This Sunday, City Guides kicks off the first of two free walking tours of the Richmond District.

This is a great chance to learn more about the rich history of the Richmond District which includes robbers roosts and race tracks, squatters and roadhouses, a saloon district and a red light district, the 1902 and 1903 Big Games, an earthquake shack camp, San Francisco’s only columbarium, the house of Wyatt Earp, and lots more.

And it’s free! For more information, call (415) 557-4266.

Inner Richmond Walking Tour, Part 1
Sunday, October 4 | 10am – 12noon
Meet at the corner of Geary Boulevard and 3rd Avenue

Inner Richmond Walking Tour, Part 2
Sunday, October 11 | 10am – 12noon
Meet at the corner of Geary Boulevard and 6th Avenue

Sarah B.

The quarter stretch of the Richmond District’s Bay District Racing Track, 1890s.
Courtesy of California State Library via outsidelands.org

This Saturday, local non-profit Leap will host their 26th annual Sandcastle Contest on Ocean Beach.

It is Northern California’s largest sandcastle building event, and the competition is fierce between teams of architects, engineers, contractors, designers and local elementary school students.

This year’s theme, “Stories in the Sand: Classic Children’s Books,” will inspire an array of one-of-a-kind creations featuring elaborate castles, formidable monsters, and gargantuan monuments in approximately twenty-five, 400-square-foot plots.

Leap will also debut a new feature at the 2009 contest: a community sandcastle-building area where bystanders can team up with volunteers and one of Leap’s teaching architects to try their hand at designing their own sand structure. So if you have visions of sandy greatness, seize the moment!

This mission of Leap…imagination in learning is to stimulate imagination and creativity in Bay Area children by bringing visual and performing artists and architects into the classroom for extended residencies. Leap artists and architects team with teachers to design participatory projects that augment and amplify the school’s curriculum.

Proceeds from the Sandcastle contest, gathered from sponsors and team fundraising, will go back into Leap’s programs, which serve over 6,500 children in the Bay Area.

The Sandcastle Contest takes place this Saturday from 10am to 4pm on Ocean Beach, near the intersection of Balboa and the Great Highway.

Sarah B.

Volunteer Ruth Ann Rosenberg, an integral part of the Adult Day Health Center at the Institute on Aging, is the recipient of a Jefferson Award from CBS Channel 5. CBS-5 reporters Kate Kelly and Sharon Chin give out the award each week to Bay Area heroes.

Ruth Ann is being honored for her years of service at the Institute’s Adult Day Health Center, which provides activities, medical services, and therapy for over one hundred seniors in the Richmond District. She wasn’t a senior herself when she began helping out, but now, the Center is named after Ruth Ann for her years of volunteer work.

“It gives you a feeling that you are really helping other people, you are giving of yourself,” Ruth Ann explains.

In addition to her work with the Adult Day Health Center, Ruth Ann has a long history of volunteering her time at other local organizations like Mt. Zion Hospital.

Read the full story on CBS5.com or watch her profile on Channel 5 Wednesday, 9/30 at 6pm, Thursday, 10/1 at 12noon, or Saturday, 10/3 at 8:30am. The video is also available here.

Congratulations to Ruth Ann!

Sarah B.

With the troubling Jaycee Dugard case in the news over the past several weeks, I began wondering what sex offenders might be living in my own neighborhood. Thankfully, there are tools online that can help you find the information.

My first stop was the website Family Watchdog which enables you to look up offenders by city, street, zip code, or even by name if there is a particular offender you want to track.

A quick search on “94118″ showed me a map of the Richmond District with small squares to denote offenders. Family Watchdog categorizes different types of offenders with specific colors, mapping out those that have committed offenses against children, as well as those that have been convicted of rape, sexual battery or something else. Screenshot of Richmond District map

Click a square on the map and another window pops up with detailed information about the offender including their photo, address, prior convictions, physical description, and any known aliases.

The map also points out schools and parks. I noticed one child offender, Mills Johnson, lives at Cabrillo and 17th, right next to Argonne Elementary School. Same for Ronald Benavidez who lives one block from Star of the Sea elementary on 9th Avenue.

Another tool that has gotten a fair amount of media attention is the Offender Locator app for the iPhone. Download the free app and you can quickly look up child sex offenders in your area (unlike Family Watchdog, the app does not list other types of sexual offenders).

Because an iPhone has built-in GPS capabilities, the app can use your current location to pull up a list of nearby offenders. Or type in a different U.S. address, perhaps that of a location you’ll be visiting with your kids.

Both Family Watchdog and the Offender Locator app have the same data in them. That’s because they both pull from each state’s “Registered Offenders Database” which is publicly available information. Keep in mind that though offenders are required by law to re-register every time they move, it doesn’t always happen. So the data you see on Family Watchdog or in the iPhone app may not be current.

At the end of the day, knowledge is power. While I don’t want to alarm or scare parents or other residents that live in the Richmond, I think it’s important to know your surroundings and be aware of who and what is in your community. I hope you find these free resources useful.

Sarah B.

Screenshots from the Offender Locator app for the iPhone. On the left is a list of offenders near my current location in the Richmond. The other shows the details about an offender after you tap on their name.

Last week, Greg at N Judah Chronicles told me about a bookstore in the Sunset that had some old Richmond Banner newspapers for sale. I picked up a few of them and look forward to sharing some of the stories with you in future posts.

I confess I don’t know much about the Richmond Banner other than what I glean from its inside page. The paper was started in 1893; I have issues dating up to 1931. It was published every Friday out of its offices at 320 6th Avenue, and the subscription price was $1 per year.

Here’s what the Richmond Banner “editorially stood for” in its January 2, 1931 issue:

- Removal of cemeteries that separate the district from the rest of San Francisco
- Completion of the automatic traffic control system on Geary street
- A street car line on Balboa street
- A senior high in the district
- Better street lighting for Fulton and other district streets
- Better transportation to the Sunset district
- Placing of wires underground on Geary street
- Consruction of a fireproof grammar school south of Geary street between Seventeenth and Thirty-seventh avenues
- Construction of a branch library in the western part of the Park Presidio district
- Preservation of China Cove for the public and the renaming of it to either “Phelan Beach” or “James D. Phelan Park”
- Erection of the proposed Golden Gate Bridge
- Cutting of Clement street through to the beach

Many of the items on the list did come to fruition. George Washington High School, still the only high school in the district, opened in 1936. And all of the cemeteries were eventually relocated outside of San Francisco.

Though I learned recently from the book San Francisco’s Richmond District that while the markers and headstones were removed from City Cemetery, many bodies were left where they lay. So the next time you’re out golfing at Lincoln along Land’s End, be sure to pay your respects.

If you know more history about the Richmond Banner newspaper, please leave it in a comment. Thanks!

Sarah B.

As always, this year’s free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park will live up to its name. The schedule of performers is incredibly eclectic, ranging from Lyle Lovett to MC Hammer to Aimee Mann.

The festival stretches over three days with performers on six stages on Speedway, Lindley and Marx Meadows in Golden Gate Park. Be sure to print out a map before you head to the festival and check the schedule to decide where and when you favorite artists will perform.

On the days of the festival, keep an eye on their twitter stream for any last minute updates or schedule changes. If you’re planning to attend, you can bring coolers, blankets, and short-back chairs. Cameras are ok as are dogs on leash, and free bike parking will be available, courtesy of the SF Bike Coalition (I always leave them a little tip as thanks; it’s a great service they provide).

The festival is free for everyone and financed entirely by Warren Hellman, a wealthy investment banker in San Francisco. In an article on last year’s festival, Chronicle critic Joel Selvin says Hellman “has endowed San Francisco with a weekend of the finest acoustic music from all over the country, building a repertory company out of the top names in American folk music and filling out the bills on the festival’s stages with the best available talent from the broadest reaches of the world of acoustic music.”

In other words, if you’re into music, you definitely want to make it out to the park for this one.

Sarah B.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, 2007. Photo by Flickr member Steve Rhodes

This week, KQED began airing Ken Burns’ latest documentary The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.

In support of that, QUEST, KQED’s local science and environment series, is debuting their own documentary on our local national park: the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

The half-hour program, Bringing the Parks to the People, covers Land’s End, Crissy Field, Alcatraz and the Marin Headlands, all part of the GGNRA. QUEST examines how these national parks came to be preserved, the rise of non-profit land trusts in protecting and restoring Northern California’s open spaces, and how these vital places are used and maintained by the communities served by them.

You can watch it tonight at 7:30pm on KQED Channel 9, watch it below, or watch it on KQED.com in higher quality. The show is also available as an iTunes podcast.

Sarah B.

Looking for some laughs? Turn off the boob tube and head out to the Rockit Room Tuesday night for the 34th Annual San Francisco Comedy Competition.

The Rockit is host to the first night of the final round of the $25,000 contest. This years finalists include Danny Bevins (Los Angeles), Jarrod Harris (Atlanta), Tom Simmons (Los Angeles), Maureen Langan (New York City) and Rodger Lizaola (Seattle).

Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. The laughs begin at 9pm.

The video below is of comedian Tom Simmons telling jokes about his difficulties at the grocery store. Come on, now, you know you’ve had trouble with that U-Scan thingamajig too!

Sarah B.