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Everyone knows about local billionaire Don Fisher's plan to rule the world by putting a museum for his personal art collection in the Presidio. What we (and, probably you) didn't know is that the preferred site for the museum is none other than scruffy local fave Presidio Bowl. According to the alley's update page,
We are still trying to work with the Presidio Trust on lease extensions as well as finding a new home for bowling, but to date we have not been successful. The Presidio Trust has been unable to find a suitable location to build a new bowling center. Your comments are necessary to champion our cause.
We're not the biggest or the best of bowlers, but if Presidio goes, the only alley left in the city will be at Yerba Buena Gardens, where there are teenagers on Friday nights. Ugh. We shudder. Naturally, the only way to do anything is to leave a public comment, which will probably be ignored, given the City's current preference for Art (stand around! Look at stuff!) over fun (beer! Fried food!). But do it anyway. If we lose our last real bowling alley without a fight, what does that say about us?
Photo of the alley from Flickr user Thomashawk, used under a Creative Commons license.
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Oh, the generosity of the grotesquely rich.
Donny is going to edify and bless us with his personal taste in expensive trinkets that only the rich can afford.
Oh that Donny, he is just the nicest. Isn't he?
Great, another bowling alley to disappear.
Japantown bowl is gone, and now this.
An no offense to the current condo owners at 1600 Webster (except that tenant's association president David Zisser who pissed off the entire Japantown community with that disgusting letter last August); I just think the alley should have been kept.
If you want to read Zisser's letter, it's posted here:
http://www.akit.org/2008/08/japantown-festivals-threatened.html
The presidio bowl is gone no matter what. It's better that something that will be open to the public be there than something like a investment firm. As it is the place is only busy for a few hours a day (I can see the parking lot from where I sit), I would guess that it serves at most 1000 people a week. Whereas the de Young serves 15000 people on the weekend alone. As for where those bowlers are going to go? Well the lanes at the Moscone center are sterile, but generally empty, and accessible by public transit. Serra Bowl is only a 10 minute walk from a bart station, and generally have lanes available as well. But if you must drive to the bowling ally, Sea Bowl has lanes available most saturday nights.
Fuck you, man. It's bowling.
Great, an extra 15,000 people a weekend in the Presidio.
I want the Presidio for only me! BTW when was the last time you set foot near the Main Post?
Sunday...to go bowling.
And no, it's not about me, I just don't think what makes the Presidio so great will be aided by a mass influx of people.
How many people and hours is your local neighborhood baseball field serving? Because guess what? Bowling is more popular than playing baseball.
Baseball fields have multiple uses (and I would venture to guess that they are more often used to play softball than actual baseball which I doubt is counted in your statistics), bowling alleys only one.
but bowlers are 15x more important than other users.
Oh, mushmouth, try turning off your TV once in a while. Bowling is more popular than baseball and softball combined. It is also twice as popular as jogging.
mushmouth, your argument is exactly the Fisher's argument for building a huge museum in the middle of the Presidio. And the beloved bowling alley is just an ant in the way of their grotesque display of wealth -- dispensable in their eyes! Do you really want the evil Fishers to take over the place? Because that's what they'll do. The Presidio is one of San Francisco's most cherished public spaces -- build your fucking museum somewhere else. And if they win... you will surely feel the impact whether you bowl or not.
The remodeled Academy of Sciences's impact can be felt all over the inner Sunset. And if you don't believe me, try parking your car withing a 5 mile radius on a weekend these days. All the free parks in the area are no longer free to the public because of the traffic and parking issues.
This is bigger than a bowling alley -- this is about corporate big wigs taking over our public space. Don't be an idiot and fall for their stupid tricks.
mushmouth, your argument is exactly the Fisher's argument for building a huge museum in the middle of the Presidio. And the beloved bowling alley is just an ant in the way of their grotesque display of wealth -- dispensable in their eyes! Do you really want the evil Fishers to take over the place? Because that's what they'll do. The Presidio is one of San Francisco's most cherished public spaces -- build your fucking museum somewhere else. And if they win... you will surely feel the impact whether you bowl or not.
The remodeled Academy of Sciences's impact can be felt all over the inner Sunset. And if you don't believe me, try parking your car withing a 5 mile radius on a weekend these days. All the free parks in the area are no longer free to the public because of the traffic and parking issues.
This is bigger than a bowling alley -- this is about corporate big wigs taking over our public space. Don't be an idiot and fall for their stupid tricks.
I park my car without a problem within a 1 mile radius of the academy of sciences every weekend. Sorry the currently very empty parking lot tells me that the Presidio Bowling Alley just isn't that beloved, not even on a rainy day. The idea of it is far more beloved than the practice.
So sorry the implementation of a world class museum which literally brings joys to thousands a day is impacting your right to be a lazy mo'fo' and park your car in front of your house.
Love the selfish motivations people in SF have.
Screw the greater good of the city! I want my little suburban dreamland!
I hear there are both lots of parking and bowling alleys in Forbes new #1, Stockton
Uh, yeah, I'm not agreeing with the museum necessarily, but I live on Cole only a few blocks from the park and there's no huge problem with parking related to the museum. Parking is pretty much always fairly crappy and the Academy of Sciences certainly hasn't changed that.
More telling is saying 5 miles. Even as hyperbole that's over the top. Five miles away and you're either downtown, in the ocean, or all the way over in Ingleside where there's usually parking to be found.
That particular bowling alley is doomed regardless of the Fishers.
Maybe they'll find a new location...
San Francisco: "We dont need no steeenking modern art collection unparalled the world over - FOR FREE. We prefer bowling!"
Please Don Fisher - give your collection to another city - any place - Cincinatti! We're way too provincial up in here.
It ain't free. The Presidio Trust would be on the hook for a lot of improvements if this museum is built.
If you have a car, there's Serra Bowl just south of the sf city line in Daly City.
http://www.zvents.com/daly-city-ca/venues/show/17000-serra-bowl
Serra bowl is only a 5 minute walk from the Colma Bart station
Bowling alleys are one of those perfect storms of space in an urban area coupled with a business that has seen ups and downs.
Bowling alleys tend to take up a lot of space (presidio is smaller but still). when bowling became "uncool" to the yuppie hipsters of the 70s and such the businesses declined and often times it made sense to close 'em up and make 'em in to something else (Amoeba Records, anyone?)
Now bowling is "cool" again but all that's left around here is the Yerba Buena sterile overpriced but serviceable lanes and Presidio, and that's it. The rest are kinda far away, and part of bowling is the fun of the old-fashioned style of these places (in this regard LA has SF's ass kicked).
I would imagine that no matter what, Presidio's going to have a tough time because of the location, and because there's so many people who want to build Pretty Things on scenic land, and in the end, a bowling alley that has budweiser in bowling-pin bottles probably isn't at the top of most people's list to save.
Which is too bad because bowling can be fun. And it's better than say, smoking crack or gang-related activities that involve shooting.
Far away? Where do you live, Cow Hollow? Serra Bowl is larger and generally more accessible (Colma Bart station 200ft) than the Presidio Bowl. After 7:00 pm the 29 stops going past Baker Beach, thus the closest bus is the 43 which stops nearly a mile from the bowling alley.
Funny. The Serra Bowl went from a 10 minute walk to a 5 minute walk to 200ft from the Colma Station. Which is it?
The 200 ft figure sounds most correct. It's right next to the station, across from the SamTrans lot (no, I don't mean the BART lot; I mean the SamTrans lot).
200 feet is what I would guess about a five minute walk, all are rough with only one significant digit. And according to google maps its less than 100 meters. (or about 300 feet, sosumi I was off by 50%, which is close enough for government work) The bottom line is the same, Serra Bowl is more accessible than the Presidio Bowl
BTW how do you take transit to the Presidio Bowl? Presidi-go?
They should put the museum in the Yerba Buena Center bowling alley and take the hockey rink with it. Who the hell ice skates in SF anyway?
I used to bowl in a league at Yerba Buena. The ice rink management took over management of the bowling alley and the place went to hell. The lanes are rarely oiled and the pinsetters are held together with bubblegum and bailing wire. Half the time we had to manually keep score because the computers were screwed up. Completely useless. We switched to a league at Serra which is a very nice, professional alley.
I've never bowled at Presidio - on the wrong side of town for me, but I'm told the lane is decent.
I play in 2 hockey leagues at Yerba Buena (and pay through the teeth for the privilege). That place has the ice in use from 5:00 am to 1:00 am every day.
Wait, the rink is more than 200ft from BART. How could this be?
It's still far more accessible than Presidio Bowl.
For someone who jerks off to train schedules, you seem awfully unconcerned by how many cars an art museum will bring to the Presidio.
First of all they are going to bulldoze the huge paved parking lot of the Parade Grounds and replace it with green space which can't come soon enough. But also with more reasons to head to the Main Post of the Presidio, it could then sustain better transit from downtown or other parts of the city. As it is today there is OK transit during the weekday day times if you live or work there (especially to the Embarcadero station), but pretty much car/bike only the rest of the time, and good luck ever getting a cab (even if you call them).
There's a shit-ton of transportation options to Golden Gate Park, too, but it doesn't prevent people headed to CAS on the weekends from flooding it with cars.
I'm all for the art museum and don't even really care about the bowling alley, I'm just not sold that it's the best place for it.
What are you talking about? There are great transit options to golden gate park compared to the Presidio. From downtown off the top of my head there are the 71, 5, 21, N-Judah, and the expensive but express "Culture Bus", these all stop within a couple blocks of the park.
Ooops I read that wrong. Really I want more transit options to the Presidio because I'm there most every day and it can be a real hassle to commute on (government) holidays and the weekends. If everyone else wants to drive I could care less, there won't be all that much parking so I probably won't see them all that much.