Tree-huggers running wild, that’s what it is. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I love ‘em, every blinking one of ‘em, and a few I really admire, such as Julia Butterfly and Frank Egger, but it’s like anything else: along with the wizards you get the ideologues, and wherever you get ideologues you get trouble.
I am a golfer. I have other problems, too, clearly, but that’s one of them. I am dedicated to the pursuit, which offers along other things occasional revelations concerning planet earth and what in the world we are doing here; and regardless of what any of you left-wingers out there think, you can run across a lot of really cool people on the links, even the ones with money.
I am a golfer but I stick pretty close to home, which is San Geronimo Golf Course just over White’s Hill and five minutes away if the traffic’s wide open, which it often is. I do not travel well, another of my problems. But you are not reading this because you find my problems fascinating –– you have plenty of your own, especially these days of economic calamity and criminal euphemism.
There’s this golf course, Sharp Park, in San Francisco. Never played there. Couldn’t find it even with a google map, see aforementioned note on travel, and probably never will.
There is pressure being applied to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors right now by a tree-hugging outfit which wants the city to close the course, which it owns, so that the land may revert to its ‘natural’ condition. This idea is enthusiastically backed by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who evidently does not understand shit about golf but isn’t going to let that detail derail his larger purpose.
The tree-hugger faction is fronted by The Center for Biological Diversity, which has threatened to sue the city unless the course is closed, in order to “protect two threatened species,” according to the blurb in the Mercury News. These are the garter snake and the red-legged frog.
I am a big fan of the garter snake, although I appreciate it even better when it’s not underfoot. I go back to childhood with the garter snake. I believe I also have an affinity for the red-legged frogs. Frogs and I go back a long way, too, and in jaw-dropping ways I’m not going into here.
But Sharp Park is not hurting the garter snakes, and it is not hurting the frogs. Golfers have been slogging around this links-style track for seventy years. The snakes and frogs are still there. In fact, the course already closes portions of the 14th fairway due to flooding, rather than pump the water, because that would disturb the frogs laying their eggs in the springtime.
These are people who know something about caring for their surroundings and the creatures which inhabit them.
On its wed site devoted to Sharp Park, the Center speaks of turning the “exclusive, underused and budget-breaking golf course” into a series of wetlands with trails, a visitor center and camping and picnic zones. They don’t mention what that might cost, and the ‘budget-breaking’ line is horseshit, but the point is clear. One Jeff Miller, described as an “advocate with the center” thinks such a project would attract a lot of federal money.
“Exclusive” meaning what, exactly? “Underused” in what manner? The CBD folks, who are worried about the species they cite, want to bring in more people? Increase “utilization”? Camping zones? Picnic zones? How’s that helping out the garter snake? Does the red-legged frog want visitors?
Let’s face it, the CBD people want to build a theme park for themselves and their friends; they want to attract federal money and build things; they want, in fact, to turn this golf course into an open-air zoo.
As I said, I’ve never played Sharp Park. There are other courses around, and even if this place, at $12.00 for seniors and $20.00 for S.F. residents, is a great place for people who love the game but don’t have the money for fancy equipment, or new Priuses, why should I care?
It happens that Sharp Park, whatever its faults, was originally designed by one Alister MacKenzie, who is in the course architects hall of fame, if there is such a thing and even if there isn’t. He was a genius, a mad creator, a visionary. Not every course he designed was as likely as Augusta National, where the Masters is played, but they are his creations.
One does not consign a Picasso sketch to the slag heap, even if it’s not one of his best.
Mirkarimi’s legislation asks city staff to look into “transferring the land to the National Park Service or jointly managing the property with the agency, which raises the possibility of shrinking the golf course” –– shrinking the golf course? like, we could make it a 12-holer? –– “or transforming it into a 400-acre park with managed wetlands.”
By all means, let’s turn 400 acres over the National Park Service, those progenitors of concession stands at National landmarks, that’s what the red-legged frogs need: federal management.
Hey, I realize that Mirkarimi’s just another ambitious pol, albeit on the left, and he’s a whiz at the equations: save the snake, talk about wetlands, plenty of votes; save the golf course for those who can’t afford to play without it? Not so many votes.
No, I blame the brainless culture which has sprung up alongside the environmental movement, for it gives birth to things like the CBD. I blame the culture of left-wing self-righteousness which at its worst lends credence to the sneering ‘political correctness’ jibes of the moronic right-wing.
I have over the years been an active participant in a number of political crusades, and on reflection I think they were each worthy (if occasionally self-destructive), but crusades attract not only the morally-engaged but the morally-compromised as well. Fanaticism is always dangerous because it rides on certainty, and if there’s anything certain on the planet it’s that human beings, you and me included, don’t know much and are astoundingly slow at this learning business.
If anyone out there knows any San Francisco politicos, I invite you to please tell them to leave the garter snake, the red-legged frog, and the low-income golfer alone.
