Tulips in February

I love San Francisco. Still. While the media loves to take their cameras into the Tenderloin and magnify the depravity, homelessness and drug abuse there, they will never, ever, come visit the Arboretum and show tulips blooming in February. Friends from afar sometimes now comment to me, “Oh, I’m so sorry what’s happened to your city” and yes, while homelessness is real and on the rise and needs to be dealt with, so are the tulips real. And the blooming magnolia and plum trees and the people strolling in the park enjoying them. So are the people playing ping-pong or dancing on roller skates or biking out to the ocean on carless roads to inhale the ocean breeze. 

 

Today I will walk at Crissy Field with its stellar view of the Golden Gate Bridge, a place that once was an abandoned military airport runway transformed into vibrant wetlands and inviting walking and biking paths. It's part of the Presidio that was owned by the military and when they packed up and left, in came the cultural transformation with a live theater, museums, a recently revived Tunnel Top park with a free shuttle to the top of the Presidio where you can enjoy tennis courts, playgrounds and stunning views of the Bay. 

 

Later I will play piano at The Jewish Home for the Aged, where my Mom was so lovingly cared for the last six years of her life and every penny paid by Medicare. Nearby is The San Francisco School where I worked for so many decades and is still going strong with its culture of rigor combined with fun, a place where children and teachers are given the invitation and the tools to bloom their happiness. This morning, my daughter will do her monthly seven mile walk to school going through different parks and neighborhoods and almost all of her 24 5th grade students from the SF School will meet her at 5:30 am (!)  knowing the delights that await them and the memories they will carry forever. Tonight, I’ll go to the Balboa Theater, one of the few remaining old-time movie theaters in my beloved city that has suffered from the loss of so many, but is holding on to this time-honored institution.

 

So my friends, don’t drink the Fox News Kool-Aid that San Francisco is a wasteland caused by too-liberal politics. We are alive and kicking still, gloriously green and vibrant and mostly a delightful place to live and raise children. We have to deal with the connected issues of homelessness and too-high rents and mortgages birthed from the dot.com explosion, but name a city that doesn’t have its own issues to deal with. But how many can boast of hundreds of miles of trails to hike in the fields and woods just across the bridge, the ever-increasing city bike paths, the rise in jazz clubs alongside SF Jazz Center, the 7-mile walk through neighborhoods offering burritos, sushi, dim-sum, pho, piroshki, pasta, falafel, fresh crab. Not to mention tulips, plums and magnolias blooming in February.

 

Our once-resident newspaper columnist Herb Caen wrote constant love letters to San Francisco and once said:

 

“When I die and show up at the pearly gates, I’ll look around and say, ‘Well, it looks alright. But it ain’t San Francisco!”