I was born in this town. Although I spent my Wonder Bread years growing up in San Jose, on clear nights we could see the shimmering lights of San Francisco’s skyscrapers and the towers of the Bay Bridge from perches in the Los Gatos–Almaden foothills. As soon as somebody could drive, we were hauling up to Winterland for rock shows and to prowl Broadway and the first punk clubs “south of the slot” (that’s Herb Caen for “south of Market”). Eventually, since we were in the city every night, it made sense to sleep and work there also. Before I was twenty-two, the City by the Bay’s Oz-like stature had lured me back.

When we were kids, our rare forays close to the actual shores of San Francisco Bay were either on the Bayshore (101) or Eastshore freeways, bumming around the Alviso and Milpitas wetlands or riding dirtbikes over the landfills now known as Sunnyvale and Redwood City. We were always told the Bay was polluted, and the smell of rot and tidal swill confirmed it. The creeks that we foraged ran black in summer with pesticides and petroleum products that were washed downstream with each flushing winter rain. In a family that included five rugrats, our juvenile jousting often included verbal threats to throw one another in “the smelly Bay.” We just thought that’s the way it was and would be. To the people’s credit, our Bay water quality, and even the air above it, is much improved since the filthy ’60s and ’70s. Just don’t eat the fish every day and, as always, breathe at your own risk.

Now, wherever I am in San Francisco, my gaze is constantly drawn to the waters of the Bay and the Golden Gate. If not for a quick check of the anchored tankers waiting for Oakland port (bow pointing out, tide coming in!), then as a reminder of exactly where I’m at on the map. Over the past twenty years, during regular bicycle touring from my Potrero Hill digs, I always seem to choose a route that follows closest to the shoreline.

I’ve enjoyed the windswept pleasures of Candlestick Point Recreation Area when it wasn’t covered with 49er parking. The PG&E outflow at Hunters Point makes me wonder what Islais and Mission Creeks, farther north, looked like when they flowed naturally into the Bay. I’ve gladly welcomed the sea lions to blubber around Pier 39, and always salute the old guard rowing clubbers swimming laps inside the breakwater at Aquatic Park, its sliver of sand at lower tides one of the few approachable “beaches” inside the Gate.

San Francisco has great oceanfront beaches, but most of those on the Bay were filled and paved long ago. You won’t find any sand, or a place to put a blanket, in North Beach or trendy South Beach. The recently improved northeastern waterfront and Embarcadero Drive brought us better Bayside access and a beautiful “old-timey” brand-new ballpark, but no new beachfront.

During my bike rides I’d continue to the Marina Green, check the fishermen’s buckets along the wall there, and take a side trip to the Wave Organ on the jetty. Then I would tuck into the moist headwinds sweeping fog across the barren Crissy Field, bearing for Fort Point and the Golden Gate Bridge. Because of the cold wind and the presence of the 6th Army (and later, the mess left behind), I would usually pedal right past the sandy shoreline of the Presidio. Why couldn’t this city have great urban beaches to rival those in Sydney, Rio, Waikiki, and cities on the Mediterranean?

Well, at long last, there is a new “jewel” to add to the crown that is San Francisco, and it has nothing to do with Barry Bonds’s pierced earring. The new cool spot that has defied all government red tape and bumbling local politics is the lagoon and beachfront at Crissy Field. This is the best thing to happen to San Francisco since the Embarcadero Freeway was taken down (the ’89 earthquake left it cracked and unstable), and it rivals Golden Gate Park in its value to the human spirit. PacBell ballpark is for baseball fans; what’s being done at Crissy Field is for everybody, providing San Francisco residents and visitors with a natural respite from urban dilemmas just blocks away. Even a view of the city has been restored, so to speak. Looking eastward from the new beachfront (yes, beach, I tell you!) and path system presents you with a historical panorama, with the Palace of Fine Arts and the grounds of Fort Mason anchoring the foreground and the white-painted buildings crowding the slopes of Russian and Nob Hills. It’s a romantic view of the city, and one that hasn’t changed a lot since the 1920s.

Oh yeah, the wind and fog are still out there, but dunes behind the beach have been restored and planted with native grasses and flora by volunteers’ hands. New parking areas are well disguised by designer landscaping, and large cypress trees holding sway over many newly planted saps will deflect the chronically healthy northwesterly breezes. New nooks, swales, and picnic areas are being established, even a protected set of concrete sunning steps toward the Fort Point end, so bring a blanket and the “pic-a-nic” basket, Yogi. Besides, the wind fuels the sailboards that have long been a feature on the waters of this part of the Bay.

I can see a parking problem developing as too many board-laden SUVs insist on nosing right up to the sand to jockey with rental cars for too few spaces. Already, the area’s attraction as a haven for extreme sports enthusiasts, dogs running wild, joggers and walkers and bikers and skaters and gawkers is causing the kinds of conflicts that tend to stop projects like this from ever getting started because of all the “what ifs?” and special interests. My own personal use of the site, besides gliding through in my wannabe Lance Armstrong road jersey, is saltwater fly fishing for surf perch and occasional striped bass, and skimboarding the mouth of the channel to the new marsh, where a small one- to two-foot breaking wave peels across the sandbar when the tide is right. So far I have taken no fish on the fly rod, and last time we went skimming I was sore for three days so, as always, “nature” has a way of leveling the playing field.

Problems and conflicts will arise, but they will be “good” problems to have. The project at Crissy Field is a model for the future, and possibly the key to humans’ continued coexistence on a fine line between Mother Ocean and Mother Earth. For me, it’s a joy just seeing that little peeling wave where none existed before, or imagining a steelhead trout someday instinctively poking around the channel to the new lagoon, as if maybe rediscovering the route to a long-lost ancient spawning ground. Obviously I’m crazy, as were the individuals who came up with a plan like this, which is now laid before us for all to see and enjoy. Thank you.

San Francisco local Kevin Thatcher (age 42 going on 17) is publisher of Thrasher skateboard magazine, Schwing! golf magazine, and Juxtapoz art magazine.