Pissing in Tiger's woods

The golf pros got Harding Park. When will SF residents get restrooms in public parks?

By Matthew Hirsch

For golf enthusiasts, the past weekend was awesome. Seventy of the world's best golfers teed up at newly renovated Harding Park, San Francisco's top public golf course, with the American Express championship coming down to a gripping two-hole playoff between John Daly and Tiger Woods that ended when Daly choked on a three-foot putt.

In recent years the city has pumped several million dollars into modernizing Harding Park just for moments like this, but not everyone welcomed the occasion. Some say the city has more pressing needs than subsidizing the pro golf tour and think the funds used for Harding Park's renovations should've gone to improve some of the city's more battered parks.

The most vocal objections come from H. Brown, a blogger and one-of-a-kind political blabster. Brown is bent because the city has dumped a ton of money into Harding Park but can't seem to find any cash to reopen the shuttered public restrooms in Panhandle Park, where he takes his two-year-old granddaughter, Tandewey, every Thursday afternoon.

No toilets, no peace

An intrepid writer and three-time, semiserious candidate for the Board of Supervisors, Brown spends most days watching government meetings on public access TV and opining on his blog, SFBulldog.com. Once a week he collects Tandewey from the sitter's, on Oak Street, and ventures across the street to Panhandle Park.

There, Brown and Tandewey stroll past the giant statue of William McKinley and usually wind up at the children's playground, where Tandewey goes for the slide. Problem is, the park's New Deal-era restrooms are permanently chained shut, which means they have to head home as soon as one of them has to pee.

Thanks to the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, there's a portable toilet nearby, but it's filthy and lacks the space needed to change a messy diaper.

"Hey, I have no modesty," admits Brown, who fondly recalls a time when hippies peed freely in the park. "But a woman can't do that. And a kid can't do that."

Last month Brown launched an effort to force Rec and Park to repair and reopen the Panhandle restrooms, threatening to wreak havoc at the AmEx Championship if the city failed to meet his demands. Fix the restrooms "before Tiger tees off, or he will hear from us on every single shot he makes for the succeeding four days," Brown warned in an e-mail to Mayor Gavin Newsom and District Five supervisor Ross Mirkarimi.

Rec and Park pledged to raze the restrooms and replace them with a new structure years ago. Rec and Park spokesperson Rose Marie Dennis says her agency has lined up an architect to design a new facility and expects to have the job completed – finally – by March 2006. "It's really decrepit now, and it needs to be replaced," she says.

After all this time, Cheryl Brodie, a 20-year resident of the neighborhood, wonders if the new potties will ever arrive. "I have a hard time believing they [Rec and Park has] any intention of opening a toilet there," Brodie says.

Brown is equally skeptical. Convinced that Rec and Park wasn't feeling the heat, Brown began exhorting his blog readers to go make chaos at the golf tournament. "If they refuse to listen to us now, Tiger can listen to us during his backswing," he wrote . "A blaring car horn from a half mile will easily make him miss a putt. Got a window facing Harding Golf Course? Get the tournament tuned in and lean out your window with a compressed-air foghorn."

Asked about Brown and other unhappy Panhandle dwellers, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi said, "It's absolutely understandable that their frustration would be at an apex where they would want to disrupt a highbrow golf tournament." Mirkarimi called Rec and Park's handling of the run-down restrooms "lackluster."

The problem extends far past Panhandle Park, Mirkarimi said, noting that Kimball Park, in the Western Addition, has been getting the short shrift from Rec and Park as well. "It's an embarrassment that it doesn't get the attention it deserves," Mirkarimi said. "Why? Because it's an inner-city park."

Empty threat

But by the time the AmEx Championship rolled around, Brown lost his nerve, leaving Tiger to play in peace. "I really didn't want to fuck up the golf tournament," he told the Bay Guardian. Apparently, neither did anybody reading his blog.

However, Brown did succeed in drawing attention to something going on at Rec and Park that could continue to be a problem long after the golf pros have left town: i.e., the city has dumped a ton of money into Harding Park, while other facilities have starved.

All told, since 2002 abo ut $22 million has been channeled into the Harding Park renovation, according to Isabel Wade, head of the nonprofit Neighborhood Parks Council. That amounts to roughly one-fifth of the entire annual Rec and Park budget.

Despite the cash infusion, though, financial projections show Harding Park losing $200,000 this year. And even if Harding begins generating revenue one day, that money would be earmarked for a special golf fund, ensuring the investment will never pay dividends for any of the city's more utilized facilities.

That has Wade wondering how many golf courses Rec and Park ought to operate. (Right now the department has three 9-hole golf courses and three 18-hole courses, including one that's located in Pacifica.)

"I'm thrilled that we have a nice golf course," Wade said, referring to the new Harding Park. "But do we really need six of them?"

Evidently the general populace has been asking the same question. In a 2004 survey conducted by Rec and Park, park-goers listed cleanliness, poor restrooms, an d inadequate maintenance at park facilities as key concerns. They also ranked their favorite kinds of recreation facilities. Golf courses came in 16th out of 19 choices.

E-mail Matthew Hirsch at matthew@sfbg.com.