Here's a rare sentence you don't often get to write about San Francisco: you can do something genuinely beautiful here, for free, without a waitlist or a city-issued permit or a $22 cocktail involved.

The Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park is hitting peak cherry blossom season right now — we're talking the full cinematic experience, pink petals, wooden bridges, koi ponds, the works. And if you time your visit right, you won't pay a dime to get in.

The garden offers free admission during its early morning hour, a window that not nearly enough people take advantage of. While the rest of the city is waiting in line for a $9 cortado, you could be wandering one of the oldest Japanese-style public gardens in the United States surrounded by some of the most legitimately stunning scenery this city has to offer.

Look, we spend a lot of time around here talking about what San Francisco gets wrong — the spending, the dysfunction, the sense that basic things cost too much and deliver too little. So when something gets it right, we're going to tell you about it.

This is a city park doing exactly what a city park should do: providing genuine, accessible beauty to residents without nickel-and-diming everyone who walks through the gate. The free admission hour exists. Use it.

Cherry blossom season in the Bay Area is notoriously short — peak bloom typically runs through late March into April depending on the weather, and once it's gone, it's gone until next year. No amount of late bureaucratic action is going to extend the bloom cycle.

Get to Golden Gate Park early, bring your own tea if you want to be smug about it, and actually enjoy one of the things that makes this city worth the cost of living here — while it lasts.