Finding the Way — Empty Treasures and Fleet Week Crowds

By the third round of fieldwork, I had a system. I could plan ten parks, pack for a full day, follow the route, take the photographs, and bring everything home in a form the application could use.

Systems are comforting. San Francisco is under no obligation to cooperate with them.

The next twenty sites divided themselves into two days that seemed designed to prove that point. One took me through the quiet southeastern edge of the city, where I sometimes had an entire park to myself. The other sent me into the Presidio during Fleet Week, along with what appeared to be every other person in Northern California.

Alone with a camera in the southeast

Hunters Point, Bayview, and Visitacion Valley felt far removed from the familiar postcard circuit. During my visits, many of the parks were nearly empty. That made it easy to photograph paths, play structures, entrances, and boundaries without waiting for a clear frame. It also made me conspicuous.

Walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood alone with a camera involves a small amount of self-conscious negotiation. I knew why I was there. Nobody else did. At first, I felt more visible than I wanted to be. The feeling eased as I settled into the routine: find the entrance, understand the shape of the site, take the useful photographs, and keep moving.

The quiet gave me time to notice how much character these places held. Visitacion Valley's parks shifted with the neighborhood's topography and reflected community investment that was not always obvious in the official material I had reviewed. The pages could list features, but the sites felt more considered and specific than those lists suggested.

The climb to Bayview Park

Bayview Park presented one more serious hill, as if the previous outing had not made the point clearly enough. The route upward was long and steep. The summit felt almost detached from the streets below.

Then the view opened.

It was among the broadest panoramas I had encountered during the project, the kind that makes the climb seem reasonable in retrospect. The park sat high above the neighborhood, quiet and largely absent from the usual visitor itineraries. It was difficult to reconcile that sense of discovery with how little visual context a person might find before deciding whether to go.

This was where the project made the most sense to me. A database can confirm that Bayview Park exists and place a marker on the hill. A few grounded photographs and a careful description can help someone understand why they might make the climb.

The southeastern sweep ended in the now-established fashion: excellent food before the drive home. This time it was a burrito in San Bruno, followed by the highway back to the East Bay and the satisfying knowledge that another ten sites were in the camera.

A minor scheduling oversight

The next outing was supposed to be another orderly park survey. I would drive into San Francisco, find somewhere to park near the Presidio, and work through the route on foot.

There was one flaw in this plan: it was Fleet Week.

Every waterfront lawn, overlook, and plausible parking space appeared to have been claimed by someone watching the air show. Traffic slowed. Lots filled. My carefully arranged route gave way to the more immediate objective of finding any legal place to leave the car.

I kept driving deeper into the Presidio until a space finally appeared. At that point, changing the plan again felt less appealing than simply accepting the consequences. I parked, gathered my equipment, and prepared to walk a great deal farther than intended.

The sky becomes the main event

The southeastern parks had been so quiet that I could hear myself moving through them. The Presidio came with a wall of sound.

Blue Angels crossed low overhead throughout the hike. Conversations stopped whenever a jet approached. People filled lawns, paths, and overlooks, their attention pulled upward. The park was not functioning as a retreat from the city that day. It had become a vast public amphitheater.

By the time I climbed through the trail network toward Inspiration Point, roughly a hundred people were pressed along the overlook, waiting for the next pass across the bay. Documenting the place meant working around bodies, cameras, picnic supplies, and a spectacle much larger than the landscape I had arrived to photograph.

One of the resulting images caught a Blue Angel above a wooded hillside trail. It is an honest photograph of that afternoon, but not a neutral description of the park. That distinction matters. An event can completely transform how public space looks, sounds, and functions without becoming part of its permanent identity.

The experience clarified why Baker Parks separates evergreen descriptions from temporary notices. A closure, construction project, or major event may be the most important thing to know on a particular day. It should be prominent, sourced, and allowed to expire without rewriting the enduring story of the place underneath it.

The long way home

After hours of walking under roaring skies, there was no celebratory meal. I was exhausted, my ears were ringing, and the camera was full. I went straight back across the bridge.

Together, the two outings brought the project into focus. Public space does not have one natural state. A park can be empty enough to make a solitary photographer feel conspicuous. Another can absorb an enormous crowd and become the stage for a regional event. The same place can probably do both on different days.

Baker Parks had started as an effort to add visual context to municipal data. Somewhere between Bayview Park's quiet summit and the Fleet Week crowds, it became more than that. The real subject was orientation: helping someone understand where they were going, what kind of place they might find, and which parts of that understanding could change before they arrived.

The routes were systematic. The city never was. That was what made the project worth continuing.