On Beautiful Days When You Can't Watch a Ball Game.
Nothing makes me feel alive and free like stealing the good seats right above the dugout at a baseball game. Even sitting up in the nose bleed sections are still an exciting delight miles and miles away from all responsibility. Nothing like it in the world, but as summer eases in, there’s one more sport I have to get my fix of.
There was something sad in the air last weekend as the temperature started to rise and people throughout the city gathered at Dolores Park for Cinco de Mayo. It wasn’t the fact that hundreds of my neighbors were (true to their San Franciscan nature) stripping down to their undies and passing out in the grass from too much wine, but that there was a Giants game going on at AT&T park. It was that this past weekend was the perfect time to see a game and the Oakland A’s were in Florida. It’s hard not to betray your team at times like this, and if Giants' tickets were somewhat affordable I probably would have left my loyalty at the door and gone to game because on these rare hot days in SF, you’re either going to go to a game or your going to go crazy.
When the A’s are out of town and you live in San Francisco without a television, good luck finding a sports bar that will broadcast an Oakland team – especially on a Giants game day. But when it’s beautiful outside, who wants to be in a sports bar anyway? Also, although SF may have been voted one of the US’s most physically fit cities to live in by ten different publications ranging from Men’s Health to the Advocate, who really wants to see the citizens of San Francisco getting wasted and naked at the park?
Oh, the dilemma of what to do on a nice day when there isn’t an A’s game going on and you’ve got about $30 in your pocket…ha! The answer’s easy – go fishing!
Last night, I was lucky enough to skip out of work an hour early, load up my buddy’s car with Highlife and beat rush-hour traffic out of town to the Lafayette Reservoir. Yes, there are places to fish in the bay or at the coast in San Francisco. There are even places to fish that are closer to downtown Oakland, where I work. But I’m obsessed with pollution levels and all the silver mining that went on 50 years ago around the bay – I just don’t like to fish there. However, the Lafayette Reservoir is 5 minutes from Oakland (just past the Oakland hills), and is perfectly clean in every way (except on the 4th of July, when I’ve been know to jump in for an illegal swim with friends).
Right now you can go to the Lafayette Reservoir and fish for trout and catfish. There’s a $4 fishing charge, and a $15 canoe rental charge for an hour ($45 for the whole day!). Otherwise, you can spend most of your money on beer and nightcrawlers. I haven’t caught anything yet, although there were some loud teenagers with annoying cell phones on the dock next to me that were catching all kinds of trout (I hate them!). Dogs are welcome, but need to be kept on a leash.
Perhaps that only thing better about late spring than baseball is watching the sun going down over a lake on a dock with a mamma duck and her 5 fluffy little babies.
