Regular readers may have noticed that on weekends we switch things up a bit and report on local San Francisco activities, travel, and culture. I call these posts “Changing Gears”. Today we’re going to do the ‘quintessential Bay Area tour’: biking the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and back to the City via ferry. I say ‘other’ in jest here, given the huge surge in interest in the new Bay Bridge East Span…
While the locations and subjects of most of these shots might be obvious, you’ll see that a few of these were taken at a stopover at one of San Francisco’s less-known sights: the Columbarium on Anza Street off of Arguello (the ‘highway’ for bikers from the central districts to the Presidio and bridge). Since, much as Manhattan did, the City cemeteries were nearly all removed for real estate reasons (here, to the southern suburb of Colma), it’s the only possible resting place remaining in the city for civilian folks. Today it’s a fascinating study of the lives and social groups, from Asian immigrants to gay leathermen, that shared San Francisco as their home.
Other than that, seasoned Bay Area bikers will recognize the route well: up from the Haight-Ashbury through the Clement Street and Presidio Heights neighborhoods, a scenic cutover through the Presidio (a former Army post, now a massive urban park), across the Golden Gate on the bicycles-only West Sidewalk, down into Sausalito, just in time to catch the return ferry home, waving to the condemned tourists of Alcatraz on the way. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
