The Unleashed TheARTre

This piece is on the way to Eberhard Janke (Edition Janus) in Berlin for his mail art call with the theme The Unleashed TheARTre.   Sending something from San Francisco, I felt the need to get out the glitter and memorialize one of our greatest homegrown theatre troupes — The Cockettes.  They were before my time in San Francisco and the Palace Pagoda Theatre is no more.  But I loved the performances when the Thrillpeddlers revived their shows in recent years.

Oak Woodlands

The story of Golden Gate Park is of a windswept landscape of dunes that 150 years ago were transformed into 1,107 acres a public park.   As beautiful as the park is, it is essentially artificial.  The waterfalls, the gardens, the redwoods, the meadows — none of it was there before.  Thanks to irrigation, horse manure and gardening, the natural landscape was transformed.   And while I appreciate coastal dunes, it’s hard to argue with Golden Gate Park — it is the escape from urban life we all need at times.

But the story has a twist.  This week I visited unspoiled nature with a lovely walk through some typical California oak woodlands.   Hiding in the northeast corner of Golden Gate Park, generally overlooked by most visitors, is a magical place.  A pocket of the original landscape that was never altered. 

It is difficult to capture the woodlands in photos or a painting, but it was worth a try.