A huge rotating rock. A pump track for bikes and skateboards. Green kites up against the clear, blue sky. Bounce houses with the backdrop of the ocean.
Sunset Dunes, the roadway turned oceanfront park, officially opened on Saturday, drawing hundreds of bikers, joggers and families with kids in tow, to the farthest west end of the city to enjoy a sunny day at the beach. On Noriega Street, businesses were packed, with lines out of the door.
Opponents of the highway’s closure came too. A caravan of vehicles with yellow Recall Joel Engardio signs circled around the block near the Lower Great Highway, a road parallel to the new park, honking and revving up the engines.
“Stop it!” a resident coming out of a blue house said to one of the drivers. “It’s our neighborhood! This is not making it any better!”
They didn’t listen. And the resident didn’t retreat. “We don’t want you! We want the park!” the resident shouted.
It’s been five years since the Upper Great Highway first closed to vehicles to provide space for the public during the lockdown in April 2020. After years of debates, lengthy public hearings and two ballot measures, at 2:13 p.m., the giant golden scissors were out. And it was official: Sunset Dunes is open, at least for now.
Just last week, the District 1 supervisor Connie Chan floated the idea of another ballot measure to reopen the park to traffic on workdays, although it would be difficult for her to gather enough votes to do so.
Walking down Sunset Dunes on Saturday, similar conversations came up over and over again: A friend explained how the park came about to another. A Richmond resident brought up Chan’s possible ballot measure to her out-of-town parents. “It’s already happened,” many said.
Take a look at what it’s like at the park on its first day, and people who are enjoying it.
Thanks for capturing the local businesses benefitting from the new park! Glad there was such beautiful weather for the opening too!
The local businesses got their first Spring day of hot sun, just like every year.
Day 2, it was back to normal. 200-300 on the UGH.
Sure hope that 1 day of business made spending 50+ Million as a district “make sense”…
(BTW the UGH was almost completely empty today, Monday, also… as usual. Sunset traffic was up to 80% increased locally in the Outer. Big win for Bernal?
Or Big Business ignoring State law when they want to?)
Thousands came and celebrated our new park. A couple dozen whined and created noise and exhaust because we changed something in the city. I disagree with giving the latter equal footing in the headline.
They lied about how many showed up. You lost 2/3 to 1/3 in the district.
Day 2, nobody showed. Go figure.
They can’t stand the actual facts, they have to run away and hide behind the Sam Singer BS.
(They are not locals)
Beautiful weather brought people out, just like it has for 5 years since the road was closed to cars on weekends and Friday afternoons. But now sand has reclaimed a significant portion already without any DOT maintenance. Come back in 3 months and you’ll need to empty your shoes because it’ll just be a deeper beach.
I really hope Chan gets the Ballot measure to reopen the highway. It has been nightmare for traffic for people in the outer sunset and folks commuting from Outer Richmond.
https://growsf.org/news/2025-04-09-chan-reopen-great-highway/
she won’t, it will not pass the BOS or a city wide vote because the park is popular. get over it.
It’s also illegal and pending a defense of circumventing 2 state laws.
Get over your lack of argument.
I hope that Chan’s Ballot Measure gets going strong! It has been a disaster for folks living out there with traffic and for folks commuting. There was already a giant park (called the beach) 50ft farther west.
https://growsf.org/news/2025-04-09-chan-reopen-great-highway/
Our commutes up and down 19th ave have gone up by 10+ minutes. The only reason people showed up for the grand opening is because it was nice weather and it was the weekend. Guess what – the highway was already closed on weekends! I would love to see how many people are bringing ‘joy!’ at rush hour on weekdays when that car is covered in fog and the rest of us are stuck miserable on 19th ave. Tone deaf initiative.
a moment of silence for your commute time.
You don’t have a commute, we can tell… touch work sometime.
Look on the bright side – When the first bicyclist gets run over in the Sunset as a result, you can be as politically outraged as you like!
Deliberately part of the anti-car YIMBY developer push for transit blackmail. See NYC.
I don’t care one way or another but it seems amazing that people didn’t consider the beach, walking on the beach, etc a park but a closed highway of asphalt is now a park.
@Lana – Both are parks, of course.
Ocean Beach was always a park, carpetbaggers from elsewhere.
that term has a very specific context relating to the american south rejecting candidates from the north during reconstruction because they were advocating for rights first the formerly enslaved. i don’t think you’re making the point you intend to be making.
Ocean Beach was always a park, carpetbaggers from elsewhere.
The “artwork” is so cringe. It’s like who elected this crap? Did anyone vote on it?
Nope. Phil Ginsburg’s little “giveaways” of the public commons add up.
They think they have no responsibility to be at all accountable now.
Do any of you remember when there were storms/wind that would close the Great Highway for days or weeks because of the drifting sand? When this happens again, and it will, how long do you think would it take for the park service to remove the sand? I would like to see the budget for sand removal for this “park”.
it will be less than the $500k spent to remove the sand from the roadway.
Hilariously the Prop K campaign put out 5x exaggerations of how long it was closed due to sand drift and equally dishonest accounting of how much it cost to clear.
Why would they lie? Because Sam Singer knows it works.
I loved that the highway was closed on Friday afternoons and weekends, and then opened up to traffic. This is because the DOT would maintain and clear the road of sand. Great compromise . Now, sand has already started reclaiming about 10 percent the road, and Parks and rec are doing nothing to remove it . Plus murals with slippery paint on asphalt make it treacherous for cyclists. What a joke our government is
wrong, i’ve biked over the murals, bike tires can handle it.
@Richard – The “slippery paint” argument was made about JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park, too, but so far a completely lack of treachery for bicyclists has emerged. It’s almost as if people have figured out how to make textured paint.
Hardly “environmental” with our combined sewer system,flower children on wheels. You’re dumping more particulate solids into the Bay than ever, congratulations.
go outside and enjoy the nice weather.
I was outside documenting the lack of people on the Great Highway on Sunday and Monday both.
Ghost town, I guess the yuppies had other things to do that were more instagrammable?
Latest video on recall Joel is too good not to share:
https://youtu.be/2RTeV5PRZeM?feature=shared
Disappointing to not see any photos of protests. Recall Engardio
Behold, a Trojan Horse, a real San Francisco Treat. Special interests disguised in liberal/progressive clothing. En Garde, Westside! Real estate development interests are ready to spring when conditions are ripe.
All these carpetbaggers that came to San Francisco and changed it for the worse. I hated to leave but by 2012 it became unbearable. I ended up in Rhode Island.
@Peter J Poulos – Ding-danged tranzplantz, yer not from aroun’ here, we don’t take kindly to strangers in these parts.
(BTW, do Rhode Islanders call you a “carpetbagger?”)
A carpetbagger – you come from elsewhere to sell things and locals don’t trust you.
Joel Engardio for example.
again, you’re not using that term the way you think you are.
Again:
Ocean Beach was always a park, carpetbaggers from elsewhere.
They even lied about how many showed up on day 1. The media just printed it.
On day 2 I counted no more than 200-300 at the concurrent highest peak.
The novelty wore off and the Bernals were already bored once it was no longer political.
“We don’t want you!” the resident Karen shouted against 2/3 of the residents of the Sunset and Richmond districts, the affected districts impacted by increased traffic and decreased safety by Billionaire-backed “non-profits” (that also support the genocide in Gaza, go figure.) The Sunset has seen 80% increases in traffic since the closure so Karen is going to be seeing more cars whether Karen wants that or not – she voted for it, in fact.
The Sunset doesn’t want Engardio – or Prop K. 66% is 2/3. WE don’t want YOU.
agitated crank yells online again.
Good self-knowledge troll. Don’t you have an alley to gentrify?
It’s a real estate deal