How to push a snowball down a hill

The story of the neighborhood gardens of Bayview is a slow story. It’s a quiet, dogged story about people doing a lot of hard work to make their neighborhood a nicer place. It is a story of how a couple of neighbors came out to plant the median strip on their block and inspired others to pitch in. The story grows like a root system, never in a straight line, always reaching across and through the earth to connect the gardens, the people and the spirit of Bayview.

Karl Paige and Annette Smith, the two Quesada Ave. neighbors who started working in the garden in 2001, probably had no idea just what their simple acts would grow into. They just saw a weedy median with potential and decided to make it look great.

One after another people got involved: Neighbor James Ross started helping with the garden. Neighbor Jeffrey Betcher started Quesada Gardens Initiative, a private non-profit that helps many community groups within Bayview.

Soon, Mary and Joel McClure, who could see Quesada Gardens out one window, and a weedy vacant lot out another, decided to follow suit. They transformed the vacant lot into a garden. Now Bridgeview Garden is a sustainable learning garden that is used to grow food and to teach children from local elementary schools how food grows. It also provides food for a community sorely lacking in fresh produce for sale.




Rhonda Winter and Peter Haas started Latona Garden about a year ago by cleaning up a lot that had been used as a dumping ground for years. They and a few of their neighbors began to plant flowers and put in some raised beds. There is a sandbox for kids and a big tree for them to climb in.

Rhonda and Peter’s dedication is moving, especially considering they are renters. They have no financial ‘steak’ in the neighborhood, but they want to make this difference anyway. They would someday like to open up a bike shop and teach community youth how to work on bikes.

Double rock community garden grows organic food for the farmer’s market and also donates produce to the food bank. The youth from the neighborhood learn how to grow the food and they also run and operate the farmer’s market. It produces food for Bayview and gives the kids an important, productive job. They can see, touch and eat the difference they are making.

Gardening and plants have a healing effect. Something about seeing a flower grow out of a seed, or cultivating a vegetable crop is immensely satisfying. It literally grounds people and gives them a chance to work together as a community. It motivates and unites them with a common goal. It gives people a choice of what to eat and how to live.

Documenting some of this process has given me hope for our world. Our actions can and do make a difference. We do have the power to affect change in the communities around us.

James Ross and Quesada Gardens

On a recent morning walk with his adopted dog, Lucy, every other car that passed slowed down so the driver could wave and say ‘Hey James!’ or “Garden is looking great, James.”

The feeling shows on James Ross’ face when he smiles. He is excited—his efforts are having an effect—he sounds happy when he speaks about his work within the Bayview community.

Ross, a father of five and grandfather of one, is co-founder of the Quesada Gardens Initiative, a private, non-profit organization that focuses on better health and quality of life in Bayview. At 50, he looks like he is just hitting his stride. He is not a large man, but he gives the impression that he’s tall. He wears a baseball cap on a clean-shaven head. His most prominent feature is a warm toothy smile that flashes on when you least expect it. He is reserved, but not uptight.

“When I was young I was more of a pain in the butt than anything else,” Ross said. “I didn’t get locked up or anything but I didn’t do anything to help the problems that were going on. I wasn’t into helping the community. When I came back again things were a lot better for me. I was grown, my kids were grown and I saw other people on the block, I decided I was going to help out. The rest is history.”

The work on Quesada Avenue began in 2001 with Karl Paige and Annette Smith, two seniors who started planting the garden. Ross started helping with the garden in 2002. He said it was sort of contagious watching Paige and Smith; it made him want to help. Others joined in. By 2004, the whole block was planted.

The narrow strip of earth down the center of Quesada Avenue between Third and Newhall streets is a multi-colored jungle of flowers and shrubs studded with portly old palm trees. At the end of the cul-de-sac is a vibrant mural that depicts people in action weeding, trimming and planting trees and flowers.


The garden is a tangle of growth. A neighborhood group recently started outdoor movie nights—bring a chair and get free popcorn and soda. It is almost unheard of for people to gather at night outside in Bayview. It’s too dangerous and there isn’t any place to go. Yet the last film at Quesada Gardens drew 200 people, who sat peacefully and watched movies in the cool evening air.

It’s easy to see how the energy of the garden could spread into greater Bayview. Ross is hoping it will.

He and co-founder Jeffrey Betcher have helped to fund and nurture many community-building efforts, working with other foundations within Bayview to form a support network for the community. QGI has started two major community gardens, one a place for people to sit and relax, and one a learning garden where community children learn how to grow food from seed to harvest. The initiative also runs a free build-a-backyard garden program called BayBlooms.



Ross has always loved working with his hands. As a child in Danville, Kentucky, a town of about 40,000, he built bicycles and toys for fun. Later in life, he learned carpentry from his uncle. His wife, Lisa Ross, says that he replaced all the pipes in their home and worked on the electric system, too.



“James is a hard worker. He has lots of energy. He made nearly everything around the house from laundry hampers to furniture.”

After Danville, Ross was ready for a larger vista, so at 17 he left Kentucky and joined the Navy. He was stationed at Monterey and had an uncle and aunt who lived on Quesada Avenue. He visited often and came to view them as substitute parents. When he got out of the Navy, he married and settled in Bayview.

James and Lisa moved back to Danville in 1990 because they wanted a more serene setting. In 2001, after 11 good years in Kentucky, Ross learned that his uncle and aunt were in danger of being moved into a rest home. The family made the difficult decision to move back to Bayview to care for them.

Their boys were ten and 14 when the Ross’ moved to Bayview, a district notorious for violence among young black men. Ross and his wife home schooled them and got them involved in as many activities as they could find. Both boys have managed to survive and stay out of trouble.

“I think parents need to take more responsibility for their children. And that would cut down on a lot of the crime. Because now you know where your child is at,” Ross said. “I’ve always known where my kids were. Even if I couldn’t keep up with myself I knew where my kids were.”

“People are starting to really pick up on this block,” Ross said. They know that we’re into fun and we want to take care of the kids. Cause we know if we don’t take care of the kids and give them someplace to go, they’ll find their own place to go. So this is the perfect place to keep an eye on them,”

Ross works at City College of San Francisco, doing admissions outreach. He speaks at middle schools, high schools and even juvenile detention centers around the Bay Area, trying to get kids to go to college.

“He’ll do almost anything to try to convince kids to go to college,” said his boss, Sanela Latic, events coordinator of outreach and recruitment at City College. “He’s not afraid to share his own story with the kids. He doesn’t hide his own mistakes.” She said they listen to him when he speaks.
As for the future, Ross is earning a graphic design degree at City College so he can fulfill his artistic side and earn a living, too. He hopes to work for local community non-profit agencies so that he can continue his work within Bayview.

Map of smaller Baptist Churches in Bayview

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"The Point"

From a distance, most of the buildings at “The Point,” the artist’s colony at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard look as if they are abandoned. They’re all the same bland concrete color and when viewed against the backdrop of the empty ship building facilities it seems impossible that anything lively is going on here. On closer inspection, however, it is obvious in many small ways that there are artists around here somewhere.

There is a turquoise-colored lawn jockey looking over one small garden. Another is the home of a plaster Marlin playing what looks to be a plaster cello. There are dots of color from bright flowers outside in some places, in others it looks as barren as the shipyard.

According to its website, “The point” was started in 1980 when Jacques Terzian a manufacturer of found-object furniture approached the Navy about renting a building to manufacture furniture. The Navy leased him the space and Terzian renovated several buildings with the idea of providing artist studios at an affordable price to local artists. The idea worked. Today there are more than 250 artists and musicians working there.

It’s very quiet here. There is no traffic nearby. No fire engines or busses or people’s voices cutting through the air. The main building’s entrance yard is peppered with metal sculptures. They are cut out metal, all humanoid with different expressions on each of their faces. There are two comical life-sized metal forged stick-figure sculptures that look like they are jumping for joy.

Lynn Sneed is squatting outside on the sidewalk using a blowtorch to melt the wax on a framed piece of art-in-the-making. She explains that she and her friend are learning a new technique of adding, melting and spreading different colored wax onto canvasses that have gesso on them already. She says that it’s really difficult to control the flow of the wax. She isn’t allowed to use a torch inside, so here she is. She is using the studio of her friend, Paula.

Paula Clark, a watercolor artist and a sculptor has had her studio space her at “The Point” since 1999. She is able to afford the rent here and continue to make art. She does not make her living from her art. She’s a psychotherapist. Her studio is crowded with pots of dry watercolor paints of various colors, framed and unframed watercolor paintings and sculptures of stone and wire. “The Clash” is playing on the stereo and Clark is busily working on a piece, putting images cut from a magazine on her canvas before she begins applying the wax. She and Sneed took an intensive class in the medium a few months ago and have set out to master it.

Sculptor David Dion has been making his art at “The Point” since 1983. He said he had a studio on Third Street before that, but rents were going up and someone there told him about “The Point.” He moved his tools over and has been here ever since. Dion makes sculptures out of wood that he laminates together, then sands and cuts away. His large studio has about a half inch of sawdust on the floor and dozens of sculptures that look like odd-shaped buildings from the past and future.

They are each about the size of an old-fashioned 28” television set. The studio smells like glue and tobacco. Dion smokes a cigarette down to the filter as he explains how he makes his sculptures. He pays $330 a month in rent and says it has hardly gone up since he moved in. He said he knows that the building he is in got a new lease from the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency when they teamed up with Lennar Corporation to re-build the area, but some of the other buildings were not so lucky. Many artists were evicted.

Though the surroundings have a haunted ghost town feel, “The Point” is full of creative people. For the time being the artists and the red-tailed hawks are the only ones here. One wonders what this place will look like in five years. Glitzier and with more amenities, probably—perhaps there will be bathrooms instead of porto-potties, sod-lawn instead of many small gardens. In a perfect world, the Marlin will continue its serenade.

First Impressions-Sunday, Sept. 14, 2008

The sun glints off the glass of the new T Third Street stop and the smell of barbecue and hot dogs fills the air. Police have cordoned off the street for San Francisco’s “Sunday Streets,” and people are walking and biking up and down Third Street at a Sunday pace.

Antoine, a young man standing with two friends in front of the corner store on Third and La Salle, says that along with the facelift, the T Third St. project has brought more police.

“They stop and harass folks, try to bring me in for loitering when they know I have a job. They’re trying to bust people for parole violations. We can’t just hang on the corner and pass the time.”

He said rents are going up and some of his friends have moved to Vallejo and Antioch to find rents they can afford.

A block up the street, two women are frying plump, juicy-looking hot dogs on a sidewalk grill and giving them out free to passersby. The sidewalk is clogged with smiling people eating or waiting for dogs.

“I’m just out here trying to give a little back to my neighborhood by giving them some of my good cooking,” said Shamauda Bishop, owner of “Simply Fabulous” salon. Bishop said she heard about the “Sunday Streets” program and decided to give away food for fun.

Bishop’s friend, Diane Wesley Smith,another Bayview local, runs the Obama campaign office on Third Street. Bishop said they were the first office in San Francisco, and their job is to get as many people they can to register to vote. Today, they are giving out free barbecue to anyone who registers.

Smith’s old friend Bernard Williams stops by to say hello. He has lived in the neighborhood since 1963 and attended elementary school with Smith. He sees the recent upgrades to the neighborhood as positive.

“It was due for a change. It’s nice to see people out riding bikes with kids and families. People are going to create stuff, positive or negative. It might as well be positive,” Williams said.

Aside from the Sunday Streets activity, the only loud noise in the neighborhood comes from pastors giving Sunday services. There seems to be a small storefront church on every block with gospel singing swelling out from many of them. Almost all the businesses are closed. The Upper Crust Deli is the only thing open for blocks.

“This is one of the last neighborhoods in San Francisco where everyone knows everyone else and almost everyone grew up here. It’s a really warm neighborhood with a lot of good people,” said Ray Gheith, owner of Upper Crust Deli.

Gheith started the business last year and it has been steadily growing. He lives in Daly City and owns another store in Pacifica. The people in Pacifica say they think he’s nuts to own a business in Bayview, Gheith said, but he finds the people friendly here.

“What sucks is that you have a small number of people ruining it for everyone. I would love to do food delivery, but it’s dangerous after 8 p.m., so we don’t,” he said.

A female police officer directing traffic on Third Street said that patrolling the Bayview is more challenging and more dangerous than patrolling in other San Francisco neighborhoods. Sometimes she feels that she is making a difference, but often she gets discouraged. She has been patrolling Bayview for nine years.

Sidney Polk and Albert Harrison are sitting on a bench in front of the Opera House. They both have jovial attitudes and it’s difficult to believe they are homeless. They agree that there haven’t been any real changes in Bayview.

“I grew up over on Hudson Street. I was born and raised here. I don’t see any improvements. All I see is the metro rail,” Polk said.

Both he and Harrison stay at Mother Brown’s shelter on Van Dyke Street at night and sit on the benches during the day.

“We are homeless,” Harrison said. “Why is it so hard for homeless seniors? I’m 69 and Sidney is 63. I worked for Muni for 25 years and my pension isn’t enough to pay my rent.”