I’ll tell you, I haven’t toured Strybing Arboretum since they threw up the paywall a few years back, kind of a boycott thing.
But I remember the bicycle parking area right out front of the Main Entrance near 9th and Lincoln, you know, right where it belonged.
Well, things are changing.
In another “improvement” from the RPD, the bike parking area is a moving all the way over, as seen in the top right of this image:
Here you go, a big-ass pdf:
12 10-04_DD package Gateway Improvements
On It Goes…
People have been tooling around Golden Gate Park in their cars for more than 100 years, but it’s never been tougher than now to get around and find a space on the weekends.
This is what MLK Drive looks like from 9th Avenue on a summer weekend – it’s a parking lot. You’d be better off walking:
Click to expand
And here’s where you’ll find cyclists and bikers on MLK when things are bad – they just lane-split in the middle of the road. That’s how bad it can get.
But you want to carry your brood to the de Young Museum or the California Academy of Sciences anyway, right?
Now, if you want to approach the park from the north, from the Richmond District and then head right to that $4 per hour Music Concourse garage, well then be my guest. The problem with that is that the garage gets full sometimes. In that case, you should be able to (eventually) find a space on Fulton (for free on Sundays and some holidays.)
Or you could make a try for Stow Lake, where it’s always free to park. Pretty easy to get to from the south. Just follow the blue arrows past the boat house - if you can find a place near the east end of the lake then you’ll have to walk just a couple minutes to get to wherever you’re going.
Whatever you do, don’t try to circle the Music Concourse or use MLK between 9th Ave. and the southern entrance to Stow Lake. You’ll be traveling at one MPH if you’re lucky and there’s a good chance the southern garage entrance will be blocked off. You’d be better off trying to find a free space on MLK east of 7th Ave. or on Lincoln (where it’s free to park on Sundays.)
Bon courage.
The is the scene at Golden Gate Park‘s Brown Gate near 8th Avenue and Fulton – it’s Bear vs. Cougar in soft metal. Actually, the everyday meanings of both these words have changed over the century since these sculptures went up, so how about Brown Bear vs. Mountain Lion instead?
(San Francisco has more people bears and people cougars than ever. Oh well.)
Bear has the reach but Cougar appears to want it more.
“We were playing Cat and Bear, you know, and Cat was chasing me and I ran panicked over logs and through streams, you know, maddened with primal terror, you know, and I turned and raked my deadly claws against his howling snout, you know, and I rose to my hind feet, towering, and still bellowing he came, and I mewled and spewed gore from my wounds and snot from my flaring wild maw and… and… and we were locked like lovers and, and, and, and I was encircled by spotted feline bodies and my entrails were hanging out and I tried a savage feral roar but, alas, my force was spent.”
Look for them the next time you pass by on the #5 Fulton.
