Weekends in the City

For the last two months we have spent just about every weekend in San Francisco. The notable exception was the first two weekends of July (and the week in between). They were spent in New York City (see previous post). Our oldest son has a studio apartment in San Francisco. We sublet it from him for two months while he was away studying and doing an internship in China.

For half of the SF weekends we had our two youngest kids with us. Other times they are with their Mom. When they are with us, we always try to do something fun and different. This time we played gay family tourist. It is fun to visit the local big city do things as if you are visiting for the first time. Some of the fun things we did in San Francisco with the kids:
Alcatraz Island cruise and tour: This can be an all day event. We took the first ferry over to the island. An opening talk was given by a former guard that worked at federal penitentiary. Alcatraz housed a number of notorious prisoners during it time, 1934-1963. Some of the famous inmates included Al "Scarface" Capone, George “Machine Gun” Kelly and the "Birdman" Robert Stroud. Today it is run by the National Park Service. It has a fantastic headset tour of the cellblocks.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: We organized a tour for our FrontRunners group and brought the kids as well. They were featuring an exhibit called “Matisse: Painter as Sculptor” The exhibition assembles more than 150 works, juxtaposing Matisse's sculptures with his celebrated paintings and drawings. The kids also liked some of the very strange exhibits that a modern art museum has in their galleries.
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco: “Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga” This exhibition features the Japanese comic and anime work of Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka was known for his two types of manga ‘comic pictures’. One was for a youth audience that including “Astro Boy”, “Kimba the White Lion” and “Princess Knight”; and the other, gekiga ‘drama pictures’ – more seriously-toned, adult oriented narratives such as “Song of Apollo” and “Ludwig B”.

Golden Gate Bay Cruise: Another cruise on the Bay. We went under the Golden Gate bridge and around Alcatraz again. We did this cruise several weeks after the Alcatraz tour. It was a beautiful clear afternoon.
Musée Mécanique at Pier 45 next to Fisherman’s Wharf. This is a huge collection of antique arcade machines that you can still play. The kids loved it.
We also went to a Giants game, walked around Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39, and saw the movie “Hairspray”.