San Francisco Beautiful

11/18/2024

REMINDER: Application deadline for our 2024-2025 Neighborhood Grant (NBG) are due this Wednesday, November 20th! Website: sfbeautiful.org/neighborhood-grants/

10/24/2024

After a successful first year, we are excited to announce the start of our second annual Neighborhood Beautification Grants program for 2024-25. We are accepting applications from anyone with a beautification project across San Francisco that is in need of funds. Apply Now!

06/05/2024

Another beautiful day in San Francisco! ⛅️

📸 Photography Credits: JGregorySF

04/11/2024

Check out the Excelsior Mosaic being built by Vienna Street!

The artists invited the neighborhood kids to help create a farm landscape using tiles to build a barn, windmill, water tower, barn ,clouds, birds and a giant rooster!

02/26/2024

What a successful day picking up trash with in Lower Pacific Heights. Huge KUDOS to all of the volunteers who participated last week! 👏

10/18/2022

Please join us for this fun community event honoring our founder and symbol of San Francisco, the Cable Cars!!!!

05/02/2022

"For Friedel Klussmann, it started with cable cars. Or rather, it started with the threat of losing them.

Following World War II, many, including then-Mayor Roger Lapham, saw the future paved with asphalt and gas-powered automobiles. “Cable cars were already antiques at that time,” said Darcy Brown, executive director of San Francisco Beautiful, a nonprofit Klussman founded in 1947.

But Lapham’s plan to “junk the cable cars” was complicated by Klussmann, who formed a coalition to oppose the measure and began a public campaign to demonstrate that the value of San Francisco’s cable cars was greater than their operational cost.

“Friedel Klussman was just your average neighborhood lady,” said Brown. But, “she decided this was not a good idea. She was far more forward-thinking than the mayor.”

Ultimately, Klussamn’s actions forced a referendum on an amendment to the city charter, compelling the city to continue operating the lines. “Diesel buses did not prompt romance in the minds of riders, and there were no thrills to be found in chugging over a hill, belching exhaust fumes as it went,” the Cable Car museum wrote in commemoration of Klussman’s victory.

But her civic activism did not stop there. In the 1960s, her organization partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to jumpstart San Francisco’s first tree planting program and merged with the Chamber’s litter program to clean City streets and promote green space throughout the city.

Preservation of open space was also important to Dorothy Erskine, a lifelong resident of San Francisco who watched as the sand dunes and lupin bushes surrounding her home on Broadway and Divisadero gave way to housing as the City’s population boomed following the first World War."

https://www.sfexaminer.com/faces/san-franciscos-environmental-pioneers-had-one-thing-in-common-they-were-all-women/

05/02/2022

"“The Mini Park is one of the last hubs or meeting areas for the Black community,” said Jameel Patterson, associate director of the New Community Leadership Foundation, a nonprofit that works to empower Black and other disenfranchised communities.

But to Darcy Brown, executive director of the nonprofit San Francisco Beautiful, the park is also an example of how The City has continued to neglect its underserved and historically marginalized populations.

“It feels abandoned because it has been,” said Brown. “We’re talking about a tiny little park for a community that really needs a boost in San Francisco. It’s all fine to post Black Lives Matter posters everywhere and march around. But what are you doing to really back that up for the community?”

The Fillmore District is known as a rich cultural and commercial corridor in the heart of San Francisco. It’s a place that gave the world the “Harlem of the West” for its renowned jazz scene, nightclubs, restaurants, churches, and Black-owned businesses that flourished here.

But the Fillmore also bears the scars of displacement, redlining and neglect. The Mini Park itself was part of a larger “urban renewal” effort known as the Western Addition A-2 redevelopment program implemented by Redevelopment Agency in 1966. The program razed large swaths of the neighborhood, uprooting thousands of Black families who owned homes and businesses here."

‘It feels abandoned because it has been’

04/06/2021

"Pamela Axelson, a neighbor who led the project on the once trash-strewn hillside and graffiti-marked concrete steps, says: “Like ours, most mosaic stairways grow out of a movement within a community to improve something that may have been an eyesore or just could be so much more beautiful. The city supports community projects like this because they build relationships among neighbors, safer and more supportive communities, and friendships among people who would not have met otherwise.”

Also in the Excelsior, a waterfall mosaic swirls in shades of blue from cobalt to aqua, splashed across a stairway located in Kenny Alley. I find it on Mission Street between France and Italy avenues, a corridor packed with Mexican, Salvadoran, and Filipino eateries. Comprising glass stones, tiles, and mirrors that glint in the sunlight, the stairs lead up to London Street. The walls of Kenny Alley are adorned with a mural featuring mountains, the ocean, and local flora and fauna (bears, fish, eagles, and poppies).

For the staircase design, “We intended to play off the mural already in the alley,” says Summer Koide, a member of the group Friends of Kenny Alley, who helped transform the former dumping ground.

Muralist Matt Christensen, a high school art teacher, referred his colleague, mosaicist Kim Jensen, for the job of designing the staircase. Her waterfall design was embraced by community groups, and tiles were made and assembled primarily by her students. Community volunteers also contributed, including Koide, who made some from home during her maternity leave.

“Before, the alley looked pretty atrocious,” says Koide, “Now, it’s a jewel.”

The California city is the hilliest in the U.S., with more than 600 public stairways, some of which are decorated with beautiful mosaics.

02/26/2021

"As explained in a column by former Chronicle librarian Bill Van Niekerken, 51-year-old Friedel Klussmann, already a regular in the society pages, formed A Citizens Committee to Save the Cable Cars, persuading the Board of Supervisors to put transportation measure Proposition 10 on the November 1947 ballot. The measure would keep the cars under Muni and Public Utilities Commission stewardship, ensuring their survival.

After that passed overwhelmingly, Klussmann fought to move the dying California Street line under Muni stewardship, and supported a second fight to save the cable cars, a $10 million fundraising effort led by Mayor Dianne Feinstein in 1982. The Chronicle enthusiastically supported the 1982 efforts, and in 2018 and 2019 sponsored decorated cable cars for the Christmas season.

Klussmann, who died in 1986, would no doubt side with Chronicle columnist Heather Knight, who called last week for a quick-as-possible return of cable cars to city streets. The Chronicle’s anti-cable car role was revealed while researching a pro-cable car Total SF podcast episode co-hosted by Knight.

Muni head Jeffrey Tumlin pledged that cable cars will return at an unspecified date, while floating the possibility of a revenue measure in 2022 to close budget deficits. An organized anti-cable car effort in 2021 has not emerged.

While other anti-cable car forces softened their stance in 1947, The Chronicle remained steadfast opponents until the end, gently mocking the growing pro-cable car forces that could no longer be ignored in coverage. Meanwhile, reporting revealed the super-buses to be mere mortals; it would cost the city a fortune to rip up slippery brick streets, so the buses wouldn’t slide down the steep Powell Street grades that cable cars had negotiated for decades.

The Chronicle was once part of a drive to hasten the extinction of cable cars in San...

02/22/2021

San Francisco CAN NOT lose our Cable Cars!

"The SFMTA will probably place a revenue measure on the ballot next year to help close the deficit, Tumlin said. If San Franciscans don’t pass it, the cable cars’ metaphorical gravestone could read, “Born, 1873. Delighted locals and tourists alike. Starred in Rice-a-Roni commercials and a Tony Bennett song. Defined San Francisco. Died in 2023 at age 150 because everything got too expensive.”

San Franciscans, we can’t let that happen. We’ve lost too much due to the pandemic already, and there’s too much wealth and ingenuity in our city to lose the cable cars.

It was heartbreaking talking to Byron Cobb, the city’s eight-time cable car bell ringing champion, whose smile seemed to stretch as wide as California Street, the line he’s worked as a gripman for decades.

“You’re not going to go to Disneyland if the rides aren’t running, and you’re not going to go to San Francisco if these aren’t running,” said Arne Hansen, superintendent of the cable car barn, who used to love his job, but not so much anymore. “It’s so sad keeping these things locked up.”

He’s convinced city officials have wanted to get rid of what they view as expensive, inefficient relics for decades — and it’s true cable cars were almost killed off in the early 1980s before Feinstein saved them with a fundraising and PR campaign.

“The pandemic gave them a bullet for the gun,” Cobb said."

San Francisco’s beloved cable cars haven’t run in nearly a year — and might not be...

10/15/2020

"Masks are required, and only one adult per household should be present to maximize space for children. Rec and Parks’ playground rules have always restricted adults from entering unless they are accompanying a child.

There are capacity limits set for different types of play equipment, and some attractions such as slides and sandboxes have locations marked where it is safe for a kid or a household to wait their turn.

No eating or drinking will be permitted, and toys shouldn’t be shared between households. If others are present, or the capacity limits have been met, play time should be limited to 30 minutes or less.

Despite the new restrictions, the playgrounds’ reopening provides a welcome diversion, especially in the Tenderloin, which has the highest density of children per capita in the city.

The dense neighborhood, packed with transit and emergency response routes, struggled to attain any access to Slow Streets closures. Some neighborhoods saw full street closures just over one month after shelter-in-place was ordered, but the Tenderloin’s first partial street closure didn’t take effect until August. Meanwhile, tent-crowded sidewalks discouraged many families from spending time outdoors.

Now the neighborhood can welcome kids back to Boeddeker Park and Helen Diller Civic Center playgrounds, as well as two smaller playgrounds that were under construction up until the shelter-in-place.

The city's 180+ playgrounds reopened yesterday, including two recently-remodeled parks in the Tenderloin.