Spring Guide

Personal Enrichment

By Jialin Luh (Mar 14, 2006 )

It's spring, contrary to what the weather may say. You've finished the dreaded spring cleaning and gotten your taxes out of the way like a good boy or girl. Or not -- regardless, if you're looking to reinvent yourself this spring, here are a couple things you might consider:

Windmills & flares
Okay, so breakdancing is not the newest, most avant-garde thing out there. But it's fun and the music is good for uprocking. Get your start with some classes at Acrosports -- where you can pick up the fundamentals of breaking: popping, locking, freezes and power moves. Once you've mastered the basics, hop in on the B-Girls/B-Boys Breakdancing Skillshare at CELLspace, which takes place Monday and Tuesday evenings for a mere $1.

Cirque du Soleil Wannabe
The Circus Center of San Francisco is where you'd acquire Chinese acrobatics skills -- contortion, Chinese poles, hoop diving, hand-to-hand balancing and tumbling, among others. Classes in Chinese acrobatics are offered to adults and children at four levels of training: beginning, intermediate, advanced and intensive. You can also practice flying trapeze; this class comes in three levels.

Acrosports also offers a variety of classes to expand your skill sets. In the Aerial Arts class, students learn maneuvers on the static trapeze, focusing on developing strength, control, grace, flexibility and a "basic trick vocabulary". The Xtreme Sports class helps you develop the skills to do crazy snow/wake board and ski tricks with a training regimen that includes work on the fastrak and trampoline with a spotting belt. If you just can't get enough of trampolines, you'll love the Trampoline class (yes, it really exists) where you can practice your tumbling skills and develop body awareness.

How Does Your Garden Grow?
If you are interested in learning how to grow your own food, compost, or manage your pests and plant diseases naturally, Cole Hardware offers classes on these topics and more. Call the Garden for the Environment's Gardening and Composting Program (415-731-5637) for a full list of classes or to pre-register. All of the March classes are free!

Get Crafty
Whether you want to manipulate metal into a Calder-esque mobile, learn how to etch a set of pint glasses, practice your soldering, or explore what you can achieve with precious metal clay, Craft Gym is brimming with workshops in many mediums.

Bookish is Saucy
We are lucky to have the San Francisco Center for the Book, which offers more than 300 book-arts workshops per year in binding, printing, and other book-related arts. These workshops go beyond the basic book binding methods… a few juicy titles include "Painted Pages and Visual Books: Found Poetry and Multicolor Stencils with Alisa Golden", "Innovative and Sculptural Cookbooks with Margaret Kessler", "Painted Pages and Visual Books: Graffiti in the City Hardcover Book with Alisa Golden", and "Screen Printing on Textiles and Paper with John Sullivan".

Acrosports
http://www.acrosports.org

B-Girls/B-Boys Breakdancing Skillshare
CELLspace
http://www.cellspace.org

Circus Center
http://www.circuscenter.org

Cole Hardware
http://www.colehardware.com

Craft Gym
http://www.craftgym.com

San Francisco Center for the Book
http://www.sfcb.org