If you’re going to do the San Francisco waterfront properly, as I surely did, you need to leave time to do the best kid-oriented attractions, and trust me when I tell you that any visit would be incomplete without spending time at the Basic Brown Bear Factory, a place I’m convinced is either an orphanage for undernourished bears or some kind of mad, plush, crazy bear creation laboratory. But which it is, I still can’t say.
If you go in during proper business hours you can join a free tour where you learn all about bears, the history of bears, how the bear gods make bears and what goes into a quality bear. Turns out God favors fluff and stuff over short-lived organs, who would have known? How great to know what your credit cards will be buying, once these bears are put together. On with the tour.
Josh was our guy of a guide, he told us a clever anecdote about Teddy Roosevelt who accidentally inspired the invention of bears, but I was already getting ahead of things so I didn’t pay attention to if it was all bears or just the stuffed kind. Either way it’s a pretty big deal.
Left – Here you can see Baby-D picking and plucking through the bucket of bear hearts. We all got to pick out our own, but Dominic insisted on taking two. Hope that doesn’t cause future health problems for his new buddy.
So Josh dragged us around, told us what bears are all about, preached us the what-for, told us where baby bears come from (not as scary as I’d braced myself for) and when our tour was done, he set us loose to pick out our own bears to bring to life.
There wasn’t any lightning storm and there wasn’t a mad scientist around for miles, but they had bins and bins of unflated bears. Not deflated, since they hadn’t been preflated to require reflation, but just as yet nonflated. They had big, little, pink, brown, furry, fuzzy and at least a half dozen between each extreme. All the bears looked so lonely without a kid to carry them around. I felt bad about it, but only bad enough to convince my crew to wander around, convince each to pick out their own, and get to work on becoming true bear daddies.
And bear daddies we did becam… becomed? Becamedid? Let’s just say ‘turned into’.
It took a good fifteen minutes for all of us to decide, but once we picked out our bears we got to dip into a bucket and give them each its own heart. Baby Dominic was tired, so he insisted on picking out two or three to stuff inside his cuddly new pal, but nobody said boo about it so we moved on.
Right – Here you can see the delicate surgeons putting the finishing touches on the backs of bears, you know, to keep them from coming unraveled and spilling out their stuffings. It’s a lot like clamping the umbilical cord on a baby, except that belly buttons don’t usually come unraveled so much.
We handed over our flation-ready friends to Josh, who hooked them up with their (probably patented and trademarked) converted World War II era lifejacket stuffer, alakazam, bears are topped to the gills with stuffing.
I wish I could get full that easy, but I have to eat vegetables before I can top off with custard. Sometimes I just wish I was a bear, at least then I could maul people who don’t give me my honey.
Once stuffed we passed along to the back-stitcher, the master seamstress in charge of zipping up the bear backs to keep them as stuffed tomorrow as they are today. She was all smiles, but if your job is watching orphaned bears find new homes, you’d grin from your one ear to your other as well. (I have two ears and I think most people do, not sure if I’ve pointed that out before but it’s true.)
Then my gracious guide fixed the seam-bound fur, helped me put him through the bath of screaming wind to clean off his loose fur-bits, and then we were done… but in truth, we were just getting started.
You see, on the tour we came to know we were looking to fill out a bear or bunch, but what we didn’t know was that we were going to get to pick out their first outfit to keep them warm when we were done… well, half-done I guess.
Once your bear is all done being done, stuffed up good, properly fluffed and de-linted, you get to go back out to the main entry area and from there you get to ogle outfits aplenty, dress up your new bear friends and walk ‘em down the runway. That’s right, our bears don’t have to stay bare! As you can see from the picture, I chose a SpaceMan motif, complete with shiny silver mask, full body space swashbuckler suit and black vinyl boots. He’s a dapper Booboo bear if you ask me.
Dominic couldn’t be persuaded to go for more flash, he insisted his handsome buddy don a patriotic military outfit, though if you ask me, I think he should be a soldier in space. Maybe I’m biased.
You can see master bearsmith Josh teaching us kids exactly where it is that baby bears come from. I have to say I thought it was going to be a bit different, but it’s pretty adult stuff. You have to cut, stitch, do all kinds of tough stuff.
Patrick picked out a cowboy getup for his little dawgy (which was actually also still a bear, though more Kodiak than the brown or sun variety us youngers picked out.) His bear got a fancy hat, suede boots and vest, five-point Texan-style stars and a bandana to polish it off. He even got an official “Stuffed in San Francisco, Basic Brown Bear Factory” t-shirt to round it out. Again, maybe it’s just me, but what’s wrong with the idea of a space cowboy instead? Space is bigger than the Old West, I think, but probably only a little bit.
At the end of the day (which was fast arriving) we didn’t leave the place with decadent shopping bags, but with new best friends under arms. No discredit to Dog, you’re still my dog, dog, but these new bears are really special. We got to pick them out from floppy scraps of cuteness and build them out as our own, dress them to our tastes and everything.
That was our last night in town and we pretty promptly hopped back in the car, and I can tell you that our delight from that day on was much alike our demands from the long ride home; we demanded we have our bears to cuddle and snuggle for comfort, aid to slumber and general fun.
Above – Here you can see our new, usual suspects. From the prairie to the trenches to space, we each got something so specific to our tastes that these guys effortlessly beat out the hundred other bears we have back home, most of which we’ve never even played with. This was easily one of the most fun places we’ve gone, ever, and I can honestly say I speak for all of us when I say I recommend it fully. Of course, I don’t speak very clearly for all of us, but I still speak it.
So if you hate cute bears, this is no place for you. It’s not just because you’re going to walk out with a degree in bearology or that you’ll have something new, fun, festive and delightful that you’ll love, but the real deal-maker for us was that they didn’t hardly even cost more than a store-bought bear, but they are ours from first stitch to last. The Basic Brown Bear people really put their hearts where their hearts are too. It’s a family business owned and operated by the same people since YEAR, and they don’t pull the unscrupulous fast-ones you might find from the bigger bear chains.
But really, if you want my advice (and I just know you do, that’s why you come here, isn’t it?) you need to give them your time because it’s a great experience, a fine product, a fair price and a bear you won’t let go of for a long time to come.
Basic Brown Bear is located at 2801 Leavenworth Street in San Francisco CA and offers daily tours to families and groups from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; but a word of warning; don’t go visitin’ this orphanage if you don’t plan on taking a bear home, they’re a package deal. Check them out online for seasonal adjustments or changes in services or availability. Tell them Brendan sent you, if you like. I’m sure they won’t remember us, but even with my own terribly short memory, I still remember them and I’ve still got my bear right here… sorry Dog, it’s nothing personal.
Above – These are the bears we made our very own selves, complete with wandering felt hearts somewhere inside, and the joy they’ve obviously given us.