Just spent a half-hour downloading and looking at photos from our trip to France. A few of them show our baby in the French stroller belonging to a relative of mine--he's just beaming with pleasure. It fits him perfectly, is well-padded, reclines beautifully (when the back reclines, the bottom tilts up; in other words, the whole seat moves as a unit when it reclines--not like the American strollers where the back reclines by itself). I'll never find anything quite like it in the U.S. and that thought is killing me. I have yet to decide which front-facing stroller to buy for him, but I have to make a decision soon. He's just getting so big, and needs to see the world so badly.
Back, however, to the theme of lost places. I happened to be in the Mission District today, with an errand to run. The baby had fallen asleep in the car, so after parking, I decided to go for a stroll with him on the outskirts of the Mission, where it meets Bernal Heights and Noe Valley. A lost area only in the sense of its not being the Mission any more, but not clearly being anything else, either. That vague area on the other side of Cesar Chavez, before 30th Street, and between San Jose and Dolores.
I happened upon an interesting little spot--not much to look at, actually, but it's a work still in progress--a small experimental park, where San Jose intersects with Guerrero. Big cut-up logs and police barricades are blocking off access to San Jose from Guerrero, and behind the barricades, someone has installed large planter boxes filled with, well, rather ordinary-looking plants, as well as a few white plastic chairs and one uncomfortable-looking wooden bench. As I said, not much to look at; but the idea behind it is called "Pavement to Parks," a project to take little sections of the urban landscape that aren't being used for much of anything, and make mini-parks out of them.
They just created this particular space in September, and are giving it a six-month trial run. Apparently they have this "Pavement to Parks" program up and running in New York, and are just starting to implement it in San Francisco. I think it's a great idea, although the execution of the idea, at this particular location, leaves much to be desired.
What's intriguing, in the context of this blog and my search for "lost" places--they took this forgotten little part of the Outer Outer Mission, and did something with it, and lo and behold--it looks even more forgotten than ever. Every city needs its forgotten places--but a carefully planned one--that's a new twist.
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