Quite a few people are, understandably, upset about the recent (successful) push by the SF Parks and Recreation Department and the SF Botanical Society to charge an admission fee to the Arboretum. It's a pretty inexcusable appropriation of a great PUBLIC resource. First, they change the name of the place and demote poor Helen Strybing (her generous donation, in the memory of her late husband, made the garden possible) to a footnote and now they'll be charging out-of-towners a hefty fee and checking the IDs of all visitors. Pretty depressing.
Still... there's a lot of park left that doesn't require a fee or ID check. One place that's as beautiful, if not more beautiful, as anything in the Arboretum is the De Laveaga Dell/National AIDS Memorial. It's a short stroll from the Academy of Sciences. It's usually very quiet and it's very, very wonderful.
Still... there's a lot of park left that doesn't require a fee or ID check. One place that's as beautiful, if not more beautiful, as anything in the Arboretum is the De Laveaga Dell/National AIDS Memorial. It's a short stroll from the Academy of Sciences. It's usually very quiet and it's very, very wonderful.
Eight of our Supervisors, led by pseudo progressive John Avalos, voted to subsidize the Botanical Garden Society by charging. These Supervisors need to hear from you! And we need to thank Bevan Dufty, Ross Mirkarimi, and Eric Mar for voting the right way — even though they exhibited no leadership whatsoever in the fight against the Society. Corrupt lobbyist Sam Lauter purchased the votes of the other Supervisors, and our dissolute "unions" (SEIU and 161, led by the uncouth lawyer Vince Courtney) helped pressure them into this. The Newsom/Ginsburg Axis of Incompetence was also crucial to the execution of this privatization.... Pathetic!
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