So, Proposition K won. I didn’t vote for it, nor did most westside residents apparently, but it passed. The ballot measure promised to replace the stretch of the Great Highway from Fulton to Lincoln with a park. But it didn’t say what kind of park. So let’s think about this!
San Francisco today suffers from a lack of imagination. Sure, people still do creative work here – the AI revolution bears witness to that. But when it comes to civic projects, we’ve gotten so used to letting government clog everything up with masses of regulatory red tape that we’ve forgotten how to dream big.
This town used to be called “The City That Knows How” because they got things done. The improbable birth of “Baghdad by the Bay” in the first place – who could have dreamt, in 1845, that the Gold Rush would turn a barren, windswept peninsula of little more than 1,000 residents into the most important city west of the Mississippi? Later, San Francisco magnificently rebuilt itself, rising like a glorious phoenix from the ashes of the 1906 earthquake and fire. In 1915 and 1939, the city hosted two world fairs. They built two bridges and Treasure Island, along with a bunch of gorgeous buildings that shouldn’t have been torn down. But back then nobody cared – the thinking was, we’ll build something even better.
So what are some creative possibilities for Ocean Beach Park?
RV Park
Let’s start modestly. There’s virtually nowhere to legally park a recreational vehicle in San Francisco. This is wrong. Many if not most of the RVs you see are inhabited by people who are one step from being homeless, having only their vehicles to live in. Yet the city harasses RV owners with tickets and tows if they don’t regularly burn the gas to pointlessly move them around. This summer, dozens of vehicles were “evicted” from two locations near the San Francisco Zoo. Why not let them park on this section of road that won’t be used any more? Let people build tiny homes there too, and invite food truck operators who are also made unwelcome in many locations, to create a mixed use residential and commercial RV park.
Medical Enterprise Zone
If they can build a platform off the coast of Gaza to unload relief supplies, why not off the coast of San Francisco? The sea lions would love it. Let the Mexican cartels do something more helpful than importing fentanyl. Give them a legal (or just decriminalized) place to dock their speedboats bringing in the good stuff: Magic mushrooms from Oaxaca, ayahuasca from Columbia, cheaper prescription drugs from Tijuana. You probably know someone who’s traveled abroad to buy drugs or obtain more affordable transgender surgery or other medical care. Those things could be provided in a special tax-free zone here, creating local jobs. Let the Great Highway be reborn as a medical business park and drug emporium.
Playland 2.0
As longtime residents know, there was once a full-on amusement park across from Ocean Beach north of Golden Gate Park. Playland at the Beach could be reopened with a Santa Cruz style boardwalk. We could even underground the highway and let cars travel beneath the park, like Tunnel Tops in the Presidio. While we’re at it, let’s give tourists more reason to come by rebuilding the old Victorian version of the Cliff House and reopening the Sutro Baths. Supervisors are finally getting serious (knock on wood) about bringing bathhouses back – doesn’t restoring the most famous one make sense?
Worst case scenario?
Ah yes, funding. City Hall has a whopping deficit, and the federal money spigot’s about to be turned off. So what better time for SF to re-learn how to accomplish things without State assistance? What’s the alternative, kiss Donald Trump’s orange you-know-what enough to get the gravy flowing again? (Actually his rear is undoubtedly white, not orange – not even the edges of his face are orange, if you look carefully.) But it’s kind of become his trademark color. What might politicians be tempted to do to make the Orange One forgive all? Rename the Golden Gate Bridge after him? It’s already orange, and he’d love-love-love having his name attached to such a world-famous landmark. His antipathy toward San Francisco would melt away like fog on a sunny day in the Mission district. There’s clear precedent, too – naming SF General Hospital after Meta mogul Mark Zuckerberg. If our gag reflexes can stomach that, maybe... But no. No! The “Donald J. Trump Golden Gate Bridge”? No subsidy would be worth such humiliation. Better a big, all-volunteer, Habitat for Humanity style community building project, am I right?
Okay, maybe the practical solution is to forget all this and just put another proposition on the ballot to overturn Prop. K. And restore the iconic 49 Mile Scenic Drive by reopening the southern portion of the Great Highway for good measure. The way that’s being discussed is frankly embarrassing: “Oh well, coastal erosion is happening, nothing we can do, guess we’ve just gotta permanently close that stretch of road.” Nonsense. Look at Devil’s Slide in San Mateo county. Highway 1 is built into the side of a sheer cliff! Yet every time the road there washes out, they manage to get it reopened. Why can’t we figure out how to do the same where the land is relatively flat?
But if we’re not going to do the sober, responsible thing, let’s have an Ocean Beach Park with a purpose. Get government out of the way, and as the fairies say, glitt’er done!