~excerpt from SFGate Home of the San Francisco Chronicle~

La Playa Park Across from the surfer-friendly Java Beach Cafe at Ocean Beach in San Francisco is the newly transformed La Playa Park. Converted from a neglected space that formerly attracted drunks and the homeless, the park has become an oasis, complete with an organic edible garden, a meditation path, a bee habitat, and now - two well-designed bocce courts of degraded white granite.

"It's been a lot of effort that involved a lot of people," smiled Steve Ward, a neighborhood resident who was involved in the transformation. Picking pebbles from the court, which will officially open in coming weeks, he added, "We had people from the city, from the Parks Trust, from the Surfrider Foundation, and from a ton of locals, including Patrick and Buffy Maguire, the owners of Java Beach.

"The bocce courts, situated on city land - next to the Muni turnaround at Judah and La Playa streets - happened also thanks to the donations of many, and thanks to $18,000 received through the city's Community Challenge Grant.

Ward, who is a special education teacher with the San Francisco Unified School District and is part Italian, said, "When you beautify a place, it reduces the amount of crime.

"Framing the bocce courts are planters built and installed by locals, and benches made of discarded old curbstones from city streets. Nearby, the edible garden blossomed with strawberries, sage, mint, oregano, rosemary, lavender, geraniums, blackberries and artichokes. "We want to be known as a destination spot - as La Playa Park," Ward said.

There is still work to do, he noted, looking at the Muni shack diagonally across from the bocce courts. "We are trying to get the city to let us take that from an eyesore to something nice, with a mural on it and a mosaic. We want to give all of this a plaza type of feel. You've got the cafe. The beach. And now the bocce courts."- Julian Guthrie
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/06/PK5H1L9KV1.DTL&ao=2#ixzz1cKLJKVND