🎬 Letterman Army Hospital for kids

Here's a riddle for the car. Where did a hospital become the home of Yoda? Look to your side, because the place you're passing sits on the old grounds of the Letterman Army Hospital, a military medical center that closed in 1994.

The 1960s hospital buildings were torn down, and in their place rose a 350 million dollar campus for Industrial Light and Magic and the rest of Lucasfilm. So a spot once devoted to patching up soldiers is now devoted to making spaceships look real. About fifteen hundred people work here, and the grounds were designed by Lawrence Halprin, the landscape architect who also restored Ghirardelli Square.

Now the part worth repeating at dinner: the lobby of one building is open to the public during business hours, and it holds props and costumes from the Star Wars films. Out on the patio there's a fountain with a life-sized statue of Yoda, who has the best security detail in the Presidio: a lot of lawn and no one trying to hurry him. So as we roll past, look for greenery, tidy buildings, and ask yourself which galaxy is actually far, far away.