Free Things to Do in San Francisco

The Knuckle Knockers are “homey hayseeds hailing from the Heights of Bernal.” The trio sings and plays toe-tappin’ music on fiddle, guitar, banjo, and mandolin.

Where:

Red Hill Books
401 Cortland Avenue (@ Bennington)
Bernal Heights

When:

Sunday, March 22, 2009

3:00 PM

More information:

Red Hill Books (415) 648-5331

The Knuckle Knockers

Future Events:

Red Hill Books — a sister store of Phoenix Books and Dog Eared Books — has music on most Sunday afternoons, and evening concerts whenever there’s a full moon! They also have author readings, book launch parties, etc. Plus there are story hours for kids at 10 am on Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Check out their schedule.

The Academy of Sciences is free on the third Wednesday of every month, which this month will be on March 18.

Fun facts: The new building cost $500 million dollars. The roof contains 1.7 million native plants. Sixty-eight percent of the building’s insulation is from recycled blue jeans. The Philippine Coral Reef tank holds 212,000 gallons of water. Inside the rain forest exhibit, it’s 82-85 degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity is at least 75%. The blue-whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling is 87 feet long.

When:

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Opens 9:30 am. Final entry time is 4:00 pm. Closes at 5:00 pm.

Where:

Music Concourse, Golden Gate Park (around 9th Avenue)

Logistics:

Expect to wait on line.

More information:

California Academy website

415-379-8000

Photo (c) 2009 Ms Terri

The annual Anarchist’s Bookfair has expanded to two days this year, and features a full line-up of speakers, an art show and, of course, books.

Here’s a description of a prior year’s fair:

Thousands of like-minded souls with a taste for state smashing, patriarchy toppling, government defying, feminism, punk, radical politics and children’s books with titles like “Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon” came out in force for the 10th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair.

They snatched up books by Noam Chomsky and Emma Goldman, greeted old friends, bought “Bomb the mall” T-shirts and DVDs about “imperial democracy” and happily lay in the sunshine with their anarchist dogs and wild-plant food pamphlets.

By midafternoon, the San Francisco County Fair Building and the lawn outside were packed with everyone from bookish brainiacs leafing through dense texts to green-haired punks with pierced septums and a distinctive, musky scent…

Where:

County Fair Building, Golden Gate Park, right inside 9th and Lincoln entrance

When:

Saturday, March 14, 2009, 10 to 6
and
Sunday, March 15, 2009, 11 to 5

More information:

Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair

Poster by Hugh D’Andrade

Plant a tree on Sunset Boulevard, attend a Green Resource Fair, take a tree tour, or attend tree care and equipment demonstrations.

Special activities for children and for high school students.

There will also be docent led tours at the Botanical Gardens (formerly the Arboretum) in Golden Gate Park at 10:30 am and 1:30 pm, as well as maps available for self-led tours to learn about street trees.

Where:

Most of the activities listed above take place at 37th Avenue and Ortega, in the Sunset district.

The Botanical Gardens (Arboretum) is near the 9th and Lincoln entrance to Golden Gate Park.

When:

Tree-planting on Sunset Boulevard is from 9 am to 2 pm.

For the times of other activities, see the website below.

More Information:

SF Arbor Day website

Email to volunteer for a specific event: volunteer@sfdpw.org

Phone number for more information or to volunteer: 415-641-2600

Photo from sfarborday.org

There will be over 200 exhibitors with information on things for children and famliies to do this summer. For younger children, these include camps, classes, cultural activities, sports, and arts and crafts. For youth ages 14 to 21, there will be information on getting a summer job. For parents, there will be free massages!

This is sponsored by the Mayor and The Examiner. There will be fun and games for kids, all free.

Where:
Concourse Exhibition Center
Eighth & Brannan

When:

Saturday, March 14, 2009
10 am to 3 pm

Free Roundtrip Shuttle:

From Third & Palou (south side of Third) to Eighth & Brannan

More information:

See sfkids.org, call 311, or look in the March 13th Examiner

Until today, the San Francisco Zoo’s three-month old baby gorilla, who became famous around the world after being neglected by his mother, did not have a name.

The zoo held a naming contest. Five thousand people from 40 different countries entered. A panel of human judges chose five names, and today they took five color-coded cantaloupes, each representing a name, and gave them to the baby gorilla’s father, Oscar Jonsey, to make the final selection.

Oscar Jonsey selected the green cantaloupe, which meant he chose the name “Hasani” for his son. Hasani, which means “handsome” in Swahili, was entered in the contest by Amanda VerPloeg of Oskaloosa, Iowa.

Hasani’s surrogate mother is still being trained, and the baby is not yet on public display. But you can watch him on a “Nursery Cam” at the zoo from noon to 2:00 pm, and you can see lots of pictures and videos on the zoo’s website.

The Zoo is free, for San Francisco residents only, on the first Wednesday of every month.

Picture (c) San Francisco Zoo

This will be the 158th St. Patrick’s Day parade in the City, with more than 5,000 people marching.

There will also be a festival all day in Civic Center Plaza, with Irish music and dancing on two stages. There will also be children’s rides, a petting zoo, pony rides, arts and crafts, and, of course, the usual outdoor-event food booths.

When:

Saturday, March 14, 2009

The Parade starts at 11:30 am at Second and Market, and goes up Market Street to the Civic Center.

The Festival runs all day in Civic Center Plaza, from 10 am to 5 pm. Live music begins at 11 am.

More Information:

Festival info

Photos of last year’s parade

Photo of the Civic Center Festival (c) Gregory Case

This looks very cool! The Exploratorium is placing 20 exhibits along the northern waterfront in and around Fort Mason, starting on March 13, and continuing indefinitely.

Exhibits invite people to look at the Golden Gate Bridge through a telescope to observe how it moves in response to temperature changes, to taste water with different concentrations of salinity that correspond to different portions of the Bay (just a demonstration — the water isn’t actually from the Bay!), and to observe wind patterns by seeing the motion of arrows on 35-foot tall poles.

If the weather is as nice as it has been recently, this could be a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

When:

Starting March 13, 2009

Where:

Fort Mason, entrance at Marina Boulevard and Buchanan Street

More information:

Directions to Fort Mason

Exploratorium press release, with photos

Article in the SF Chronicle

Photo of wind arrows exhibit (c) The Exploratorium

There are many things that are free in San Francisco on the first week of every month. Here’s the schedule for March, 2009:

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Free admission to the de Young Museum, Legion of Honor, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Museum of Modern Art, Cartoon Art Museum (pay what you wish), Museum of Craft and Folk Art, and the Conservatory of Flowers.

More information: Free first Tuesdays

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The San Francisco Zoo (SF residents only), and the Exploratorium.

More information: Free first Wednesdays

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Bird-watching walk in Golden Gate Park botanical gardens.

More information: First Saturday bird watching walk.

Bank of America Free Museum weekend (B of A account or credit card required). Free admission to the de Young Museum, Legion of Honor, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora.

More information: Bank of America free first weekend.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Bank of America Free Museum weekend (continued)

Picture of the Museum of Modern Art (SF MoMA) by WolfmanSF, via Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

The Conservatory of Flowers is known for its beautifully restored wood and glass building and its tropical plants.

Now, it’s also temporarily known for its model trains.

One room of the Conservatory has been set aside for a special exhibit of model trains rolling through a landscape dotted with models of San Francisco landmarks.

What makes the exhibit special is that all the landmarks are all built out of recycled “found” materials. It’s very cleverly done. At first glance, you may not notice anything unusual, but then you are likely to do a double take as you start to see what the models are made of.

For example, the Golden Gate Bridge model uses strings of beads for the cables, the Transamerica building is made of computer keyboard keys and floppy discs, and Coit Tower is made of miniblind slats, tape measures, and plumbing supplies. My favorite model, the Ferry Building, uses forks, spoons, and chopsticks; a cheese grater for the base of the tower with an oven timer as the clock; and scrabble tiles to spell out “Port of San Francisco” on top.

My blogging buddy Jodapoet has lots of pictures on her blog.

The special exhibit runs through April 19, 2009.

The Conservatory is free on the first Tuesday of every month, so there are two more opportunities to see the train room for free: tomorrow (March 3) and April 7.

If you can’t make it on a free Tuesday, the regular admission price is $5.00. Hours are 9 am to 4:30 pm, Tuesday through Sunday (closed on Mondays).

More information:

Conservatory of Flowers “Golden Gate Express” exhibit

Conservatory of Flowers phone: 415-666-7001

More information on all the places — six museums, in addition to the Conservatory — that are free on the first Tuesday of every month: Free First Tuesdays

Photograph of the front of the Conservatory of Flowers (c) J. Ash Bowie, via Wikipedia