San Francisco Report

I was in San Francisco on business last week and arranged to stay through Saturday night so I could participate in their Friday Night Skate and check out the Golden Gate Park on Saturday. If you surf the web looking for places to skate or skating events that are highly rated, the San Francisco Friday Night Skate and the Golden Gate Park are near the top of most lists.

Unfortunately, after attending both events I was very disappointed. On a scale of 1-10 (10 being high) I rated this outing as a 4 on the fun scale. Read on for detail if interested...

The Friday Night Skate is held year-round and they meet at the intersection of the Embarcadero and Market Street, which is close to the Oakland to San Francisco Bridge on the SF side. The route follows the Embarcadero where you skate past the entrances to the different piers and past many restaurants, shops and taverns. This is a very touristy area. The pavement along here is smooth and the sidewalks are wide. After you get off the waterfront the route starts winding up and down through the hills and you eventually get back to the start point. Overall, about 15 miles. I give them credit for plotting the route through the mildest hills available. On the way back they even skate through two tunnels to avoid having steep climbs and descents. Fortunately for me I drove the route prior to the start and wisely chose to turn around at the end of the Embarcadero and not tackle the hills. The paving in the streets is on the rough side with the occasional manhole cover and pothole. This night there were about 100 people that showed up even though it was very windy and quite chilly. Like an idiot I had on shorts and a T-shirt not even thinking about packing my Polartec. The large majority of the skaters were young males and most of them had helmets, elbow, knee, wrist guards and four-wheel skates with brakes. In retrospect, I too would want to have on full body armor and my old K2's with a brake on each heel if I were to try this again.

On the plus side - it was good skating and fun on the Embarcadero. Not a great place for a speed or fitness workout due to people walking around but a good place to skate around for the fun of it. The people that participated in the FNS were hospitable and friendly. Somewhere between the plus and negative side - they had a boom box on a push cart (that some poor guy had to push) powered by a car battery so you had tunes blasting while you skated. On the negative side (for this old man anyway) - after you leave the Embarcadero the skating is a little too risky for me. Prior to the start of the skate the lead guy announced that last week was a good skate, no injuries, etc. Also, it cost $2 to cross the bridge into SF and finding a place to park was a hassle and then it cost $5 to park. The traffic there and back was heavy (sometimes stop and go) and the car traffic on the Embarcadero was heavy.

Saturday I went to the Golden Gate Park. Stuff on the web says that on Saturdays they close off one portion of a roadway and then on Sundays they close off a longer and different portion. I must have read an old write-up because on this Saturday there were no closed roads. I saw very few skaters in the park but did come across David "D" Miles, the father of inline skating in SF (so they say), who was giving a skating clinic. I waited until the end of his class and then asked him where to skate. He said the Embarcadero is the place to be. I told him I was there last night that I was looking for something for a speed skating workout so he suggested the stadium, which is in the Golden Gate Park. I found the stadium and did indeed get in a pretty good speed skating workout. At the stadium they have six (6) full sized soccer fields in a natural bowl. Going around the soccer fields is a smooth 20' wide paved track. This was a good skate but I was surprised I was the only one there.

On the plus side - the Golden Gate Park is quite large and beautiful with all sorts of plants, flowers, bushes and trees. The only good place to skate in the park, in my opinion, was at the stadium. On the negative side - almost all of the paved foot trails in the park are marked "no bicycles, no skating". There are quite a few roads in the park that one can skate on but they are somewhat hilly with frequent stop signs and the paving is "pebbly" and rough. All the roads in the park had lots of traffic and everyone was trying to find a place to park. It was noisy and congested. I entered the park near the intersection of Haight and Asbury (remember the 60's and 70's – it still exists in this neighborhood) and was practically mobbed by homeless people looking for handouts. Again, it cost $2 to cross the bridge and $5 for parking.

I never did see the Golden Gate Bridge as it was in fog.

I got the impression that inline skating isn’t as popular in SF as it once was, being replaced by skateboards or bicycles. Also, due to the hills it was almost entirely a 4 wheel skating environment, not a good place for fast fitness or speed skating.

In summary - I am glad I had an opportunity to check out these two events and see for myself what they are like. I doubt I will ever go back to SF to skate mainly because it is too expensive and too much of a hassle to get to the places to skate. I'm glad that I live where I do and have the skating opportunities that we probably take for granted now and then. I'm so glad we don't have the traffic, congestion, noise, smog or panhandlers that they have in SF.