SF gifts: Union Square, Ferry Building

This being the holiday season, I made it a point to stop by and see two old friends: the Ferry Building and Union Square.

The latter was chaotic, cheerfully so. The former, with its demure garlands above the crowds, was as tasteful as a woodcut of Father Christmas. Each conjures up impressions of San Franciscos past while radiating the vitality of youth.

Yes, youth.

Only a decade has passed since these two storied spots were retooled for the way we live now. Each upgrade did what it set out to do, leaving us with settings that embody quite different aspects of today's city.

Union Square is the San Francisco of mainstream America, urban sights and sounds for the masses. The larger retail district that borrows its name attracts the shopping throngs; the square itself is an ideal place to meet for a rendezvous after separate errands. Or pose for photographs. Or, this time of year, reward children for their patience by taking them for a spin on the seasonal skating rink.

That rink shares the space this month with a giant Christmas tree and an oversize menorah. Carolers pass through, and protesters, and groups of schoolchildren on their way to see the kittens and puppies in Macy's windows. Keeping watch over it all is the female figure dubbed Winged Victory who stands atop the Dewey Monument, a granite shaft erected in 1903 to commemorate the Spanish American War.

Disparate elements

The monument also is the one familiar element retained in the square's current incarnation as a tiered plaza with green along the edges and flat granite in the middle. The design by Michael Fotheringham and April Philips was selected in a 1997 architectural competition, which was followed in five years by the $25 million physical overhaul of the block bounded by Geary, Post, Powell and Stockton streets.

Purely in terms of aesthetics, too many aspects of the redone square either don't mesh or don't do their job. (One quick example: The four small service buildings in the square are adorned with trellises that consist of thin round bars that, because of their dimensions, provide little shade.) That said, the landscape architects nailed the basics: clear out the middle for gatherings of all sorts, then break down the scale of the periphery so that sunbathers can sprawl on hillocks along Post, or co-workers can gather for lunch on steps with a voyeuristic angle on the Geary Street goings-on. Immersed or apart, you know where you are.

The Ferry Building offers a more choreographed and memorable set of sensations.

The exterior is unmistakable, of course, with its arched stone wall along the Embarcadero and its clock tower that stands between Market Street and the bay. Inside, though, history is adjusted to the artisanal urges of the Bay Area's food culture. Stalls are devoted to dried mushrooms and olive oil, ultra-luxe chocolate and arcane byproducts of pork. The wine bar includes bins where you can recycle corks.

The pale bricks framing the stalls, meanwhile, are atmospheric rather than structural - when commuter-filled ferries picked up and dropped off riders on the second floor in pre-bridge days, the bottom level was a storage area off-limits to the public.

Rarefied and real

But if some aspects of today's Ferry Building are precious, so are aspects of San Francisco in 2012. The Ferry Building's triumph is that it manages to feel at once rarefied and real, at one with the city around it.

People pass through Union Square; at the Ferry Building, they linger or bring friends from out of town to indulge. But you can also grab cheap sandwiches, or plant yourself at one of the comfortable tables in the alcove. Commuters rush to meet the trickle of ferries that remain, people with nowhere else to go sit for hours on benches that face the bay.

In this holiday season, each of these spots has an extra-vivid glow; simply being in either one offers cause enough to smile. They are two of the gifts that come with living in the Bay Area. Here's an even bigger gift for which we should give thanks: Wherever you live in our region, there is an abundance of remarkable places to savor. The best ones cost little or nothing, and the glow lasts all year long.

Source: http://feeds.sfgate.com/click.phdo?i=a2ebf19551e189417aaff03690aa2b8a

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