This weekend, my team tested concepts for our upcoming installation, “The Play Station SF”, soon to be a temporary part of the Market Street sidewalk in downtown San Francisco.
We tested interactive kinetic bike sculptures, this one hand cranked and featuring a MonkeyLight Pro 256-LED wheel installation.
We also played with a teammate’s last minute fun addition – two hand made zoetropes created on horizontal spinning bike wheels.
There will also be a kinetic bike sculpture created from corrugated hose, to add a sound element.
A fun canopy to create color and a sense of place . .
And three spin bikes with a box full of games and challenges to play on them!
Neighbors, designers, and families teamed to create a low-cost, low-intervention flexible play and gathering space in what was formerly a very large asphalt-paved school parking lot in San Francisco’s Sunset District.
Even on a wet, cloudy day, these photos clearly show the effort made to create a bright, colorful, welcoming space. Overhead nylon paracord delineates a pingpong table and outdoor seating, and colorful painted murals break up the asphalt surfacing.
A newly built plot of raised beds freshly planted with greens frames the new skate park, in the back, with the magenta spires of two climbable “San Francisco Hills” donated by participants in last year’s Market Street Prototyping Festival.
a group of early morning yogis and yoginis enjoying the momentary break in the fog.
last week, i had the pleasure of attending and co-creating a bunch of fun events for the NOWSF festival – check out more on the festival here and here – a DIY neighborhood public space activation festival, which was open source and totally free. all the events focused on creating a sense of fun in the general panhandle neighborhood, getting to know new friends and neighbors, being active, and sharing ideas, music, and art.
i teamed up with fellow Yoga Garden alumna Court Green for an early AM yoga session by the McKinley statue, complete with sun rays breaking through just in time for child’s pose and savasana.
jonathan and and i teamed up to celebrate our one-week wedding anniversay with “wiggle treat”, a pop-up bike-in happy hour with hot cocoa and homemade ginger snaps for cyclists biking directly into a stiff 15 knot wind on their ride home from work on friday.
we rolled that clankety bar cart all the way from our house, assaulting the ears of everyone in the neighborhood. unfortunately, the thermos didn’t work either, so we didn’t serve very much hot cocoa. so, we gave out cookies instead and focused on sharing the genuine SelfiStick (actual wood, wedding gift from Cresa) with friends and passersby.
maybe there are some new customers for this piece of functional social commentary. we teamed up with some other NOW festivalers to create a one-stop fun shop on the edge of the panhandle – giant crossword puzzle, free flowers, AND the wiggle treat cart!
we talked to lots of interesting people and even gave away bike-by flowers!
finally, was one more yoga class – a thursday evening class that was cut a little short by the extreme chilling winds that rake from the beach toward downtown at that time of day. teaming up with lovely canadian cynthia for a team taught class with lots of wide-legged forward folds and an extremely short, shivery meditation and savasana.
see you around the neighborhood!
*note – not sure why my photos in this post are displaying all wonky and stretched. this is a new issue, working on it!
One corner of an enormous parking lot in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood has been temporarily transformed into a lively pop-up “village”, featuring food trucks, seating, planters, retail, and a beer garden all based on repurposed shipping containers. The colorful concept, dubbed “The Yard”, features Gehl Architects’ methodology of activating public spaces and focusing on human interaction.
Photo by Emily Peckenham
The Mission Bay neighborhood has gone through numerous changes in its lifetime, beginning with its origins as, well, an actual bay. The bay was slowly filled in over the past two hundred years of San Francisco’s urbanization, seeing use as a shipyard, industrial zone, dump, paved over empty space, and soon, will feature condos (are you surprised?).
The part of the project that may be a bit unusual is one of its aims – to “create community” and a sense of place –in advance of condos and mixed use development breaking ground. It will be interesting to see how and if this concept succeeds.
For now, you can enjoy a beer at Anchor Brewing’s pop up outdoor beer garden (watch out on game days – its sure to be packed to capacity), and The Yard project hopes to activate the space with free public performances and happenings of various kinds over the coming months.
Read my whole article and check out a photoset from my visit to The Yard last week (and don’t forget to try the food – the greasy, delicious Filipino BBQ pork from Señor Sisig filled me up for the entire day!)
ritual coffee, on valencai street in san francisco’s mission district, features a fun new parklet. the tiny public space (created from two former parking spaces) is now home to a “shipwreck” complete with ships beams, sand dune plantings and a tiny anchor! patrons of nearby ritual coffee enjoy sipping their drinks in the sun and passersby turn their heads to puzzle out how this nautical vessel made its way a good few miles inland from the bay. check out my full piece on the project, designed by boor/bridges archictects, here.
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