SF’s new completely public parklet has opened on Page Street near Golden Gate Park, as that designated Slow Street gets a public parklet with benches, plants, and a tiny free library.

This weekend was the final Sunday Streets of the season. As that program does every year, their final Sunday is also a collection of smaller Sunday Streets events called Phoenix Day, generally held on Slow Streets. And one of those Slow Streets had something special up their sleeve.

The Examiner reports that a public parklet had its grand opening on Page Street, a parklet which that paper describes as San Francisco’s “only parklet completely open to the public.” Most parklets, of course, are associated with a bar or restaurant, and are only open to their patrons.

This new Page Street parklet is not to be confused with the magnificent parklet at the bar called The Page, which is located at Page and Divisadero Streets. The Examiner describes this new parklet as being “on the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park.”

Page Street became a permanent Slow Street in January of this year, and about two dozen other SF streets have received permanent Slow Street status to reduce car traffic there. The Slow Streets program started early in the pandemic and spread widely across town. Some streets were made permanent Slow Streets, others returned to normal car traffic.

“Kudos to all of the amazing folks involved with this project,” the district’s supervisor Dean Preston said in a statement to the Examiner. “It took a ton of work, but now we have this amazing public space to gather, relax, explore books in the tiny library, enjoy beautiful flowers curated by kids from John Muir, and connect with neighbors and build relationships. This is what building community looks like.”

This parklet was funded by a city grant, was designed by volunteers, and will also be maintained by volunteers. And if the parklet is near Golden Gate Park, given the, erm, population that park attracts, it may need fairly frequent maintenance.

You can be one of those maintenance volunteers, as Page Slow Street has a volunteer signup form online.  

Related: SF Supervisor Proposes Waiving the First Year of Parklet Permit Fees [SFist]

Image: @PageSlowStreet via Twitter