There are other events: Zumba Wednesdays, storytelling for small kids, music on Thursdays and yoga on Friday afternoons. Some people were sitting in the Salesforce Park amphitheater in a group - an office lunch or maybe an outdoor business meeting.īut never mind that. There were little kids, some in a children’s play area with a “recess cart” where there were books, games, crayons and paper to draw pictures. There were plenty of people, walking the paths, sitting on benches and chairs. Environmental artist Ned Kahn designed it. It looks like bus magic, but it turns out the water jets are activated by sensors on the bus terminal floor. There were plenty of things to see, including a unique “Bus Fountain,” 1,000 feet long on a slender path that shoots up little jets of foamy water every time a bus in the terminal below moves. There was no fog the afternoon I was there, only a watery sunlight. The third is blue, the deep color of a winter sky. The second impression is green: green lawns, trees and plants. It is like a separate San Francisco with an older San Francisco visible in the distance, or down the streets below. The park is surrounded by glass and steel towers, buildings reflecting each other. The first impression you get is that you have arrived into a hall of mirrors. Like most people, I stayed away during the COVID years when downtown and the Financial District was a ghost town.

It’s open in the daytime, everyone is welcome, and it’s a delight. It’s a park that’s up above the city - four stories above the street, four blocks long, 5.4 acres, planted with 600 trees and 16,000 plants. I got off the bus at First and Mission right in front of Salesforce Tower, up a couple of flights of stairs into a different city. I took a walk in Salesforce Park, which is one of the city’s successes. I was interested in the something else.Įverybody knows about San Francisco’s failures. But the rest of the street is something else. Between 16th and 24th streets, Mission Street is a graffiti-covered mess. A trip on the 14 bus is a bumpy ride past the best and worst of San Francisco.

Salesforce park open