Black Friday for free

As a coincidental but nontheless satisfying slap in the face to consumerism, my partner in exploration Topher and I decided to choose the day the United States hoped would regenerate its faltering economy- Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year- to explore San Francisco's privately-owned, public (yet little publicized) open spaces.

Those of you to whom that sounds like alliterated jargon, these spaces (otherwise known as POPOS) are in abundance throughout San Francisco. Mostly located downtown, they find themselves at the base or peak of a modern office buildings, malls and banks. City code deems that developers must provide a public access space, thus creating these urban atriums, greenhouses and plazas, many of which are hidden and best explored we found, on the weekend, when the office workers are in the suburbs, food courts empty and the spaces all the more secret.

A copy of the map, some fancy beer from Rainbow Grocery and some chunky-cut cheese and bread, we were on our bikes down heading east on Folsom Street, with our first stop in sight: Crocker Galleria, a high-end shopping mall with an alluring 'obscure staircase' the only access point, the guide said, which would lead us to a sun terrace: the first stop to sip on one of three beers (one for each of our planned stops).
While we thought the weekend would work in our favor, offering us the city's best views with the least crowd, we hadn't counted on the spaces being closed. Due to their locations in buildings primarily serving the nine-to-fivers, a skeleton security staff was on hand to deny us access outside of the regular opening hours. After being refused by an at-first-helpful-but-impatient when-pressed weekend guard , we didn't let our non-discovery of the obscure staircase discourage us. Half a block's wandering led us to a well-signed but completely empty terrace. A place whose refuge from the humdrum of office work would be welcomed, it was complete with lattice, creeping ivy, lovers' seats and, in an earlier hour, sun. The shade made the space chilly but you could see how it could draw you into its warm clutches on a mild San Francisco winter afternoon.
We soldiered on, tourists in our own city. We were determined to find that secret place- the unstumbled across, the place that had the perfect view, so unsigned and seemingly clandestine that it would feel like we weren't supposed to be there, only it was a POPO, so we knew that we could!