Fortress sights in San Francisco
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Fort Funston
The grassy dunes of Fort Funston give you some idea what the Sunset looked like before it was paved over in the early 20th century. The fort is protected as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and it attracts butterflies and migrating birds. The park is a defunct military installation, and you can still see a WWII gun battery where 146-tonne guns point out to sea, and remains of Nike missile silos near where the parking lot is now. Left to its own devices, the hardy non-native succulent known as ice plant has taken over in this windswept area, but the National Park Service is gradually replacing ice plants with native plants such as dune sagebrush, coastal b…
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B
Pacific-Union Club
The only Nob Hill mansion to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire is a squat neoclassical brownstone, which despite its grandeur lacks architectural imagination. Today it’s a private men’s club. The exclusive membership roster lists newspaper magnates, both Hewlett and Packard of Hewlett-Packard, several US secretaries of defense and government contractors (insert conspiracy theory here). Democrats, people of color and anyone under 45 are scarce on the published list, but little else is known about the 800-odd, all-male membership: members can be expelled for leaking information. Cheeky cross-dressing protesters have pointed out that there’s no specific ban on transgender…
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C
Fort Point
Fort Point is the result of an eight-year makeover from small Spanish fort to triple-decker US military fortress. The fort was completed with 126 cannons in 1861, just in time to protect the bay against certain invasion by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War…or not, as it turned out. Without firing a single shot, Fort Point was abandoned in 1900 and became neglected once the Golden Gate Bridge was built over it. (Engineers added an extra span just to preserve it.) Alfred Hitchcock saw deadly potential in Fort Point, and shot the trademark scene from Vertigo of Kim Novak leaping from the lookout to certain death into the bay…or not, as it turned out. Fort Point has…
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D
Fort Mason Center
San Francisco takes subversive glee in turning military installations into venues for nature, fine dining and out-there experimental art – evidence, Fort Mason. The military mess halls are gone, replaced by vegan-friendly Greens, a restaurant run by a Zen community. Warehouses now host cutting-edge theater at Magic Theatre and improvised comedy workshops at BATS, and the dockside Herbst Pavilion has art fairs and craft fairs in its arsenal – see the website for upcoming performances and events.
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