to prevent escape. Monarch the bear lived in captivity until 1911. After his death his body was preserved through taxidery and displayed at the Academy of Sciences for many years.

Posted in "lost" golden gate park, history, wildlife | 2 Comments

herons return to stow lake

Posted on January 20, 2011 by fromthethicket

The herons are returning to nest in the stand of trees on the little island in Stow Lake, in front of the boat house. Last weekend I saw five of them, seemingly inspecting their nests and assessing necessary repairs. With their unique ungainly grace, they are truly marvelous to watch! How they manage to construct secure housing for chicks on those spindly-looking branches is a wonder! Apparently this rookery dates to 1993, or so. By 1995 it had become locally famous, as this 1995 article written by Katherine Seligman recounts.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/e/a/1995/07/09/METRO13846.dtl

From the higher vantage points on the slopes of Strawberry Hill there are good views of the nests, especially with the aid of good binoculars. Males and females construct the nest together and then take turns sitting on the eggs.

a great blue heron approaches nest (photo by sharon osberg, wildworldfoto.com)

Posted in wildlife | 1 Comment

hippie hordes turned on, tuned in, dropped out . . . jan. 14, 1967

Posted on January 18, 2011 by fromthethicket

I found this delightful article on line, commemorating the gathering that ushered in the Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park. A beautiful tribute to the park in the 60s, an era that many of us can vividly recall! This past weekend the sun was dueling with the fog in Sharon Meadow, but the sound of bongo drums in the air reminded me . . .

“. . . on Jan. 14, 1967, the Human Be-In — the peaceful gathering that provided a prelude to the Summer of Love and the era of the rock festival — unfolded, with none of the authority clashes that would mark so many major rock concerts of the 1960s.

In fact, there were just two park rangers on horseback to police the crowd of 25,000 or so stoners who convened in Golden Gate Park. Officially known as “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In,” the event was organized not as a protest but a celebration. “Bring the color gold, photos of personal saints and gurus … children … flowers … flutes … feathers … banners, flags, incense, chimes, gongs, cymbals,” instructed the organizers.

Performers included the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Jefferson Airplane, Sir Douglas Quintet and jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie. Allen Ginsberg, who’d recently called for a “mass emotional nervous breakdown in these States once and for all,” chanted. Acid guru Timothy Leary, making his first appearance in San Francisco, unveiled his “Turn on, tune in, drop out” routine. Underground legend Owsley Stanley delivered thousands of hits of White Lightning, his most potent brand of LSD to date, along with dozens of turkeys, which provided hundreds of sandwiches.

The MC for the day was an ex-Marine drill instructor everyone knew as Buddha. Even the Hells Angels, later infamous for their violent behavior at Altamont, played nice, tending to lost kids and guarding the sound system after generator power was mysteriously cut.”

Watch Scenes From the Human Be-In

via Hippie Hordes Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out at the Human Be-In — Twisted Tales – Spinner.

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a walk in the park with charlie

Posted on January 16, 2011 by fromthethicket

Charlie Eckberg, a volunteer City Guide, leads a free walking tour in Golden Gate Park on Friday mornings, starting at 9:30 a.m. at the entrance to the Japanese Tea Garden. A gifted story-teller, Charlie leads a tour that is like a treasure hunt! Following him through the Japanese Tea Garden, around Stowe Lake and up Strawberry Hill yesterday morning, our group found a living dragon (bamboo) and a secret Buddha in the Tea Garden, stones from a Spanish Monastery (folly of William Randolph Hearst) lining the shoreline of Stowe Lake and remnants of Sweeny Observatory on top of Strawberry Hill (to name just a few!).

With a notebook of historic photographs under his arm, Charlie brings the park’s quirky history to life, pointing out clues to the past that would normally go unnoticed and telling colorful stories about historic figures like Makoto Hagiwara, long time steward of the Tea Garden, who invented the fortune cookie and park commissioner William Stow, who succeeding in getting his namesake lake built only after lengthy feuding with William Hammond Hall, the park’s designer.

A retired firefighter and fifth-generation San Franciscan, Charlie sort of grew up in the park, feeding “pink popcorn” to the ducks (a Golden Gate Park delicacy still sold at the Stow Lake Boathouse!) and watching for the first cherry blossoms in the tea garden each spring. He is kind of a treasure himself!

this dwarf cherry tree in the tea garden is the first to bloom in the spring

For a list of the various walking tours offered in Golden Gate Park by the Parks Trust (now in partnership with the City Guides), visit Parks Portal on line and click on the icon for Tours:

http://www.parksportal.com/

Posted in people | 2 Comments

from greenhouse to garden in golden gate park nursery

Posted on January 14, 2011 by fromthethicket

Carolyn Adams loves her job! She works at the plant nursery in Golden Gate Park, overseeing the propagation and nurture of more than 800 species of plants that are used to fill in the blanks in parks throughout the city. The place is like a candy shop for city gardeners, with the delectable choices arranged in neat rows and box formations showing off the different flavors. Something for every taste: exotic, familiar, tall, spreading, spicy or bland.

golden gate park nursery: pick your flavor!

The plants are started from seed or vegetative cuttings, which Carolyn gathers on hunting expeditions in Golden Gate Park. Then seedlings sprout in flats in one of the greenhouses.

Once rooted, they are transferred to rose pots or tree tubes (long, narrow tubes that afford room for tree roots to grow). Then hardened off in a cold frame and finally transferred to one-gallon pots. City gardeners can come and browse among the orderly pots, or pre-order what they want and the order will be assembled on a palette for pick up. Carolyn updates the plant inventory weekly; between 1200-3000 plants go out every week! The nursery also supplies potted azaleas for the desks of supervisors in City Hall and flower arrangements for special city events (hundreds of poinsettias for the holiday season!). There are potted trees (some 30 years old!) and boxed hedges that are trucked out to adorn the stages at special events, such as Opera in the Park or Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

box hedges lined up and ready

A huge, on-site compost pile supplies the basic material for the potting medium used to grow the plants, mixed with sand, peat and pearlite in different formulas depending on requirements of various plants.

How satisfying it must be to watch the plants germinate and grow, and then to see the results in parks and public open spaces throughout the city! Carolyn has been in this job for about five years; before that she worked at Heron’s Head Park in India Basin, clearing out tons of debris and weeds to make way for the habitat restoration that is now such a success there. A different kind of project but also pretty satisfying, and a great public service. Thank you Carolyn!

Posted in people, plants | 3 Comments

common sense standards for a historic park?

Posted on January 11, 2011 by fromthethicket

Regardless of whether or not Golden Gate Park is officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places, guidelines developed by the National Park Service for historic properties that are listed on the National Register could be useful in debates about how to manage this historic San Francisco park as a cultural resource.

THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR’S STANDARDS FOR THE TREATMENT OF HISTORIC PROPERTIES

“The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties are common sense principles in non-technical language. They were developed to help protect our nation’s irreplaceable cultural resources by promoting consistent preservation practices.

The Standards may be applied to all properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places: buildings, sites, structures, objects, and districts.

The Standards are a series of concepts about maintaining, repairing and replacing historic materials, as well as designing new additions or making alterations. They cannot, in and of themselves, be used to make decisions about which features of a historic property should be preserved and which might be changed. But once an appropriate treatment is selected, the Standards provide philosophical consistency to the work.

There are Standards for four distinct, but interrelated, approaches to the treatment of historic properties–preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction.

Preservation focuses on the maintenance and repair of existing historic materials and retention of a property’s form as it has evolved over time. (Protection and Stabilization have now been consolidated under this treatment.)

Rehabilitation acknowledges the need to alter or add to a historic property to meet continuing or changing uses while retaining the property’s historic character.

Restoration depicts a property at a particular period of time in its history, while removing evidence of other periods.

Reconstruction re-creates vanished or non-surviving portions of a property for interpretive purposes.”

via TPS Standards and Guidelines.

Which approach would be best for Golden Gate Park? Or is it possible that each of the four approaches might be useful at some point in a large park like this with such a long and rich history?

dunes in golden gate park, viewed from strawberry hill, 1880 (San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, SFPL)

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registering a historic landmark in california

Posted on January 7, 2011 by fromthethicket

What would it take to “officially” designate Golden Gate Park a historic landmark? The process begins at the state level; historic landmarks must be registered by a state first and then they may be considered for national historic landmark designation (a process managed by the National Park Service). In California the Office of Historic Preservation is under California State Parks. Here is a summary of that program:

“The State Historical Resources Commission has designed this program for use by state and local agencies, private groups and citizens to identify, evaluate, register and protect California’s historical resources. The Register is the authoritative guide to the state’s significant historical and archeological resources.

The California Register program encourages public recognition and protection of resources of architectural, historical, archeological and cultural significance, identifies historical resources for state and local planning purposes, determines eligibility for state historic preservation grant funding and affords certain protections under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Criteria for Designation

Associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of local or regional history or the cultural heritage of California or the United States (Criterion 1).

Associated with the lives of persons important to local, California or national history (Criterion 2).

Embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, region or method of construction or represents the work of a master or possesses high artistic values (Criterion 3).

Has yielded, or has the potential to yield, information important to the prehistory or history of the local area, California or the nation (Criterion 4).”

via California Register.

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