San Francisco is My Home

15
Feb

Post-Valentine’s Day — because you actually forgot

Author: kris, Category: Holiday, Landmarks, Shopping

You got home from work yesterday to a grimacing, pissed off significant other. He/she got you something for Valentine’s Day and you, by forgetting, basically spat in his/her face. This will teach you not to check San Francisco Is My Home several times a day. However, I will take pity on you. When you find yourself in the post-Valentine’s Day doghouse, try one of these tricks and treats (oops, wrong holiday) to be allowed back in the human house where you belong:

An expensive present

Readers voted Idle Hand the best tattoo shop in SF Weekly’s 2007 “best of” issue. A gift certificate or an exploratory trip to the store with your sig. other might be just what the doctor ordered to get you back in good graces.

A silly present

Tutti Frutti carries an extensive range of greeting cards and a bunch of silly toys and small gifts. You might find that the only thing keeping you from a romantic reconciliation is that male nurse action figure your lover didn’t even know he or she wanted.

A non-material present

Take your s.o. on a surprise outing to the Albany Bulb. This garbage-dump-turned-art-gallery is filled with enormous, strange, funny and beautiful artworks, perfect for distracting your person until he/she forgets exactly why he/she is mad at you. For extra points, create an art piece yourself before arriving and dedicate it to your one true love, or whoever you happen to be dating.

25
Jan

Life in the Rain

Author: kris, Category: Museums

It’s going to keep on raining all next week. Maybe forever. However, we cannot let the rain force us to hide in our houses — well, YOU can’t. I completely can; I work from home, after all. But for everyone else, life must go on. In keeping with this philosophy, I will from time to time present Stuff You Can Do While It Is Raining.

Here is one such stuff: visit the Randall Museum. You can see live animals, learn about natural history, find out about earthquakes, take classes, play in a treehouse (if you are a toddler), and right now the whole lobby has been converted into a giant labyrinth.

I also have an anecdote about this. My lovely British friend was here on a long visit last year, and looking for some museum work to plump up her resume and put her art history degree to work. She applied for and was granted an internship at the Randall, and was very excited — until her first day, when she discovered part of her job would consist of holding the tarantula. She eventually wound up working at the De Young.

At any rate, the Randall is open 10 - 5, Tuesday through Saturday, and admission is free. You don’t have to hold the tarantula unless you work there.

15
Jan

Bird Walks

Author: kris, Category: Events, Kids, Nature, Outdoors

I’ve been slacking on my promise to include some kid-friendly activities, but here’s a good one for older kids: birding walks in the SF Botanical Gardens.

This sounds like the kind of thing I might have dragged my feet through as a kid, whining and wishing to be back with my Nintendo, but the guide is an old hand at peaking kids’ interest and the gardens are actually filled with some pretty exciting things: ospreys carrying fish in their talons through the air, and all that “red in tooth and claw” stuff.

The walks are held on the first Saturday of each month. Meet in Strybing Auditorium at 10:00 am. Walks last a couple of hours and are free, but will be canceled if it rains. As an added bonus, you can hang around for a picnic lunch in the gardens afterwards, since this is one of the most beautiful and visually interesting spots in Golden Gate Park.

This photo was taken by Mike Baird and obtained from Wikipedia. 

14
Jan

Science: not just for the nerds anymore

Author: kris, Category: Museums

I almost went to the Exploratorium yesterday. This would probably be a better post if I’d actually gone, but we ran out of time. No science for us. Still, I was reminded that it exists and I thought I’d do the same for you.

The Exploratorium is a great big warehouse full of hands-on stuff that they tell me has some relation to science. All I hear is blah blah blah giant bubbles. The science is not strong with me, but even I love a room full of fun science experiments. Freeze your shadow in the shadow box or holler down the length of the echo tube. Or just run around like a crazy kid, too excitable to sit still at any one experiment.

Added bonus: you get to wander through the Palace of Fine Arts, home of a scene from So I Married an Axe Murderer, my after-prom party 11 years ago, and, of course, fine art.

11
Jan

More trouble at the Zoo

Author: kris, Category: Landmarks, News

This summer I was struck for about two weeks with a fierce craving for the Zoo. I kept having this daydream about being there in the early morning, before the heat wave really picked up, and listening to the monkeys chattering at each other. I kept meaning to go but never got around to it.

I’m sorry I didn’t go then, because I’m feeling less and less inclined to go now. It’s not just the recent tiger escape, which killed one man and wounded others, and it’s not just that a snow leopard and a polar bear both almost escaped in the past week alone, although all this helps of course. Then, too, there’s my increasing suspicion that the Zoo is maybe not the most humanitarian place — a suspicion that any sane person feels on entering even the best zoos, and which is doubled by the reports of their reactions to animal misbehavior. The word “fire hose” is being thrown around a lot. Plus the keepers seem to be violently disagreeing with the officials’ take on what’s going on.

Anyway, I don’t know enough of the facts to be fully condemning, but at least for now I don’t want to support the Zoo — or be attacked at the Zoo. Congratulations, journalistic fearmongering: you have worked your crazy magic on this girl.

Zoo officials promise this bear won’t try to eat you:

Photo courtesy of the SF Chronicle.

31
Dec

Blood and song

Author: kris, Category: Downtown, Landmarks

Number three in the fusion series is the San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center. Here you can see performances by our excellent city ballet troupe and opera company. Here you can also come to attend cultural and veteran-related events at the War Memorial side. I am delighted every time I walk by this building, or attend a show here, not just because the architecture is satisfyingly imposing, but because it tickles me pink that this city combines such disparate flavors as war and opera.

Photo by Craig Mole, from the War Memorial website.

28
Dec

Shh!

Author: kris, Category: Landmarks

Hey, you ever been to the main branch of the SF library? Because it. Is. Awesome. It’s like a palace where books are king. Five (five? I think five) floors stretch up into the booky heavens, reached by a spiraling staircase that looks out over the wide-floored lobby. (Also by an elevator, but I prefer the view.)

Like everything in this lovably down-at-heels city, it has its drawbacks. I’ve never gone and found all the books I was looking for in one trip, for example. Still, I always find something I’m powerfully excited to read. Plus, library members can access the OED (that’s the Oxford English Dictionary, for those of you who aren’t big grammar nerds) on the library website. For that alone I give them five stars, one for every floor.

30
Nov

Ice skating and baby bears

Author: kris, Category: Landmarks

I’ve been wanting to go to the zoo lately. They’ve got new grizzly bear cubs (feeding is at 10 a.m., and my parents report that it is both exciting and adorable), and I am a sucker for baby animals of all kinds.

Now, just in case the promise of adorable man-killers doesn’t draw you in, the San Francisco Zoo has apparently opened a new ice skating rink. And they have real reindeer there!

I feel a little ishy about this, like when Marine World Africa USA, the local animal theme park, was acquired by Six Flags and suddenly became more about rides and less about seeing a handler walking a baby jaguar on a leash through the park. Still, the rink is only open for the holiday season, and might bring in some customers to the zoo. Say what you like about the moral issues involved with zoos — and there is a lot to think about in that regard — the animals still have to eat, so it’s good they’re bringing in money.

28
Nov

A day in the Park

Author: kris, Category: Landmarks, Museums, Nature

Today is one of those perfect days when all the city’s microclimates agree with one another and it is sunny everywhere. My dad and I had lunch at the cafe attached to the De Young Museum, which has a nice outdoor patio facing a small lawn dotted with sculptures and toddlers running circles around their parents. (Lest you get a screeching, Disneyland vibe from it, let me clarify that there were only a few kids, all adorable and none screaming, and the general vibe is very calm.) The food is way better than what you’d find at an average museum cafeteria, and you can buy beer, wine and champagne along with standard sodas and hot drinks.

Afterwards, stroll across the street and wander through the Botanical Gardens, which are full of Zen-ish little nooks and crannies decorated with benches and brooks.

22
Nov

Alternatives to Black Friday

Author: kris, Category: Nature

I know many people get fired up for the post-Thanksgiving bargains to be found everywhere on the ridiculously-named Black Friday (it sounds like a 17th century massacre in Ireland to me). But for those few of us who cannot stomach a store full of fellow consumers at 6:00 a.m., I offer this advice: go outside.

Yes, it’s November, but we all know that means nothing in the Bay Area. Wrap up a little and head over to the kid’s train at Tilden Park, or the beaches anywhere (many have re-opened after the spill, although today’s high tides may increase oil globs found on the sand so watch what your dog eats out there), or any of your local parks. Go see the Buffalo enclosure at Golden Gate Park, wander through the enormous trash-turned-art at the Albany Knob, or hike up the hill at Buena Vista and enjoy the view. You might miss some sales, but the real bargain is getting to be outdoors on a beautiful day in a place that’s almost deserted because everyone is off buying half-priced sheets and teapots.

I myself will be at the beach with my family, so…if you do go shopping and you see a half-priced teapot, seriously, pick one up for me, will you? Mine broke.