Artist Lauren Bon focused attention on the potential of downtown’s new Cornfield state historic park last year with an act as brilliant as it was obvious: She planted the swath of empty, low-lying land with corn. The corn grew tall as the summer sun arched higher, and the field’s verdant, vividly green beauty shimmered in startling contrast to the concrete bunker that is downtown. Under Bon’s nurturing, the sun, the seed and the site’s historic significance all conspired, unleashing an almost Dionysian energy. What ensued was a kind of Summer of Love, with drumming, dancing, bonfires, lectures, soirees, film and art festivals. It was as if nature coupled with the city and produced culture as its offspring, persuasive evidence that downtown desperately needs a defining natural feature — a Central Park, a Golden Gate Park — and that the agricultural field that once fed el pueblo is... More >>>