Back to SF | Part 9: Bi-Rite Creamery + Dolores Park

Posted on April 28, 2015

Bi-Rite Creamery is one of those places, like Dolores Park, that is awesome…in theory. But when you’re living in the city you go maybe a handful of times, maybe less if you don’t live in the neighborhood, because when you want to go, everyone else in the entire city wants to go. Usually it’s a weekend, the weather is awesome, you want to be outside listening to hippie drum circles in the park, eating salted caramel ice cream with friends. If you don’t live near the J or have a bike you feel like riding, you drive — and then round and round you go searching block after block for parking, passing the creamery about a hundred times, noticing that each time you drive past the line gets longer and longer. And finally, after an hour of this you give up and go home, picking up some ben & jerry’s at the grocery store along the way.

Such is the reality of city life. When you feel like doing something simple — getting some ice cream, hanging out in a park, brunch — on weekend — you know it will be a hassle. You know that a idea as innocuous as getting ice cream will end up with you hating everyone out of frustration. So you end up spending most weekends within walking distance of your neighborhood, eating at the same diner and walking to the nearest park.

But as a tourist this hardly seems to matter, especially when visiting the area on a Monday afternoon, after a recent downpour. It was not quite lunch, not quite dinner and the perfect time to pick up some Bi-Rite ice cream (no line whatsoever) and hang out in Dolores Park to watch the sun slip behind the Victorians. There wasn’t a soul around save for a guy blowing huge bubbles and another guy videotaping him. We randomly ran into some friends who were also in town for a different wedding (what were the odds?) and hung out with them in the park, playing on the playground and chasing around bubbles with their cute little girl. I may have gotten a little too into it. We frolicked in the park until dusk then walked to Lolinda to meet up with another friend for dinner and drinks.

What I remember most about this day — those moments — was that I felt happy instead of nostalgic. I was able to enjoy SF in the present moment instead of thinking about all the times before that had been tinged with sadness and longing. Mostly, I just felt lucky. Lucky to have had such memories and lucky to be making new ones.