2 hours ago, birdguy said:

When my brother and I played at the Presidio 75-80 years ago your helipads were an airstrip called Crissy Field.  We watched Piper L-4 Grasshoppers land and takeoff there.

Back in the late 1960s when I was in 7th and 8th grade, we would have soccer practice on the Marina Green.  At that time, the Army would fly small twin propped aircraft (looking it up I believe they were Beechcraft L-23 Seminoles) in and out of Crissy Field, and the approach was low right over us.  Every time one would arrive, some of us would break from whatever drill we were doing, run towards the Presidio making machine gun noises as if we were being strafed and collapse onto the grass when they passed over us.

1 hour ago, Mike A said:

Back in the late 1960s when I was in 7th and 8th grade, we would have soccer practice on the Marina Green. 

When did soccer become a popular sport?  In my day it was football, baseball and basketball.  We played in empty lots, parks and playgrounds without any adult supervision at all.  We got into  fights and sometimes came home with bloody noses but we worked things out ourselves.  We learned a lot about growing up on our own.

Marina Green was a favorite place for touch football.

Empty lots were favorite places to play war.  This was during the middle of WW2.  Our favorite place was the end of Larkin Street.  At the time it was a big empty lot that sloped steeply down to Polk Street.  Every once in a while a battleship or carrier or cruiser would come under the Golden Gate Bridge and we would halt our games to watch it until went out of view as it passed Treasure Island.

BTW, Mike, I took a couple of Huey flights from those pads right after the Loma Prieta earthquake.  My weather flight was tasked to provide weather support for the 6th US Army emergency operations center.  Most of the helicopter operations were staged out of Hamilton Field and I would fly up there to check on the weather observers and forecasters there. 

Noel

I'm guessing that everyone is done with the topic.  If you want to discuss where you played as a kid, the
start a new topic!  🔒