Today, the city of San Francisco rolled out free WiFi in 32 public spaces across San Francisco, including the Richmond Recreation Center on 18th Avenue between California and Clement.
The new service is part of a new program from the city’s Department of Technology, who used a $600,000 donation from Google to fund the initiative.
The 31 other locations now offering free WiFi include parks, recreation centers and plazas. 2 of the parks – Dolores Park and Boeddeker Park – are under construction and will come online in a few months. See the full list
The new network is called #SFWiFi, so if you’re in the vicinity of the free WiFi, look to connect with that name in your network list. The older the network name “_San_Francisco_Free_WiFi” will no longer be available.
This new program should make city teens happy, according to the Trust for Public Land’s Parks for People. Durign the program’s design phase, they held a focus group with teenagers and asked them what would make them go to parks more. Their answer was simple: “WiFi”.
Sarah B.
Great, can we take it out of the libraries now, so there is a place for dedicated reading?
Somehow I just don’t see how putting wifi in the parks/recreation centers contributes to the furthering of physical activity and social activity we normally expect at these kind of places. Seems almost as useless as putting televisions in the parks for people to watch would be.
Oh sure, some parents who bring their kids to play with other kids in the park may relish the availability of wifi to entertain themselves, but wouldn’t it be better if they were monitoring their kids or interacting in-person with other parents?
Perhaps it’s a conspiracy to provide parks & rec employees an entertainment outlet on-duty or to make free wifi available to some favored residents who live near these venues and allow them to cut their Comcast expenses.
I thought the whole idea of Parks and Recreation was to further activity and nature. Maybe it won’t be long before Golden Gate Park gets sold off to developers to fund a free wifi network for everyone in the city .