By Lisa Awbrey, HANC President

A few weeks back I attended a peace rally, concert and benefit for the People of Ukraine in Golden Gate Park. My mom and I are travel pals and avid hiking buddies; we made a date to go together but her 88 year old ankle is deteriorating so I fired up a newly purchased wheelchair for its maiden voyage. My task: navigating the sidewalks, streets and pathways from Hayes and Clayton to the Golden Gate Park Band Shell with my mom in a wheelchair. This journey turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, and I learned that accessing Golden Gate Park from a wheelchair is much more challenging than it ought to be.

I was averse to navigating a wheelchair across the Panhandle through Fell and Oak’s multi-laned treachery with speeding bicycles and cars to the 7 Haight bus. And even though I’m fit and strong, the prospect of pushing my mom two and a half blocks up hill in a wheelchair to the 5 Fulton was also daunting. For two and a half years service to our local reliable 21 Hayes bus line has been suspended. 

And so we set out on the 1.2 mile journey. It was a cold, windy day and we were bundled in our woolies. The 3 blocks of Hayes to Stanyan were fairly easy going, although the Stanyan Street intersection is scary with speeding traffic, light runners and distracted drivers turning right and left into the crosswalks at high speeds. The light is short; we moved quickly and barely made it. Once we’d crossed Stanyan, we confronted a 6 inch step at the park’s entrance at Hayes and Stanyan. Lucky for us, my mom was able to stand so I could lift the wheelchair up and over the step, and we were back in business, but what about people who are unable to stand or rise from their wheelchairs?

We travelled along the paved pathway behind McLaren Lodge and down the sloping path through the Fuchsia Dell toward the Conservatory. Suddenly we came to a large bulge across the width of the path (a tree root?) and I nearly pitched my mom out of the wheelchair and into the ivy. Although my mom laughed, I was horrified. We came next to John F. Kennedy Drive, the Conservatory and the shiny gold sculpture that looks like someone’s intestines with polyps. The paved pathway beside JFK Drive is uneven with ruts, bulges and rough edges that drop off. JFK Drive was mobbed with speeding cyclists (many on motorized bikes) along with swarms of mechanized scooters and motorized skateboards all sharing the road with pedestrians. There were many young children and novices on bikes who were grappling with the traffic as well. We came to another giant bulge in the pathway and once again: I almost dumped my mom out of the wheelchair. Thank Heaven for the seatbelt (and for my mom’s sense of humor); I now realize how truly lucky we were that neither of us was badly injured en route.

It took us 40 minutes to reach the Band Shell. We settled on a bench and tucked into our picnic lunch, while delighting in the wonderful music, folk dancing, poetry readings and distribution of sunflowers to the audience by the spectacular Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. On the return trip, we better anticipated path issues and made it home without crashing. I learned a lot by making this journey and now have a deeper understanding of the obstacles and difficulties elders, disabled folks and people with small children in strollers endure in daily travel around San Francisco.

The closure of JFK Drive to cars and lack of accessible parking, combined with the cessation of local MUNI lines (like the 6 Parnassus and the 21 Hayes) that once served residential neighborhoods in accessing Golden Gate Park is unacceptable. Elders, disabled people and families with young children who would normally travel by bus or car to the park are left to their own devices. Our public parks and amenities should be accessible to all, a truth that was highlighted by the recent lockdown and global pandemic. 

According to The San Francisco Human Services Agency/SFHSA, more than one in ten San Franciscans (94,000 people) reports a disability. Almost half of the people with disabilities are under age 65. And in 2020, an estimated 23% of San Francisco’s population were elders. Older adults are the fastest growing age group in our city, and an estimated 30% of SF residents will be 60 or older by 2030. The city must do more to make Golden Gate Park, and all of our city accessible to all San Franciscans.