Posts Tagged ‘swimming’

I’ve written before about San Francisco’s gritty city swimming pools, and they’ve only gotten worse (and cut their open hours!) since then, as Rec/Park budget cuts have started taking hold. There is, however, a bright spot: the newly renovated Charlie Sava Pool, out near Stonestown Galleria in the West Portal neighborhood. After multi-million dollar fix-ups, the pool is fresh and gleaming, 75 feet of pristine water and spanking-new locker rooms, without the standing pools of water so common to SF facilities. A bonus for parents of noise-sensitive kids: the ceiling is equipped with noise-canceling baffles, and the pool isn’t as echo-y loud as many.

The downside: unless you sign up for one of Sava’s classes (and all the Learn to Swim classes are sold out for the summer), the pool is only open for one short recreational swim period a day, 2:30-3:30pm Monday through Friday, and 2:30-4pm Saturday. The pool isn’t even open on Sundays! But if you’re in need of a swim and can hack the schedule, the facilities at Sava are mighty sweet.

Sava Pool is located at Wawona and 19th Streets in San Francisco; call 415-661-6327 or visit sfgov.org.

“Kids love swimming,” you say to yourself grimly, as once more your child pitches a fit when you get to the pool. “You should be loving this!” But she isn’t. Although most children love going in the water from infancy, the indoor swimming spots typically available to urban kids are a nightmare for those sensitive to sounds or nervous about being watched. Loud screams and splashes echo off the tiled walls; water gets in your eyes; and there’s some instructor hounding you to put your face in the water when you’d rather get out of the pool and run far, far away. Worst of all, there’s tense mom on the sidelines, watching the several hundred bucks she spent for swimming lessons slide slowly into the “money down the drain” category.

Anderson Swim School in Pacifica knows how to handle these kids. The pool is clean and warm, instructors are gentle and willing to jolly along children who are having a tough time with the lessons. Students generally start out with private lessons, $225 for seven 30-minute one-on-ones with an instructor; and can move on to semi-private lessons, 2-3 kids plus an instructor, once they’re more comfortable in the water. Semi-private lessons are $175 for seven lessons.

Whichever package you get, the instructors are experienced in dealing with kids having water issues. They don’t push, they don’t force, they don’t raise their voices. But they get kids comfortable in the water, and then they teach them to swim, while mom or dad sits on the sidelines, finally getting a break.

Anderson Swim School is located at 541 Oceana Boulevard (at Manor Drive), Pacifica. Call 650-355-3050 or visit andersonswim.com.

All this hot weather has me cursing the lack of swimming spots in San Francisco. Yes, yes, I know, if I lived in the East Bay there would be pools and lakes aplenty, but here in the city you’re pretty much stuck with aging public pools, horrendously expensive private pools, or the ever-icy Pacific Ocean.

If you don’t belong to a private facility with a pool (yum, fancy JCC pool), your best bet is the rooftop pool at UCSF’s Mission Bay location, which has open Family Swim Time every day but Wednesday. The pool is new, clean and sparkling, with an unparalleled view of San Francisco’s downtown from the water, a million teak chairs to rest in, and a tiny Astroturf lawn to mystify tiny fingers. The day pass rate is $15 for adults and kids, but the nice front desk people tend to wink at the kids and let them in free for swim time. Street parking is dicey but there’s an adjacent parking garage with parking a mere $3 an hour.

The pool is heated, but kept at a brisk 75 degrees so wait for a nice, warm day to drag the family down there. Floating in clear blue water, watching the dramatic San Francisco skyline and planes flying overhead, you may for just a few seconds feel like you have the glamorous urban lifestyle you planned for.

The rooftop lap pool at the Bakar Fitness & Recreation Center is located at UCSF’s Mission Bay location, 1675 Owens Street (at 16th Street), San Francisco. Call 415-514-4545 or visit mbfitness.ucsf.edu for a schedule of swim times.

The sparkling, pristine new location of swimming school La Petite Baleen is finally open in the Presidio. No longer will San Fran parents have to haul their cranky children down to San Bruno or (ye Gods!) Half Moon Bay to get a crack at the fancy swimming school’s excellent instructors.

It’s not like there aren’t places in San Francisco to get swimming lessons. But with the notable exception of the pool at the JCC, local pools tend to be, well, kind of grotty, with suspicious dark spots on their bottoms, and extra-strength mold around the ladders. La Petite Baleen is brand-spankin’, well-appointed, nicely located and just plain nice. That said, it’s going to cost you — $85 a month for lessons in the San Francisco location.

Non-potty-trained swimmers are accepted, as young as two months, and as kids get older they move from splash-and-play sessions to more serious stroke drills.

La Petite Baleen is located at 933 Mason St. in the Presidio. For more information, call 866-896-3603 or visit swimlpb.com.

Feel that sun? It’s San Francisco’s summertime, and it’s time to think about swimming before the weather cools back off in July. If you haven’t already signed up for a series of swimming lessons somewhere like San Bruno’s tony La Petite Baleen or the magnificent pool at UCSF’s Mission Bay location, it’s not too late to get in on classes offered by San Francisco Recreation and Park — though most courses aren’t open for Internet registration until June, calling Recreation and Park at 415-831-2747 can usually find you an open space in one of the local pools. Classes are offered for kids as young as six months or as old as 17, and many are incredibly cheap or free.

If you can wait a few weeks, the new cycle of classes at the dreamily warm pool at the Janet Pomeroy Center out by the SF Zoo start June 9. Kids aged 3 and under get an introduction to water in the Cuttlefish classes; those aged 3-6 may opt for the Penguin option, in which kids learn swimming skills. There’s no schedule online for classes, but Cuttlefish classes are offered generally in the late mornings Tuesday through Friday, while Penguin classes are Tuesday and Friday afternoons. The online information is hopeless; call 415-665-4241 for questions and to register. Students in swim diapers are accepted.

Prefer drop-in pool time? The JCC offers daily Family Swim time free to members or to those who can pay the rather steep day fee, $20 for adults and $10 for kids. Most of the public pools in San Francisco offer open swim times as well, and for a much more reasonable $4 for adults and $2 for kids. Each pool has a different schedule, so finding the right location and pool may take some clicking around. But SF Rec and Park does admit kids in swim diapers, a bonus for those with smaller kids, if not the rest of us.