Saturday in San Fran

On Saturday morning, Market Street is blocked off for the Filipino Heritage Parade. Here's the entry from the transit employees:



After we express our enthusiastic support, the teenagers use their 3-day metro passes to ride bus back to the Japan Center and the rest of us ride BART across (er...under) the Bay. We agree to meet later for dinner.



FARMER'S MARKET

In downtown Berkeley, we stumble upon a fantastic farmer's market. The market is a mix of farmers and food vendors, like the collective that sells Jen a bowl of mushroom gravy with gluten-free biscuits:



It's a dollar extra for the bowl (they give it back when you return it), or you could bring your own for a discount:



If you forget your re-usable bag (not likely in Berkeley) you can borrow one, or donate your stash from home:



In addition to the musicians, political activists and massage therapists who have booths, we enjoy meeting Raw Daddy, who makes us an awesome "Tuscan" cone, rolled from flaxseed and filled with cashew creme, a tomato & basil salsa and a wicked dose of garlic. He dreams of taking his cone food national, to compete with McDonalds.



ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND

Our actual destination in Berkeley is the adventure playground. As far as we know, there are only two communities in the world that have these playgrounds - we visited the other one in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2007.

The concept of an adventure playground is that kids enjoy and are most fulfilled by creating the space they play in, with loose (read: dangerous) parts that they can move, saw, hammer/nail, paint and demolish. In both communities, these are (incredibly) run by their city parks departments.

In Copenhagen, this meant that the Adventure Playground was actually a bit of forest that was subdivided into plots of about 10 x 20, and a group of kids would build a structure (usually two stories high) where they could hang out, raise animals like chickens and rabbits and otherwise have their own turf. As kids grew out of the playground around age 17, there were always 6 and 7 year-olds on the waiting list waiting to join that plot. It was Really Cool, but also kind of serious, since it was kind of a blend of 4H club (what with all the animals) and Lord of the Flies, since the kids operated their own society with very minimal adult participation.



Here in Berkeley, it looks more like a traditional playground blended with hippie shanty-town feel. There are park & rec staffers who ensure that whatever the kids build is substantial enough to be safe, and there are a number of forts/climbers on the grounds. There's also a zipline, a giant climbing net, an abandoned boat partly submerged in the sand and a carpenters corner with more supervision (thought not much) for sawing and clamping individual projects.

We talked with one recent college grad who had a summer job with the park, and he said his job is half construction/demolition and half interacting with the kids. In his opinion, the park is ideal for 11 to 14 year-olds who can return for a few days and really build something that will last, with adult help. On the other hand, I saw a lot of really dedicated preschoolers painting and sanding on the existing structures, while other kids played around them.







PIKA PIKA

Meanwhile, the teenagers have not been wasting their day. They hang out in the photo booth shop called Pika Pika, which is frequented by the local loli girls.



It's a store filled with photo booths where you can do crazy photos and then write on them! Fun!



DINNER IN INDIA

Eventually, the family reunites in Japantown, where Yelp helps us find a new Indian restaurant called Dosa with a friendly attitude toward Gluten Free eating - check out the special menu which lists the allergens in each dish:


The sambar (a tomato-based soup or dip) is spectacular - and the masala dosa (a rice crepe with a dollop of spiced potato inside) is *almost* as good as Middletown's Udupi Bhavan - which is saying a lot!



We devour everything, including dessert: it's blackberry and lemon sorbet, and a coconut custard cake with a perfect shot of cardamom.