Golden Gate Park Pétanque Courts

Love this place. We came on Sunday, and found the SF Petanque club playing a friendly game. They were wonderful, and chatty. I hope to be as spry and happy when I hit my golden years.
Love playing here, the courts are nice, and ‘loved’ by the club. What a quaint little place to come.
They have regular meet ups, but to get info you may want to stop by and read the boards, the president of the club, I think is about 85, and I’m not guessing he is too keen to email.

Have you ever wanted to go lawn-​bowling without a lawn? Have you ever wanted to do something French without having to speak French, be rude, or eat something you normally wouldn’t touch? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then pétanque is the game for you. What is pétanque? It’s like lawn-​bowling, but it’s played on a more gravelly surface.
My brother’s Dutch girlfriend and her parents introduced me to it a few years ago, and then my brother figured out that Golden Gate Park has its very own pétanque courts. I couldn’t get an exact location for Unilocal,but if you’re driving south on 36^th Avenue from the Richmond District, turn right as soon as you can after entering the park (right next to Spreckels Lake). Follow this road until it dead-​ends, and then turn left into the little parking lot. The pétanque courts are on the left.
To play, you’ll need your very own pétanque set. I don’t know where you can find one, but they’re pretty cool. A set comprises two or four pairs of steel balls (each pair has its own pattern etched into it so that you can tell the pairs apart), a little starter stone that has a cool French name, a measuring device, and – if you’re lucky – a string with a magnet on the end so that you don’t have to lean down to pick up your pétanque balls.
The courts themselves aren’t in the best shape, but it’s really neat that there are so many of them. (I believe there are twelve total, but there may be more.) I’ve never seen more than three groups of people playing at one time, but it’s fun to imagine the place jam-​packed with people originally from the South of France. There’s a kind of amateur group that you’ll see playing here regularly, and they’re pretty good. Then there’s this absolutely amazing group filled with mostly older guys. But the star player is some young guy who never misses. Ever. And his ball never hits the ground before it knocks out the target ball.
Two odd quirks about this place are the really old, cheap trophy and the cordless phone, both of which are glued (for some reason) to a bulletin board. The phone is green, and I thought it had moss growing on it, but it might be painted green.
In any case, pétanque is fun, and you should play it.