News from the Glen Park Association

From Sup. Scott Wiener:

By Bonnee Waldstein

Glen Park said “Fie!” to term limits last Thursday, January 19, as the incumbent officers of the Glen Park Association were swept back into office by unanimous vote.  For President Michael Rice, it will be his seventh term.  No superpacs, debates or direct mail hit-pieces were to be found on this campaign trail either.

The other officers elected on Rice’s coattails are Carolyn Deacy, vice president; Dennis Mullen, treasurer; Heather World, recording secretary; Mic Ames, corresponding secretary; and Sally Ross, membership secretary.

District 8 Parks and Playgrounds.

Karen Mauney-Brodek of the San Francisco Rec and Park Department brought residents up-to-date on future plans for parks improvement.  She recapped the improvements that are about to begin in the Glen Canyon Park playground and the trails within the park, with funds from the 2008 Clean and Safe Neighborhood bond act.

There was a 14-month process of community meetings in which residents prioritized the projects that would be undertaken with the available bond money.  In addition to the trails and playground, they include basic upgrades to the Rec Center, including accessible restroom facilities; a welcoming entry plaza; relocation of the tennis courts; and improvement of the Elk Street entrance with a vehicle drop off point, among others.

The renovation design will be completed this spring and construction will begin in the fall.  The construction area will be off limits for ten months while the work is being done.  Completion is expected in May 2013.

This structure will be the centerpiece of the new Glen Canyon Park Playground.

Mauney-Brodek gave an overview of the projects Rec and Park is undertaking this year. Parks slated for renovation in District 8 are Mission Dolores-Helen Diller playground and Mission Dolores Park.  Trails will be improved on Twin Peaks. There will also be landscape and restroom improvements in Noe Courts and construction of a dog park in Upper Douglass playground.

Looking beyond the current projects, Rec and Park is planning for a 2012 bond.  They are doing community outreach now for feedback on a new wish list.  By June they hope to bring a proposal before the Board of Supervisors for approval to go on the November ballot.  Eighteen parks and playgrounds were selected for inclusion in the proposal.  Closest to Glen Park are George Christopher Playground, Balboa Park and Pool, and Douglas Playground.

We will need to rely on grants and matching funds in order for continuing (Phase 2) improvements in Glen Canyon Park.

More information:

Park/playground renovation:  http://sfrecpark.org/glenParkProject.aspx

Trails project:  http://sfrecpark.org/GlenParkUrbanTrailsProgram.aspx

Bernal Cut Southbound 1907. SP Trainline, The Official Publication of the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society, Winter 2005. No. 82, courtesy Richard Brandi.

For a total change of pace, Richard Brandi, architectural historian and San Francisco native, presented a slide show about the “lost” Southern Pacific Railroad Line, which connected San Francisco and San Jose, and whose route took it through the Mission and Glen Park.

The original rail line ran from 1863 until 1907, and then continued as a branch line until 1942.  It went along the Bernal Cut, which is today’s San Jose Avenue. It crossed Dolores Street at 28^th Street, meandering through houses and backyards, coal fired steam engines belching black soot all along the way.

Southern Pacific System Map 1931. San Francisco Public Library Historic Photo Collection, courtesy Richard Brandi.

Brandi traced a fascinating journey along the old route, finding remnants and reminders of the tracks, with houses and other structures placed strategically and sometimes awkwardly to make way for the trains to pass.

With the rise of the auto and truck and the decline of the train, there were large lots of land vacated by the train car barns.  This is where many of our present-day supermarkets are located, such as the Safeway on Mission near 30^th Street.

More information on San Francisco train history, including a current project to save the only standing brick roundhouse in California, in Brisbane:  www.sftrains.org.

Vince Terry taking a shot during a three-on-three basketball game during open gym.

By Murray Schneider

Several middle-aged athletes gathered one recent afternoon around the free-throw line at Glen Park Recreation Center’s basketball court, tuning up for the first of dozens of afternoon and evening half-court pick-ups games.

“They’re our senior statesmen,” said Oskar Rosas, 46, recreation coordinator at the Depression-era Rec Center, which would remain open until 9 p.m. to accommodate the squads of players.

Rosas, who has worked for Rec and Parks for 20 years and who graduated from George Washington High School, studied the quartet of hoopsters taking jump shots and driving to the net at one of the last “pit” gyms remaining in San Francisco.

Pit gyms, dating from the early twentieth century, are no longer common on the City recreational landscape. They’re called pit gyms because their permanent bleachers aren’t retractable, as you’d find at high school or college gymnasiums today. Instead, they feature two permanent sets of bleachers. (Glen Park’s gym has only one set of bleachers.) From their perches in the stands, viewers look down upon a “pit” to watch 3-point shots or rare underhand free throws.

Vince Terry, 54, was sinking left-handed set shots from 15 feet out. Limbered up, he launched a jump shot, which swished through the net. “I return here out of loyalty,” said Terry, a 1974 graduate of Balboa High School.

Vince Terry looking at backboard during a basketball game at Glen Park Rec Center's open gym.

The ball bounced to the floor, where Jerry Williams, 48, picked it up, tapped it a couple of times on the floor and then pumped it back to Terry.

St. Mary’s Park, Sunset and Potrero Hill playgrounds all have similar courts, all built 15 or 20 years after Glen Park’s, all constructed in a Quonset hut motif reminiscent of World War II military barracks.

To experience an authentic double bleacher pit gym these days, you’d need to go to Daly City, where Vince Terry now lives. Jefferson High School still boasts one, built with the same Depression-era WPA (Works Progress Administration) funds that constructed Glen Park’s facility.

Across the floor, against an opposite wall, other players laced up sneakers, stretched, dribbled and tossed in layups.

“I’ve been coming here since I was 17,” said Terry, who has a job with Avis Rental Car. “It’s right in the middle of the city and I get back here sometimes three times a week.”

Williams, who has been returning to Glen Park for 30 years, scooped up an errant ball and angled a hook shot toward the rim.  “I like the atmosphere here,” he said. “It’s like home, lots of good vibes.”

Other players began trickling in, stopping to scribble their names on a chalkboard that scheduled 24-point matches. They walked to a court at the far end of the floor and began serving up shots. Twenty years younger than the 40- and 50-somethings, they attempted stuffing dunks, but the balls ricocheted from the bucket.

Terry looked over his shoulder, appraising the competition. “They’re more athletic,” he conceded, “but us old guys will win because we understand the game.” He dribbled from the key and banked a shot that swirled around the rim and then eventually fell through the net: “24-18, we win,” he predicted.

Across the hall, Rosas sat with Clay Breitweiser, another recreation coordinator, and Bart Borg, 59, who retired from that same job in 2010. Borg is from the old school. In 1975, when he first put a playground whistle to his lips, he was called director, and he was responsible for organizing afternoon and weekend sports teams when competition among neighborhood playgrounds was common. These days his former job, which Rosas now has, involves renting facility space and charging for yoga classes as well as  modeling the art of a one handed-jump shot.

“I liked watching kids grow up into young men and women,” said Borg, who worked at Glen Park playground for 15 years. “I liked seeing them become citizens.”

Glen Park gym Recreation Coordinator, Oskar Rosas, standing in front of bleachers in WPA pit gym.

Borg supervised a playground Neverland, where kids chose up sides, where good sportsmanship was as important as winning, where skill was valued – but never at the expense of hurt feelings or physical injuries, where athletic eligibility required only a sweatshirt embedded with grass stains, a pair of jeans with ironed-on knee patches and a fielder’s mitt burnished with coats of Glovolium.

And if you didn’t have a glove, Borg would rummage through his equipment closet to find you one.  “A place like Glen Park was a melting pot,” said Borg, “a place a kid could try out his skills.”

Playgrounds, all those years ago, were where kids simply could be kids, where your ZIP code meant little, but where you hit in the batting order did, where respect was earned by how far you spiraled a football down the field, and where you worshipped was unimportant, but your ability to win a game of Around-the-World was.

To save money, the City now schedules “specialists” to do what Borg once did: organize basketball leagues, schedule tennis lessons, umpire softball games, supervise soccer matches and hand out ping pong paddles, checkerboards and chessmen. Now specialists move like nomads from one playground site to another.

Mike Gualco, 53, a neighborhood fixture, wandered in and leaned against Rosas’ wall. “I remember the trampoline classes,” said Gualco, who has lived on Paradise Avenue his entire life.

In those days, San Francisco was flush with funds and was never shy dedicating dollars to its children. “In the summer the directors took us on fieldtrips,” Gualco reminisced. “Once we even went to Santa Cruz to ride the roller coaster.”

Oskar Rosas telling talking with a parent about a Tiny Tot program at Glen Park Rec Center

Rosas stood and gestured outside. Parents pushed children on swings and nannies watched their charges gain steam down a slide. “We capture them at this age,” said Rosas, whose kinesthetic thrill these days is limited to exercising his vocal chords along with the musical Tiny Tots he supervises. “But when they get to be 5 or 6, they don’t come back and we lose them.”

To reverse that trend, Rosas schedules what he calls Community Council meetings to obtain input from parents about which activities can attract their 7-, 8- and 9-year olds, particularly in anticipation of the $5.8 million Glen Canyon Park Bond Project funds that will upgrade the Rec Center, introducing state-of-the-art and age-appropriate playground apparatus.

“After kindergarten there’s a disconnect,” Rosas said. “We’re trying to determine what we can do to build community.”

Clay Breitweiser, who oversees Rec and Parks’ nature class program, and shares an office with Rosas, leaned back in his chair. “Glen Canyon’s natural area is a magnet,” he said, while planning a two-week winter day camp. “We hope by showing 7- through 10-year-olds our trails and habitat and doing team building, we’ll get them to return.”

In the gym, the three-on-three game heated up. Rubber soled shoes screeched on the hardwood and echoed across the hall. Vince Terry skirted past an opponent, passed off to Jerry Williams, who drilled the ball back to a third player who took a jumper and scored.

Rosas runs open court several afternoons and evenings a week, a tradition that goes back decades, way before Borg’s tenure. But Glen Park playground, so close to BART, attracts players from all over the City, even the Bay Area, making it a favorite of basketball lovers.

Terry’s prediction got the score wrong. The Old Guys put away the Young Turks 24-to-16.  “They’re good,” said Oskar Rosas. “There’s never any commotion, and rough play isn’t tolerated.”

Devall Porter, 49, who lives in the Bayview and is a SFO airline technician, leaned over and picked up a bottle of water. “I’ve been coming here two times a week since 1987,” he said. “It fits in with my work schedule.”

Wearing purple Riordan High School Crusader sweatshirts, three teenagers walked to an unused backboard, while Sean Johnson sat out, waiting his turn to take the court. “If there’s any trouble,” he said, rustling up a ball, “we tell the dude to take it someplace else.”

By 3 p.m., 23 players were shooting hoops on seven courts. The gym door was propped open. A breeze circulated, cooling down several of the shirtless players who sat in its doorway. “Who’s up?” asked Porter, looking toward the chalkboard.

Six more players took positions on the half-court, each selecting a player to guard. An offensive player bounced the ball in bounds and the players began to pick and roll, slicing back and forth, dribbling and passing, shooting and rebounding. They followed the time-old ritual, promulgated by decades of playground custom, where the team that made the shot takes the ball out and the winning team holds the court.

The ebb and flow of neighborhood basketball continued, as it has done for generations in Glen Park. Rosas watched. While he’s challenged by a building in need of a systemic repair, he puts the best spin on matters. “Our location is gorgeous,” he said, “and I have some wonderful people to work with.”

Matt Hill, 33, entered the gym. Raised on Mt. Davidson, Hill spent his youth as an Eagle Scout and his summers at Silver Tree Day Camp. He hiked the Sierras with his Boy Scout leader father and his older brother and played organized youth basketball. Now married and a father of two sons, he’s been coming to the gym since 2001 to test his mettle, a rite of passage that wouldn’t be foreign to Bart Borg.

“In order to compete,” he said, thinking about players such as Terry and Williams, “the burden of skill is on me.” Hill arrives at the gym after work twice a week, and he comes as much for the camaraderie as he does for the competition. “Vince is a heck of a guy,” he said. “I come to see guys like him as much as I do for the exercise.”

The days when the cash-strapped Rec and Parks Department offers free access to playground basketball courts may soon be over. Pay-for-play may become the name of the game in what has been tax-supported public places.

“The guys have talked about it,” said Hill. “I’d pay, but the costs would prohibit others from continuing to exercise.” Exercise would not be the only loss. A civic space that translates into community civility would be lost, as well, and not simply for Hill and his contemporaries.

“It’s pretty cool to see some of the guys bringing their kids here,” Hill said. Devall Porter walked over, ready to defend his team’s victory. The airline mechanic smiled: “I’m thinking of bringing my 13-year-old daughter over from Richmond to play a game of HORSE.”

All photos by Murray Schneider

FYI the next GPA Meeting info
January 19, 2012 7pm
St. John School, 925 Chenery Street
Program – Southern Pacific Railroad Line through the Mission and Glen Park: Slide Show with Richard Brandi, Architectural Historian
ADJOURNMENT
Social hour to follow

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 32,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 12 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Jenny Sotelo, Steven Uchida and Georgia Fie pushing back Cape ivy above Silver Tree Summer Camp

By Murray Schneider

Willow Creek Trail isn’t named on any official map that San Francisco Rec and Park has shelved at McLaren Lodge. Nevertheless, the Glen Canyon path circles Glen Park’s Islais Creek. It begins near a boardwalk that leaves Silver Tree Day Camp in its wake, runs parallel to a seep that collects run-off water from Diamond Heights and continues beneath canopies of arroyo willow and solitary strands of California blackberry that dangle like errant embroidery from a quilter’s needle.

Angling left, it passes over a railroad-tie-sized-chunk of wood acting as a single-file bridge above a nascent puddle yet to turn into succulent mud. Then, on the west side of the creek, it inches past invasive Himalayan blackberry whose stalks are pregnant with spiky thorns. Finally, the trail moves past beds of reintroduced native plants whose purpose is less aesthetic or nostalgic than it is to promote habitat diversity in San Francisco’s bucolic 70-acres natural area.

Recently planted Columbine surrounded by straw to protect it.

On the Wednesday before Christmas, Dylan Hayes, 40, a Rec and Park Natural Areas gardener, stood near a bank of Islais Creek, on the west side of a cedar-rail fence constructed by Friends of Glen Canyon Park, studying pink-flowering currant and columbine, both planted only three days earlier by volunteers from the same organization who built the split-rail fence three years ago.

The plants were thirsty, parched from the absence of December rains. “We’re interested in a variety of shrubs that are links in the food chain,” Hayes said. He pointed to dozens of plants, each surrounded by protective blankets of straw, which are designed to suppress weeds and to keep the dry soil moist. Both the columbine and pink-flowering currant hugged an incline that would eventually climb to the O’Shaughnessy Boulevard frontier. Kneeling down, Hayes brushed away some straw and fingered a stem of columbine. “It’s great food for moths, beetles and caterpillars.”

Hayes dressed in a fleece vest over a maroon long-sleeved T-shirt, both embossed with patented Rec and Park logos. Bright and crisp, the early morning signaled a chill. He wore Wellingtons since earlier he’d dredged pools of slow-moving water, like a mid-western kettle hole, above the seep from where wildlife drink, clearing it of choked detritus, making it user friendly for critters such as raccoons and coyotes.

Natural Areas gardeners and Friends of Glen Canyon Park clearing Cape ivy.

“The chorus frog drinks from up there,” Hayes said, pointing to the tawny hillside on the other side of the creek where amphibians croak springtime medleys of mating songs.

He continued to gesture to the hummock above the seep, home to hillside oaks from where red-tailed hawks hunt, their sharp eyes zeroing in on rodents coyotes may have overlooked.

“I call the pools the coyote baths,” he said. He fished an iPhone from his Levi’s and tapped an icon. A video of a grazing coyote appeared on the screen. The animal stretched and began moving at a snail’s pace toward the water hole.

“Coyotes are omnivores,” he said, pocketing his phone, “requiring a daily diet of voles, gophers and berries to maintain their mass.” Hayes has worked for the Natural Areas program for seven years, and it doesn’t take much prompting for him to stop what he’s doing and offer a mini-lecture on the ecology he’s entrusted to safeguard. His Recreation and Park Commission mandate is that of a steward of the Glen Canyon. He takes his empowerment seriously, ensuring the canyon’s preservation and assuring that day users have access to it, using it in symbiotic harmony with indigenous habitat, both plant and animal.

As the sun peeked through willow branches sheltering song birds, he tutored a Friends of Glen Canyon Park volunteer, demonstrating how best to sculpt berms that surround each native plant and then douse each with correct amounts of water.  “Work your way down the line,” he instructed, “and then give them a second and third drink.”

The volunteer scooped ladles of water from a five-gallon container and anointed each plant, the liquid soon absorbed by the dry ground. “When the flowers bloom they become nectar to humming birds,” said Hayes, sounding every bit like a high school sophomore biology teacher. “In the winter, honey bees like them, too.”

He walked along the remaining reaches of Willow Creek Trail where Silver Tree’s bunker-like building hulked in front of him. Integrated among tall redwoods, a stand of eucalyptus trees towered in craggy spires, their deciduous leaf duff snapping under foot. The non-native gum tree, brought to California in the aftermath of the Gold Rush, has become an adoptive sibling to native conifers, its pungent perfume ingratiating itself to generations San Franciscans who have grown up surrounded by these giant Australian imports while rounding the western edges of Golden Gate Park and hiking atop Mt. Davidson.

But the shallow-rooted eucys need caretaking. Hayes pointed to a limb that crackled. It hung where Glenridge nursery school children, now on Christmas holiday, normally play. A similar Sigmund Stern Grove branch fell years before, causing the death a gardener. When branches fall along Willow Creek Trial they drop almost in slow motion, cracking from the girth of the tree, echoing like lightening in a thunderstorm.

Dylan Hayes viewing a blackberry leaf in Glen Canyon.

“We’re all about habitat diversity,” Hayes said. “We aren’t about wholesale tree removal, simply managing them.” He detoured above Silver Tree’s cement picnic benches where six volunteers worked, ankle deep in colonizing Cape ivy. Using three-pronged rakes, they muscled wide swaths of the invasive plant into mounds, making skirmish lines much like fire fighters do when they combat wilderness blazes.

They wrestled with pyramids of ivy, forming scrum lines in an effort to shoulder the inimical ivy up the hill. “Many hands makes light work,” Hayes said, reminded that the underfunded Natural Areas Program relies upon volunteers.

Critics of the Natural Area Program see its efforts as destructive to animal habitat, where pruning a willow branch is akin to clear-cutting a forest, where the occasional use of multi-faceted integrated pest management is tantamount to wholesale and irresponsible herbicide saturation.

NAP sees natural areas not as battlegrounds but natural park grounds, multi-use venues where wildlife, plants and people co-exist in symmetry.  “Cape Ivy is a monoculture all to itself; it expands and threatens other species,” Hayes said.

He pointed up the hill to a variety of native shrubs. “All of that,” he said, in a calm and measured tone, “that’s monkey flower, coffee berry, hillside pea, elderberry, California blackberry two species of fern, even coast-live oak.”

Dylan Hayes inspecting coast live oak above Silver Tree Camp.

Left to its own devices, carpets of Cape ivy will spread amoeba-like, ascending the hill, strangling trees in its path, enveloping species after species. “What we’re doing is defending an intact food matrix,” Hayes said. “We’re clearing a defensive area, creating a barrier to prevent the continued encroachment of the ivy.”

Native to South Africa, Cape ivy has the ability to form a dense ground cover, climb trees and fences and other plants in such masses of herbaceous growth that it smothers everything beneath it.

Hayes leaned over and picked up a stem of ivy, appraised it and tossed it onto the burgeoning pile of its brethren.  “We’re banking on short-term disturbance,” he said, “for long-term multi-purpose gain.”

If anyone has a long-term view of Glen Canyon it is Carol Steiman who, with her husband Harvey, has lived at the end of Bosworth Street for 27 years. Remembering it as dark, dank and barely accessible nearly three decades ago, today they both routinely walk its paths, just as likely to come across Hayes’s City utility truck, as they are other day-trippers, dog walkers and rock climbers.

“It is much more accessible, much more cared for now,” said Carol Steiman, who registered her daughter, Kate, at Silver Tree Day Camp 20 years ago. “Now I see people sitting on boulders and walking deep into the canyon.”

Hayes looked up from a California blackberry leaf he’d inspected, holding it up for a volunteer’s perusal, studying where both larvae and adult insects fed on the leaf.

“Insects sustain themselves from it,” he said, in his best professorial voice, “but just as importantly, it produces some of the best bird habitat by providing deep cover that the they need for nesting.”

He looked back at a cluster of eucalyptus trees. “Blackberry scrub is another habitat shaded out by eucalyptus groves that are unmanaged,” he cautioned. “This allows the Cape ivy to proliferate, shading out any possibility of plant species living together to form a strong local food web.”

Across the creek he watched a column of children bookended by adults. They trooped Indian-file along a path where earlier he’d encountered the lounging coyote. Several of the children skipped and hopped, more than enough proof that Glen Canyon is a sanctuary not simply for shrubs and wildlife, its original inhabitants, but for the next generation who will share it with them.

Dylan Hayes, the father of a soon to be two-year old daughter, grinned at the tableau playing out before him. “I like seeing that.”

Photos by Murray Schneider

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Anyone wishing to volunteer in Glen Canyon can contact Joel Grey, volunteer coordinator, at Joe.Grey@sfgov.org or at 415-831-6328.           

We are now accepting applications for 2012 Glen Park Festival which will be held on April 29, 2012.  Please follow the link below to find out more information about becoming a vendor.

http://glenparkfestival.com/become-a-vendor.shtml

You can link to the vendor application from the page above or find it here:

http://glenparkfestival.com/vendor-application.shtml

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Cheers,

Kate Maselli Zimman
Vendor Coordinator
vendors@glenparkfestival.com
415-806-3654