Zoo Friday

You can't hiiiiide your... [*]

We continued our summer "fake-cation" Fridays yesterday with a trip to the San Francisco Zoo with our dear friend Lucile. (Lucile has a membership in the Zoo, so we had free admission and parking under her auspices -- thanks, 'Cile!)


I have been a frequent visitor to the San Francisco Zoo since 1973, when I first was hired as a part-time astronomy instructor at City College of San Francisco. My sons became very familiar with the place as little boys, since it was a great (if obvious) place for a divorced dad to take his sons on a weekend. Toward the end of my tenure at CCSF (1989), many of my former students were working at the Zoo in various capacities -- just as I could find many former students all over the city in other occupations -- and I could count on cheerful greetings from young staffers on every visit. After taking my current position at DeAnza College, forty-five minutes away from San Francisco, my visits became less frequent, but didn't fall to zero by any means.

Malibu Stork (No, he's not really impaling himself. Lucile, a longtime, avid birder, tells me he's molting and grooming. Me, I think he's checking his wallet.)

The zoo has had a hard time in recent years, with scandal, management issues, construction, and a horrible tragedy last Christmas day. (No links here, because that's not what this entry is about, but Google stands ready to assist you if you're curious.) A quick check of the Zoo's website before we left prepared us for the closure of some of its prime attractions, which are undergoing significant renovations: we expected to see no elephants, or small cats, or big cats. Right on two counts, happily wrong on the third.

Stumped Gorilla

The Zoo's parking lot is on its west side, close to the ocean, and adjacent to the huge derelict remains of the Fleishhacker Pool. The first section after the entrance is a relatively-newly remodeled, very attractive area called the "African Savanna," and, adjacent to that is the gorilla preserve.

Black Lemur

At left, a ringtailed lemur idly looks up at a big ape on a walkway above him. At right, a Koala rests on a eucalyptus stump. The Lemur compound is a fascinating array of open spaces, jungle areas, heat-lamp warmed elevated platforms,
and a maze of enclosed, lemur-sized walkways leading from one part of the compound to another through, over, under, and around the elevated walkways for humans.


The elephant area is closed. In fact, right now the zoo has no elephants, and the Pachyderm palace is undergoing major renovation. The buildings for the elephants and big cats are at the geographic heart of the zoo, as befits zoos' traditional main attractions, and having both of those areas closed down made for an odd, almost decayed aura at the zoo's center. We walked quickly through there, heading for the bears' area at the park's east end.

We were in for a treat at the bears, because none of us had seen the new Grizzly compound before. It appears to be a fine place for the sisters Kiona and Kachina to inhabit: plenty of open space, plenty of things to occupy their attention. They were very active when we visited: much running and cavorting.

Running bear, sans white dove. These two bear photos were taken through a thick plexiglass window which didn't play nicely with my lens's polarizing filter.

As we walked back westward toward the exit, we passed by the closed hippo section (at right -- the hippo is a sculpture, not a leftover) and passed the big cats' house, where we expected to see no occupants. But, as evidenced at left, there was a tiger out in his compound. (Click on these, or any other pictures, to see larger versions.) He entertained us for a while, even playing with a yard-wide blue ball. The photo at left was taken through a chain-link fence, which is why it has that odd overlay pattern, and none of my other pictures of him came out very well, either. We continued westward, and came on this:

Lions through Plexiglass

Three summers ago, on a trip with Doug and Adrianne and Grace, we paused at this compound to admire the lions. At left is a picture from that visit; Grace is the little kid in blue in the stroller. All of the remaining pictures from this place were taken from behind that window, from roughly in its center.

I know he's probably checking the air currents for scents, but it really, really looks like he's posing in this shot and the next two...

... and the state of his mane emphasizes that impression. Diane and Lucile both remarked that it looked like it had at least been carefully brushed, if not shampooed and blow-dried.

Right Profile.

After he had enough of posing, he took direct notice of us behind the window, and very purposefully marched over to investigate us.

Lion's Arrival. I don't know what this fellow's name is, but, for some reason, "Mojo" sounds like it might be an appropriate one for him.

Looking at Lucile, who was to my left.

Looking at me.

A goodly crowd had arrived by the time the last picture was taken, and, until then, my only view of His Highness had been through the viewfinder of my camera. I pulled the camera down from my face... and damn' near had a heart attack. I was not at all prepared for the visceral, overwhelming feeling that seeing a real lion riveting me with his stare from inches away would engender. I don't mind saying that it was a primal fear; reason had nothing to do with it. Diane, bless her black, shriveled heart, is still ridiculing me for...


... basically running away. I didn't run away, dammit, I was just going back to get this establishing shot of the lion and the crowd! Story. Sticking to it.

Much later, when we arrived back at Ft. Harrington and greeted all the critters in our zoo, it struck me that this was the only time, ever, that I looked at Cooper (right) and thought that he looked small.

Addendum: Many photos from this outing are available at much higher resolution over on Flickr. To see high-resolution versions there, you need to click on the image you want and then click on the magnifying glass icon over the image that appears then. You'll be given several options after that; choose the highest-resolution you can stand.

[*] ... lyin' eyes. But you knew that.

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Another Excursion to Oakland's Disneyland

In his most recent blog entry, Brian Fies says, "Honestly, I think I divide other people's work into three categories: 1.) I could do that. 2.) I wish I could do that. 3.) Wow, I have no idea how they did that." Diane and I categorize all glass art as a 3+, and are fascinated by it. (We also have a lot of it around the house, which is probably not the smartest thing in the world for people who have six cats and three dogs.) Above, Diane visits our favorite glass-art shop in Sausalito, Petri's, in 2002. Photo used with her permission. At least I think "I don't care" constitutes permission.

I wish I could remember where I first heard San Francisco referred to as "Oakland's Disneyland," but it's an apt tag in a sardonic sort of way. "The City" (as its citizens often call it*) is a little square of treasures and surprises, abutted on three sides by water and graveyards on the fourth, isolated, suave, kinky, cosmopolitan, goofy, and always charming. It is a great place for a getaway, as it was a great place to work for 17 years.

This week was spring break for me, and Diane and I motored off to Oakland's Disneyland twice. The first time was Wednesday, to visit our old friend, Lucile, and another of my co-workers from those 17 years whom I hadn't seen in more than a decade. On part of that visit, Lucile showed us a little treasure that I hadn't seen before: the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden at the foot of the Dutch Windmill at the far western edge of Golden Gate Park. After I'd muttered at myself for a while about not having brought my camera, Diane and I decided that we'd just drive back up the next day and do some more of the tourist thing. It's an easy drive, and even with gas prices the way they are now, the round trip from Ft. Harrington only costs about 30 bucks.

So we did.

Here are some snapshots from yesterday's outing:

Our first stop was a place that has been a topic here before: the Legion of Honor Art Museum near the Golden Gate. Our main aim there was to visit the Annie Liebovitz exhibit ("A Photographer's Life, 1990 - 2005"), which was well worth the drive all by itself. No pictures here from that exhibit, though: photographing the photographer's photographs was strictly forbidden, possibly because the Museum was concerned about potential effects on the spacetime continuum of inadvertent infinite recursions. But a couple of things that I could take pictures of were just remarkable.

Dale Chihuly's Sun in the Legion courtyard.

Chihuly's Sea Blue and Green Tower in an interior exhibit room.

The Legion of Honor's sister museum, the de Young in Golden Gate Park, will have an exhibit of Dale Chihuly's remarkable sculptures later this year. As part of the lead-up to that event, four of his large glass works have been installed, two in each of the Museums. In the Legion, they were Sun and Sea Blue and Green Tower, both above. They are massive works of blown glass, and Sun is also a neon light! You can see it illuminated by clicking here to go directly to a well-hidden (it seems) page in Chihuly's massive website (but please come back.)



Details in Sun. Click on any image to see a larger version.










As we were leaving the Legion of Honor to go on to our next destination, we were treated to an accidental piece of performance art.

Oakland's finest at a Frisco museum.

A group of seven Oakland motorcycle police officers pulled into the parking area and carefully backed their bikes into position for a photo to be taken of them with the stately pillars and arches of the Legion in the background. As I was taking the photo above, Diane (standing closer to them than I was) heard one of them say, "Somebody should write down all the gay stuff they make us do."

I'm pretty sure he thought that Diane was laughing with him. Silly boy. I was tempted -- but only for a split-split second -- to tell him that if he actually went into the museum, he could see lots of pichers of nekkid wimmin! Of course, he probably knows how to use the internet, so it wouldn't have been worth the effort to him, anyway.

The next destination. Somebody should write down all the gay stuff Diane makes me do.

The Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park actually has an astronomical tie-in. Its constituent parts were purchased by James Lick, who endowed Lick Observatory. Those parts were still in crates when he died in 1876, so the Conservatory (like the Observatory) wasn't constructed until after it would do him any good personally.

The attraction on this day at the Conservatory was the butterfly exhibit -- not insects mounted on pins in cases, but freely flapping around in the entire western end of the Conservatory. We had a great time there for an hour, giggling like little kids (of whom there were may real ones scooting around) as the colorful littler guys flitted around.

On to the final stop:

The Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden, Golden Gate Park

Our final destination was the tulip garden we had seen, briefly, the previous day. The little patch was named after Queen Wilhelmina (1880 - 1962) of the Netherlands -- and so was my paternal grandmother. The tulips are at the height of their display right now, as you can see above.

The Dutch Windmill.

The tulip garden is at the foot of the "Dutch Windmill," one of two large pump drivers that were erected in the early 1900's to supply fresh water for the huge expanse of greenery atop sand dunes that is Golden Gate Park. The windmills are at the far western edge of the Park, facing the beach, and the nearly constant strong wind off the Pacific allowed, through them, the park to become what it is today: one of the greatest urban parks in the world.

Meanwhile, back at the Fort...

... it's time for the first rosebuds ...

... and for apple blossoms ...

... and for the bees to get to work. Clicking on this picture to see the little guy hard at work upside-down will be worth your trouble.

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* "The City" is so ingrained a nickname for San Francisco that the Warriors NBA team had that as its only locale designation on their jerseys for many years. Now, of course, they use the milquetoast "Golden State" abomination, which makes them sound like a college team from Colorado. (Photo copied from an ad on eBay; I have no idea whom to credit.)

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