​PHOTO ESSAY  -  
          A Puzzling Parklet in Downtown San Francisco 

Photo by C. Anderson                                                                              

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A Puzzling Parklet
Main and Howard Streets;  San Francisco
​​By Charlene Anderson

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​Heading to my first OLLI class in the new digs on Spear Street, I was walking along Main Street when I encountered a park or courtyard. There were a lot of tall buildings around there, so I wasn’t sure if it was attached to one of them. I wandered around for a while and though I didn’t find anything to identify the area, I did see several signs cautioning:

The little hillocks the dogs were cautioned to stay off proved tough for one dog I saw. He or she struggled over the top of what he or she doubtless thought was grass, probably as puzzled as I was to find a park with artificial grass. Later in the inevitable Google check, I found a comment by a woman who said she’d been shooed OFF one of those little hills by a park attendant claiming that the grass (or ‘grass’) was only for dogs. Hmm. She, I and the dog are all puzzled now.
 
I kept looking for info on the ‘green’ area, but pretty soon, I started to enjoy it for itself, despite the lack of real grass.

I liked the layout and, inspecting it more carefully, I noticed that much of the pavement was dyed blue and there were blue swirls and squiggles, drawn in carefully, throughout: 

There were also interesting oblong, egg-shaped white rocks—not for sitting, apparently, since there were plenty of benches nearby—but only for decoration:

Some of them were striking and seemed to have created a kind of artform in themselves, especially with the blue swirls set beside and around them:

I had even more questions then and really wanted an explanation. So, I came back a second day and finally, at the corner of Howard and Main Streets, I found this sign:  

This sign didn’t answer many of my questions, but at least I found out it is a public park (or parklet) and when you can go there. As for the landscape gardener or gardeners who created that unique layout, I couldn’t find that information either there or online.
 
It hardly matters. I found the place, nestled behind and juxtaposed with all those skyscrapers, eye-catching and unobtrusively artistic. As for trying to resolve the questions, I no longer care.
 
Maybe some puzzles are better left unsolved.

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​​Charlene Anderson has an MA in English Literature from Purdue University and an MA in Research Psychology from SFSU. She spent much of her working life doing research grant administration during the day and writing fiction at night, and in 2001 published a novel. When Vistas & Byways was launched in 2015, she was pleased to be asked to chair the Editorial Board, and has served in that capacity ever since. She is also pleased to be able to submit her own work to the magazine!

Other pieces in this Issue:  
Fiction;
Dark Matter - a Science Fantasy
Inside OLLI:
Transit Zone

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