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Golden Gate Park
Kimberly & I spent the afternoon in Golden Gate Park. It was a bit of a trial getting out there as the N-Judah wasn't running (some brain surgeon though weekends in the summer would be a great time to close down the light rail out to Golden Gate Park; and the same brain surgeon didn't do *nearly* enough to get the word out, like, you know, post about it OUTSIDE the Muni area), but we managed with a different bus, and some inefficient walking back and forth and back across the park.
We picked up lunch from Andronico's. We've missed our local store as a source of occasional luxuries, but today we got to pick up excellent sandwiches, sodas, and snacks from one of their SF stores. I had a delicious turkey & avocado sandwich on Dutch Crunch, with an Adult Brownie for desert. We actually ate our lunch in the Fern Grotto, a beautiful, secluded area smack-dab in the middle of the Park, running along a little creek, deeply shadowed by ferns.
It was apparently built as part of the Aids Memorial Grove which we later visited. We were both deeply moved by the quiet, dark area, full of stones piled atop stones. As I told Kimberly, I consider the AIDs epidemic of the '80s one of the tragedies of our time. I get choked up when I hear gay men from the time talk about how almost everyone they knew died, especially when I think about the ignorant and spiteful president that we had, who tried to pretend the problem didn't exist, and thus doomed many to death through the lack of federal aid.
Our main destination for the day was the Conservatory of Flowers, which Kimberly & I had not previously visited. It's a hot house, mostly full of green plants from the tropics. Lots of orchids too, and some other flowering things, but lots of ferns and such too. I thought the main room was the neatest. It had the highest ceilings and there was a lot of stuff really towering up toward it. One of the plants there was apparently over 100 years old. There was alsoa room of aquatic plants, which sounded cooler than it was (and was quite hot & humid in actuality) and a room of "dinosaur" plants which had some bizarre plants and some silly roars and floor shaking. The building itself is an attractive Victorian, which I could see in the floor ornamentations and the colored glass. Overall, a fun hour or so. It made me think of my (deceased) Grandma Appel, who often would take me to the (extensive) botanical gardens in St. Louis when I visited.
We have memberships to the De Young, so we were able to stop in there just to see one exhibit, "The Fashion World of Jean Paul Galtier". It was extremely cool in a yes-I-watch-Project-Runway sort of way. Tons of outfits that he's designed over the last 35 years. All strange and weird in various high-fashion ways. I particularly enjoyed seeing which outfits fit in collections with which other outfits. At the same time, you could really see his overall design aesthetic — as sometimes outfits that looked like they were from the same collection were actually from totally different parts of his career. (In one area, highlighting some of his "punk" work, most of the outfits were actually mixtures of different individual pieces from different collections, which really highlighting how his aesthetic remained amidst lots of different works.) Oh, and we learned that Galtier was apparently the one to give Madonna dangerously pointed boobs.
Overall, a fun day at the Park. Discovering those sort of hidden places around the Aids Memorial Grove really made me want to learn more about the Park, so I'm going to take a look at some books when I stop by the library tomorrow.
We picked up lunch from Andronico's. We've missed our local store as a source of occasional luxuries, but today we got to pick up excellent sandwiches, sodas, and snacks from one of their SF stores. I had a delicious turkey & avocado sandwich on Dutch Crunch, with an Adult Brownie for desert. We actually ate our lunch in the Fern Grotto, a beautiful, secluded area smack-dab in the middle of the Park, running along a little creek, deeply shadowed by ferns.
It was apparently built as part of the Aids Memorial Grove which we later visited. We were both deeply moved by the quiet, dark area, full of stones piled atop stones. As I told Kimberly, I consider the AIDs epidemic of the '80s one of the tragedies of our time. I get choked up when I hear gay men from the time talk about how almost everyone they knew died, especially when I think about the ignorant and spiteful president that we had, who tried to pretend the problem didn't exist, and thus doomed many to death through the lack of federal aid.
Our main destination for the day was the Conservatory of Flowers, which Kimberly & I had not previously visited. It's a hot house, mostly full of green plants from the tropics. Lots of orchids too, and some other flowering things, but lots of ferns and such too. I thought the main room was the neatest. It had the highest ceilings and there was a lot of stuff really towering up toward it. One of the plants there was apparently over 100 years old. There was alsoa room of aquatic plants, which sounded cooler than it was (and was quite hot & humid in actuality) and a room of "dinosaur" plants which had some bizarre plants and some silly roars and floor shaking. The building itself is an attractive Victorian, which I could see in the floor ornamentations and the colored glass. Overall, a fun hour or so. It made me think of my (deceased) Grandma Appel, who often would take me to the (extensive) botanical gardens in St. Louis when I visited.
We have memberships to the De Young, so we were able to stop in there just to see one exhibit, "The Fashion World of Jean Paul Galtier". It was extremely cool in a yes-I-watch-Project-Runway sort of way. Tons of outfits that he's designed over the last 35 years. All strange and weird in various high-fashion ways. I particularly enjoyed seeing which outfits fit in collections with which other outfits. At the same time, you could really see his overall design aesthetic — as sometimes outfits that looked like they were from the same collection were actually from totally different parts of his career. (In one area, highlighting some of his "punk" work, most of the outfits were actually mixtures of different individual pieces from different collections, which really highlighting how his aesthetic remained amidst lots of different works.) Oh, and we learned that Galtier was apparently the one to give Madonna dangerously pointed boobs.
Overall, a fun day at the Park. Discovering those sort of hidden places around the Aids Memorial Grove really made me want to learn more about the Park, so I'm going to take a look at some books when I stop by the library tomorrow.