THE VISTAS OF SAN FRANCISCO: Pairing Buena Vista Park with a Dead Guy Ale

LOCATION: BUENA VISTA PARK

BEVERAGE: DEAD GUY ALE by ROGUE

The following installment in this series takes a decidedly morbid turn, despite the fact that our setting is a park whose whimsically creative name translates to “Good View”. In fact, Buena Vista Park is San Francisco’s oldest official park and was originally established in 1867 as “Hill Park”. That being said, I suppose the new moniker employs worlds more brainpower than the first one. But still. Show some effort, old-timey city planners!

Now back to the spookies. A necromantic beer was selected as the perfect drink to imbibe atop this famed hill for one simple reason, and it does, in fact, have to do with dead guys. The story starts when the city decided to move its Victorian Cemeteries from Lone Mountain to Colma in the 1930’s. At the same time, however, the WPA had taken over the duty of making improvements over at Buena Vista, particularly with regards to the rain gutters that line the steep pathways to the top. Well, being the resourceful fellows they were, the project managers decided to use some of marble headstones that were broken in the move to construct these gutters. And if you don’t believe me, check this shit out:

Yup. That’s an old Victorian Gravestone, just peering at you through the debris. Freaky, right?

Even the view up there was perfectly dreary for the beer, which, by the way, is really killer stuff.

So all in all, I had a great time climbing Buena Vista, looking for San Francisco artifacts and drinking a–very appropriate–Dead Guy Ale. I definitely suggest you do the same sometime soon. There are more gravestones (located on one of the western pathways) and in general it’s just a cool park to explore. It also gives you the chance to ask someone, “Hey, what are you doing after work? Do you feel like catching a buzz and looking for gravestones?”

You can really tell a lot about a person by their response to that one.

To get there,  just go to Haight Street at Central. You can’t miss it.

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