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San Francisco Public Library- Park Branch
Rating Details »
Neighborhood: Haight-Ashbury
1833 Page Street
(between Cole St & Shrader St)
San Francisco, CA 94117
(415) 355-5656
1833 Page Street
(between Cole St & Shrader St)
San Francisco, CA 94117
(415) 355-5656
- Hours:
Mon. 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Tue. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Wed. 1:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Thu. 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Fri. 1:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
9 reviews for San Francisco Public Library- Park Branch
I love the libes! Of course, this location is no main branch, but it's quiet and cozy, and above all neighborly. We have recently been spending more time here since our little guy Dash is into books. They have a lot of lectures, storytellings for the little people, etc. throughout the year, and I've found the staff to be pretty helpful as well. Best of all, and this goes out to all you naysayers, it's free.
You've also got to love a system that allows you to "order" books from other branches and have them delivered to your closest branch. I recently did that with Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth (fantastic, by the by), and they had it for me in 2 days. Beat that, Jeff Bezos!
People thought this was:
- Useful (7)
- Funny (5)
- Cool (10)
i love libraries (well mainly that they are free and offer so much) so i'm not going to give it less than four stars. the building was nice and sunny and the librarians friendly. free wifi and all that, my complaint is that i didn't see very many outlets. like i only saw one power strip? so that makes it not ideal for a work area, which surprised me. i'll try the main branch next time.
Positives: Easy to get to from my house, friendly staff and easy check-out process, especially if you request books ahead of time.
Negatives: Dirty and small, loiterers in and outside of the library, weird hours (not open on Sundays and every day has different hours).
I give it four stars because I use the Park Branch library a lot and I don't want it to close.
People thought this was:
- Funny (1)
How strange that people seem to hate this library so. I love it. Why? Convenience first, of course, being an incredibly lazy person prone to wearing uncomfortable shoes, and this branch is right on my way home. Never take the Haight buses if you can take the N-Judah, by the way.
Actually, no, stay off the N, it's fucking crowded enough already and sometimes it stops for a really long time in the tunnel before Church and Duboce with the air off, giving me claustrophobic paranoid fears of running out of air and dying with the rest of these commuting suckers.
Still, it's nice for me, and as I said, my way home takes me almost right to the library's front doors, which is good, because then I can avoid walking on Haight at all, which is becoming less tolerable the longer I live here. One of the best things about the neighborhood, though, for non-residents, is that Haight Street proper is really the only congested part -- the surrounding streets are full of gorgeous old houses, it's quiet, and people are pretty nice about letting you make faces at their children and/or dogs.
The library contributes to this peacefulness, I think. It's a very small branch, but one of the oldest, and recently renovated so you're not afraid the ceiling is going to fall on you. No, the ceilings are high, in fact, and it's well lit too, which as you may know is key for a place where reading is venerated.
I suppose if you are a browser, this may not be the branch for you; it really is small, although they do have a nice display of "books you should read before you die," and the children's section is large. However, browsing is also for suckers. What you do is, you take advantage of the systemwide "request" function. Say you're me, and you edit a weekly book digest for a website (http://www.themorningn...), and you're on a bimonthly new-lit review mailing list, you come across a lot of interesting titles. As soon as you find a book that interests you, go to the library website (http://www.sfpl.org), log in, find the book you want, request it, and choose the branch you want to fetch it at -- usually the one closest you in, in my case, Park Branch.
Then in a little while, depending on processing time and previous requests &c., you will get an email telling you that "The material(s) you have requested are now at the library," and then you have 10 days to go pick them up. It's great and I love it. Of course, sometimes it takes so long to get a book that I've forgotten why I requested it in the first place, but I blame that on slow readers; the public school system failed you. My superior Montessori education and I have read 44 books this year, by the way, and that's not counting all the junky, embarrassing ones that I don't like to talk about. HEY I AM VERY FULL OF MYSELF.
Back to Park Branch: The librarians there are always polite, if a little bit weird. Yes it is strange that the older gentleman who's always dressed in a button-down shirt and a vest also has a mohawk; yes it is strange that another guy wears gloves and makes you take your own receipt. But, whatever. Librarians can be as eccentric as they like, because they do us a great service.
The Haight being rife with homeless dudes, there're often a few of them taking a break in the library as well. The last time I was there, the children's librarian spent a good 15 minutes helping a clearly crazy man find the genre of books he wanted (scifi, naturally), and no one got mad when he yelled a little bit. The other ones have been quiet; I shared a table with a dude whose face, hair, body and sack of personal belongings were all the same shade of grunge, and he was not rude or scary at all. We just sat at opposite ends of the table, me with my horrible, frightening book about how people turn evil, and him with a newspaper.
You know, I come from suburbs. Certainly not all-white suburbs, but before moving to the city I'd never lived in a town with a population over 70,000. Homeless people still make me sad and scared and uncomfortable; I haven't entirely learned to deal with it yet, so if the above paragraph comes off like "The homeless: Just like real people!" I apologize. I know they are real people, and I feel terrible that our society has failed them so horribly. That guilt makes me nervous around them. (I do work for a magazine that exclusively covers the affordable housing market, including many developments for the formerly homeless; I try.)
Ultimately, the Park Branch is just what I needed in a neighborhood library, and I'm happy to have it so near.
People thought this was:
- Useful (7)
- Funny (8)
- Cool (10)
So I have the misfortune of living exactly equidistant from two branches of the library (each a mile away), two Walgreenses (each about a half-mile away), and two post offices (each about three-quarters of a mile away). How amazing is that? I know there aren't many post offices in the city, and the library branches are in pretty weird spots, but Walgreenses? There are like fifteen Walgreenses per square mile in the rest of the city. (And yes, Walgreenses is the appropriate plural form of Walgreens. That'll teach them to omit the apostrophe.)
So back to the Park Branch of the library. It's an old building that's pretty different inside what what you expect from the outside. There are posters on the walls from various Haight Street festivals and other memorabilia from the Haight. It's usually pretty empty.
To be honest, I've never browsed the stacks here because I usually do my browsing at the Main Library. I basically return all my library books here, and the only problem I've run into with that is that they're not open every day so one time I got charged an extra ten cents because my book wasn't scanned in until a day later. Big deal. More money for the library is fine by me.
I'm really glad this place is on Page Street, which really is one of the Haight's gems. Really close to Haight but also really quiet. I guess by writing a review here, I'm alerting more people to this place's presence, but that's OK too.
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- Useful (2)
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You know how sometimes when you walk around the Haight you run into insane people who talk to themselves really loudly and try to engage you in conversation when you're clearly not interested in being bothered at the moment? Well... imagine those same people hanging out in a space that is supposed to be quiet and a type of haven from the outside world. Yeah. Not so good, right?
Really large children's section here with dirty toys and stuffed animals. Gross.
UPDATE:
Apparently, some of the CDs that I returned in the book drop were swiped. Guess who is going to have to pay $20-something for each disc? THIS SUCKER!! During this whole nightmarish book debacle, the librarians at this branch have really been helpful and patient, though. I only wish that they had a camera in place outside to see who the thieving bastards are, though. I'm coming to the library to check out music ... obviously I'm not one who wants/can frickin' PAY for it. Very disappointing.
People thought this was:
- Useful (8)
- Funny (3)
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I love libraries but...
I went to the library at Park Branch for my first library experience in SF and it made me miss libraries in my hometown- Toronto so much! The staff is horrible here and it 's very visible they are paid to be here. When I went to ask one of the librarians about a book, I was greeted with a sigh and a hint of annoyance. I don't know..maybe she was having a bad day?? I was feeling homesick that day, so this place perpetuated my feeling and made me not want to hang at this place. Sadly, this branch is very close to me, but I do not feel the welcome feel so I take my holds and run.
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- Useful (1)
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let me start by admitting i love the brary.
lately, i've been taking advantage of the wi-fi and peace & quiet to do some work... recently, i thought, why not try a differnt one besides the monumental Main Library? wouldn't the haight one be full of bliss and love and tranquility?
um, it's a toddler paradise. 'storytelling hour' had escaped my mind decades ago. I completely forgot that this is little kids' 'happy hour.' No drinks, but lots of smelly diapers and crying. (oh and lots of chairs sized for mini- me). All of this is perfect working conditions, no? What's even better is the mix of the pseudo-homeless/down on their luck types who are visiting the brary for some reading materials (and quiet). They generally don't exactly mix well with the kids. so then you get them yelling at the screaming kids and all of a sudden you are at a raging Tenderloin McDonald's playground.
So much for peace and quiet. That being said, I'd go back to peruse the books/media...and the historic architecture of the place is in tact with great natural lighting. It's not a place to study, but a place to take the kids. or maybe a place to visit before deciding you're ready for them.
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I like this library for a few reasons: it's close to my apartment, it's open late a few nights a week, it's small, the staff was friendly to me, it's in a cool building ... however, the selection is not as great as the other larger libraries. It was easy to find what I wanted, nice and quiet, and unimposing.
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- Useful (2)
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