Join up with a Critical Mass

Honestly, are you really going to move away without having taken part in the original free-form expression of a collective bike-centric consciousness? I didn't think so. Joining up is one step to making sure that bicycle-hating Republican warbots don't descend from the heavens and eat your children.



(What an asshole!)

Anyway, go out back, dust off that 30-pound bruiser that you bought off the junkie outside 16th Street BART and then quickly forgot about, and haul it to Justin Herman Plaza before 6PM on the last Friday of any month. You'll know you're in the right place when you see about eight hundred other people lolling about on two wheels, waiting for the unspoken signal to get rolling and take back the streets (for a few hours) from soon-to-be-outraged (but normally dangerously oblivious) motorists.


Don't forget your heaviest U-lock, handy for securing your bike outside a Tenderloin liquor store after you run out of Tecate or throwing through the windshield of an irate soccer mom's minivan.


Critical Mass is just plain cool. It happens on the last Friday of every month and follows no particular route. Feel free to lament the fact that you missed out on the oft-proposed "taking of the [Golden Gate] Bridge", but know that It Could Happen To You. And despite jokes to the contrary, don't be an asshole and provoke soccer moms into pointless confrontations just because they happened to inch forward when you were self-righteously blocking an intersection; remember that the maternal instinct to get back to Lafayette as fast as possible in order to microwave frozen TV dinners for the kids is biologically ingrained to a sometimes murderous extent. Don't mess with the soccer moms, you fixie-riding schmuck. PS - Even Google likes bikes.

Camp at Kirby Cove

The countdown to grad school in New York has barely begun and you're already getting teary-eyed over any mention of the Golden Gate Bridge. Your absentminded doodling at work has increasingly resulted in sketches of trees, birds, the San Francisco skyline and fog--oh wait, that last one is really just the dried result of a sneeze. What better place for a send-off bash than the campsites at Kirby Cove?


With only four sites, a sandy beach, and a close-up view (when not occluded by fog) of the bridge, with the city in the background,


you'll have to be diligent in your efforts to obtain a reservation. Luckily--unlike the 7-months-in-advance system of most California State Parks--you and every other REI member in San Francisco have only a 90-day window to battle it out to reserve a spot, meaning that you can have a fun, black-out weekend-with-a-view with nine of your friends before you have to concentrate your energies on finding the perfect sub-$1000 place in Brooklyn.


Kirby Cove is a campground just over the ol' Golden Gate in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Reservations attempts are made by phoning 877.444.6777 or online at recreation.gov. There are four campsites with fire rings--bring wood--that cost $25 each per night and allow a maximum of 10 people and 3 cars per site. You have to walk all of your shit down (and up) a big hill, so leave the portable fondue set at home. And don't forget ear plugs--ever wondered what a foghorn sounds like up close at 3.30AM?

Enjoy the views from Buena Vista Park

Whether you're looking for a view of the northern part of the city, downtown and the bay, or of aged citizens walking their dogs through surprisingly natural-looking (for a park) greenery, or of lone middle-aged men peering out at you from said greenery, you will find what you seek in Buena Vista Park.



Which of these you'll see more of depends on the time of day and the part of the park you visit.

Bring a picnic lunch and sit on the grassy spot at the top of the park. For a better view, head down and east from the top to the solitary bench that looks north through a break in the trees.

If tennis is your thing, there are courts at the park's far eastern end.

And if you fancy a different sort of workout, head off a trail and wait in the undergrowth, counting out the syllables in "Sen-a-tor Lar-ry Craig" with taps of your foot to pass the time.


Buena Vista Park is easily accessed from Haight Street at Central Avenue in the Upper Haight. Larry Craig is a Republican senator from Idaho who has voted for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, against expanding the definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation, and against prohibiting job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and who was recently arrested by a plainclothes police officer investigating complaints of lewd conduct in a men's restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, and who subsequently pleaded guilty as a result of this arrest.

See a movie at the Castro Theater

Contrary to what you might think, the pink neon CASTRO sign that is visible from higher points around the city is not, or at least was not originally intended to be, a homing beacon for lost homosexuals separated from the queen mother ship. While it may occasionally serve this purpose, its principal function is to advertise a movie house built in the grand style of a bygone era.

The cavernous auditorium seats a total of 1400 people on the ground level and in the balcony, and is crowned by an Art Deco chandelier that resembles a jellyfish, a missile or an alien ship from Star Trek: The Next Generation.


A Wurlitzer pipe organ--the city's only regularly played theater organ, according to the American Theater Organ Society--plays before most shows, with the player and console popping up from beneath the floor in front of the stage and screen.

The Castro Theater was designed by Timothy L. Pflueger and built in 1922. Pflueger, who was raised in the Mission, designed a number of other movie houses in the Bay Area, including the amazing Paramount Theater in Oakland.



He also designed a number of other buildings, including the first major skyscraper in San Francisco (140 New Montgomery)


and the Medical and Dental Building at 450 Sutter.



The Castro Theater is located on Castro Street, between Market/17th and 18th. A program schedule is available on the theater's website. (Thanks to Jim at thedude.com for the interior pics of the Paramount.)