Relieved by the pandemic, stern grove concert meadow remains a place for visitors.
One of the most productive things about living in San Francisco is that each and every resident is no more than 10 minutes from a park, which meant a lot this year of pandemic, when our lives were reduced to our walls and our rapid shelter on site. .
This long and endless year made me appreciate more than ever the nearest park, Stern Grove, and I discovered myself in the park almost every day. With his methy smile eucalyptus trees, he has a sanctuary for the rest of my life.
For many citizens of San Francisco and the Bay Area, Stern Grove is more productive known as the loose music festival site named after him. This year, for the first time in its history, the concert series was cancelled. He was quiet, although there were occasional guerrilla concerts at his level during the summer, with individual musicians playing in front of an attentive but much smaller audience.
However, the park offers much more than a music festival, no matter how fabulous it is. If you pass all the way through the park, you will have the opportunity to explore fairly simple trails, practice many birds and dogs, and take a look at a story that begins even before San Francisco officially becomes a city.
What appeals to me here most of the time is Pine Lake Park, one of the 3 remaining herb lakes in San Francisco, the others are Lake Merced and the mountain lake in the Presidio, and the smallest and least known.
A of men and boys sailing in Pine Lake in 1903.
Pine Lake feeds through the waters of the same aquifer that feeds Lake Merced. Like his wonderful cousin, he wouldn’t propose swimming in Pine Lake. Its waters are regularly a strange and murky color. No wonder to anyone, formerly called Pig Lake: in summer, when the algae overwhelm it, the lake stinks of sewer-scented paradise.
With this strong recommendation, you might be wondering why I was drawn to it. The answer is the birds that live and visit. Despite its small size, Pine Lake plays a vital role in the Pacific migration route, and there are a large number of birds. that can be discovered here every day.
Here abound the royal anades residents, rarely accompanied by heron cormorants diving in search of the tent that lives in the waters of Pine Lake; other permanent citizens come with black foebes, brown back reeds and black eyes; hummingbirds abound here, too. Once, to my delight, I saw a hummingbird not harass one, but two of the resident red-tailed falcons away from a log.
A black phoebe in Stern Grove. De many birds can be discovered within the park as Pine Lake Park is along the Pacific migration route.
All those birds, and many others, thrive on eucalyptus trees around Pine Lake and Stern Grove. The trees themselves are part of the park’s history. Like all other San Francisco eucalyptus trees, they are not local to the domain, however, they were planted in 1871 through other people who first remodeled a domain that once became sand dunes in The Grove you see today.
In 1847, Stern Grove began as reclaimed farmland through the green circle of relatives (also spelled Greene), who moved from Maine in the 1850s and even moved a space from Maine to San Francisco, according to a July 1953 edition of Recreation and Parks News Bulletin. The brochure began on what is now 19th Avenue and Sloat and continued to Ocean Beach.
Grove near the Trocadero.
But in the 1850s and 1960s, the Greens faced legal situations that required their right to land in the “illegal occupier wars” of the time. When they lost the case, they refused to leave, metal-clad standing hangar, according to the new Recreation and Parks bulletin. It would take three months and a congressional law in 1887 to repair his land rights.
This is not the end of colorful times for the Greens. In 1892, George M. Green built the Trocadero Inn, now the oldest building in the Sunset District. , which included everything from tame bears to chance games, drinks with other characters, some laughed too much, and there would have been shootouts at the Trocadero. Trocadero gate.
The Trocadero Roadhouse around 1920.
You can still see bullet holes at the entrance to the Trocadero, a legacy of the building’s wild history as a beach hotel and possibly encouraging one or two shootings.
Despite rumors of smart times, the Ban closed the Trocadero. “I didn’t need a smuggler scenario there,” Green said.
Green and his circle of relatives would continue to live in the Trocadero until he sold the construction and the rest of the land to Rosalie Stern, which heralded a new era for the land. Although Green and his circle of relatives shaped the area, it was Stern who bought the pamphlet and then sold it to the city to honor her husband, Sigmund Stern, a famous philanthropist and nephew of Levi Strauss. act: the land can only be used for recreational purposes.
Secluded trails wind through the park. During concerts, these trails are much more frequented because they allow spectators to pass through the herb amphitheatre of the valley.
An outdoor amphitheatre was built to take advantage of the valley’s herbal acoustics, and in 1932, the San Francisco Symphony gave the first concert at what was now Stern Grove. The Festival began in 1938, and over the decades, concerts have been loose to keep music available to the public.
Today, Stern Grove is much quieter and louder and shoots, you’re more likely to see birds, dogs and children, but even if it’s a little more domesticated, Stern Grove is still a gem in the crown of San Francisco parks. .