Talk:Balboa Park, San Francisco

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Bartash (talk) 20:50, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Notes on why “Balboa Park” is not a San Francisco neighborhood
The City and County of San Francisco does not recognize any neighborhood called “Balboa Park.” There is no neighborhood called “Balboa Park” in the City’s Neighborhood Groups Map, San Francisco Planning Dept. https://sfgov.org/sfplanningarchive/neighborhood-groups-map In the neighborhoods map available at SF Find, there is no neighborhood called “Balboa Park” in the drop-down menu. https://sfplanninggis.org/SFFind/ “Balboa Park” has no meaning in the context of current neighborhood activism or organizations. There is no neighborhood association or group that contains the name “Balboa Park” in the City’s Neighborhood Contact List, San Francisco Planning Dept., nor can any such organization be found via internet search. https://s3.amazonaws.com/sfplanning/maps/NeighborhoodGroupList.xlsx NextDoor.com, the popular social media website based on neighborhoods, does not recognize “Balboa Park” as a neighborhood.

“Balboa Park” has no meaning in the world of real estate sales categories, neighborhoods, or advertising. No real estate website has “Balboa Park” listed as a neighborhood. If you search on “Balboa Park, San Francisco CA” on any major real estate website such as Trulia or Zillow, and you get no meaningful results related to the area around Balboa Park, the public park.

The name “Balboa Park” has no meaningful history of use outside of being the name of a public park and part of the name of a transit station. Neighborhoods have histories. Although there have been some recently invented neighborhood names in San Francisco, for instance “East Cut” for an area South of Market that is low in residences, to have your neighborhood re-labeled is generally resented by people who live there. Many neighborhoods in San Francisco began as late 19thC homesteads or early 20thC developments. The name “Balboa Park” was never used for either of this type of residential area. A review of references in the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that over the last one hundred years “Balboa Park” refers almost exclusively to the public park, especially sporting events held there, or it serves as a truncated version of the name of the BART/Muni Station. Occasionally a house fronting the park itself is listed in real estate ads as “Balboa Park,” just as a house fronting Golden Gate Park might use that designation to advertise. But this is the exception that proves the rule.

Interestingly, as another exception that proves the rule, in a 2014 SF Chronicle feature about home automation, the residence of the subject of the article is described as a “modest Balboa Park home,” yet that house, being near the intersection of Cayuga and Navaho Avenues, is 0.4 miles away from Balboa Park. It is also over a quarter mile from the Balboa Park BART Station, which, in a stretch, might have been what the resident meant. His house is squarely in Mission Terrace; alternately, the SF Planning Dept (and consequently real estate websites such as Zillow) lists as this area as “Cayuga.” Both neighborhoods have Wikipedia pages. San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco CA), 27 Apr 2014, Page 387.

Bartash (talk) 20:50, 16 January 2021 (UTC)