Carol Gould of Bernal Heights was leading some friends from Concord on a three-park hike along San Francisco’s southern waterfront when she looked over her shoulder toward the bay and saw something that stopped the hike before it had even started.
It was a 13-foot-tall African mask hung on a pole and standing all alone in the middle of the dock at India Basin Waterfront Park. Gould instructed her charges to make a hard right, and they went down a flight of stairs for a closer look. Their final destination of the Ramp for lunch on the sundeck would have to wait.
“I saw that thing, and it wasn’t here the last time I was here,” Gould said. “It’s very striking and located in the exact right place. It is very evocative and raises lots of questions.”…