Archive for August, 2008

School’s in session again, and all those little heads in close proximity means that some kids will soon receive the gift of head lice. Getting rid of them isn’t easy. Though there are multitudes of bug-killing solutions to try, from the scary toxic drugstore stuff to health-food store treatments, actually conquering the lice means long, tedious sessions of locating and removing bugs and nits (lice eggs) from your child’s hair. Not for nothing does “nit-picking” have a negative connotation. And then a week or two later you have to repeat the whole operation to get rid of any lingering bugs.

Or you could just turn your kid over to Hair Fairies, the salon that specializes in lice. With locations in Manhattan, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, Hair Fairies can do the job for you. You simply bring your kid in for a nit-picking session, followed up by a lice-killing shampoo and another nit hunt, all accomplished while you read magazines in the waiting room (or possibly while you launder everything in your house, curtains included). The downside: treatment costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $200-500, depending on the severity of your infestation. Pricey, but for the wealthy and easily grossed-out, well worth it.

Hair Fairies is located at 2238 Fillmore Street (between Sacramento and Clay Streets), San Francisco. Call 415-292-5200 or visit hairfairies.com.

Even if it does turn foggy like the weather people say, there’s still plenty to keep you warm this weekend.

Slow Food Nation

The gargantuan three-day sustainable-food event is a sure bet for parents and kids, with many ways it can be enjoyed. You can take the casual route and just bring your children to wander around the food booths and activities at the Civic Center Plaza, or enjoy the live bands (Gnarls Barkley, the New Pornographers) at the Slow Food Rocks event. If you have an older teens (aged 15 and older), you may instead be interested in steering them towards the Youth Food Movement, several days of workshops, sleepovers, and meet-and-greets designed to get young people thinking about healthy living. Finally, you could leave younger kids at home and attend events geared towards parents, such as Saturday’s 2pm panel discussion with Alice Waters, “Edible Education,” a call to action for parents discouraged by the national school lunch program.

When: Thu.-Mon., 8/28-9/1; programs are at various times; All ages; Free-$60 (most events are free but some events, such as Slow Food Rocks, require tickets).

Where: Various locations in San Francisco and the Bay Area, including the Civic Center Plaza, Polk Street between McAllister and Grove Streets, and the Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Avenue (at McAllister Street); 917-539-3924; slowfoodnation.org.

Hop Dogs Dance Party

Get your kid moving to the music at this monthly (last Saturday of each month) dance party featuring DJs, kid-friendly snacks, a quiet lounge area for the overstimulated, and dance instructors ready to teach a dizzying variety of dance styles to students both young and old. Show your kid you’re not too old to do the Cabbage Patch, the rhumba, or the Funky Chicken.

When: Sat., 8/30, 5-7:30pm (lessons are from 5:15-5:45pm); All ages (no adults admitted without children); $6-10 per person (sliding scale) and parking is $1.50 at lot on 17th Street.

Where: ODC Commons, 351 Shotwell Street (between 17th and 18th Streets), San Francisco; 415-863-6606;
hopdogsdance.com.

Sunday Streets

Gavin Newsom’s sweet new Sunday Streets program diverts traffic from big swathes of Chinatown/the waterfront and Bayview Hunter’s Point and replaces the cars with stations manned by local fitness organizations that encourage and equip the strolling masses to try out roller skating, bike riding, yoga, dancing, tai chi and more. Participants can stick to the programs at a certain community center, or walk the route between centers and sample activities along the way.

When: Sun. 8/31 (also Sun. 9/14); 9am-1pm; All ages; Free.

Where: Various locations in San Francisco, visit website for a map of participating community centers and street station locations; sundaystreetssf.com.

After a five-year, $2.7 million renovation project, the Potrero Del Sol Skate Park is open at 24th and Utah Streets.

When I visited this week, I was actually a bit afraid to go down there. Formerly known as “La Raza” park by the Latino locals, Potrero Del Sol has for years been an encampment for the homeless, enlivened by the occasional Saturday night flock of lowriders. But after a five-year rebuild, the park is looking good, and is already attracting flocks of skaters to the area.

The once-scrubby grass replete with passed-out folks has been replaced by a verdant lawn crisscrossed by skaters in baggy pants practicing their ollies and slides. If your kids are much younger than 12 or so, most of ramps and bowls in the park will be a bit too challenging. But there’s a smooth and gentle incline running from the labyrinth inside the park down to the fenced-in skating area that young skaters can use to practice.

Families with kids of varying ages will also appreciate the adjacent playground area, which has several interesting spinning structures, and a beautiful seesaw. It’s easy to envision spending pleasant afternoons here, letting older children run off to skate while parents stick around the playground with the younger ones.

There’s no bathroom or water fountain, so bring those potty chairs and bottles of water. When you get hungry, wander over to nearby 24th Street and its line of eateries. I particularly like the La Palma Mexicatessen at 24th between Florida and Bryant Streets.

Incidentally, Potrero Del Sol is located relatively close to San Francisco’s other skate park, Crocker Amazon, spurring a movement by skaters in the northern part of the city asking for a park in Golden Gate Park and near Duboce Park. For more information on those initiatives, visit sfskateboarding.org.

The Potrero Del Sol Skate Park is located at 25th and Utah Streets in San Francisco. For more information call 415-831-2700 or visit parks.sfgov.org.

Maya’s Mom, a parent’s social networking site with a heavily Bay Area membership, has announced it will shut down on September 30.

Founded in 2006 on venture capital and run by a handful of people out of a house in Palo Alto, Maya’s Mom was bought by San Francisco’s BabyCenter in 2007. The tiny MM team was imported into BabyCenter’s San Francisco office and asked to maintain the Maya’s Mom site as well as using its proprietary social networking software to improve BabyCenter’s boards. Maybe the improvements went a little too well — the MM team noticed some months back that they were spending just as much time working on Maya’s Mom (a paltry 1,500 members, albeit frantically loyal ones) as the BabyCenter boards (tens of thousands of members).

So they pulled the plug, not without some angst on founder Ann Crady’s part. The site’s users are also up in arms, particularly over a suggestion in Crady’s shutdown announcement that jilted users should just migrate over to BabyCenter. One irritated loyalist said on her own blog entry on the topic:

So why would Maya’s Mom think that when they close their doors on September 10th I’m going to follow them to the new and improved BabyCenter site? I understand that they were granted a fantastic opportunity and I think it’s great that the Maya’s Mom team jumped right into spruicing up the BabyCenter community site. Good for them. But to go and shut down their own site and casually invite people to “come relocate to the BabyCenter community” because they are too busy to manage two sites is absurd. That “the design and features will be familiar to me” is just not enough. Transfer my account, my friends, my groups, my pictures, and everything else I’ve spent well over a year collecting, and maybe, just maybe I’ll join the new site. But transfer just my “member since date” and my “note count” and expect me to do everything else myself and I’m outta there.

Water Babies don’t look like much. The dolls are of average cuteness and size, dressed in nondescript babyish clothes, not able to talk or walk or pee themselves or do any of the other remarkable things some dolls can do. But once you pick up a Water Baby, you’ll want one for your own. They feel better than dolls. They feel real.

The secret is the water that the aptly named Water Babies are filled with. The dolls are heavy. They jiggle. Fill them with warm water and they’re even as glowingly warm as an actual baby. Holding them feels substantial and magic, igniting our automatic baby-love.

Water Babies are also DIY a success story. Dan Lauer, whose sisters used to make their own (fragile!) water-balloon dolls, sent out proposals to over 700 manufacturers and toy companies, asking them to buy into his idea of a water-filled baby doll. He met with nothing but rejection, and so decided to quit his job in banking. He raised $250,000 and produced the dolls himself in 19o0. They were a blockbuster success, with 17 million dolls sold making them the second most popular baby doll ever (just after Cabbage Patch Kids).

The dolls are now made by San Francisco company Wild Planet Entertainment. They come in two sizes: 13-inch Water Babies and 9-inch Newborns, and are available in three (surprisingly realistic) ethnicities, Caucasian, African-American, and Hispanic. A bottle, diaper and small water-filled teddy bear are included with the 13-inch Water Babies.

Happy holding!

Available at shopwildplanet.com.

If you want to enroll your child into a San Francisco Recreation and Parks class and don’t yet have a Family Account yet with SF Rec & Park, tomorrow is one of the few days when it’s relatively easy to do it. See, instead of having to drag a bunch of xeroxed documents down to McLaren Lodge in Golden Gate Park during working hours, you can drag those same documents to one of SF Rec’s temporary registration locations on a Saturday or evening. Still not fun, but easier than taking time off work.

Here’s what you have to bring, according to SF Rec:

• Proof of age: Copy of a birth certificate or passport for anyone under 18 years and 65 and over;
• Proof of residency: A utility bill that matches your address to your name or the name of the head of your household;
• State of California Driver’s License or Identification Card - Your utility bill must match this address and the name of the head of household;
• Emergency Contact Information;
• Proof of Immunization (for children under 5 years of age)

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff. Sure you can’t make it any harder, SF Rec? Maybe make us bring our high school diplomas, or a list of our measurements?

Anyhoo, here are the locations of the temporary registration field offices. They will be open Saturday, August 23 from 10am - 3pm and Monday, August 25 through Friday, August 29 from 4-7pm.

• Richmond Recreation Center 251 18th Avene @ Clement Street
• Joe DiMaggio Playground (closed Mondays) 651 Lombard Street @ Mason Street
• Eureka Valley Recreation Center 100 Collingwood Street @18th Street
• SOMA/Eugene Friend Rec Center 270 6th Street @ Folsom Street
• Glen Park Recreation Center 70 Elk Street @ Chenery Street
• Mission Recreation Center 2450 Harrison Street @ 20th Street
• Palega Recreation Center 500 Felton Street @ Holyoke Street
• Sunset Recreation Center 2201 Lawton Street @ 29th Avenue
• Joseph Lee Recreation Center 1395 Mendell @ 3rd Street
• Randall Museum (closed Mondays) 199 Museum Way
• McLaren Lodge (M-F 9am-5pm) 501 Stanyan Street

If you go through the hassle, the rewards are substantial: literally hundreds of classes in a variety of disciplines (sports, the arts, music, food), located all over the city, many of them free or so low-cost that you can afford to take the kids out to lunch after your Saturday soccer or dance class.

For more information, call 831-6800 or visit sfreconline.com.

School starts Monday, so now’s the time to hunker down in town and have some close-to-home fun.

Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival

Introduce your children to mom and dad’s music at this giant outdoor music fest featuring Radiohead, Tom Petty, Beck, Wilco, and scores of other musical greats. Of particular interest to kids: Jack Johnson’s 7:40pm set on Sunday. Maybe he’ll play something from Curious George!

When: Fri.-Sun., 8/22-24; 5-10pm Fri., 1-10pm Sat. & Sun; Age 5+; $85-$695 (for 3-day VIP tickets).

Where: Various stages in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco (see website for details); SFOutsidelands.com.

Breakfast with Enzo

The zippy and talented Enzo Garcia and his guitar (and banjo, and musical saw, and accordion, and…) get kids and parents tapping and dancing along at this weekly sing-along.

When: Fridays, 10am & 11am; All ages; $6 per person.

Where: Fort Mason Center, Room C260, Marina Boulevard (at Buchanan Street), San Francisco, 415-561-2958; enzogarcia.com.

Sing-A-Long The Little Mermaid

Dress up as Ariel or Ursula and sing along to the subtitles while the movie plays on the giant Castro screen. The best costume wins a prize!

When: Daily Fri.-Thu., 8/22-28; 2 & 7:30pm; Age 2+; $10-15.

Where: Castro Theatre, 492 Castro Street (at Market Street), San Francisco, 415-621-5288 x15, thecastrotheatre.com.

Fairy Music Farm Grand Opening

Celebrate with snacks, pomp and circumstance as Children’s Fairyland celebrates the opening of its Fairy Music Farm Tunnel, a 118-foot tunnel journey that explores music through hands-on exhibits and art.

When: Sat., 8/23, 10:30am; Age 0-8; Free with admission ($6 per person).

Where: Children’s Fairyland, 699 Bellevue Avenue (at Grand Avenue), Oakland; 510-452-2259; fairyland.org.

You’ll want to wear your most fashionable duds to the Julius Kahn Playground, because if you slop in in sweats and flip-flops, you’re going to feel seriously schlumpy next to the polished Pacific Heights and Richmond district moms who crowd this park on sunny days.

Once a rather neglected sand pit, Julius Kahn underwent a 2003 renovation that birthed a sparkling, pristine play area with a rope spider web, two-kid swings, a mini climbing wall, spinning cups, and a small canal fed by a dripping spigot for sand- and water-play. The park’s surrounding Presidio landscape is also choice: eucalyptus trees, a huge green lawn on which to kick balls around, nice clean picnic tables where one can grab a snack. And to parent’s relief, plenty of places to sit and an adjacent bathroom. Oh, and free parking in a giant parking lot right across the street. Sweet!

Be sure to bring extra clothes as the canal is a pants-wetter even for the tidiest child, and that wet ride home in the fog is mighty cold. Plus, the clubhouse adjacent to the park frequently sets out paints and easels, and we all know how messy that can be.

Julius Kahn park is located on the Presidio’s southern border at 3550 West Pacific Avenue (between Arguello Street and the Presidio Gates), San Francisco. Call 415-292-2400 for more information.

Name murals and wall-hangings are one of the primary means for mass-manufactured pastel crap to sneak its way into your house. Give your kid’s room a much hipper look with the New Skool Alphabet, wooden plaques spray-painted with graffiti-esque letters.

Each plaque is hand-painted by Nate1, impresario of San Francisco-based New Skool, which is best known for its “baby DJ” shirts and onesies silkscreened with headphones. Imagine the possibilities! You can spell out your kid’s name: Meghann or Bryce would look awesome in graffiti script. Or you can sprinkle the nursery with hip-hop slang. Nate1 suggests DOPE.

Available at Wishbone, 601 Irving Street (at Seventh Avenue), San Francisco, 415-242-5540, wishbonesf.com.

Parents magazine has compiled a list of the country’s best science museums, and San Francisco’s Exploratorium is second on the list.

It’s no surprise, really. The influential museum stands head and shoulders above most science centers. It was, in fact, one of the very first hands-on science museums, founed in 1969 by the physicist Frank Oppenheimer (J. Robert’s brother), who hoped to make abstract scientific concepts palpable. The Exploratorium wildly succeeds at its goal, with witty hands-on exhibits that mesmerize as they teach lessons about physics, mechanics, perception, and electricity. There are exhibits that fascinate the little ones: just try dragging a four-year-old away from the sand wheels, where children can grab wooden sticks and make intricate patterns in sand whirling around on a pottery wheel. And there’s plenty to grab the attention of older kids too, like giant interactive computer games, a bubble station, and magnetized particles to sculpt into towers and fanciful shapes.

School starts in a week, so this is the week to go; without student field-trip groups thronging its halls the Exploratorium is less packed than usual. Bring some money for the stellar gift shop, and a sandwich to eat on the lawn if you don’t feel like shelling out $14 for a PBJ, an apple and a lemonade.

The Exploratorium is located at 3601 Lyon Street (at Baker Street), at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Visit exploratorium.edu or call 415-EXP-LORE.