Celebrate the season at India Basin Waterfront Park (900 Innes Avenue) with Santa’s Workshop, a free holiday arts and crafts event on Saturday, December 20 from noon to 3 p.m. Shop the holiday market, pick up free toys, and enjoy food, live comedic performances, and music, including sets by Afterthought and The Top Chefs. Event is rain or shine. For more information, visit ibwaterfrontpark.com. 

See additional holiday events in our parks below: 

Due to rain starting on Friday, we're cancelling the opening celebration of Lincoln Park Playground (33rd Avenue and Clement Street) that was scheduled to take place on Friday, December 19 from 1 to 2 p.m. Note that the playground will still reopen on Friday morning for families to get out and play!

It will reopen after an act of arson last spring damaged the play surface, equipment and several nearby trees. The refreshed playground now includes a new play structure with a tower, slides, and climbing elements, along with new safety surfacing and plantings.

McLaren Lodge, San Francisco Landmark No. 175 and a cornerstone of Golden Gate Park’s history, now features a new mini-museum within its storied walls. Named the Commission Vault Museum, it is located inside a historic vault once used by the Park Commission.

John McLaren, the longtime superintendent of Golden Gate Park, lived in McLaren Lodge for more than four decades while overseeing the park’s development. The building also housed the Park Commission, which used the vault to store funds and sensitive documents.

As the commission and Recreation and Park Department evolved, the vault, as well as other tucked-away spaces in the administrative offices, became home to historic materials including reports, letters, photographs, and scrapbooks dating back to the 1930s. These rediscovered documents have now helped transform the vault into a mini-museum celebrating the history of San Francisco’s parks.

The exhibit showcases the Commission’s story by decade, from the 1850s to today, highlighting administration, funding, major events, and park growth alongside city population trends. It opened in a small ceremony ahead of the 96th Annual Tree Lighting at the lodge earlier this month. 

A special thanks to Rec and Parks' Historian-in-Residence Christopher Pollock, as well as Commission Liaison Ashley Summers, for dusting off this historic gem and making it shine!

Through this process, more than 2,500 items were digitized and are now readily accessible to Department staff who use them. Additionally, many irreplaceable historic items were archived with the San Francisco Public Library, keeping them safe and accessible for generations to come.

Construction has begun on the Oak Street Quick-Build Project at Oak and Masonic streets in the Panhandle, with work at this intersection continuing through January. Residents can expect temporary crosswalk and pathway closures with pedestrian detours, limited parking impacts on the north side of Oak Street for construction staging, and minimal travel-lane disruptions scheduled outside peak hours.

The project will improve safety and access for people walking and bicycling between Stanyan and Baker streets and along JFK Drive, creating a new link between Golden Gate Park’s JFK Promenade and the Wiggle. The project will install a new paved bikeway in the Panhandle near Masonic, update lane striping, and add bikeway improvements along Oak Street between Stanyan and Shrader. For more details on the project and upcoming work, click the link below.

Celebrate the holidays with a festive visit from Santa to St. Mary’s Recreation Center (95 Justin Drive) on Friday, December 19 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Enjoy hot chocolate and apple cider while meeting Santa and taking in the seasonal cheer. For more information, call the center at (415) 695-5009. 

Volunteers are invited to join the Civic Space Foundation for a horticultural maintenance day at Sunset Dunes on Saturday, December 20 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Meet at Noriega Street and Sunset Dunes for a morning of stewardship and cleanup along the coastline. To sign up, click the link below.

Join the Friends of Alemany Farm (700 Alemany Boulevard) and J.R. Blair for their Fungi on the Farm workshop on Sunday, December 21 from 10 a.m. to noon. The event will serve as an introduction to the life cycles of these organisms, with a discussion of the ecological roles that fungi play in the environment and on the farm. Participants will seek out mushrooms and other visible manifestations of fungi, such as rusts and lichens. For more information and to RSVP, click the link below.

The Food Pavilion at India Basin Waterfront Park (900 Innes Avenue) is closing out the year with its “Savoring the Year: Food Pavilion Chef Showcase,” a three-weekend series highlighting local culinary talent from the Bayview–Hunters Point community. Chef Classie of Cooking with Classie wraps up the showcase on Saturday, December 20 and Sunday, December 21, offering her soulful, home-inspired plates. The pop-up runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The venue will close for the holidays on December 27 and 28 and will return with more programming in 2026. For more information, click the link below. 

Take part in BORP Adaptive Sports and Recreation's wheelchair basketball tournament at Glen Park Recreation Center (70 Elk Street) on Saturday, January 10 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. This free, four-team tournament is open to players and spectators alike, and organizers are currently recruiting teams. For questions or to get involved, contact jorge@borp.org or molly@borp.org.

Join the Giants Community Fund and Rec and Park for free winter academy clinics at Silver Terrace Playground (1700 Silver Avenue). Baseball with the Santa Clara University team runs Saturday, January 10 from noon to 2 p.m., followed by softball clinics on January 17 with the Cal State East Bay team and January 24 with the UC Berkeley team, both from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Open to players ages 10 to 17, these sessions offer an off-season opportunity to build skills and connect with collegiate athletes. For more information and to register, click the link below.

Earlier this week, the Bayview United girls soccer team was recognized by District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for its San Francisco Youth Soccer 6th Grade Premier Division championship. Our Video of the Week comes from SFGovTV and highlights the meeting, including speeches from the coach and players.

The team, which won this title with a 4-2 victory last month, is made up of primarily fourth graders, along with a handful of fifth graders and one third grader. This title makes it back-to-back for this squad.

Bayview United is a free youth soccer program for boys and girls that expands access to the world’s game in the Bayview-Hunters Point community. The program began in 2019 with a single team of players, most of whom were new to the sport. It has since grown to include two boys teams, a coed team, and this girls team, with nearly 50 players in total. We look forward to this program's continued growth and success! 

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