Victoria Manalo Draves Park — Attraction in San Francisco

I was working for Urban Alchemy’s Pit Stop Restrooms and found myself assigned here on the weekends. This was one month before COVID🦠 shut down the world.🌎February 2020, people out walking dogs, children playing little league baseball, people taking the time to “smell the roses 🌹 and just Zen out for a minute!”🙏🏻 from the hustle and bustle of THE URBAN LIFESTYLE that traps us all. I saw more caring, compassion, and empathy for the displaced peoples of our city, (there were 3 tents outside the park at this time). It really touched me deeply to see people walking to the tents to see how the occupants were doing, dropping off food or clothing, and engaging these PEOPLE! as fellow human beings, not like in “the city” where regular citizens walk around them, they are ignored, preyed upon by criminals and the ignorant “people” who take their amusement by mistreating them. Excuse me for the venting folks, I came super close to being homeless except for being hired by...

Family and dog friendly. My visit seemed like the first time in almost a year that I saw young children playing together in a playground setting while their parents kept overwatch from the grassy field, enjoying the sun, friendly conversation, and the simple pleasure of watching their kids interacting and having fun without the developmentally-stiffling muzzle of social distancing protocols or facial expression-stealing mores of mask-wearing coronavirus culture. With amateur organized sports on hold, the baseball field's batting cage area has become a doggy playpen. A few dog owners stood talking while their canine buddies frolicked about, and Jr and I were welcomed to join in the fun. We only spent 20 minutes or so at the park but a good time was had by all and we definitely plan on marking a big X over this close-to-home park's map coordinates and making it a regular destination on our dog...

It's finally open again!!! I don't know who's more excited, me or Jake. We'd been walking by every few weeks to check progress (since they closed for at the beginning of last summer). When we saw that it was finally open, we both broke into an elated sprint to the gates. He won by a hair. It was quite crowded; our matching lunatic grins and breathless enthusiasm doubtless unnerved some, but I restrained myself from dropping to the ground and rubbing my face in the freshly-cut, olfactory delight of dew-dampaned grass (Jake shared no such compunction). We're just so happy to have this little slice of heaven back; when it was closed we were required to bus it to the nearest park, making it impossible to go nearly as often as a rambunctious little dog needs/deserves. We'll definitely never take it for...