There’s a movement afoot to “improve” Dolores Park, the 2-block square urban oddity across the street from our house. In a recent spate of print and online articles people have pointed out what they perceive as problems: trash, dog and human waste, drug dealing, public drinking, portable barbecues, amplified sound. I agree that these are all to varying extents problematic.
But it’s Dolores Park. Don’t you know what that means? It’s sunny, unlike most other San Francisco parks, which makes it a patch of heaven when the weather is good.
And it sits on the cusp of three very different neighborhoods – the Castro, the Mission and Noe Valley, with easy public transit from all parts of the city; making it a truly and not just wishfully diverse public space.
Yes, there are not nearly enough trash cans, and the bathroom is a health hazard in so many many ways. As for dog shit: no comment ,you assholes. And the music/performances are essentially uncurated. They vary wildly, from Chilean heavy metal drag bands to the San Francisco Opera to the heinous screeching polemics of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
The worst aspect of Dolores Park is that those people with the portable barbecues keep forgetting to put my invitation in the mail, and sometimes on a hot day the Mojito lady runs out of rum.
But there are so many things to love about this place. There are:
1) The hill dwellers, including: the 6-foot-tall guy with his hair wrapped in a huge white towel, wearing a white sundress, girls size 12, tops; totally naked man; lesbian with bikini bottom pulled down to her ankles; guy selling beer and water, wearing knee-high athletic socks totally without irony; giggling Japanese girls taking pictures; former (?) meth addict training scary pit bull to “listen to Daddy.”
2) The prairie folk: many of these people are strikingly similar to one another – skinny jeans, peasant blouses, single-speed bikes, tall cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Bi-Rite picnics. But they all mean well, I think, and are not as irritating as they might be, except for the guys playing hacky-sack. There are also Hispanic men playing soccer, hopeful entrepreneurs selling cassette tapes and bracelets made out of twist-ties; the truly addled sleeping off a month-long bender.
3) The kids on the playground. Who are not all white and dressed in Hanna Anderson, with bored nannies speaking Swedish into cellphones. Jackson grew up first swinging in the baby swings and being guided down the baby slides, then careening around the wooden structure playing ball tag, lining up with every kid on the playground to take turns jumping off the boat to make the Stomp Rocket go even higher, jumping off the top of the slide, dropping his helados in the sand. Some Dolores Park association is renovating the playground. I hope they don’t make this into one of the Alta Plaza-ish, No Fun At All places, with the creepy foam surface under all the completely hazard-free 2-foot high, blunt-edged structures.
4) The Dyke March and pre-party (see photo)
Parts of the community – I guess people like me who live around Dolores Park – are trying to get the police to patrol more, to make them enforce the no-alcohol/drug/barbecue/nudity rules.
I’m totally in favor of increased patrols. I just think they should focus on muggers, car thieves, bicycle thieves (2 out of my garage in 2 years), guys who ask 3-year-old children to perform sex acts (yes, it did happen, and I was the one screaming “Get the fuck away from him NOW or I will fucking kill you!”), people who don’t control their vicious dogs (yes, that was me involved in another discussion featuring the word fuck), and the few remaining hard-core dealers who are trying to replace 90’s crack with today’s crystal meth. Oh, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
Dolores Park is beautiful, egalitarian, useful, and as much as it has to be, good clean fun. In some ways, with a few remarkable exceptions, it polices itself. Put in a couple of trash cans, fix the bathroom, make sure people (especially high school kids, Jackson) know how dangerous the place is after dark, force dog owners to pick up that large crap they’ve conveniently overlooked with their bare hands, and I think we’ve got a wonderful Public Space on our hands.
Viva Dolores Park.