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Guest
Guest
This is my neighborhood park, just two blocks from my flat. I love it. My niece had a few birthday parties there, and I go there to read, or just sit and be quiet. At the children's playground area all the Russian babushkas sit and gossip while the kids play. The Russian men play chess. I remember the other swan; when it seemingly disappeared people thought homeless Asians must have captured it for a meal. A dream flat for me would be at the lake. Reading about this couple makes me think I need to go there more, and not in my sweats (haha). - Perdita
Dog Days -- and Afternoons: Finding love at Mountain Lake Park - Sam Whiting, SF Chron., Nov. 21, 2004
Brandon Butrick and Elizabeth Mendelsohn met in the off-leash area in Mountain Lake Park in San Francisco, got married there and live across the street in an apartment with 17 windows facing it.
On split shifts, they walk their brown dog, Jose, through twice a day. Plus there are ancillary trips with their sons, 5 and 7, who treat the park "as their backyard, or front yard, or the closest thing we have to a yard," Butrick, 39, says as he and Jose make the four-block loop from the 12th Avenue entrance along the lakefront to the dog run at Eighth Avenue. Since they use the park, even the underappreciated Par Course, more than anyone, Butrick and Mendelsohn are co-presidents of the Friends of Mountain Lake, which has earned a beautification award from San Francisco Beautiful.
Funds are drying up for parks everywhere, but the Friends of the Lake have a Friend in the Airport Commission, thanks to the Presidio Trust and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. "The airport wants to suck up some land in the bay, so they had to pay for wetlands restoration somewhere else," Butrick explains. "How this sidewalk counts as wetlands restoration I have no idea. But they put up half a million dollars."
With duckies swimming along, a viewing platform, walkway and adjacent golf course Mountain Lake looks manmade. But it has been here 200 years. "On March 27, 1776, (reads a lakeside historic marker) Spanish Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, Father Pedro Font and an advance party of soldiers . . . camped here for two days, long enough to lay the groundwork for the settlements that would eventually become the City of San Francisco."
...
Though this was their first visit, all eight in Hurley's picnic group, including Billie Tweed from Birmingham, Ala., remember the visit of an alligator that slithered here from parts unknown in the summer of 1996. Butrick saw it once and would have mistaken it for a stick. But with every sighting in a 77-day siege, it grew in size and snappishness. Even Myrtle, the swan that ruled the park, got scared and quiet.
Soon there was enough hysteria that Trapper Jim, a registered Florida gator hunter, was summoned. Hundreds came out for the spectacle. But Trapper Jim slithered back to Florida, defeated. After several months at large, the alligator was finally trapped (or "rescued," as animal activists prefer) by a zookeeper, discovered to be disappointingly small (3 feet, 2 inches) and relocated to the Louisiana bayou. "I remember the alligator like it was yesterday," says Butrick, who has equal recall of the day 10 years ago he ran into Mendelsohn during Happy Hour at the dog run.
"It was a 101 Dalmatians story," he says, sitting at a green picnic table. "We met right here. We got married right there," pointing to a promontory maybe 50 yards away. One of the peculiarities of Mountain Lake is that the waters part into two jurisdictions, the way Lake Tahoe is cut into two states. The northern part of Mountain Lake is in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The southern part is in a city park.
Walking along this side, Butrick points out that there is no buffer between houses and park. Some Friends have gotten friendly enough to push their yards into parkland. Some wildlife has gotten friendly with the Friends -- the most obvious case being Myrtle the swan, who became smitten with a neighbor named Chuck Lantz. She'd follow him onto the tennis court, honking to keep interlopers away. Then she followed him home. "She would come out onto Lake Street and wake us up at about 6 in the morning with her honking," Butrick explains. "I believe she thought Chuck was her mate."
Myrtle would cross the street to the Lake Market, attracted by the awning emblazoned with white lettering against pink advertising "Tab." "She'd talk to all the people hanging out in front of the store and whatnot," says Butrick, whose Bay window looks at the store. It finally took a restraining order to get Myrtle -- who turned out to be a he -- removed to the zoo. That made the intersection quieter, but they missed Myrtle and went to visit. They managed to get a black-and-white portrait of the swan, which they keep framed with their wedding picture in Mountain Lake Park.
Dog Days -- and Afternoons: Finding love at Mountain Lake Park - Sam Whiting, SF Chron., Nov. 21, 2004
Brandon Butrick and Elizabeth Mendelsohn met in the off-leash area in Mountain Lake Park in San Francisco, got married there and live across the street in an apartment with 17 windows facing it.
On split shifts, they walk their brown dog, Jose, through twice a day. Plus there are ancillary trips with their sons, 5 and 7, who treat the park "as their backyard, or front yard, or the closest thing we have to a yard," Butrick, 39, says as he and Jose make the four-block loop from the 12th Avenue entrance along the lakefront to the dog run at Eighth Avenue. Since they use the park, even the underappreciated Par Course, more than anyone, Butrick and Mendelsohn are co-presidents of the Friends of Mountain Lake, which has earned a beautification award from San Francisco Beautiful.
Funds are drying up for parks everywhere, but the Friends of the Lake have a Friend in the Airport Commission, thanks to the Presidio Trust and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. "The airport wants to suck up some land in the bay, so they had to pay for wetlands restoration somewhere else," Butrick explains. "How this sidewalk counts as wetlands restoration I have no idea. But they put up half a million dollars."
With duckies swimming along, a viewing platform, walkway and adjacent golf course Mountain Lake looks manmade. But it has been here 200 years. "On March 27, 1776, (reads a lakeside historic marker) Spanish Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, Father Pedro Font and an advance party of soldiers . . . camped here for two days, long enough to lay the groundwork for the settlements that would eventually become the City of San Francisco."
...
Though this was their first visit, all eight in Hurley's picnic group, including Billie Tweed from Birmingham, Ala., remember the visit of an alligator that slithered here from parts unknown in the summer of 1996. Butrick saw it once and would have mistaken it for a stick. But with every sighting in a 77-day siege, it grew in size and snappishness. Even Myrtle, the swan that ruled the park, got scared and quiet.
Soon there was enough hysteria that Trapper Jim, a registered Florida gator hunter, was summoned. Hundreds came out for the spectacle. But Trapper Jim slithered back to Florida, defeated. After several months at large, the alligator was finally trapped (or "rescued," as animal activists prefer) by a zookeeper, discovered to be disappointingly small (3 feet, 2 inches) and relocated to the Louisiana bayou. "I remember the alligator like it was yesterday," says Butrick, who has equal recall of the day 10 years ago he ran into Mendelsohn during Happy Hour at the dog run.
"It was a 101 Dalmatians story," he says, sitting at a green picnic table. "We met right here. We got married right there," pointing to a promontory maybe 50 yards away. One of the peculiarities of Mountain Lake is that the waters part into two jurisdictions, the way Lake Tahoe is cut into two states. The northern part of Mountain Lake is in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The southern part is in a city park.
Walking along this side, Butrick points out that there is no buffer between houses and park. Some Friends have gotten friendly enough to push their yards into parkland. Some wildlife has gotten friendly with the Friends -- the most obvious case being Myrtle the swan, who became smitten with a neighbor named Chuck Lantz. She'd follow him onto the tennis court, honking to keep interlopers away. Then she followed him home. "She would come out onto Lake Street and wake us up at about 6 in the morning with her honking," Butrick explains. "I believe she thought Chuck was her mate."
Myrtle would cross the street to the Lake Market, attracted by the awning emblazoned with white lettering against pink advertising "Tab." "She'd talk to all the people hanging out in front of the store and whatnot," says Butrick, whose Bay window looks at the store. It finally took a restraining order to get Myrtle -- who turned out to be a he -- removed to the zoo. That made the intersection quieter, but they missed Myrtle and went to visit. They managed to get a black-and-white portrait of the swan, which they keep framed with their wedding picture in Mountain Lake Park.
