Grotto of Compassion Collection

Central to LGTBQ culural expressions of wellness, especially Trans which had few safe havens anywhere, the rooftop garden provided space for growing food, ornamentals and when people started getting sick and dying in the first pandemic it was a place to mourn and remember - and organize.

Central Y was one of the first buildings to be rebuilt after the Earthquake and Fire of 1906. It was dedicated by Teddy Roosevelt. It felt permanant, an anchor, throughout the roaring 20s when the TL was a silent film capital, the Great Depression and the World Wars, in the 50s with Beats and 60s with Peace movemnet, the 70s with disco and the rise of the great Harvey Milk and the opporunism followed that changed our skyline from one respectful of earthquakes and fires, 10 stories tops, to a real developers' profile. We always could say "I'll meet you at the Y", for pick-up basketball, a steam bath, a swim or to sit on the roof and watch the birds.

In 2007 she was 100 years old, 100,000 SF of prime real estate 2 blocks from City Hall that teemed with activity 24-7, frequented by baristers and B-boys, dykes and queens and Budhists and socialists, big families of fresh immigrants and scions of the oldest money, artists, weightlifters, the fabulous and the studious. At the time of her sale in 2008 there were 1500 active memberships. Because that is what the wealthy suburban board did - in order to make up fundraising shortfalls in 2 other historic and poor districts: Bay View and Chinatown, the Tenderloin was sold out. Prove to us former Central members that the sentiment wasnt "a place too good for poor people" or being embarrassed by a Gay YMCA. The valiant Staff of the YMCA fought to safeguard social cohesion, fought to make the promise of a new TL facility real but it was too easy by half for the underperforming Bay Area YMCA Board to take the 10 million and run. Shirking stewardship of a histotic treasure given to their care they allowed displacement on a scale that still destabilizes the Tenerloin and Civic Center nearly 20 years later.

But the Rooftop Garden, then 40+ years old, was part of the salvage effort. Thanks to Y Staff and fortuity the DNA of compassion held in that sacred space was conserved and moved, every stick and grain of sand to UC Hastings, an acre asphalt lot below street level destined to become the Cotchett Law Center

The original 4 years allotted passed, still no building, but in the meantime the spirit of Rooftop Garden had transformed a wind-blown lot into the Demonstration Gardens, thriving with the Grotto of Compassion tucked quietly into he last hidden corner of Redwood Lane.

Much life happened there, music, learning, aerlism, puppets, beekeeping, landscaping. In 2018 the Law School needed its land for the new building and the Demonstration Gardens moved the Grotto of Compassion to the outer edge of the District at the invitation of San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the Dept of Real Estate. Land, it seems only becomes more valuable and space more scarce. An 8th of the size of 333 Golden Gate, McCoppin Hub was a City stepchild, deeded to the City but not to R&PD when the freeway came down. We moved all the fruit trees, all the rare ornamentals, all the benches, all the tools. But we had trouble getting the water turned on, they wouldnt allow us a shed, numerous meetings set up to initiate a formal lease trailed off into nothingness. Our first night there DPW crews came through and dumped a third of our plants into their trucks and hauled it away.

When unhoused people took up residence our crews couldnt work and the City was unresponsive. Then the 2nd Pandemic hit - we continued to care for our charge of the now 50+ year old Collection until one day we were notified by a neighbor that DPW was loading everything, trees, plants, statuary into chippers and dumpsters. By the time I arrived the site was scraped, no sign we had ever been there. Calls to the City went unanswered. One day a couple of years later a young City worker bravely identified himself as the one tasked with carrying out the order. He was ashamed and sad. I said to him it wasnt his fault.

The Grotto of Compassion has now joined SF's significant, ever-growing, Ghost Canopy. The Ghost Canopy is made of all the trees that are needlessly mown down, their stature or meaning to community dont protect them. It is emblematic of the genocide and earliest mass displacement here, never recognized, with debts incurred that can never it seems be paid. Small wonder then that the City is still sick, our people and streets so ill.

Readers please forgive me for this simple prescription: Plant and care for 10 trees for each inhabitant of this place, call it a sacred obligation. Do it in honor of those whose lives were broken by greed-driven developemnt, who can never be replaced but in remembering them through our commitment and action we create a place where they could live in peace and health. That is the spirit of the Grotto of Compassion seeking renewed expression after aparent destruction. Too simple? What would be the harm in trying it?