Leisure time

It may have been “leisure time” for the people in the vintage pictures, but the traffic, crowds, and the fog on the Saturday before Halloween made it less of a leisure time and more of a labor of love for me. Still, I’ll take any day “out in the field” in San Francisco over a day in the office anytime. So come along with me, and we’ll find some relaxing things to do around San Francisco before the cold days of fall arrive.

It’s a mild afternoon, so let’s take in a movie. How about Star Wars at the Coronet Theater in 1977? We’ll have lots of leisure time waiting in line for two or three hours! (Vintage photo from the San Francisco Chronicle)

How about lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf, and a stroll around the boat lagoon with these three ladies, whoever they were? There are a lot more buildings on Russian and Nob Hills now, but you can still see all of the ones in the vintage picture in my photo.

We’ll head out to Ocean Beach around 1972. Hope I can get the Cliff House in my picture through the fog! It wasn’t a bad attempt as far as bad attempts go, especially considering that you couldn’t see the Cliff House half the time. There’s some really strange looking people in that early 1970’s picture, particularly the lady with the child in the center. I have no idea what kind of a beach outfit that is! This was at the time that the Cliff House was painted blue with ocean waves around the top.

Or, maybe, a leisure stroll through the “Oriental” Tea Garden is your cup of tea. The vintage picture is where the old entrance used to be to the Japanese Tea Garden, you can see it in the background of my photo. There have been a lot of changes to the landscape in the garden since the name was changed to the Oriental Tea Garden after Pearl Harbor. The original name was restored in 1952.

We can spend to a pleasant afternoon listening to music in the old Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park, and then wander over to the DeYoung Museum; except, there’s never a band playing there when I visit. That’s the old art deco museum during the 1920’s.

Well, if you’d like to ride the Sky Tram behind the Cliff House or ring the bell at sunset in the Redwood Dining Room we can hang around here for awhile! I never rode the Sky Tram, but I did listen to them ring the bell at sunset when the sun disappeared behind the ocean horizon quite a number of times.

Would you like to do some shopping at the Cliff House Gift Shop? I know, there were a lot more items to choose from long ago, but it’s not a bad little shop today and I almost always buy something when I go in there.