Easter is my favorite San Francisco holiday. Sure, Halloween is fun but people dress in costume for Halloween everywhere. And Christmas is okay but it’s a bit lackluster without many light displays. But Easter … Easter in San Francisco is like Easter nowhere else and I love that about this city. Easter is The Big Hat Contest and The Hunky Jesus Contest at Dolores Park. It’s Big Wheel Races on steep streets (although I haven’t seen that since it moved off of Lombard Street a few years back). It’s different. And sunshine-filled. And bright with joy and silliness.

Tags: dolores park, easter, holidays, San Francisco

I’ve never actually done anything for Obscura Day but every year I think about it. Lots of things happen here in the Bay Area for this event so the options are varied. I’m not sure I’ll make it to anything this year either but I’m considering it.

What is Obscura Day?

“Obscura Day is an international celebration of unusual places. It is a day of expeditions, back room tours, & exploring hidden wonders in your own hometown.” In other words, it’s all about seeing a different side of some things in your area that you don’t always get to see. It allows you to be a tourist where you live which is something I try to do often here and is one of the things I love about San Francisco.

San Francisco Bay Area Obscura Day

Many of the 2012 events are already sold out but some of them are still open. Some of the options in the area include:

• After Dark Secret Tour of Alcatraz. This tour shows places that aren’t even shown on the late night tours. I actually think Alcatraz is a tourist attraction worth visiting.
• The Art Of Dark Scavenger Hunt at the De Young Museum. San Francisco has a surprising number of scavenger hunts in general.
• Play Old Pinball. There’s a great pinball museum in Alameda that’s fun anytime but for Obscura Day they’re opening up access to their oldest games. I recently played some old games like this at another pinball museum in Las Vegas.
• Zymoglyphic Museum Day. Frankly everything about going to this museum is unique!
• After Dark Under Old Sacramento. Okay, this one is kind of far from San Francisco but Old Town is kind of cute and it might be fun to explore the underground of it!

Tags: bay area, obscura day, San Francisco

Yesterday I went hiking with my best friend at a Mount Tamalpais Trail that is one of my favorite hiking trails in the Bay Area, a trail called the Matt Davis – Steep Ravine Loop. It’s a moderately tough trail that’s about 7.5 miles long and starts off with some serious climbing that I thought was going to beat me. In the end, I climbed the mountain and was rewarded with the last half of the hike which is a meandering, relaxing hike. The trail goes through beautiful redwoods with a creek running along most of it, the vegetation is lovely and there are views of the ocean that surprise you here and there throughout the trail. I brought back some photos for you.

Tags: bay area hiking, matt davis steep ravine, mount tam

I’ll be spending the day hiking here:

The photo is a 2009 picture I took from the same trail. New photos to come after the hike!

Tags: hiking, hiking trail, north bay, San Francisco

People who have extra room to spare in their homes have started to take advantage of that fact to earn a little bit of income. They rent out their space to short-term travelers, offering them better deals than local hotels with the added touch of a personal stay in someone else’s home. This works best for people living in tourist destinations because there is an endless stream of visitors who want to pay to stay with them. It also works best in cities like San Francisco and New York where many of the visitors are from foreign countries as staying with locals seems to be something that Europeans and other foreigners find more appealing than other Americans do.

Two new bits of news came out about this recently that show off the differences when it comes to doing this in New York and doing it in San Francisco:

1. AirBnB founder staying in others’ homes throughout 2010. The first bit of news is that the founder of the website AirBnB has decided to spend the rest of the year staying in the homes that are listed on his site. AirBnB is a San Francisco based website that allows people with space to connect with travelers. It’s a great site that I’ve used myself. It offers some measure of safety and security for connecting strangers from different locations and many of the homes on the site are homes that are ideal for visitors to stay in. The guy who runs the site is going to test it out himself by staying in various homes throughout San Francisco for the rest of the year and reporting back on his experiences. Most people that I’ve heard comment on this think it’s an interesting, fun experiment.
2. New York may legislate against short-term vacation rentals. The second bit of news comes from New York and is about new legislation there that may stop people from being able to use sites like AirBnB. If it passes, this bill would ban all short-term rentals that are for less than one month at a time. This means that individuals who are interested in renting out their room to travelers aren’t legally going to be able to do so. Plenty of people in New York are riled up about the controversial legislation but it does point to a difference in general between how this type of thing is dealt with in NY as compared to CA.

Tags: airbnb, ca vs. ny, renting out room to travelers, west coast vs. east coast

I recently wrote a couple of articles for HubPages about the history of Alcatraz. The first was a general history of Alcatraz. The second was a more in-depth look at the period of time during which Alcatraz was taken over by Native American activists. Hopefully you’ll be interested enough to take a look at those articles but if not I thought I’d share with you some of the key points in the history of Alcatraz.

The history of Alcatraz basically progressed as follows:

• It was named by Spanish explorers who didn’t even land on the island at the time due to the rocky choppiness of the waters surrounding it.
• In the middle of the 19th century the military realized that this island could be useful. They turned it into a military fort.
• Alcatraz switched from being a military fort to becoming a military prison.
• The military abandoned its use of the island. However, it was still considered to be a good place for a prison. That’s when the Alcatraz federal prison was established there. This is the most famous time during Alcatraz’s history. What most people don’t realize is that it only lasted thirty years.
• There were several years during the 1960′s and 1970′s during which it was taken over by Native Americans. The land had been abandoned and activists took it over as their own. They started a Native American education center. A fire ran everyone off of the island in the early 1970′s.
• It became obvious that this would make a good tourist attraction. That’s what it is today. Periodically people talk about turning it into something else – like a big casino – but so far it remains just a place for guided tours.

Tags: alcatraz, alcatraz history, history of alcatraz, native american alcatraz

Yesterday I went on a really amazing walking tour of some of the murals in the Mission District here in San Francisco. I mostly went to get outside, see my city and learn something new. I had no idea just how much new stuff I would learn. Turns out that murals are more complex and interesting then I ever knew!

Here’s ten interesting facts about murals that I learned yesterday:

1. Murals are so much more than pretty pictures; they have a much deeper meaning. The artwork in a mural is very well thought out. It is designed to represent a specific community at a specific point in history. It is often designed to make a political and / or social statement. The details in the murals add up to a bigger message.
2. Murals are not designed by one person; they get input from a whole community. One person might head the project and one artist might even do all of the work but designing a mural usually involves groups of people.
3. San Francisco has over 1000 murals. There are 200 – 300 murals in the Mission neighborhood alone. As far as I am able to tell that’s the most number of murals in a single neighborhood anywhere in the world.
4. There are many different styles of murals. These styles include cartoons, fine art, mixed media, mosaics, 3d cutouts and graffiti art.
5. The main difference between graffiti and murals is that people who do murals have permission from the property owner to do them.
6. Graffiti artists almost never tag on murals. This is because the murals are part of the community and they respect that. Tagging on murals does happen of course but the social message of murals and their ties to the community tend to prevent this problem from happening on a grand scale.
7. There are three muralists from Mexico who played an important role in bringing murals to the U.S. They were called Los Tres Grandes. They are Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and Jose Orozco. These are guys to learn more about!
8. Many murals change over time. They may represent a specific time in history but they decay and are repainted and change a little bit. There’s actually a community mural in the Mission that features a bunch of portraits of people who live in the neighborhood. It was done in the 1970′s. When it was updated in the 90s there was one man pictured who still lived in the neighborhood and they changed his image so that he looked the way he did twenty years after the original image was painted.
9. Murals may be painted indoors or outdoors. They may be big or small.
10. Murals date back to the caveman era. Some eras have been particularly important in certain areas. For example there were a lot of San Francisco murals made in the 1930s and again in the 1970s. Murals can be found all around the world today.

Tags: mission murals, mural art, mural facts, murals, san francisco murals

The photo of the day is back. I don’t know if other people are too interested in this Diary of a Smart Chick feature since nobody responded in the comments when I asked for feedback about it but I like posting photos so I’m going to keep it up for now. Would still love some feedback. Today’s photo is of the Rocketboat that I mentioned in the earlier post today.

Tags: images, Photos, rocketboat, san francisco boat tours, san francisco rocketboat

It’s been unusually sunny and warm here in San Francisco this week. It’s only in the high eighties but that’s close to record-breaking heat here for this time of year. Although I’m from Arizona, I’ve adjusted to the cooler temps in San Francisco and have to admit that it’s hard for me to take an interest in doing much of anything while it’s so hot here. I feel like eating popsicles and being lazy.

However, yesterday, I found the perfect activity for this kind of weather. Every time it gets warm here I wish that I owned a boat. Thinking about that I remembered the Rocketboat. It’s touted as “the fastest boat on the bay” and a real adventure ride for tourists. It’s a new thing that’s only been here maybe a year or so and I hadn’t been on it yet. Despite the fact that a lot of tourist stuff here is cheesy, I like to do it all at least once to get the experience of it. So, I decided to go on Rocketboat.

It was totally worth it! It’s a speedboat built for a big crowd of people.  It speeds out into the bay, beneath the Bay Bridge, and skids around a bit to make some waves and splash the riders. Silly fun. The weather was ideal – it wasn’t cold at all out on the water but there was a nice breeze on the fast boat. The skies were clear so I got to see stunning views of the city’s skyline and the two bridges. Beautiful.

I love living in a city where I can wake up in the morning and decide to do something like ride the Rocketboat!

Tags: boat rides san francisco, rocketboat, San Francisco, san francisco attractions

When I learned that there’s a peak in San Francisco where a huge concrete cross towers over the city, I had to go check it out. It’s not that I’m particularly interested in the cross itself but was curious about how I’d never heard it existed. It’s on Mt. Davidson … interesting place.

Tags: cross, mt. davidson, Photos, San Francisco